Don’t Go Crossing My Boundaries
I belong to an Open Adoption Blogger webring. Some of you might find this curious since, of late, I rarely seem to blog about adoption. Sure, I’m very forthright about how our daughter joined our family and have no shame about adoption or infertility. It’s just that initially when I wrote about open adoption, and specifically our open adoption, there arose some issues with Boundary Crossers…issues that I’ve not fully resolved.
Boundary Crossers exist in any area of the internet. They can range from gnat-level annoying to full on bring-da-noise trolls. Now trolls are ubiquitous on the web, but the Boundary Crossers and Boundary Crossing trolls are a particular breed that I am speaking of. These people do not respect boundaries between people. Truth be told, many of these people seem to believe that the universe ends at the tips of their noses. They do not understand that their worldview, ideology, perspective is just one of many worldviews, ideologies, perspectives and that all of these may be valid in part or in whole. The idea of pluralism of thought is anathema to Boundary Crossers.
Boundary Crossers are among the first people to tell you that your feelings are wrong when you share your thoughts about a particular incident online.
- You shouldn’t feel that way about it.
- When that happened to me, I didn’t feel like that.
- I think you’re overreacting.
I ascribe to the commonly held position that feelings are neither right nor wrong…they just are. And as such, judging someone’s feelings is a nonsensical proposition. Is the person receiving the judgment supposed to hear the judgment and say, oh, this person on the internet who has no meaning in my life is so right in this judgment of my feelings that I’ll stop feeling this way right now! If the point is to help the writer see an alternative perspective, one can achieve that without invalidating the person’s feelings. Yet despite how someone else may interpret the situation or experience, the writer’s feelings are real and valid for the writer…period.
A good example of this Boundary Crossing came in the Open Salon comments for the post, You Know You’re Black in Corporate America When… As is common when someone posts about race or gender or anything specific to the author and not fully generalizable, there is always a need/attempt to make the experience apply to those outside the racial or gender group described. Always. It’s a bit of the Don’t Be So Sensitive Syndrome. I expected this and even preemptively addressed it in the post itself. However, there was a commenter that took this annoying gnat type of Boundary Crossing to bring-da-noise troll behavior when he decided to critique my feelings about my experiences. This asshat in a repeated back and forth exchange insisted in a browbeating, my-way-or-the-highway type of posturing that his assessment of what I should feel as a black woman in corporate America was more correct than my own assessment of my feelings. In other words, his feelings trump my feelings. And if that isn’t Boundary Crossing, I don’t know what is.
The other feature of Boundary Crossers that I’ve seen is the belief, no, the expectation that everyone will have a similar experience to his/hers. Again, no space in the brain for pluralism.
I once had an offline discussion with a woman who was having big issues with her friend’s decision to selectively reduce her pregnancy from triplets to twins. She continued to share her opposition to this reduction with her friend, even when the friend had asked her to stop doing so. In speaking offline, I was trying to get her to respect her friend’s boundary (since she had come to the board looking for help in doing just that). In the dialogue she confessed that her anti-abortion vehemence comes from the fact that 20 years before, she had felt pressured into an abortion by her partner. Had Planned Parenthood and abortion not been available to her, she explained, she would not have been able to have the abortion that she still regrets 20 years later. Now in my head I’m thinking, Holy crap, Batman! What a way to deconstruct taking responsibility for the choice she made. Instead, I said, “This would be a very paternalistic solution to prevent women from making choices. And there are many women who have abortions who do not have turmoil and regret like you do. What about them?”
To which she replied, “It’s hard for me to fathom that there are women who have abortions who don’t have this awful pain and regret.”
Alas, the universe does end at the tip of her nose. She would limit the right to choose because she cannot see that there are women who could get through the experience intact. So this Boundary Crosser is operating from her universe of one framework. I did push back and say that another option that would be equally effective in preventing what she faced would be to make premarital sex illegal. That way, she would never have had sex outside of marriage, gotten pregnant, and been pressured into having an abortion. But how reasonable and Draconian is that solution? She had no answer for me.
[And please, my readers, I've no wish to get into a debate on abortion. I'm merely illustrating a narrow worldview with this example.]
So this brings me back to the point of this post: blogging about open adoption. As part of the Open Adoption Roundtable, we OA bloggers have been asked to address OA topics periodically in our blogs. And I have dawdled in addressing the first and pretty benign query: What one thing about open adoption would you tell your past self, if you could?
This delay has some to do with my fatigue/impatience with Boundary Crossers in general. For the most part, I keep the blog light mostly because of lack of bandwidth. Who has the time and energy (when one has a full time job where they seem to expect you to work for your paycheck, a two year old, an AdoringHusband, and a really cool camera) to deal with trolls, flame wars, and kerfuffles on the Interweb? From time to time, I will post on something deep and I can handle the flak easily when the issue pertains only to me. But posting about adoption hits me in another place entirely.
Before I started blogging about my infertility journey, I had no idea that there were people who were anti-ART (advanced reproductive technology). Yet these people and their blogs are more off the beaten path. Most of my support sites and friends were enough to compensate. Then when we moved to adoption, I was surprised to learn how many people were anti-adoption. Even among those who weren’t out-and-out against adoption, there were angry firstmothers who said that they were coerced by duplicitous adoption agencies, adoptees who said they felt broken, unwanted and less than. And all the talk of trauma, deep trauma. When I dared pose a question about whether open adoption could just “work,” I was accused of being some fantasy-riddled adoptive mom who had drunk too much of the Kool-Ade.
