Monthly Archives: January 2012

I didn’t want to call him ‘Logan’

I had a dream last night.

I regularly have dreams, and tell them in great detail to whoever might be handy. And this morning . . . that’s you! (I hope. Hello? Hello? Are you out there?)

I was walking down a concrete sidewalk of sorts with my husband, and I had baby James in the crook of my arm. The sidewalk was set in a hilly area, and as I looked up at the grassy incline to my left, suddenly I realized there were cows everywhere. “Moo!” they said. My husband started to steer us away from the cows, but I reassured him “They’re not dangerous–don’t worry.”

But as we progressed further into the melee of cows, suddenly I realized there were also lions and tigers in the mix. We hadn’t noticed them at first because they were lying down, stretching and napping and generally chilling, but as we passed by they started yawning and waking up. I counted at least two tigers and one lion . . . plus a white tiger. I wasn’t sure whether to keep walking, go back, or just stand still. Though at the moment the cats were still pretty snoozy, at any moment they could turn into life-threatening fur-bags of muscle and terror.

My husband started running, and I almost shouted “No! That will just attract their attention!” But then I realized that he was doing it on purpose. He was trying to draw the animals away from James and me.

And then, as I watched my husband sprint away and the tigers and lions started running after him, there was a man with a gun. I thought, “I should duck in case he fires off some shots,” but before I could get a grip on the situation, my husband was tackling him.

It was a glorious running tackle, and as he took that guy down, my heart swelled with pride. People started clapping. I beamed. Two cops shows up and pointed their guns at the criminal and I thought, “we’re safe! My baby is a hero!”

BUT THEN. The cops were surrounded–the gunman wasn’t a loner. There was a whole crowd of criminals, and we were all taken prisoners. I was crying, but proud, but crying.

I was sitting in the back of a truck with a bunch of other hostages watching things unfold with the criminals and the cops and my husband. There was a small blond boy sitting next to me who was maybe 4 years old, and his mom was one of the criminals. He poked her in the back and somehow killed her (this part was fuzzy and she conveniently disappeared), and I realized it was now my job to take care of this boy. “Logan is now my son,” I thought. “My responsibility.” Then I realized I didn’t want to name a child ‘Logan’ and wondered if it would be feasible to change his name to something I liked a little better. My heart was full of love for James and Logan.

One of the criminals was telling me about this play that a bunch of kids were putting on, and I realized that Logan was involved and that I’d have to get him there. “Rehearsal starts at one o’ clock,” he told me, “but ends at 13:00.” I figured he meant 15:00 and rehearsal was two hours long, but as I spoke up to clarify with him, it dawned on me that this was his way of telling me that there was no rehearsal, since the start and end time were the same. I wished I’d caught on more quickly.

Then, in a completely unrelated part of the dream, I went to Plato’s Closet only to realize the store was shutting down and all they had in stock were some hideous green evening gowns.

Thank you for listening.

What does it all mean??

On being behind the camera

I’ve been lagging soooo behind on my picture duties. I’ve just now finally wrapped up the picture processing of Kevin and Katina’s wedding from mid-December (see here for their engagement pictures from last summer and here for pictures of the bride getting dressed), and I can’t wait to share the rest of the shots with you guys! (Katina was glowing. Kevin was dashing. Etc, etc.)

Consequently (since I’m trying to deal with my pictures in chronological order so I don’t get confused all to heck with where I stand), I haven’t made it through any of the Christmas pictures (except for the small batch of James shots), or the complete batch of New Years photos.

If you’ve been with me for a while, you may remember that every year we celebrate the New Year with the same group of friends, and a merry group it is!

I love those guys. Some of them we see throughout the year, and some we only see once, at this party. Due to some pressure from facebook and my own inherent guilt, I finally threw a couple dozen or so pictures up on facebook, with the promise to go through them all later and actually get the complete set made public (task completed as of Monday!). As I doing my quick intial scan of the oodles of pictures, selecting a few here and a few there for immediate sharing, I was thrilled that there were a couple good shots of me and my husband!

(by the way, isn’t my husband’s nose fabulously straight? I hereby wish that nose and that nose only upon any future children of ours)

Being the girl behind the camera at most events in my life, there aren’t that many pictures of me–probably less than 0.01% of the total pictures taken with my lovely Nikon. And having a slightly weird face when it comes to the camera (don’t worry, I’m at peace with my face–it’s just not at peace with a lens), there are even less good pictures of me.

I also feel bad asking anyone to take pictures of me, first because I’m still slightly self-conscious (“will they think I’m, like, super vain???”), and second because I have to explain how to use the camera in order to obtain a focused, non-blurry, generally A-OK shot (“you can rotate this part of the lens to zoom in; yes, you have to look through the eye-hole-thingy instead of just looking at the screen; press halfway down on this button to focus, then the rest of the way down to shoot, but don’t hold your finger there after shooting because it will keep shooting and could burn out the flash; it you want to take a vertical shot you need to rotate the head of the external flash like so so that it points towards the ceiling and bounces off at the right angle . . .”). And frankly, that’s got to be kind of annoying to the poor person designated to take my/our picture. And in the process, I end up feeling like a micro-managing, controlling female fiend.

So thank you to whoever took these!

I think it was Liz.

They make me happy, and my nose doesn’t look 5 miles long. Yay!

More pictures to come!