Whine Warning

I took these with a Nikon CoolPix...my baby camera that stays in my purse. The one that has no problem handling the 4 gig SD card. Unlike it's big, beefy older brother a Nikon D50 who wimps out on anything beyond a 2 gig card. (which is no big comparison to some of the huge-0 SLRs that came out later that I saw all over the houses at Orlando 2011) I know that because someone who happened to turn sixteen on Tuesday, removed the 2 gig from my laptop...where I put it to make sure that I had it on our very brief trip to the beach. But, it was on my dining room table where she'd left it when she and her dad tried to get the fantastic deal of an mp3 player I won on Ebay to work. So...while I felt really bad for myself that my planned picture for dear photograph of my dad didn't work out because the little one cannot take a close up very well, little one did okay. I have this picture of my dad being a muscle man, complete with sucking in the gut he didn't have, looking all skinny when I was probably three or four on the same beach. He died in 2002 from lung cancer after quitting eight years before. It appears he should have quit fifteen years before and he wouldn't have gotten cancer at all. I guess.

Anyway, now to the whine....WHAT?! That wasn't a whine already?! Here it is: I do consider myself to be a fairly dependable adult.sometimes. when.i.want.to.be....why is it then when I go on a trip where I'm responsible for other people....namely children, things can't just go according to plan? When I took Alex to Boston to meet Sarge Goodchild at Active Healing, I did great. Made all the reservations, got us to the airport, flew to Boston, rented a car, only got lost once before finding our way out of town....found Sarge, did the touristy things with the Lighting of the Trees in the Commons....found Strawberry Banke in New Hampshire after turning around when I saw the "Welcome to Maine" billboard (hey, unlike Texas, it was only like an hour and a half across the whole state...hell, we consider that a morning commute here) got us back to Boston, back to the airport, turned in the rental, flew to San Antonio only to leave my frikkin' camera bag on the plane with my wallet in it. Stuck, with no way to pay the pay for parking so my husband had to drive in at one a.m. to rescue me.

Back to this debacle....got stuck in the sand on the beach on.our.way.home....isn't that period thing annoying?! I love it! Did any of the big Bubbas sitting in their trucks while balancing their Lone Stars on their big bellies offer to come over and push me out of the way with their four-wheeled drive? How about the ex-Marine that drove past, twice, in a jeep and just waved. (Turns out it was a rental...yes, I did go out of my way to tell him thank you so much....the Marine Corp tat was probably a rental too.) Who helped us? A 7o something Vietnam Vet who only had 24% lung capacity left, that's who. Take that Honda with your "you can't be more than ten feet off of the street in order for us to help" and sheriff's department...cause "we are not allowed to help people out of the sand". Okay, now blessings time....#1 Cap'n Rob- who helped us get out of the sand #2 Being able to take my daughters and a friend of one of them for two days to the coast #3 An almost completely jellyfish-free float in the Gulf with my older daughter with really good conversations (it appears 32 is the magic year for that) and finally, #4 that our daughter, the newly minted sixteen year old came to us through an open, domestic adoption at birth. She is such a really neat person and I'm so blessed to get to be her mom.