It hurt, those words. But the pain was not about me. The pain was about this little innocent that had been entrusted to me and my husband by her firstmother. The pain that still brings tears to my eyes is that, according to their words, the simple fact that her firstparents made an adoption plan and we were chosen as adoptive parents…that fact alone: the adoption will be enough to break this beautiful little girl…this girl I love so much that it is hard to breathe when I look at her. This little girl owns my heart and soul. I do not want her adoption to break her. I want her psyche and her lovely self to remain intact.
Yet when you blog about open adoption, inevitably the Boundary Crossers will arrive to say the words that no parent wants to hear about the future their child faces. Their words, more often than not, are based on their experience alone and their connection with others who have had the same experience. There is no room in their minds that outcomes may be different. Zara will be broken and her firstmother Josie (a pseudonym), who I adore and mentor, will also be broken. There is no way around it, they admonish.
While I can deftly handle the Boundary Crossers in other areas of my blogging life, when it comes to dire predictions about my child’s and her firstmother’s future relating to an event that cannot be undone (nor does Josie want it to be undone), I am not so skilled. For the past year, I’ve just not blogged much about adoption and focus instead on our adoption triad. I don’t go into the world of the adoption blogsphere as much. Yet today the question becomes, how can I participate in this valid and valuable Open Adoption Roundtable without appropriate defenses for handling the Boundary Crossers?
Failure To Be Green
his was just so stupid that it was worthy of a quick post.
A couple of months ago, in my quest to be more Earth-friendly (yes, it is a little quest, not a big quest, mind you…baby steps), I bought a cleaner product that was touted as being “plant-based” and more green because the refill was in such a tiny little bottle. I’m thinking to myself, self, here you are bringing in your own grocery bags and attempting to use less toxic products around the munchkin, so hey, why not try the Arm&Hammer Essentials MultiSurface Cleaner?
According to the 1 Green Product Blog:
From an ingredient standpoint, the Essentials cleaners are similar to other eco-friendly cleaning products. They use biodegradable plant-based components derived from coconuts and palm kernel oil. They contain no ammonia or phosphates.
But where they really break the mold is in packaging and un-mixing the cleaners.
When you buy Arm & Hammer Essentials, you buy an empty spray bottle with a small concentrated bottle of cleaning solution. After you get home, you fill the bottle most of the way with tap water and then mix in the cleaning solution.
Months later, instead of running out and buying a big new plastic spray bottle, you can just buy a double pack of the cleaning concentrate and mix it in with more tap water.
Why does this make good eco-sense? Well, as Arm & Hammer points out, traditional cleaning products are up to 95% water. That means, when you buy a traditional cleaning product, you’re mostly buying water. Naturally, there are also environmental costs to package and ship all that water.
By switching to refillable spray bottles and smaller tubes of cleaning concentrate, Arm & Hammer uses far less petroleum (in the form of plastic) to package its product and uses far less gasoline to transport its product. Quoting from the press materials we received, “The refills were designed to use 80 percent less packaging than two standard, prefilled 32-ounce cleaners, reducing potential landfill waste.”
Now that was all great when I bought the cleaner to give it a try. Skeptical AdoringHusband looked askance at the empty large bottle, until I explained that I had to fill it with water and the contents of the small bottle. I mix, used, and have been pleased with the results: good cleaning, no harsh chemical smells, and no residue left behind.
So last night we get to the part where things get stupid. We’re running low on the cleaner, so I head out to Giant to do our weekly grocery shopping. After spending way too much time in the cleaning aisle mesmerized by the possibilities of cleaners that might do something about all the juice (and other liquids we prefer not to think about) stains in our microsuede sectional, I finally pulled myself away to find the Essentials refill.
I found the starter bottles easily. But refills, hmm… I’m not seeing them. I move stuff on the shelves. I look at the labels on the sections (perhaps they ran out…they did after all run out of bananas this Sunday evening…how a suburban grocery store runs out of bananas, I do not know…) but there is no sign of the refill.
Reluctantly, I go in search of help. (I hate asking for help since they inevitably go back and look in the same place you just looked, as if you had failed elementary and college level looking.) Yes, they drag me back to the area I had already searched. (I did very well in my looking courses, thankyouverymuch.) No refill has magically appeared since I left 2 minutes before. (Those refills can be tricky, you know!) We go back to the computer at the front of the store. She types into this magical divining device and suddenly proclaims, “We don’t sell the refill.”
“You don’t sell the refill?!” I repeated, utterly stunned.
“Nope, we don’t,” she stated with finality.
“Well what’s the point of selling a product that is supposed to be refilled if you don’t sell the refill?”
I got a shrug by way of a reply.
So Giant, as far as being green goes, despite your reusable bags and other pretensions to greenery, you have failed to understand a basic concept here. If the refill saves plastic, petroleum, waste, and money, then stock the damn refill.
Giant: Epic FAIL
So silly, as my kidlet would say.
