WordPress weekly photo challenge: Hands

These are the hands that tickle Elmo’s nose when he gives a hug to my son for a picture at SeaWorld San Diego. That will teach him to try to sell millions of Tickle me Elmo dolls.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: hands – Elmo and Bert at SeaWorld San Diego

These are the painting hands that let the artist’s creative juices flow freely.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Hands

These are the firefighter’s sturdy hands that sometimes need a little extra help from the jaws of life to save lives. Thank you, hands.

Firefighter holding the jaws of life in his hands

Of course, I couldn’t help myself from including Jewel’s beautiful and inspiring Hands song for this weekly photo challenge, so enjoy it!

A special Mother’s Day story

This past Thursday afternoon, I received a strange email message that got my attention immediately. It came from my Every Day I See A Cow blog, mentioning a post I wrote last Thanksgiving where I featured cow hand puppets from IKEA. But it wasn’t about a cow.

The email sender was a mom located in Nova Scotia, Canada, almost 4000 miles away from San Diego, where I live. As I read her message, I quickly realized it was a cry for help. Earlier during the day, her two-year old daughter lost her lovey. Her ONLY lovey. Yep, no backup. Gasp!

So this desperate mom browsed the web for hours looking for a new lovey, which happens to be a lamb hand puppet from IKEA, just like the ones featured next to the cow on my Thanksgiving cow blog post. Of course, luck would have it that IKEA recently stopped selling these hand puppets. Apparently they’re not a hot item on the resale market either. At least, not on the day this lamb puppet disappeared.

As you can imagine, this tragic and sudden loss didn’t go well for her daughter, who kept crying and asking for her lamby. As she couldn’t find another one to buy anywhere, this poor mom became frustrated until she saw my blog post and emailed me, asking me if by any chance I would have an IKEA lamb hand puppet. Hmm, I replied, attaching the photo below, like… this one?

IKEA lamb hand puppet

I actually bought several hand puppets at IKEA a few years ago. I think they were only $1.99 each at the time and very entertaining for the kids. I think I have a frog, a chicken, a zebra, and of course, a lamb. My kids still like to play with these puppets once in a while but I figured they could manage with one less.

So I got this mom’s address and on Friday morning I went to the post office to send our lamb to greener pastures. I’m pretty sure Nova Scotia has much greener pastures to offer than San Diego. And the best thing about all this is, in about a week a little girl will be happily reunited with “her” lamb lovey. Someone should tell her it just went on a vacation for a week or so…

This experience tells me that as moms, we need to stick together. Maybe one day another mom will be the one helping me out when I need it. But if there’s one single piece of advice I can offer new moms, it’s to get several copies of your baby’s lovey. That’s what I did with my two kids and even though we haven’t lost any so far, I don’t regret the additional purchases. 

By the way, if your child ever lost his or her lovey, I’d love to hear your story. How far did you go to replace it?

Happy Mother’s Day, everyone!

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Unfocused

The first thought I had when I read this week’s Wordpress photo challenge was to feature my mind. There’s nothing more unfocused in my life than my mind right now. Scrambled thoughts? Checked. Lack of focus? Checked. Wheels spinning and nothing moving? Checked.

Of course it’d be pretty hard to take a picture of my mind and it might even scare you a bit. The good news is, I’m working on clearing up my mind and turning my many thoughts into action. I’m getting my days organized so I can get the important things done. And it seems to be working, so I’m taking it day by day. My biggest challenge at this point is not only to handle the urgent items, but also the ones that have been sitting on the back burner for so long, they make me my creative side itch. Have you ever had that feeling? It sure feels good to scratch the itch once in a while.

But I digress, and I’ve done a lot of that recently,  so let me get back on track. Unfocused is one thing I’m very good at when I take pictures, especially when I use the macro feature. My camera is VERY good at focusing its macro on everything except the very thing I’m interested in. I’m sure there’s a trick to it but I haven’t figured it out yet.

