Twas the Night of Christmas

Now, I’m not going to discredit my husbands driving, because honestly—it’s far better than most peoples. He has never been pulled over, never been in an accident, and has driven more different kinds of vehicles than I can count, including MATVs in Afghanistan while TRYING to find IEDs. He has also driven me (literally) all over the country—from North Carolina, to Minnesota, back to North Carolina, then down to Florida, Alabama, and up to Minnesota again. So, I have ridden MANY hours with him. And I have no complaints. But I do have to say this—his attention to detail while driving is pretty much non-existent.

Here’s a short example: one of the times we were driving to or from North Carolina, there was a piece of wood lying in the middle of the road. When I am driving and I see a piece of wood lying in the middle of the road, I avoid it at all costs, because my thought is “It might have a nail in it, and I don’t want a flat tire.” A logical thought, I think. However, Steve just drove right over the top of it. And I said, “I hope there wasn’t a nail in that!” To which Steve responds, “A nail in what?”…“Umm…that board that was in the middle of the road that you just drove over”… “Oh, I guess I didn’t see it”. While I’m thinking “How in the world did you NOT see that!?”

I also can’t tell you how many times we have been driving home at night—during prime deer season—and I will be “on the watch” for deer. When I see one, I will say “Deer!” and point to the direction in which I see it. I do this, with the intention of pointing it out to Steve, so he, too, can see it, watch it, and slow down for when it decides to jump out in front of us. Generally when I do that he says “What?”, and again, I say “Deer!” while pointing even more frantically in the direction of the deer that I just KNOW is calculating the perfect time to decide to go springing in front of us so it was sure to be a direct it. But still, Steve stares dumbfounded out the windshield and continues driving full speed ahead, while I attempt to stare the deer down DARING it to cross the road…

Well, tonight we are on our way home from the in-laws Christmas, and as always, Steve is at the wheel. We are talking about who knows what, when out of nowhere, comes a deer that had just made a HUGE bounding leap and was flying through the air. I saw it, almost immediately and knowing we were going to hit it, all I could manage to squeak out was “AAAHHH!!”, as I literally stared him in his eyes out the side window as he reached the moment of panic when he realized he shouldn’t have made that fateful leap. I was almost positive that in 1.2 seconds I was going to have a deer sitting on my lap. Then we hear “THUNK!” on the side of the Blazer. And, of course, to no avail, Steve says, “What was that?” In my head, I was thinking, “Umm…did you COMPLETELY miss the whole episode with the flying deer?” but I just responded “A deer. We just got hit by a deer.” His reponse? “A deer?”…“Yes, a deer.”

And the next words out of his mouth? “Well you could have warned me.” (Because as per the story further up the page, you all know that warning him works SO well). I informed him that warning him would have done absolutely no good—partly because we would have hit him no matter what, partly because my mouth was unable to form words, and partly because he wouldn’t have paid any attention to me yelling “DEER!” anyway.

I suggested we should get out and check the damage once we got to town before we got home, so we were in a well lit spot where we could see. Steve responded with “We have flashlights”. But I convinced him by saying “But the damage always looks way worse in bright lights.”

We checked it out and luckily it’s not terrible, although any body damage is usually pretty expensive to fix. There is a little bit of a dent in the wheel well, but we were at least able to laugh about it on the rest of the way home.  

As for my project? There is no picture, because it’s dark and cold outside—plus I don’t know that I can really be that artistically creative while photographing a dent in the vehicle anyway. I am also not entirely sure that there is a lesson to be learned here either. Maybe if I thought about it long enough, but I think I am just going to leave that out…for now.

Camaraderie

I frequently feel bad for my younger brother. Despite having 2 siblings (and now, 2 sibling-in-laws), he pretty much grew up as an only child. There were only 2 years between my older brother and I so we pretty much had a “built in” playmate (each other) which was vital when we were younger and lived so far out in the country that we couldn’t just “ride our bikes” to our friends’ houses. But with 11 year between my 2 brothers, and 9 years between my younger brother and I, his built in playmates were both graduated from high school by the time he was in 4^th grade, and married when he was in 7^th grade.

I haven’t failed to notice though, that he DOES get to do more things than Derek and I did as kids, and he gets away with a lot more too—thereby making him the “spoiled child”. However, I have also decided that no amount of being spoiled would make me want to trade in the memories of playing tractors, building snow forts, hosting our own radio show in the sandbox, or the time that we (I say we because Derek was CERTAIN it would work, and I—stupidly—believed him) discovered that girls CANNOT, in fact, pee on the tree while standing up—which is a few of the things that Derek and I did while we were younger.