The Metaphor That Made My Head Explode
ometimes you find the most intriguing information on Twitter. Not too long ago (OK, it was about 2 weeks ago, but you try to find time to blog coherently with a job as nutty as mine has been lately) a tweet from Feministe popped up giving a teaser for a new posting. The title is what caught my eye: Once Again: Rape Is NOT Your Personal Metaphor. Of course with a title like that, I just had to click on the link. How could I not?
The author was writing a way pissed off reply to a posting on Gawker by someone who called himself CajunBoy. I don’t know about the Cajun part, but after reading Cara’s entry, I knew that the Boy part of his name was certainly appropriate. There was no way that he could be CajunMan or even CajunGuy. Someone spewing that kind of drivel had to be stuck in sociopathic boyhood pulling the wings off of flies or something productive like that.
By now you’re thinking, too much build-up, Liana. Just cut to the chase. Yeah, well, the build up is half the fun, no?
OK, so back to the dreaded CajunBoy. He wrote a whinging little post that included an analogy (or perhaps it was an extended metaphor). I think I can safely say that this was one of the worst analogies/metaphors I’ve ever heard in my life. It was an analogy/metaphor so offensive and officious that I wanted to scrub my brain after reading it. To add insult to injury, it was also both nonsensical and ridiculous.
I’m still building you up for it…
It was so bad that I encouraged AdoringHusband, who is also known as the Master of the Analogy, to read it himself.
“You just have to see this,” I told him, “It was so horrible, that I think my head exploded. I’m offended as a woman. Hell, I’m offended as a sentient life form!”
“Describe it to me,” said the wanna-be slacker I’m married to.
“Oh, it’s something you have to read for yourself,” I replied.
“Can you summarize for me?” the slacker tried again.
“Nah. I couldn’t begin to do it justice.”
I handed him the iPhone that was logged on to the webpage and watched his jaw drop as he read.
TRIGGER WARNING FOR WHAT FOLLOWS
From the creative end, developing a television show these days is sort of like giving birth to a daughter, your work, a daughter that you raise and nurture with tremendous care, and then one day you bring her, beautiful, statuesque, perfect in your eyes, to the church to walk her down the aisle, where a dashing groom, the American television viewership, is waiting to embrace her on the other end of the aisle. But just before the organist plays that “Here Comes the Bride” song so she can begin her walk down the aisle, out pops a herd of groomsmen, television executives, who proceed to throw your daughter down and violently gang-bang her in the back of the church, and by the time they’re done with her she’s bloody, beaten, and battered, almost completely unrecognizable to you, the person who raised her. Both of her eyes are swollen completely shut, one of her legs is broken, she can barely function at all, and then the very groomsmen, the television executives, who just finished violently raping her turn to you and say, “Okay, now make her walk down the aisle,” and you, the person who conceived her, nurtured her and cared for her for all those years, has to walk with her as she hopelessly flounders her way down, and all the while you’re hoping beyond hope that she a) makes it all the way down before completely collapsing and b) that her groom, the American television viewer, isn’t so freaked out by her when he sees how hideous she now looks that he turns and bolts out of the church.
Yes indeed my friends, CajunBoy is using the extended metaphor of assault and gang rape to describe what television executives did to his…his…(wait for it) his television show! Oh the trauma for him! The agony!
Now I am as annoyed/angered/frustrated as many sensate people are with the overuse of rape as a metaphor in everyday life:
You paid THAT MUCH for your ticket?! Dude, you got raped!
Yet as much as that annoys/angers/frustrates me, I wouldn’t devote time that I could be spending watching some of the fine TV taking up space on our DVR sitting here blogging about it. But CajunBoy’s metaphor rankled on a much greater scale. It went on and on and became more and more egregious with each word. And the clinician in me couldn’t help thinking, what kind of sick-ass mutha comes up with such a scenario in the first place?
Shall we deconstruct some of the glaringly obscene wrongheadedness that make up this metaphor?
1. My Daughter: My TV Show
Okay, okay. Call me a little strange, but even metaphorically attempting to relate creating a daughter to creating a television show jangles for me. Your daughter isn’t your Frankenstein’s monster. Sure you (hopefully) nurtured, guided, and supported her development into womanhood, but lookit, CajunBoy, a parent does not create an adult child in the same way you created your TV show. A TV show is a thing. A human being is not a thing (in the insensate chair or doorknob example of “thing”). So in your gangbanging/assault fantasy metaphor you’ve left out what the daughter might feel in the aftermath of her ordeal. But (smacks head) that’s right, your creation doesn’t have feelings, does it/she? She’s raped, broken and bloody, but it’s you who has to deal with the mess and palm her off, right? What she wants/thinks/needs is of no consequence to you the creator/Daddy. Objectify much?
2. Gang Rape By Groomsmen
So let me get this straight. According to CajunBoy’s thinking, Daddy is about to walk his beautiful daughter down the aisle when she is set upon by groomsmen and is assaulted and gang raped. Where is Daddy while this is happening? Watching? Having a sandwich? Taking a leak? What’s wrong with this picture?
I’ll bet you a fat man (something my crazy stepfather used to say that somehow seems appropriate now) that if someone ever tried to even step towards Zizi, the only way he/she/they would get near her would be after hubby and I had expended our last breaths in defending her. And they would have experienced extremes of blood and pain in that endeavor. There would also be pieces missing from their bodies. Oh yes, flesh would be rent.
