Photojournalism in Action

Well, Opie got me an amazing camera for Christmas and I think it’s safe to say that I have never been more annoying. I mean, I'm  pretty sure I was annoying before--I am the one, after all, who essentially crawled down the side aisles at my nieces and nephew's First Communion masses and took surreptitious pictures--in one case, in direct defiance of the priest.

(It's interesting to note that several people told me I wasn't being surreptitious at all during these events yet still cheerfully accepted all copies of the pictures I tool.)

In any case, I'm even worse now--as anyone who has been at a family celebration with me in the last few months can attest to.

The thing is, this camera has a lot of amazing features that I'm still trying to figure out, including the ability to take action shots.

Which means that as soon as I got it out of the box, I asked Opie to run around the yard as fast as he could.

"I don't really want pictures of me running around the yard like an idiot," he said.

"I'm not going to take pictures of you," I promised. "But if you start running, the dogs will run after you and I can get some shots of them."

He looked at me like I might be a little crazy but I'm used to that look so it didn't even faze me. "I'm not going to get tired of asking."  I assured him. And proved it by saying "Come on, just run.  Just a little jog?  Would it kill you to run a little bit? Come on! Please?!" until he caved.

Which was great because then I was able to test the burst motion shot thingy and get this picture of Bubba and Sassy.

Please note that I was true to my word,
you can't even see Opie's shadow in this!

A few more weeks of this and I think I'll be ready to start shooting for National Geographic.

And you might think this makes Opie a saint and me an unreasonable freak show but that’s because you don’t know all the things he refused  to do.

I mean, sure he’s been going on long nature walks with me and hauling my camera bag all over the place and even posing as I hone my skills for National Geographic:

(How about the squirrel photobomb?)

But after I got this shot:

And suggested that he run through the woods, crashing through the underbrush as fast as he could, so we could flush out even more birds, he said no.

Then when I mentioned that it would be even cooler to get a picture of these guys flying off the water:

He wouldn’t even consider jumping off the dock and doing a cannonball right into the middle of the lake.

And when I hinted that he could probably lure this hawk into an amazing, attack-mode pose:

By waving his arms in the air and rushing at its nest, he acted like I was kidding.

And when I told him that he should run through this flock of ducks:

like you see people do with seagulls on the beach, so I could get a shot of him surrounded by hundreds of birds flying in the air all around him, he reminded me that I had forced him to do that exact thing the last time we were in Florida (when I only had the little point and click Kodak) And not only did the birds NOT fly off like they do in the movies, they actually got in his way and then started chasing after him.

“I hope you realize that you’re stomping all over my dream of becoming a photojournalist,” I told him.

And you know what? He didn’t seem one bit sorry.

So, who's the unreasonable freak show now?

Wordless Wednesday

Going Postal

If you know me at all, you know I suck at putting things in the mail.

Say, for example, I need to send a niece or nephew or other beloved child in my life a card. I consider it a success if that card gets to them within a four-week window of the actual date of whatever event they’re celebrating. If there's a package and trip to the post office involved, I need a 6 week window minimum.

And that's with children. With adults, who are better emotionally equipped to deal with disappointment, all bets are off.

My friend Martha's birthday is in the beginning of October and I finally gave up on ever sending her her present; I just gave it to her when I saw her over Christmas.

So when I made it to the post office on January 16^th with the Christmas package for my friend Eric's children, I considered it a screaming success.

At first.

Here's what happened

I took the Christmas package and another package containing a return to the post office in the early afternoon, thinking this would be a less crowded time. Unfortunately there were approximately 7462 people in line ahead of me.

Which was odd since there’s only about 17,000 people in this entire town.

But I knew if I left I wouldn’t make it back to the post office for at least another month so I gritted my teeth and waited. And waited. And waited some more.

I got to the counter and put the return up first because it was ridiculously heavy. Once they got that weighed and in the bin, the problems started.

“Ma'am, we can't mail this,” the clerk said, pushing the Christmas package back to me.

To be honest,  at first I was a little more focused on the fact that he “ma’am-ed” me. Ma’am? Who is the joker calling ma’am? He’s got to be 10 years older than me! When I got past that insult, I just assumed he was practicing some form of subtle postal humor and smiled in that ‘I don’t get the joke but am willing to pretend that’s funny’ sort of way and pushed the package back toward him.

“It’s just going to St. Louis,” I said.

“Ma’am, that’s a wine box,” he said.

“There’s not wine in it,” I assured him.  “You can even open it up and check.”

“But it says wine all over the box,” he countered. “We can’t do it.”

“Is there any chance you’re making this up just to irritate me?”  I asked.

And he gave me that same 'I don’t get the joke but am willing to pretend that’s funny smile.' Touche, postal clerk, touche.

“No ma’am,” he said.  “They won’t accept it.”

Ever vigilant to the changing nuances of the English language, I couldn’t help but notice he had switched from “we can’t” to “they won’t.” As if he was somehow distancing himself from the nefarious power structure of the postal service.

“Here’s the thing,” I told him. “From my perspective, you are they. So, if you take it they will have taken it and I bet the rest of them assume that they have somehow given approval for it. And then everyone’s happy.”

“It doesn’t work that way,” he assured me.

And then I pulled out the big guns. “Sir,” I said. “Would it help at all if I told you these are Christmas presents?” And then before he could interrupt, “That’s right. Christmas presents.  For children. Children who already think I suck because Christmas was 3 weeks ago. If I have to schlep this all the way home, and wait until we somehow have a box that didn’t previously contain alcohol, repackage them and bring it all the way back here, those poor children might not get their presents until Easter! Wouldn’t the kindlier response be to just write NOT WINE all over this box and let those children have a tiny bit of joy?”

