Doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, does it?

It’s 4:30 am. I’m awake because half an hour ago the pets woke me up by getting into the plastic “treats” bag and distributing pieces of it around the dining room. Apparently they were out of food. They are no longer out of food and are now sleeping soundly.

I’m not.

Ok, I can now add “Button kicking the wall” to the list of “Things That Go Bump in the Night.” I will also mention that the only part of her bed next to the wall is the headboard.

/end random sidetrack

Haven’t been around here much lately. I’ve been otherwise involved, I guess. Have I told you that I maintain 2 blogs? I do. One is for “real life” and the other one is here. Supposedly, this one is all anonymous-like, and my family and church friends don’t know about it, so I can do things like gripe about people and say things that would be considered offensive if I put them on my “real life” blog. Uncensored and all that jazz.

Anyway, as of late I’ve been more involved in “real life” so this place has sort of gotten the shaft. Which is probably a good thing really, as it means I obviously don’t have a lot to gripe about and feel much less like someone with 2 personas.

I’ve taken up photography recently. I’ve always been interested in it, and own a pretty good camera. But lately I’ve been more interested in improving my techniques, and actually trying to learn all the gizmos on my camera and even learn the theory behind ISO and Aperture and Shutter speed, etc instead of just playing it by ear. The problem with digital photography is the ability to take good photos without actually knowing what you’re doing. But it’s like any skill - if you want to take photos that look good to a trained eye, you have to actually learn the craft.

That’s somewhat hard for me, because I’ve found that to truly learn something, I essentially have to learn it twice.  That would have been good to know in school.

A few years ago, I studied photography, did a lot of reading up on settings, f-stops, yada-yada.  But it doesn’t sink in to my recall memory until I go back and learn it a second time.  Which is what I’m doing now.

The problem I’m discovering is that photography as a hobby is expensive. I could probably justify it if I had plans to do it professionally some day. But the thing is, I don’t want to do it professionally. I just want to be good enough to do it professionally.

I consider that a shining moment of self-awareness. For much of my life, I’ve been trying to mold my hobbies into careers to justify them. Which only ends up biting me in the butt because the expense of a budding career is far greater than the expense of the hobby.

For instance, scrapbooking = expensive. Buying wholesale lots of scrapbooking supplies to save money per item under the delusion of making money by reselling them in an online store = stupidly expensive.

The problem with not doing it professionally is that I’m running out of subjects to experiment on. Basically, all I have right now is Button. And although she’s a great subject, I think she tires occasionally of the camera. I don’t blame her. I’m also getting too used to taking pictures of her. Which typically means the pictures are better, because I can predict what she’s going to do and how she’s going to look from certain angles. But still - I need some variety.

Perhaps some day I can coerce J into doing a father/daughter session when he’s not working or otherwise occupied.

We attended my parents’ neighborhood Easter Egg hunt, as is our annual tradition.  This year, it was being sponsored by our (huge) church, so the attendance was at least double the usual (and it’s usually a fairly good turnout).  The egg hunt for Little Button’s age lasted approximately 10 seconds because the ratio of eggs to children was completely underestimated.  I’m told they actually had 1,000 more eggs to put out, but the HOA queen wouldn’t let them.  Button scored 1 egg during that hunt, and she only managed that one because a nice lady took one of her son’s eggs and laid it down in front of Button to pick up.  Thank you Nice Lady, whoever you are.

Fortunately, Button is still of the age where she doesn’t realize she didn’t get “enough” eggs.  We let Button jump in on the older kids’ hunt and she managed to find 3-4 more eggs, so she walked away with enough treasures to satisfy.  I did see some kids in tears over the lack of eggs to be found, and was glad we didn’t have to cross that bridge yet.

Her favorite part of the day was meeting the Easter Bunny.  She met him 3 or 4 times because she just couldn’t get enough.  She gave him hugs, high-fives, shook his hand (paw?) and posed for pictures in his lap.  Mr. Bunny is totally the Mac Daddy.

Oh yeah, pictures…

After the egg hunt was over, we walked back to Grandmommy and Grandpa’s house.  Ok, J and I walked - Button (as usual) ran.

When we finally caught up to her, she was sitting on G&G’s front yard, waiting patiently and playing with some of her “loot” from the egg hunt.

It snowed here a few weeks ago.  Random.  One day it was 70 degrees, the next day it was snowing.  And then it went back to being warm again.  Texas weather in the Spring is so fickle.

And yes, here in Texas we take pictures of the snow because in this part of the world it’s marginally equivalent to earthquakes or aliens or Heidi Montag’s shot at a singing career.

We happened to have some friends in town from Seattle, which made the snow even more fun - the more the merrier, right?  And because it was FREAKING COLD outside and I didn’t have any warm maternity clothes but I didn’t have to go build the snowman because Scott volunteered.  Sweet.

I excel at lazy parenting.