So where in crazy CajunBoy’s metaphor does he account for a father’s (or parents’) protective love and defense of his/their daughter? Hmmm, maybe in his mind neither daughters nor TV shows are actually worth defending. Now sons, OTOH…
3. The Aisle Walk
Now if there weren’t already enough seriously FUBAR with this metaphor, CajunBoy decides to ice the cake at the end of his little nasty imagery. The groomsmen have done their horrible misdeeds. Daddy appears back on the scene and sees his traumatized and mangled daughter. Does Daddy:
- begin to rend flesh and mangle groomsmen?
- run to injured daughter and get her away from these villains?
- call the police?
No, no, no, my friends. You are thinking way too logically. Remember, we are in CajunBoy’s teeny brain. What does Daddy do? He listens to the groomsmen who tell him to walk her down the aisle looking like death on a stick, beaten, raped and bloody, to be married off to her groom, who Daddy hopes will not be so repulsed as to bolt from the church upon seeing her.
BOOM
That was my head exploding again.
When challenged about his choice of such an awful metaphor to describe what happened with his TV show, here’s what he replied:
Yeah, I can see that. I actually hesitated right before posting it worried that some might find it offensive, but I decided to go with it, if only because I think that there’s a feeling of being violated that goes along with having something you create utterly destroyed by idiots.
But regardless, sorry if that metaphor offends you. I mean no offense, obviously, I just couldn’t think of a better may to put it once I spit it out onto my screen.
Yeah, right. Couldn’t think of anything better. That says a lot about his TV show development abilities right there.
I’m going to pick up the pieces of my head now. Goodnight.
Absence of Home Training
I was going to write about my birthday, turning 46, and spending the weekend in New Haven celebrating my 25th college reunion. Unfortunately while down in the cafeteria just now grabbing lunch, I got derailed…really derailed.
As I stood at the grill station waiting for my sub to be ready, I watched a guy come up on the other side of me, reach into a bowl of potato chips that was there for the grill server to add to people’s plates and put a handful into his take out container. With his bare hands. I threw up a little into my mouth.
I turned to the grill server with my eyebrows raised. He was like, don’t ask me.
“What the hell was that?” I did ask incredulously.
“Now I’ve got to throw the whole bowl away,” he said disgustedly.
“How could he think it was OK to just thrust his hand into a bowl like that, I do not understand!”
“And I’m not saying anything anymore because I got in trouble when I told a woman to stop eating from the pretzel bowl while she was standing waiting for her burger.”
“But the bowls are on your side of the area! People should understand that they shouldn’t be reaching over and sticking their hands into chips and pretzels without wearing gloves like you do? How can these people think that it’s OK to stick their hands into a bowl that others will be eating from? Don’t they have any home training?”
“I just don’t know,” he said finally.
Now being in my current emotionally labile, easily-set-off, perimenopausal frame of mind combined with my general germ phobia, I actually set off to find this guy to teach him that
a) I have no idea where his hands have been
b) Due to a, I am in no way interested in his fomite-y hands contaminating any foods that I might eat
c) If he hadn’t learned this at his parents’ knees, then I am happy to school him about it right here and now.
Luckily, (for him) he had left the room by the time I had my sights on providing him with this education.
Strangely, now that I think about it, this incident does relate to my college memories that were triggered this weekend. I remember being horrified by the dining room behavior of my schoolmates, many of whom had more money than God, and thus (I assumed at the time) were more likely to demonstrate appropriate home training. Was I ever wrong.
People believed that picking things by hand directly out of the salad bar was completely acceptable. What the holy fuck was that about? You don’t stick your hand into anything in the salad bar! Use the tongs, for christsakes! Others would pick up large loaves of bread with their bare hands, bring it to their noses to inhale the aroma, then cut off the piece they plan to eat leaving the contaminated rest there for the rest of us to then consume. Again, I don’t get it. Did they not learn about germs? Do they think that their hands are pristine and germ-free?
So I know that this type of behavior unspools me both because of my ethnocultural heritage (blacks tend to be very germ-concerned) and my germ phobia, but I’m just not getting where these people learned that it was OK to reach into communal items with an ungloved hand? Is this about entitlement or simple lack of concern? Whatever it is about, these folks need to keep their damn hands out of my potential food.
I also know (but prefer not to think about) all the germ abuses that occur behind the scenes in the kitchen with the servers, chefs, etc. But out-in-front consumer issue is something so obvious, yet so ignored by the ridiculous few, that I’m making it an issue.
In any event, I spoke to the cafeteria manager about putting up a sign letting people know that the pretzels and chips are for the grill server and are not for public consumption, moron. (She probably won’t add “moron” but I think it fits.)
We did have a great time in New Haven, by the way. Boola Boola!
From Asshat to Prat in 2 f-stops
t’s been kinda funny getting into a hobby when you are an old, reformed-perfectionist, Type-A nutbar recovering from chronic insecurity. On one hand, you are totally jazzed when you find that you understand another concept or (as they like to say at my job) new learning. Yet that low self-esteem, you’re really a moron incapable of any real skill part of your psyche inevitably returns to shriek loudly that all you’re doing is fooling yourself. You might have gotten a little better, but you’ll never be any good! It’s such a lovely do-si-do to experience: watching your esteem travel from sanity to insanity and back again.
