New Camera and My Inner Brat

With this much loose skin around her face, Aly seems to never make the same expression twice!

Whew! When it rains, it pours! Speaking of rain, we got some yesterday. It was cold and breezy and WONDERFUL. Of course, come this weekend the temps will be nearing 100 again, but it was good while it lasted!

I just had a birthday. Since my camera stopped working properly, I did my research and found just the camera that I wanted to replace it with. First, I did my part to conserve and called our local camera repair place to see what it would cost to fix. The only thing wrong with it is that it no longer acknowledges the flash. When your flash doesn't flash, you end up only being able to take pictures of people facing the sun like they did when my mom was a kid. All of her childhood pictures have her squinting. The guy at the camera repair place laughed at me. It was too old, cheap, whatever to fix. Not worth my money or their time, from what they tell me.

Once again, it's a disposable world we live in.

Anyhow, my new camera is a Canon Powershot SX20 IS. She's PURDY! I couldn't really justify anything more than this because I'm pretty much using it to take pictures of kids and dogs. (See above picture...and I already have like a hundred of that particular pose!) I'm still learning how to use the camera and, so far, the most frustrating part is that it only comes with a tiny little manual to get started and the real user's manual is on a cd-rom. You have to download and print it yourself, if you want to keep it on hand! That part is a little annoying, but the camera itself doesn't seem to need that much explanation. There are a few things I definitely need to read up on, like how I changed the color of the whole eveing sky to orange when it really wasn't. I'll figure it out....eventually!

In the meantime, folks around here will probably be suffering from their share of 'flash blindess!' We seem to be back in the full swing of school. We have even added church on Sunday, knitting group on Monday, and gymnastics on Wednesday into the mix. So far, things seem to be falling into place quite nicely.

Great...I bet I just jinxed myself now!

I'm starting to try to get back into good habits when it comes to keeping the house running smoothly. That being said, my worst enemy on this frontier is my inner brat. I do better when I don't feel like I MUST do something. Then it makes me want to. Even when I don't have to do the things I do, doing too many of them puts me in a bad mood. It's the strangest thing, but being especially productive really messes with my head. For example, I had quite the productive day yesterday. Really, I did. I did like five loads and laundry and got it all put away. I made three beds. I cleaned the bathrooms and got the kitchen the cleanest it's been in long time now. It wasn't hard, even 3YO was good about not making messes while I was cleaning up the other messes. (Usually, that puts me in a TERRIBLE MOOD!) When I was done with all of that, I knew I could relax and feel accomplished. I knew I was going to get to knit with a local group that evening and was really looking forward to it. But, my problem was that I just started to settle down and relax a bit when the two older ones were getting home from school. That meant I had to start arguing with 6YO about her homework and sight words and that I had to hear about every teensy-tiny little detail about 13YO's day. I was trying to get something done (but not for fun!) on the computer and it was taking forever. By the time it was done, we had to rush out the door for my knitting group and we were late as it was. I was cranky. I never had any 'down time' and my brain was overstimulated. Getting a lot done puts me in a bad mood.

My inner brat is winning today because I'm doing as little as possible and my mood is outstanding. I really need to do something about my thought process, don't I? I can almost picture myself with a spotless house and standing at the door screaming at my family as they come in the door. They like me better when my house is a little messy. HECK, I like me better too!

Maybe there's a pill I can take for this sort of thing. In the meantime, I'll have my good days and my bad days. Today, my goals are to maintain the high score on a solitaire game on Facebook and learn a little more about my camera.

Poor 3YO and the dogs will probably be seeing spots for the rest of the day....