So I often end up with images that clearly lack focus. And getting rushed by my kids doesn’t help. Last weekend we went to the zoo and I got the opportunity to take pictures of beautiful flowers. At some point, I spotted a butterfly on some lovely purple flowers so I decided to use the macro to capture it. This is how most of my images turned out, with no real focus on anything in the frame.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Unfocused

Fortunately I managed to take one single image that turned out OK, even though I’m not too crazy about the lighting situation. But at least the subject was in focus. Unlike my kids, who had run away to the exhibit next door and kept calling me to come and see a tiny antelope called dik dik. I’ll admit it was pretty cute. But I still like my butterfly better.

WordPress weekly photo challenge: Sun

Since I live in San Diego, CA, I get to see a lot of sun. More sun than many people in other parts of the world. And even more sun than the people who live by the beach in San Diego and experience the thick marine layer that won’t lift off many days of the year.

Even though it can get pretty hot in the summer (90 degrees and up in the middle of the day is common, 35 degrees and up for those of you outside of the U.S.) and we go through a lot of sunscreen, hats and sunglasses, I can’t complain. It doesn’t as hot as the rest of the Southwest (boiling Arizona, anyone?) and I never experience “lack-of-sunlight” caused depression, i.e. seasonal affective disorder, in the winter.

The weather is the main reason I moved to San Diego 14 years ago and I don’t regret my choice. It’s also a great place to raise little kids, with so many attractions to visit and a wide variety of landscapes. Am I making you want to move here yet? Wait, gas is at least $4.25 a gallon now, always one of the highest prices in the country. How does that sound?

There’s something about the San Diego sunlight that makes for great photos. Maybe it’s the latitude we’re at and the way the sun rays hit us, but our sky is often a gorgeous blue. However, if you want to take great pictures of landscapes, you need to do it early in the morning or from the right angle, or in the winter, when the sun rays aren’t so bright. Otherwise, you get something like this:

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Sun

That day I was trying to take a photo of the different types of steam clouds caused by several airplanes in the sky, but no matter how low or high I aimed the camera, I kept getting the sun rays in the lens. The sun was just in the wrong place for me. 

Last year when we went on vacation to Iddylwild, a lovely tiny town in the mountains of Southern California, we got to enjoy several walks in the woods. It was refreshing to see so many large trees, mostly fragrant pine trees, especially since 95% of the trees in the mountains of San Diego County burned down in the wildfires of 2003, and then again in 2008. I took a lot of pictures during our trip, but I like this one especially, showing the imposing height of this pine tree as it hides the sun behind.

Wordpress weekly photo challenge: Sun behind a pine tree in Idyllwild

Look at this wonderful tree. Nature stands tall in front of me, and I can only bow in admiration.

The golden eyes – a missed opportunity

In yesterday’s post, I described how the tow truck driver who rescued me and recharged my dying battery had “golden” eyes. I hesitated to ask his permission to take a picture of his eyes, for fear of sounding a little freaky.

Several of you scolded me expressed disappointment for keeping those golden eyes all for myself. You even asked me to find a picture of real golden eyes so I could share my once-in-a-lifetime encounter. So I did what every person would do. I googled “golden eyes.”

Damn, you guys were right! I should have taken a picture of those eyes because finding a REAL set of golden eyes is impossible. Well, except if you’re looking for Bella’s new golden eyes, after her beloved hubby turns her into a her vampire in the Twilight saga. There are tons of those in cyberspace.

Twilight's Bella and her vampire golden eyes

Honestly, now that I’m looking at this picture, the truck driver’s golden eyes looked a lot like Bella’s. I doubt he was a vampire though, especially since he didn’t mind walking around in San Diego’s super bright daylight, with no sunglasses on. So I went on with my Google search and the closest image I could get was on another WordPress site called Varungenius’s Blog.

I still think this woman’s eyes look more hazel than golden so I retouched them in Photoshop. Here are the real golden eyes I saw yesterday. Pretty neat, huh?

Real golden eyes