However I have recently realized another advantage he has to growing up, being the youngest by many years. His own personal cheering section at wrestling matches and other sporting events is 350% (or more) larger than what Derek and I had. I wasn’t in sports really—2 years of softball was about it for me—but when I was, usually it was mom and dad that showed up at my games (which was fine, since I rarely hit the ball or made any “big” plays, or even any plays at all). Grandma and grandpa would occasionally come, but with 10 grandchildren they had to divide their time (understandably). Alec had his first (home) wrestling meet on Thursday and I looked around. There we all sat—Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa (who now have 11 grandchildren, but with 5 that are older and don’t have anything exciting enough worth watching going on), Steve and I, Derek, Kolby, and 5 month old nephew Jack. That’s right—we were all there. The cheering section of “2” that I had when I was younger, has since turned into a cheering section of “9”. Probably the biggest personal cheering section there that night. Although, if you’ve ever been to a wrestling match, you soon find out that the entire crowd becomes this unified, almost magical cheering section for ever kid that wrestles—whether they know them or not. And they. Are. VOCAL. And even though this is completely irrelevant (as is a lot of stuff in this blog post) I just MUST point out that on this particular night at the wrestling match, I knew of at least 3 families who didn’t even have children IN HIGH SCHOOL, let alone in high school wrestling that were there. And that was just the ones that I knew and could see from where I was sitting.

Anyway, there we all were, present and in the flesh, ridiculously early (except Steve who came later). When the time came, the lights dimmed and the ‘spotlight’ was turned on illuminating the wrestling mat. The music starts—“Sandstorm”—I had no idea that techno was still taking the world (or at least the high school) by storm. And out they come running—around the circle of the wrestling mat. My mom, always the avid sports fan (insert sarcasm here), says “This is a little overdone.” I told her that they have done this for as long as I can remember. In fact, I wouldn’t doubt that they did this when Derek was in wrestling 13 years ago. I figure, that whole spectacle got me kind of “pumped up” sitting in the crowd—I can’t imagine what it does for them as they run around that circle to a song that they undoubtedly chose. And if that’s what gets them excited and ready to go, then by all means, “overdo” it as much as necessary! Alec was one of the last ones to wrestle.

We sat through many wrestling matches, of kids we didn’t really know, and yet still got into the spirit of the “whole crowd” cheering going on. I’ve never been one to be real vocal in my cheering—I’ve decided that the chance that they are actually going to hear me is far to slim to justify the energy it takes to yell it. Plus, what do I yell? My dad, being a state champion wrestler in high school, can actually yell out useful information. He can yell out what move the kid should make so he would actually be of some help in the event that the kid hears his voice. Me? Although I have been to MANY wrestling meets, I know very little about the actual rules of the sport—I know punching and biting are not allowed, and that’s about the extent of my knowledge. I can’t see what move the wrestler should make next in order to escape whatever predicament he has gotten himself into. That means that my yelling would consist of “Come on ________” What does that even mean? And how exactly would that benefit him in the event that he hear my voice above everyone else’s. It wouldn’t benefit him. At all. So, I usually choose to sit there and cheer on the inside where my pointless advice won’t be heard by anyone else. Maybe it would also increase the likelihood that he would hear one of the people, like my dad, who is actually providing him with useful information.

When the match got to the wrestler right before Alec, I grabbed my camera and headed down the steps of the bleachers to sit on the floor in front of everyone—knowing that my camera’s zoom is minimal, at best (until I can save up enough money to buy a telephoto lens for it). I sat there and played with it a little bit, photographic some kid that I don’t even know as he wrestled another kid I don’t know. In an attempt to find some cool shot that I could use when Alec was wrestling. And I finally figured it out. I was so excited that I figured out how to do something cool with my camera that I didn’t really KNOW about, but discovered by experimenting. Here it is (only this is actually Alec wrestling):

  

Now, I know that if this same exact photo, in this same exact situation were taken  by someone else, I’m sure they would have been able to make the shot at least 400 times cooler, just by doing some other adjustment that I don’t actually know about—yet. I also know that my fancy schmancy camera is capable of taking photos way better than this. But I’m learning, remember?! That’s the whole point of this. So, for now, I am satisfied with this. I had a vision in my head of what I wanted the picture to look at, and through trial and error I figured out how to produce it.