In order to foster my learnings (and receive needed validation when the crazies attack) I visit various beginner friendly photography boards on this here Interweb. And there, my friends, is when I find myself making the rapid trip from overconfident asshat to discombobulated prat in the short space of an f-stop or two.
Not long after starting my Oh Shoot course at Jessica Sprague (and armed with some dangerous new knowledge), I visited the D40/D60 forum at the Nikonians (one of my new hangouts). There I recent poster was writing to complain about something being wrong with his lens.
Something must be wrong with my lens because all my photos keep coming out grainy. I thought I was using a decent lens, but I guess I need to go ahead and buy a new one in order to get better photos.
I saw this and immediately I was like that annoying know-it-all kid who sat in the front of the class and was afflicted with immediate hand-raising disease. You know the one (generally female) whose hand would shoot up before the teacher could even finish the question. I know, I know! I thought. It’s not the lens. It has something to do with your ISO. Psychic back patting ensued as I went on to read the answer.
“Stop shooting in landscape mode because the camera will push up the ISO settings. Use aperture priority and a basic f-stop of f/8 or f/11 and see what happens with your shots,” read the reply.
I flew out of our home office to share my clear and obvious ability to learn (as evidenced by my quick discernment of this guy’s issue) with AdoringHusband. Thoughts of I’m not stupid danced in my head. AdoringHusband was also happy for me. (He’s been right tickled that his Christmas present has been the impetus for such a passionate hobby.) He let me preen for a little bit, then he asked the (now apparently) glaringly obvious question, “Why does landscape mode increase the ISO?”
And there, faster than a speeding bullet, came STUPID flying right smack into my forehead.
“Uh, I have no idea.” I could see why the camera would want to stop down for a sharper picture with greater depth of field in landscape mode, but why it would choose to adjust the ISO instead of the shutter speed? I couldn’t even come up with a theory. Crap! I must have looked so crestfallen that he didn’t even ask me any follow-up questions as I slunk back to the office, tail between my legs.
It’s been like that ever since. Get confident (or cocky) for even a hot minute and next thing you know, you get hit with flying STUPID once again.
A couple of weeks ago I saw a posting on Nikonians that made me want to LOL if I were the type to LOL at someone’s cluelessness (and I’m really not that type).
Speaking of the flash, I was playing around with my new 70-300 today and noticed when I turned the flash off and went to take a picture there was a delay of about 1 sec from me pressing the button to the shutter closing. I don’t really understand that.. I’m not sure how I’m going to take any pictures at night with that delay.. anyone have an idea?
At this point, the smug asshat is lurking, thinking, he doesn’t get that turning off the flash reduces the available light for taking the picture so the shutter is compensating. Man, that is basic stuff! Like I said, I’m not the type to LOL, but were I, that might have warranted a chuckle. Happily, unlike many photography boards, Nikonians is actually pretty nice to newbies.
Once, on another major board in the beginner forum, a newbie to DSLRs posed a question soliciting opinions on three DSLR options he had been considering. The very helpful <insert eyeroll here> reply from a non-beginner was, “Considering that only one of the three cameras you are asking about has been released, clearly you are too ignorant to even be considering purchasing a DSLR.” Yikes!
So my friend with the shutter delay got a decent answer from the Nikonians, explaining the exposure triad and such. One person did suggest the commonly suggested reference Understanding Exposure for his edumacation:
(And yes, I have purchased the book along with a bunch of Scott Kelby books. I have quite the reference library.)
Then I go visit the peeps at Jessica Sprague where I am taking Candice Stringham’s portraiture class. I’m reading the forum message boards and see a post entitled Not Always Going for Tack? Before I click to see what the chicks are talking about, I’m thinking to myself, did she mean tact? And what would that have to do with taking portraits?
I start to read the entry and realize that once again, I’m taking a rapid trip down to Pratville.
I used a wide aperture (f/2.2) on many shots to get some bokeh in the background, but wider apertures sort of by nature are not tack sharp . . . at least not with my 50 mm lens, BUT they are not “unsharp” if that makes sense and I think they look nice. But for some reason, I am hung up on faces being tack. And only if you zoom in can you tell they are not. But many of these have a softer look (they are not blurry). Any thoughts on this? I like them, but at the same time, my photographer’s eye wants tack, especially in the face. How should we deal with the aperture/sharpness trade off? I would love to hear your input.
Hmm, my input, she asks? Well that would be, what the freak are you talking about?!! Geez Louise, I just learned what bokeh was (though I still don’t think I would be able to distinguish nice bokeh from ugly bokeh) and now we are talking about wanting tack?! What tack? A thumbtack to hold up your photos? I think not.
I chose to do what I do best: STFU and read on. There was more discussion on the best aperture of the lens (2 stops from the minimum f/stop, according to what I read) and how narrow the depth of field can be with particular focal lengths, aperture settings and the difficulty in getting people right to that tack sharpness point when taking the picture. My head started to throb as my abject lack of even one clue was laid bare before my eyes.
Find another discussion, I thought desperately. Something else…anything else!
