(random recently taken photo of mine which you will soon come to appreiciate immensely)
I did not blog yesterday due to being in panic mode from a heart stopping incident which rendered me useless for most of the afternoon.
The horrid details: (if you are brave or curious enough to read on)
Perhaps you are aware of the complete passion I have for taking photographs. Second only to my love for my family (which includes me kids, grandson, mom, man & dogs).
Well, ok, I do kinda like my friends alot most of the time too.
So make that "third" only to...
You get the idea.
Damn (often impractically and inexplicably) important to me.
I currently use an 8GB camera memory card in my camera, which I planned to transfer to CD & empty later this week in preparation for my upcoming trip home to St. Louis. I had been shooting on it since mid-Nov. and since I am a photo-taking-holic, there were over 1,500 images on it.
(I know, I know... I could probably go through and delete more than a few (dozen) photos of our hounds, which likely account for around 38% of the images...but I digress...)
On an average day, I probably take the card out of my camera and put it into my laptop and then out of there and back into my camera, oh, let's say 8 times. (in & out & in & out & in & out &...well you get the picture...haha...no pun intended, DON'T LAUGH! This is serious shit!)
(The "in & out" throughout the day is mainly to look at the photos on a larger screen, attach to emails, copy to folders, use in swaps, post on Facebook status updates & in albums, add to my photo share sites, etc.)
So upon one of those "in's" into my laptop, I noticed it was not exactly "in" so I took it out...and then put it back in...
and it went in alright.
In as in I could barely see it anymore.
(OMGMYHEARTISSTARTINGTORACEJUSTTYPINGTHIS!!!!)
I stopped breathing for a sec, then ran to get the needle nose pliers to GETITOUTOFTHERE!!!! ~WHEW!~
...it came out...
IN TWO PIECES WITH THE LITTLE COPPER COLORED METAL THINGIES ALL BENT UP!!!
OH(several bad words)HOLY SHIT!!!!!
(warning-here's the part where...)
I.
LOST.
IT.
Because, well, all I could see was hundreds and hundreds of images passing before my eyes (which were now filling rapidly with tears) as I realized what this meant. I literally felt like I was gonna puke, and I was pacing around like a rabid animal yelling cuss words I did not even know I knew or existed. I literally could not think or see straight-I was possibly foaming at the mouth and close to peeing my pants.
Of course, in the other room, Jeff could hear the "excitement" and although it could have easily been a "Little Girl Who Cried Wolf" moment since I am ALWAYS yelling & cussing to some degree at my laptop for being so mean to me, I think he knew this was different.
My Mr. "I-fix-things-for-a-living-for-techno-incompetents-such-as-yourself, honey"
went into professional mode and knew exactly what the correct first move was to keep me from dissolving into a fetal position or throwing myself out of our second story bistro window to my thorny rosebush demise below:
"Calm down... It's going to be okay...What happened?..
Let me see it...I'll take care if it... Please stop crying"...
(all spoken in that patient, (ie: somewhat bored/seen it all) cadence of a 23-year veteran of technology troubleshooting & systems analyzing. He does not have a major in Computer Technology and a minor in World Religon for nothing. Well, I've never actually seen the documentation but I have heard the frat stories and seen some photos.)
Anyway...after handing him the sad remains of the documentation of the past 3 months of our life, I had to leave the room and try to distract myself by working on some art I had spread out on the kitchen table, but all I could manage to do was sit & stare and revel in stage one of the 7 stages of grief:
"Shock & Denial".
(aka: "pissed off and pathetic").
It was one of those "if-I-could-only-go-back-in-time" moments.
"I would have dumped all of those too-many images weeks ago...I would have taken less pictures over the past few months...I would not have put the card in & out & in & out & in & out &... I would have a backup of the images on my laptop... I would find a less-stressful hobby/passion/addiction... I would never have even studied photography in college...I shoulda just gotten myself knocked up in high school and then I probably would not have even been able to GO to college or afford a camera and my kid woulda been ugly cause I drank alot of Boones Farm in high school and I woulda lived in a dumpy house in some shitty town where there is nothing to take photos of anyway..."
Uh-oh, I seem to have moved along into merging stage 2 & stage 3 together:
Pain & Guilt, Anger & Bargaining
(aka: "WTF was I thinking?!")
Meanwhile, my techno stud is working his magic (using GORILLA GLUE??!??!) and instructs me to leave it alone for awhile, and then he will "put it into my laptop and retrieve the images for back up".
I am not sure that there is a grief stage for "skeptism" but there should be.
I decide that, although I have more trust in this man than I have ever had in any man ever in my entire life and he is usually right about 99.9% of the time (dammit), it will be less painful in the end if I just go ahead and retreat into my typical "it's a lost cause, an impossibility, so I might as well just not get my hopes up and start dealing with the reality", which is that I will never again see a single one of those images, which of course, are now flashing through my mind like some horrible torturous gorgeous photo slideshow...
I mean, I do get that there were not like photos of Johnny Depp kissing me, or of Bigfoot spotted in our backyard or me shaking hands with Obama or Jeff marrying Sarah Jessica Parker or walking on Mars, or anything, but STILL! These images are my creations, my memories, my visions, my babies, and now they are GONE FOREVER and CAN NEVER BE REPLACED!
(cue round 2 of tears...)
(i need more)
The next thing I know, Jeff is asking me if I have another memory card to use in my camera because he is "not sure that this one will last much longer"...?!?
HUH?!
I walk into the bistro where he sits like God/Buddah/Allah/Bill Gates himself in front of my laptop,
to see hundreds of tiny little thumbnails on the screen...
ALL 1,500+ IMAGES ARE RIGHT THERE BEFORE MY EYES FOR REAL-NOT LIKE A GRIEF INDUCED SLIDESHOW OF LOST MEMORIES -BUT FOR REAL!!!!!!
Oh, how I adore this man.
My Hero.
(and weird is good!)
he knows exactly how to keep me his veryveryveryveryveryvery(infinity)
Happy Me-Laurie Z!
P.S. I tend to have situations of similar technological related chaos of varying degrees such as this befall me on average of 2 times per week. I blame it on some bodily chemical reaction type defect, you know-like my aura is toxic and deadly to electronic/computer/techno waves. It's no wonder I was an art student, huh? But at least I finally managed to pick the right guy to share life with....for more reasons than this, of course! ;)
I'm still scared to start putting my 2 GB memory card in & out & in & out of my lap now.
Hmmm...perhaps it's time I start backing it up by copying the contents onto my laptop or a memory stick daily...
Have I mention how much I hate technology yet?
