the importance of a valentine...or, is this why there aren't any unicorns?

so today . . . i was late to church. again.

technically i was not late--i actually arrived 45 minutes early, but i had a meeting. and it went long, so church had already started when i was ready to go in. diandra was not late. she SAID she was saving me a seat, but by the time i got in there, she was surrounded by teens. so i sat behind her. pretty soon she turned around and handed me the bulletin. this is what i saw.

i read it and sort of chuckled. i got the humor. but my darling daughter did not. as i looked up to hand it back to her, i saw a very sad face. the lower lip was sticking out juuuust a bit. "isn't that sad?" she said.

sheesh! it's just a cartoon. unicorns aren't real!! (although, maybe they WERE real until they couldn't find anyone to be their valentine...)

but this is how diandra is. she feels things. she connects. even to things that aren't alive. if it has a face, she empathizes with it.

so when she was making the sad face about the cartoon, i wasn't all that surprised. a few minutes later she turned around with a big smile on her face, as she handed me her edited version.

it made me smile. this is my daughter's heart. she cares. she is empathetic. she is compassionate. it isn't always easy being that way, but it is who she is. she understands what it feels like to be alone, and she doesn't want anyone to feel that way--not even mythical cartoon characters.

sometimes, i look at her and think, "how did you turn out this way? i am your mom! my example to you was pretty much 'stop whining and deal with it!'" she is a perfect example that sometimes who we are isn't the result of nature OR nurture. sometimes it is the result of God in us.

thanks diandra, for reminding me of that :)

unselfish? maybe yes, maybe no...

so today . . . i chose to spend the day with my family instead of going to the gem show by myself.

i am kind of selfish. no, really, i am. i have finally admitted this to myself. i like to have things my way. and much of the time i get to have things my way. but i think this is not a good character trait, so i am trying to change and be less selfish sometimes.

i'm still not very good at it.

rollie is really good at it. he is the reason that i get things my way much of the time. in fact, he is the reason i was even considering going to the gem show today. he knows that by the end of the summer, since i don't get a paycheck when i don't work, i am pinching my pennies. so he handed me some cash and said, "why don't you just go to the gem show this afternoon. you could go all by yourself so you wouldn't have to hurry. you could just take your time and look at all the rocks and have fun!" so that was my plan...

but yesterday he had mentioned going to the movies today. and i knew diandra wanted to go too, so instead of going to the gem show by myself, i went to the movies with my family. we went to the cheap theater to see "knight and day." rollie picked the movie. this gave diandra a reason to say, "uh oh." because every time the two of them go to the movies, and rollie picks it, it turns out to be a terrible movie! half the time, they end up getting up and walking out.

i would just like to say, this never happens when i choose the movie.

rollie says it isn't his fault. he says that when it is just him and diandra, he tries to choose something that i wouldn't enjoy seeing, which severely limits their choices. which i guess technically makes it my fault, but still...

the critics hated this movie--which was good news for us. we frequently love movies the critics hate. (we also frequently love tv shows that get canceled in their first season.) we are not big tom cruise fans but we love cameron diaz. (ok, i like tom cruise, even though i think he is a little bit out there in real life. but i like him in movies--i can't defend it, i just do. diandra does not agree with me. but then, she likes those vampire boys--yeah, explain the appeal of that to me. and we both like cameron diaz. rollie is oddly silent on his movie star preferences...)

so there we were.

we had a great time. it was fun and entertaining. there was romance--sort of. there was intrigue. there were good guys and bad guys--but we weren't always sure which was which. stuff blew up. there were unbelievable car chases. and cameron diaz's eyes shone bluer than blue clear through to the end. yes, it was far-fetched, but it wasn't supposed to be a documentary! it was a movie!! i know there were impossible coincidences and stunts, but i didn't care! it was fun!! i don't go to the movies to feel other people's pain or drama or difficulties--i have enough of my own to deal with. i want to laugh. and hear my family laugh. and have rollie and diandra saying the same thing into my ears at the same time. and high-fiving each other in front of me and behind me. (yes, i was in the middle this time.) i want to eat my hot dog and drink my soda and walk out into the sunshine feeling good! and today i did :)

i sort of thought i would try to go to the gem show after the movie, but it was late enough that traffic was going to be an issue. and diandra wanted me to go with her to get her hair cut. so, still practicing the whole unselfish thing, we went to the mall...

i watched diandra get her hair cut--practically one hair at a time! she just wanted it trimmed, and the hair stylist took her very seriously. i kept looking at the floor to see the results, but the floor looked clean to me. when she got done, i said, "it doesn't look any shorter! if i was paying that much for a haircut, i would want it to look shorter!" "mom!" she replied, "i pay that much for a haircut so that it doesn't look any shorter!!"