What did I then click on? A very busy discussion of the difficulty people have had getting their 5-in-1 reflector to refold back into the cover bag. That would be the 5-in-1 reflector that I still had not unfurled. It sits behind me waiting for me to find someone willing to be my portrait victim. But it seems that refurling this item was a major production. Major! Videos were found to assist in this learning. Videos!! My head was about to explode.
Time to back away from the computer, lest my feeling of bewildered pratfulness become permanent.
The truth is that I’ve learned a ton in a few short months. My pictures have gone from this:
to this:
I’m able to participate in photography discussions for the most part without complete WTF are they talking about puzzlement (generally…that tack thing caught me off guard, really). I even found a new place to dish: Clickinmoms. (Yes, generally I am allergic to anything that has “mom” in its title, but I gave this place a pass.) I can do basic edits in Photoshop, Elements or my favorite, Lightroom. I know now that my monitor needs calibrating and do it weekly with ColorMunki Create. I shoot in RAW like a big girl. And I’ve got good glass (lenses) with hopefully the addition of a nice portrait macro for my birthday on Thursday, along with my BaLens 52mm Snap Cap White Balance & Exposure System. (I give AdoringHusband a pretty specific wish list for gift-giving occasions, lest I end up with a desk lamp or a deluxe shower squeegee. I kid…he would never give me such gifts because I just might hurt him if he did.) I even bought some Photoshop actions from Mindy and have cool TracyJoy accessories (camera bag, straps and lens bags).
For a few months of effort, I’m doing pretty damn well. I’m no smug asshat but not quite simpleminded prat either. I’m getting there.
Sorry that I’ve been so MIA. It’s been a busy few weeks.
Two is a Magic Number
aturday was an amazing and special day. The munchkinette turned 2. Two years old! How did that happen? It seemed that all I did was blink and she went from newborn to toddler. I know they say it goes so fast, but does it ever!
The party was a blur, as was my child. The rainy weather did nothing to dampen the spirits of the kids inside Gymboree. Miss Teri did a phenomenal job in keeping them all entertained. I had looked forward to trying out a 50 mm 1.4 fast lens to get some great indoor flash-free shots of the kids, yet between socializing, my child sprinting at the pace of the road runner, and having chosen to shoot on aperture priority rather than shutter priority, I’m not thrilled with my results. But you’ll see them in the video below.
Wonderfully, Josie, Zara’s firstmother, came up for the big event. I put her cake decorating skills to work as we added Dora, Boots and Swiper to the plain white cake. She, much more than my dear AdoringHusband, became my right hand for organizing and helping set up when we got to Gymbo. She also had a good time playing with the Zizi-blur in the play area. Finally when we got back home, Zara slowed down enough that I was able to get some nice pictures of them together, that is after we went out accompanying the big girl on her first ride on her new bike!
No other gifts were opened that day. Everyone was just spent.
The next day we started the process and even halfway through our family room looked like a Toys R Us explosion! So far there’s been one Princess book (I’ve convinced her that they are just nice ladies and not the dreaded p-word) and one toy related to that spawn of the devil, Barbie, that I promptly hustled out of the house over Zizi’s cries of “open, open!”
“Mommy will get you a Dora car instead of this one, I promise! This one needs to be fixed.” Yeah, it needs to be fixed to keep the Antichrist Barbie outta my house for another year at least.
Luckily I had the presence of mind during the chaos that was the putting out the food and getting the cake ready to hand my little Sony camera to my dear friend Julie who captured the happy birthday singing for this year. I spent the past couple of days making my little pathetic attempt at a video. Yet when I posted it to Facebook it got pulled for copyright violations (the background music). Well know what? I’m self hosted. I will host it here on my own site, for you my readers. Enjoy my Happy Birthday to my not quite so little girl.
http://lianaandmason.com/dollhouse/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/Video/2nd Birthday_0001.flv
Baby Needs an IPod…Or Does She?
Earlier this week I visited the Apple Store to order the full version of Tozzle, one of the iPhone games I’ve found that is like baby crack to the toddler set. Zizi is enticed to sit on the potty with either a book, watching Dora, or one of the toddler iPhone games like Tozzle, Peekaboo Barn, First Words: Animals, Wheels on the Bus (more interactive book than game) or Adam’s Game. Hey, Dr. Karp recommends using whatever you can to bribe them encourage them to spend time on the potty. So there you have it.
So back to the Apple Store. In reading the reviews for Tozzle, one parent wrote, “I installed this on my 2-year-old’s iPod touch and…” I have no memory of the remainder of the review. My brain came to a full stop with the words: my 2-year-old’s iPod touch. I could not get past the idea of a 2-year-old having an iPod touch of his/her own. No issue with a kid playing with a parent’s iPhone or iPod, but since when does a toddler need an adult piece of electronics like that?
I ran it by my partner in doctor-mommy parenting, Michelle, who was equally aghast. “Two-year-olds don’t need iPods!” she wholeheartedly agreed. We clucked and patted ourselves on the backs for being parents who would never be that indulgent. Nice shoes here and a pretty dress there, but not an iPod, we concluded.
Fast forward to yesterday evening. Zara decided that her burrito was more fun to play with than to eat. After the umpteenth black bean was launched from the high chair, she was excused from the table with a consequence of no Dora and a task of picking up all the no-longer-airborne food strwen about. Midway through the clean-up, she informed us that she had to go potty.