He was, I’m sad to report, completely unimpressed.

“Ma’am,” he said somewhat firmly. “I really need to help the next person in line.”

It is interesting to note that these kind of situations are the exact reason we have so many empty wine boxes at our house.

So, to summarize, I suck at putting things in the mail, I’m great at drinking wine, and Eric’s kids got their Christmas presents at the end of January…which, considering my 6 week window, is right on time.

Intruder Update

Well, I have determined the source of the alarming noise.

Actually, there might be 2 sources because:

1. When we went outside the evening of the incident, we realized that one of the gutters had fallen off the house.

2. When I got into the shower later the day of the incident, I saw that 3 tiles had fallen from the shower wall into the tub.

Some might find this a relief.  I find it alarming that, in spite of shockingly loud noises mere feet from our bed, 2 dogs, 1 cat, and a husband slept through the whole thing.  Which means that, clearly, someone could come in and murder us in our beds.

Plus, let's be honest, I'm halfway convinced a ghost is responsible for both the gutter and the tile.

Wordless Wednesday

Intruder Alert

So if the whole etiquette book thing doesn't work out, I might have to write a different book called "Why Opie Is The Luckiest Man Alive."

And the first entry in that book might focus on the conversation we had this morning.

It all started when Opie asked why on earth I had woken him up at four am.

"Because I heard some crazy loud noise that woke me up and I wanted you to get up and help me investigate. But you didn't because, apparently, you don't care if we are murdered in our beds."

And then I waited for an apology.

"You didn't even wake me up until you got back in bed," he said (and he didn’t sound apologetic AT ALL). "And you said you'd already looked around and hadn't seen anything. Plus I didn't hear anything.  And I'm pretty sure you didn't hear anything unless, maybe it was the cat. But I think you were dreaming. And now I'm exhausted because I can't get back to sleep when you wake me up in the middle of the night."

And then he waited for an apology.

But I didn't apologize because:

A. I knew it hadn't been the cat because when I woke up, the cat was under the blankets, dead asleep across my ankles, completely cutting off my blood supply and thus causing me to nearly kill myself when I got out of bed and tried to hobble around on two numb feet.

B. I was secretly fine with him lying awake in an alert manner when there was any possibility of an intruder lurking around, waiting to kill us in our beds.

"Besides," he continued. "The dogs didn't even wake up. Don't you think if there had been a sound or an intruder, they would have gone crazy?"

Which just goes to show you that he doesn't watch enough crime television.

I mean, he hadn't even considered the possibility that some deranged lunatic had been watching our house for weeks, getting to know our schedule and feeding the dogs treats in the yard when our backs were turned--all in a nefarious attempt to get their trust and sneak into our house with reckless abandon.

It’s almost embarrassing how naïve he is.

But I didn’t point this out to him because I didn’t want him to feel bad. Plus I was very busy searching the house to see if I could find the source of the alarming noise during the light of day.

You know what I found?

Nothing.

A big fat nothing that could have made enough noise to wake me in the middle of the night.

At which point, it was clear that there were only 2 possible possibilities.

(It is interesting to note that Opie’s suggested possibilities were “You were dreaming” and “You’re crazy.” and he was barred from further commentary).

In any case, as I said, only 2 possible possibilities:

1. Someone snuck into the house, knocked something down, heard me get up, picked up whatever they dropped in a panic, put it back to lull us into a sense of false security, and is clearly planning to break into the house tonight.

 2. The house, as I have suspected for some time, is haunted.

So if we're still alive at this time next week we might have to call an exorcist.  And that's why Opie is clearly the luckiest man alive.  Because I am aware of any and all dangers lurking in the house and will stop at nothing to keep him safe.

It's Called MANNERS.

People always say “Kimberly, you should write a book.” And I’ve finally decided the perfect book for me to write:

An Etiquette Book.

Not one of those ridiculous etiquette books that tell you which fork to use and how to phrase the perfect thank-you note, but a useful one that tells you how to deal with real situations in the modern world.

And this might be the first chapter:

If you are boarding a plane this size (imagine an elevator with wings):

AND you’re obnoxious enough to bring a big, smelly sandwich on board with you (which, as was noted earlier, is like pulling out a sandwich while trapped on an elevator)…

AND there are 3 open seats…

AND two of those seats are single seats where you can sit and munch your smelly sandwich in solitude…

DO NOT plop your smelly sandwich-eating self down next to a woman who is so caught up in imagining the plane plummeting to earth in a fiery explosion that she shouldn’t have to also be assaulted by sandwich stench.

It is interesting to note that this will be an etiquette book not a grammar book yet I still feel compelled to point out that I deliberately did not put a comma between “smelly” and “sandwich-eating” thus indicating that smelly is modifying sandwich, not self. I am not suggesting that SHE was smelly, just her SANDWICH…but I digress…

More to the point, if for some obnoxious and deeply personal reason, you feel compelled to bring your sandwich into the airborne elevator AND sit next to an already horrified woman, please remember that it is the worst form of bad manners to, as you are gnoshing away on your sandwich, brush the crumbs off YOUR lap and ONTO the lap of the already horrified woman. Particularly if you follow this up with nothing more than an “oops.”

The problem with this is, obviously, the horrified woman will then be forced to stop praying that the plane will not plummet to earth in a fiery explosion and spend the rest of the trip imagining ways to “accidentally” trip you as you deplane.

Which, considering it’s entirely possible that the horrified woman’s prayers are the only thing keeping the plane in the air, is bad for everyone involved.

Now that I think about it, it’s kind of hard to decide if I should call this book “Modern Etiquette” or “People Who Should Be Punched In The Face.”