ok...

we spent a little time wandering the mall. for the first time EVER i came out of american eagle with a bag and diandra didn't! we braved forever 21, and managed to get in and out without security being alerted. but my american eagle victory was short-lived, as diandra made a second trip in, and came out with, yes, jeans...

i may go to the gem show tomorrow. or i may not. the gem show comes to town several times a year, but days like today are not going to happen forever. families grow and change, and ours will too. but for now, for today, my unselfishness paid off. oddly enough, what started out as an unselfish choice actually ended up paying selfish dividends, because i got to spend the day with two of my favorite people.

and i didn't have to share them :)

when "good enough" just isn't...

so today . . . i am trying to wrestle my ocd tendencies into submission. but they are strong and somewhat resistant...

first of all, let's be clear--i have never been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder. i'm pretty sure if i were tested for it, medical professionals would laugh me out of their offices. but i do have some tendencies that scream OCD!!! probably a more accurate description of my idiosyncrasies would be "frustrated perfectionist." i want things to be perfect. i need things to be perfect. yet, i know that things will never be perfect--hence, the "frustrated" part--so i don't even want to try.

well, that is not exactly true. sometimes i try. sometimes i look at a project and think, "i can do this. it may take me months and months, but i can do it." my closet is a perfect example of this. i clean it out. i organize it. i catalog it. i list everything in it. i organize the list. then i clean it out again. reorganize it. update the list. go shopping. update the list. clean it out again. and so on. and so on.

this is why it took me over a year to organize my digital music files just the way i wanted them. (i have a lot of music.)

i recently decided that it would be a good idea to digitize all my old negatives. when diandra was born, we decided that every photo we took of her was priceless and irreplaceable. so i immediately became worried that there would be a fire or a flood which would destroy both my photos and the negatives. (i'm not paranoid either. really.) i needed insurance . . . and it came in the form of velveeta cheese boxes and my mother.

the only solution i could see to save my precious photos from natural disasters (or unnatural ones) was to keep the negatives in a different location than the photos. since i had the photos, i decided my mother should have the negatives. so i put the negatives in velveeta cheese boxes (which fit them perfectly,) and gave them to my mom to keep at her house. my mom also had a set of photos--we always printed doubles--but for some reason i always thought her house was safer from fire or flood than mine. so i entrusted the precious negatives to her...

then we entered the digital age. and the priceless photos yellowed, and the negatives lay hidden in the dark at my mom's house. and i developed this need to digitize them. so i decided to scan the strips of 35mm film into my computer. but it wasn't as simple as it sounds...

i am using my beloved canon photo printer/copier/scanner which i have had for a few years. it is specially designed to scan negatives, which is one of the reasons i bought this particular model. but now that i am ready to scan my negatives, i can't find the manual. no problem, i thought. i will just go online and download the manual. which i did. and it was not helpful at all, because it kept saying, "refer to the manual that came with your printer for specific instructions." yes, that would have been great advice if i could find the manual that came with my printer. but i can't. which is why i downloaded one. i could see a vicious catch 22 developing . . . so i decided manuals were highly overrated. i would just figure it out for myself. how hard could it be?!?!?!

i lifted the lid and saw some irregularities in the plastic. ok, let's just take this thing apart, i thought. which was probably a good first step, because i found the part that should hold each piece of film, but i couldn't figure out how to snap it back into the lid. i turned it. i flipped it. it HAD to go where the light strip was, but i could not figure out how to make it stay there. i laid it on the glass while i poked around some more. which is how i discovered it would snap into place on the glass and then the light strip would lower onto it. it was a clever design, but not exactly intuitive--at least not for me!

i started scanning in the negatives. i scanned several rolls of film and was delighted to see my baby's precious face emerging. and then i went to bed.

the next day when i started scanning photos, i realized that for some reason, many of the photos were taken from quite a distance away. what if i wanted to crop one? what if i wanted to print an 8x10 of one? i checked the resolution and realized that it was not going to be enough. so, you know what i had to do? i had to re-scan all those negatives at a higher resolution! yes, i said re-scan. because it wasn't going to be good enough to just do all the rest at the higher resolution--i had to do them ALL!

you see?!?!? ocd tendencies. because really, am i ever going to do anything with those old photos? probably not--they aren't that good. but then i look at that smiling baby face, and realize that i want the best resolution i can get.i fear that i am going to be working on these photos for a long, long time. because i still haven't figured out how i am going to scan the 110mm film. and then once i get them all into the computer, i have a date with photoshop. there are imperfections that need to be erased, deterioration that needs to be restored, and colors that need to be corrected.

i'm going to be working on these until i die . . .