Meet Jessie

Jessie's owner approached me on the beach and asked me to take pictures of her. He said he would pay; I declined the money but took the pictures. I figured why not. I gave him one of my cards and told him to send me an email and I would send him the pictures. He never sent the email, so I can't send him the pictures. I wonder why they came into my life and what I should do with his images. I don't go to the beach but once a year, maybe, and I have no way to contact Jessie's owner. As I believe all things happen for a reason, there's a reason for this, I just don't know what it is.

Sappy Movie Line

"I'm just a girl standing in front of a boy asking him to love her." It's from Notting Hill. I will watch the whole sappy movie just to hear that line. It's probably the only movie line that I can quote. I'm just horrible at memorizing them. But for some reason that line sticks with me.

Perhaps because I'm just an old sap at heart — a hopeless, closet romantic. Maybe it's because I wish I had the guts to say that line to somebody. Or maybe I'm just a Julia Roberts/Hugh Grant fan. Who really knows?

I Should Kick Butt

You know that feeling when you find out somebody you liked was dating somebody else while they were leading you on? You know the sinking feeling in your gut, the anger, the shaking of limbs, the clenching of the fist, the darting of the eyes, the brain reliving every stupid minute? Quite some time has passed and I don't even talk to that person anymore. I shouldn't even care, but for some reason the news hit me like a completely unexpected ton of bricks. And I can't throw those bricks back. Or can I?

I will do no harm, I will do no harm, I will do no harm.

No matter what harm is inflicted upon me, I will do no harm. It sounds good in theory.

Lasik Blues

I had my four-month check up today and my right eye just keeps getting worse for distance, but it's super fantastic for reading. Would you believe that I may have to go back to glasses for driving at night? I'm bummed. Really bummed. I probably shouldn't be because I can finally read the computer screen without getting a headache. And really since I spend most of my day working on a computer, it's probably a good thing. The doctor says at my age, it's probably a blessing in disguise. Now I'll probably get five additional years without reading glasses. My fear is that it will keep getting worse. It takes six months they say for your sight to stabilize, it's only been four. I'm not getting the glasses for a couple months to see if it's stable. It would really piss me off if I had to buy two pairs of glasses after the promise of no more glasses! Imagine the money you will save in eyeglasses they said. HA!

They offered to do touch up surgery, but that seems silly right now. I can still see pretty well. 20/30 combined for distance. But it's like 20/15 out of my left eye. It makes up for the crappy right eye. Plus, I really want to be able to read and they think the touch up surgery would put me in reading glasses immediately since the left eye can barely see to read. That sucks.

The bummer part is that it's my right eye, my dominant eye. Which means the eye I use to look through the view finder in my camera. So that makes taking pictures a little odd. I adjusted the diopter on the view finder, but it still feels like it's off. Thank heavens for auto focus, I can at least use that as a backup when I am manually focusing.

Well, I'm not the poster child for Lasik, that's for sure. Makes me wish I went the cheap route instead of finding the best surgeon in the metro area. Then having a crappy result would have been expected. Now I paid big money, drove for hours to my appointments and still have one crappy eye, but at least I can read this as I type it.

What's the Lesson?

Honestly, I'm having a hard time figuring out the lesson here. I occasionally do random nice things for people. I just do it, I don't expect anything in return. Most of the time, people say thank you and life goes on. But sometimes, it becomes a springboard for people to try to get more. And it pisses me off. They act like I just handed them a menu of items for them to pick and choose from. Now I regret giving anything at all to them and I have to figure out how to deal with it. Because all I want to do is tell them where to get off. Should I not give what I was planning to give? Should I just tell them their behavior sucks? I mean I'm obviously not giving any more than was promised by me, but now I regret giving anything at all. And I'm right back into "I hate people" mode which is a lot of work for me to get out of. 

So what's the lesson? Stop giving? Stop being nice? Wait for people to earn it? Make people prove themselves to me before I honor them with anything at all? Crap, that pisses me off even more. Now I'm in a cycle that I can't get out of. Pissed off at myself for being nice and pissed off at others because I can't be nice anymore. Now I'm one of those angry, mean, non-giving people I hate.

Fantastic.

Baby Sandra

For years, I gave my Mom a hard time about not having any pictures of me as a baby. I'm the youngest of three. And my sisters were some sort of amazing miracle. They were first, they were identical twins, and they were born with a full head of hair so they were amazingly photogenic from day one on this planet. I was last, just one baby, not a boy, and bald so I was not as popular. The only photographs my Mom had of me started on my first birthday. I mean there is an entire album of my sisters' first everything. First time they said "coo", first time they rolled over, first time they farted, first time they blinked twice, first time they lifted their heads, first time they waved, first time they looked sideways — I'm not exaggerating. You should see the album. Then you get to my page in one of our family albums and it's "Sandra's First Birthday." Shoot, I had to wait a year before anybody noticed me and put me in an album. I thought they might be waiting for me to grow some hair, but even then what little hair I did have was up in a ribbon — you know the kind they put on girls so you don't mistake them for a boy. 

We have since learned that Mom switched to slide film for a year, my first year. All my baby pictures are on slides. Apparently it was the wave of the future back then. Somewhere around my first birthday, Mom decided it wasn't for her and she went back to film negatives. 

This year for my birthday, she converted a bunch of them into digital photographs for me. I think she's tired of me giving her a hard time. 

The shot above is my Mom, sister Cindy on the left, sister Shelley on the right and me, the bald one in the middle. I imagine that my Dad is taking the picture.

So there you have it, I did exist before my first birthday and there is evidence of it.