“Barn, pleasey Mommy?” she wheedled.
Hell, I’d give her a gin-and-tonic if it would get her to the potty. (OK, no I wouldn’t, but you get my drift.) I pulled down pants, wrestled off the diaper and settled her on her potty. I then handed her my iPhone with Peekaboo Barn open on the screen.
“No, no, barn!” she cried with toddler fickleness.
“You just said you wanted Barn! Why did you change your mind?” I asked stupidly. (Somehow I insist on asking her this type of ridiculous question. Honestly I think it’s because her behavior is so similar to my dear AdoringHusband’s that I get them confused easily.)
“No barn!” was her only reply.
“How about Tozzle?” I ventured.
“Yes, Tozzle! Pleasey Mommy!”
I handed her the iPhone and let her Tozzle her little heart out. I returned to finish my burrito with AdoringHusband.
“So what do you think about getting her an iPod touch?” AdoringHusband said while I was in mid-chew.
I must have looked at him as if he had suddenly sprouted 10 heads, because he quickly followed up with, “Wow, I guess you think that’s a bad idea.”
“What’s she need an iPod for? She’s 2-years-old! I’m not raising some indulged, bratty kid who gets an iPod at 2 and a BMW at 16! Oh no! Think again,” I huffed.
“First of all, it’s not like she asked for it. She’s too young to ask for things and doesn’t even know enough to be entitled. Remember, she still gets upset because she can’t pull a real balloon out of the ballon pictures in her books. Second, she loves those games she plays on our phones, but what if she decides to spike our phones on the floor, or better yet, give them a float test in the toilet while we’re not looking? It might be safer for her to have her own.”
“But it’s ridiculous for a 2-year-old to have a piece of electronics like that. It’s expensive…”
“More expensive that some of her dresses and shoes?” he cut in.
“That’s different!” I shot back.
“How?”
“Well everyone has clothes and shoes. That’s universal. Yet you as a parent can decide to tweak up or down your kid’s wardrobe as you see fit when they are that age. She doesn’t know what she’s wearing, but I like the quality of her clothes, and she looks so cute!”
“Calm down,” he soothed, “I love how she looks too. But I just don’t see this as being any different. Or at least any different from her other toys.”
“Hrumph,” I grumbled, at a loss for how to explain what seemed perfectly clear to me. “I still think spending over $200 for her to play her games is a little much.”
“Wait a minute. They cost over $200? I thought they were like $75. I mean, the iPhones are $199 so these should be cheaper. Oh hell no. Forget it,” he concluded the discussion.
Yet somehow I still feel that even at $75, a 2-year-old shouldn’t have an iPod touch. I’m just not able to explain it in a way that makes sense to my concrete rationalist husband.
What do you guys think? Take my poll and give me more feedback in the comments.
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Photo Restoration: From Fair to Great
his is going to be a quicky from me tonight, my friends. The weekend was unpleasantly spiced with coupleship drama…again. Not.going.into.it. Even Zizi decided to take out my very last nerve and stomp on it. I’ll be picking up my discipline (not the fun sexy kind of discipline…minds out of the gutter, please) books tonight for a little bedtime reading instead of my usual games of Marple on the iPhone before the Ambien CR kicks in. What? Me stressed? You must be kidding!
Anywhooo, tonight I want to sing the praises of my new friend Kevin, the photo restorer.
You remember my recent post about Finding Treasure? My treasure needed to be fixed up…renewed, as it were. But as I had no idea of who the best online photo restorers were, I turned to my friend Google and asked. He rewarded me with a long list. And I’ll admit it, my attention span is short. I picked 3 from the first 2 pages that Google offered me. And off I sent my treasure for restoration estimates.
Kevin was the first to reply. He charmed me by telling me how cute the little girls were in the shot. Yes, I was cute once upon a time, wasn’t I? His price was reasonable and he assured that he could indeed make the picture beautiful. His turn around time was about a week.
The next person got back to me later in the evening. He had a flashier website and promised a turn around of a couple of days. The price point was a touch higher than Kevin’s but not appreciably so.
Number 3 of the bunch had some difficulties with my attempted upload of the TIFF file that was requested. As such, the quote didn’t get sorted out until the next day. A plus of #3 was the explanation of the work that needed to be done. In addition to the obvious fold in the photo, there were smaller cracks in the emulsion that needed to be repaired as well. The turn around time offered was 1 1/2 weeks with a price point about $20 higher than the other two (though to be fair, I think he was sending an actual photo back when I only needed the electronic file).
So in considering all this, I fell for the speed and the flash and opted for number 2.
After paying #2, I waited for my photo proof to be ready. True to his speediness, by the next afternoon, I received an e-mail telling me that my proof was on the website to be approved. The great thing that I could see instantly was how well the major defect had been fixed. But the online preview allowed no evaluation of the smaller cracks in the emulsion. The preview was just too small.
I wrote back to #2 explaining my concerns and he sent me a larger proof. OK, I thought as I looked at it, there are no cracks either large or small, but was it my eyes? The photo looked more grainy/less sharp.