For the record, here is a shot similar (lighting wise) to what that picture would have looked like had I just used my camera as a “point and shoot” instead of making adjustments myself:

Either way, as I was sitting there on the floor, for the first part of the match that Alec was wrestling, I was completely absorbed in my camera. I wanted to get “the shot” before he either lost, or beat the person he was wrestling. But as the match went on, and on, and on. I become less interested in taking pictures, and more interested in how Alec was doing. He was “winning” for most of the match. He always had the “upper hand” on the other guy and was always in the better position. There was one point where he got into trouble, but he was lucky (yes, lucky) that he was right on the outside of the ring and managed to scoot/get pushed out far enough that they had to get up and move to the middle again.

Toward the end of the match, I found myself yelling—like, out loud, not just in my head—although still nothing worthwhile. And I’m pretty sure I even threw in a few floor slaps—since I WAS sitting on the floor. I could tell toward the end that he was getting tired (and understandably so) and I think that’s why I was yelling. I was trying to use my energy to help him. Of course it doesn’t actually work that way. They went all three periods with no pin, but because Alec had acquired the most points during those three periods, he achieved himself a “win by decision”, three points for his team, and his FIRST varsity wrestling victory with his whole family sitting there watching him.

So, in regards to my New Year’s project, I have the blog post, I have the photo experiment, where’s the lesson? I have no idea. With the photo on Facebook, I posted this quote:

“The art of living is more like that of wrestling than of dancing. The main thing is to stand firm and be ready for an unforeseen attack." -Marcus Aurelius

I had the intention of making my blog about some lesson related to this quote, but the blog seems to have taken a different path and maybe there is a second lesson that lies in the blog post I generated. Maybe it should be something along the lines of:

“The camaraderie that exists—between strangers, and between family—paired with the inner strength that you know you possess, can yield results you thought might not be possible.”

How’s that for profound?

New Year's Resolution

That’s right, I have one this (or I guess it would be NEXT) year. I’ve never had one before, because I always thought they were kind of silly, and everyone knows that no one usually ends up keeping their anyway. BUT, next year I have one, and I already know what it is. Although I think it’s more of a New Year’s PROJECT, than a resolution. And, since I never do anything “halfway”, it’s actually like 3 projects all rolled into one.

I have 3 passions. Okay, that’s a lie, I have way more than 3 passions. Two of these, have kind of been left by the wayside in the past few months/year.

One of these, is this blog. I started it at the beginning of the year, and did pretty well with it for a while, but then got a serious case of “writers block” and have been battling ever since. My life doesn’t seem to be all that exciting lately—and after 4 years of non-stop military “excitement”, that is fine with me. But it doesn’t really help the writers blog any. So, resolution #1 is to blog more.

The next of these passions is learning. I have always said, that if going to school didn’t cost so much, I would probably still be going. I would love to take all kinds of classes just for fun—unfortunately it seems to be rather expensive fun. So, I am going to have to find some other means of having fun…or am I? Resolution #2 is to find a different means of learning that doesn’t cost $10,000 a year.  

And, of course, the 3^rd of these things, is taking pictures. I love taking pictures, and I have wanted to learn more about photography. My husband bought me a big fancy schmancy camera for my birthday—that’s right, my birthday—in April—and I am still trying to figure out what all I can do with it. So, you guessed it, resolution #3 is to learn more about my camera, and experiment more with taking photos.

So, by now you are probably thinking “Where does the 3 projects rolled into ONE come into play? What do these things even have to do with each other?” Well, ask yourself no longer. My New Year’s Project that is absolutely ridiculously and obnoxiously ambitious, is to the 365 Photography Project, only with an added twist. My goal, is to try to find something in every day that is a lesson to me (here is the “education” part). It might be a reminder of something that I already knew, it might be something simple and silly like how you should never seek sympathy from your husband after you burn your hand TWICE, in the same day, doing the same thing, or, it might be something wonderful and profound that I have never thought of before. Hopefully I can find something to take a picture of (here’s the photography part) exercising my experimenting and/or creativity with my new(ish) camera. Then, of course comes the blogging end of it. Although I don’t expect to have a big long story to go with my life lesson every day, my hope is that these little life lessons will provide inspiration for me to blog more—to give me topics that will help me snap out of my writers block.

So there you have it…my New Year’s Resolution/Project. Ridiculously ambitious. I’m  not entirely sure how long I will be able to keep at it, or if I will be able to come up with something every day—I might have to “work up” to doing this every day. But I think I will be satisfied even if I can do this once a week.

Now that I have explained this whole little project, stay tuned for my “test run”, that will hopefully be posted tomorrow!