Camera Issues

There’s some annoying issue going on with my camera.  At first I thought it was a battery issue, but it’s still continuing.  So now I’m thinking it’s some other issue, and since I am not a camera repair pro, I think I need to have a professional look at it.

I think it’s some sort of connection sensor issue. 

Or the gout.

I really don’t know.  I’d only be guessing.

All I know is I’ll be going along happily taking pictures of something and then I’ll get a blinking empty battery image flashing on the LED display.

So for a while, I’d shut the camera off, pop the battery out, put it back in, switch the camera on, and everything would be fine.

I’d take a couple pictures, just to make sure it was working (like these random images I’m showing you in this post) and when everything seemed fine, I’d relax, sure I’d fixed it.

Only it wasn’t really fixed.

Sigh.

So next week I will bring it to this very good camera repair place and keep all my fingers, toes, and eyes crossed with the hope that the repair will be easy to fix and inexpensive.

Why don’t I bring it today?

Because, faulty though it may be, I need it.

You see, tomorrow is Sausage Day at our house.  We’re making a few kinds of sausage and other fabulous meat goodies to either eat greedily ourselves or give as Christmas gifts. 

Anyway, I think one reason I haven’t done a whole heck of a lot of posting lately – especially not food posts – is because taking my step-by-step pictures is so frustrating.

So I apologize.

And by way of further apology, I present to you this portrait of me that Julia drew last night.

But first, the little story behind it:

The other night Bill and I were sitting at the table in the dining room and he said “What if we moved that book case over there?  We’d have more room at the table…”  (We had 12 people crowded around a table meant for, at the most, 8 comfortably.) 

That seemed like it could work.  But it would mean moving the hope chest out of there, and move that mini fridge that serves no purpose other than as a stand for my pressure canner and hot water bath canner, and what about those two desks in the corner that the kids use to pile all their paper and crayons and debris? 

It looked like a big, two-person project best left for another day.

That day turned out to be yesterday as soon as Bill left for work.

I started moving furniture around and pulling cookbooks off shelves…Julia helped with stacking the cookbooks before she went to school.

By the time they got home that afternoon, I’d moved one desk into Alex’s room and had the other ready to bring upstairs to Julia’s room.  The bookcase was in its new spot, and the floor was piled with cookbooks that we need to sort through and (gasp) decide which ones we don’t need to keep.

It’s still a mess, but it’s a work in progress. 

And Bill was right – it has really opened up the room.

I gave Alex the desk that had been mine when I was a kid.  Before that, the desk had been in a classroom at Queens Vocational High School in New York.  My grandfather taught there for something like 30 years, and when the school was clearing out old desks to get new ones, I guess teachers got to take some home.  I had one, and my sister has one.  I’ve now passed mine along to Alex.

And Julia now has a desk that her cousins on Bill’s side of the family, Joe and Lisa, had when they were little, and I believe Bill’s father either built it or helped build it.

So they each have a little family history.

Alex likes his desk, and he appreciates the history behind it, but, you know, it’s a desk.

For Julia, however, it is more than a desk.  It is a big step on the climb to Big Girl Land.  I told her I wasn’t putting it in her room until she had a spot for it AND the floor was free of stuffed animals, Barbies, and assorted bits and pieces of other bedroom debris.

She hopped to it and cleaned her WHOLE room.  Yeah.  That desk is a big deal.  I set it up near her bed, and she went to work organizing her various things in and on it.  I’d gone upstairs to see what she’d done, and I was sitting on her bed as she sat on the chair and told me about all her important things…the box of assorted sea shells, many of which provide the sound of the sea to anyone who listens…her diary, with a disappearing ink pen…a picture of herself and a bunch of friends at last year’s Father/Daughter dance (or, as it’s now called, the “Spring Dance”)…and a notebook.

“Sit still, Mom, I want to draw you.”

So I sat still…or mostly still…and she sat in her chair and drew.

“Don’t look!”  She told me that more than once.  I wasn’t looking, either.

I was sitting on her bed, hands in my lap.  I was wearing black comfy pajama-like pants, a brown zip-up sweater, and my pink fuzzy slippers.  She didn’t draw the bed or any sort of background…but anyway, without further babbling on my part, here’s the picture:

It’s pretty good, actually.  You can see my boat-like slippers…black pants…the squiggly line is the zipper in the sweater…my glasses…hair that’s come out of my ponytail looped over my ears to keep it out of my face…not sure why I have that huge black eye, but maybe it was the lighting.

I’m really impressed with this sketch.

We went downstairs to show Bill, and she wanted to draw him next.  She stopped him when he was crouched at the fireplace and said to stay still so she could draw him.  So he stayed, legs cramping, until she told him it was okay to move.

And when the finished portrait was revealed…the drawn Bill was standing up, not crouching.

He had to hold that position for all that time, and she drew him standing up.

Artists. 

Comments

[Donna B.]

Ohmygoodness. This just made me smile big time.
I'm an illustrator - so I know and COMPLETELY understand what she was doing! haha! [Psssh, artists.]
I believe that 'sketch' of you is done verrrry well considering her age! Wow! and I'm jealous of your desks... how I crave a proper drafting desk... [instead of a giant clipboard and a coffee table...]

[barbara Harris]

she drew you with a happy face and that's a good sign of how she see's you,what a compliment.
I too am rearranging furniture to get rid of on old desk and make room for a larger desk that I can use for paper work and sewing,the hard part is to get the men to move the furniture,it's easier to remove all the drawers and slowly do it your self. If I could just [email protected]