Original:
Restored Photo:
Again I wrote back, apologizing for being a pain (why I always apologize when I am the client, I do not know, but it is my tendency) but asking about whether there was a way to reduce the graininess. Answer: no. He used a filter to get rid of the small cracks, sparing the faces…these he repaired manually, but this filter caused the graininess. Nothing else could be done. End of story. End of work.
Oh well. I thought. Guess that’s that. I approved the proof, wondering whether all of the restorers would have ended up with the same result or whether Mr. Quick’s approach led to graininess. I stewed over this for a day and then decided to see what another restorer would do with the photo. And this took me back to Kevin of Best Photo Repair.
I visited Paypal and submitted the fees for this second attempt at restoration. Kevin e-mailed me Friday night saying that he would have a proof to me as soon as he could. By Sunday night, there in my inbox was a beautiful restoration done in both black and white and sepia. The major and minor defects were repaired and the sharpness was better than the original. Now this is what photo restoration is supposed to be!
After I approved the proofs, Kevin had the photo files (he graciously allowed me to have both the black and white and the sepia versions at no additional charge) to me within minutes. I uploaded them to good ol’ Shutterfly and sent links to Cookie (my cousin in the picture) and Auntie M. Somehow in explaining about the two restorations, I managed to confuse Cookie into thinking that one of the two files (b/w and sepia) was the not-so-good restoration, but she couldn’t tell which one it was. Sigh… This necessitated an explanation that I wouldn’t have uploaded the not-so-good restoration to Shutterfly when we had a great restoration from Kevin in B/W and sepia…but understand that this is my cousin who asked me one day, “What’s a double espresso?” and was truly amazed to hear that it was two shots of espresso in one cup.
That notwithstanding, she was thrilled with the pictures (both of them). We’ve got plans for more treasure hunting and sharing between the two of us. And I’ve got some allegedly restored photos that I think I’m going to have Kevin work his magic on in the near future. So big props to Kevin! Thanks for being the high point of my weekend.
I’ll have some decent blogging, especially the preparation for the big 2nd birthday party as the week continues.
A Funny For The Knitters with Gratuitous Photography
This is a mini little goody from today’s entry in my Never Not Knitting! Page-A-Day
I have a rule. I’m not knitting anything for any object that can’t appreciate it properly. This rules out wine bottle covers, tea cozies, and steering wheel covers. I know that technically these gifts would be for the humans who use the items and that the humans might actually appreciate them, but I just can’t stand the idea of putting my best work and merino on something with no nerve endings.
Since getting this calendar in January, I’ve read most of the entries, chuckled at a few, but have not seen one that made me want to stand up and say, “Amen!” like this one did.
I started knitting when I was 20. I knit sweaters, scarves, mittens, bags, hats…lots of hats, blankets, and socks. What I do not knit are dishtowels:
toaster covers:
pacifier holders:
ipod cases:
or vibrator cozies:
(And why does a vibrator need a cozy in the first place? Does it get chilly?)
What is up with spending perfectly good knitting time and good yarn (not that crappy acrylic from JoAnn’s) on a freaking vibrator cozy? It just makes no sense to me.
So knitters, let’s make a rule that we only knit for organisms with pulses. I’m not a fan of knitting for dogs, cats, or hamsters, but even that’s better than knitting for a vibrator. Sheesh.
And now for some gratuitous Teendoc photography to round out this little rant.
Finding Treasure
here are times in your life that you find treasure unexpectedly. You have no idea that you’re about to walk into a treasure cache, but amazingly, there it is.
I recognize that treasure comes in many forms for different people. For me, though, connections to happy times in my childhood are my found treasures.
Those days before I went to live with my Evil Mother were the most normal of my childhood. I was loved, cherished, and felt safe and valued. I thank God/Goddess that I had those formative 7 years with Grammy and Papa to help me know what children should feel. So earlier this year, when I visited my cousin Cookie’s house, I went into her den and found this picture of us two:
My heart spasmed. For a moment, it all came back: running up and down Prospect Avenue in the Bronx while Grammy and Papa toiled in their dry cleaners. Getting popsicles at Miss Tillman’s and sitting on the stoop letting the cherry run down our hands in the summer heat. Remembering the time that you defied Papa and crossed the driveway way down the block and suddenly, as if by radar/telepathy, he was right behind you. His West Indian accent jarring your bladder loose as he called your name and sharply told you that you were in trouble for venturing farther than you were allowed. Yet you knew that you had done wrong and Papa only sought to protect you. How many times had you run into the shop to tell him that some boy had touched you and he would follow you back outside to find the transgressor, shaking his wooden stick he used to reach the clothes on the high rack, saying “Don’t touch my granddaughter!” You stood there feeling smug and all of 5 years old knowing that he and Grammy loved you more than life itself.
The image faded and I found the words to ask Cookie where the picture had come from. She and I are third or forth cousins, so we don’t see each other often. Yet we did grow up together in New York City.
“I found it in one of Mom’s albums,” she replied. I then begged her to send it to me to have it restored. After a little forgetfulness on her part, yesterday my treasure arrived.
I’m going to add it to the few treasures I have already found and restored. Here are a few that I will share with you.
Papa and Me
Me (right), my best friend Bertha (left) and her cousin
Me and Auntie M on Easter Sunday
Me and Grammy
Oh the treasure you can find when you least expect it!