The Un-Photo

Ah, the posts I could publish...if only I could find the battery charger for my camera.

I could film Kharma's advanced doggy classes. I could show you my pond in all its frozen glory. I could take pictures of this year's Christmas decorations as they slowly take over every corner of our house. I could show you before and after photos of the garage as I make room for a car to actually fit into it.

Hey! I could show you how to deconstruct a queen-sized mattress and box spring. Making it disappear was seriously satisfying.

All those lost opportunities! Instead, I have a keyboard and a blog. A blog with no pictures.

I never realized how much I rely on my photos for inspiration. I've come to rely on them as a kind of shorthand journalling as I chronicle the more interesting aspects of our daily life. Maybe I've become a lazy writer. Maybe I long ago decided that brevity was a virtue appreciated by those of us who plow through our daily bloglist (priority one) and still find time to cook dinner/fold laundry/shop for the holidays.

My sweetie has been occupying the computer desk each evening recently, playing endless games of online Sudoku and Bejeweled, while I search for my battery charger under the guise of accomplishing housework. (Let me just state for the record that housework is responsible for my missing battery charger. If I hadn't cleaned our master bathroom and reorganized our vanity, I wouldn't have put the battery charger in a new place that seemed obvious then.) I wish I could rewind my thought processes to discover just where that obvious place is.

This whole situation is a correlary to the maxim that if I throw something away, after not needing it for five years, I will need it within a month. Or that cleaning my desk automatically means it will take me an hour to find a piece of paper instead of the thirty seconds it would have taken had I left my somewhat messy, but secretly organized, piles in place. I never learn. I keep on merrily and sporadically cleaning and organizing like a teenager who can't comprehend cause and effect.

Frustration doesn't help me accomplish anything either. Frustration makes me crave hot chocolate, candy canes, frosted Mini-Wheats, escapist literature, PBJ sandwiches, and long soaks in the tub. I don't get much done and my scale groans every time I come near it. And it's not just the lack of a working camera, it's the flat tire on the 300ZX and the dead battery in the Ford and the two computers under repair sitting on the dining room table and the holes dug by a certain puppy, over and over and over. The lack of sunshine when I get home seems to sap my energy and my ambition.

Yet I've still managed to clean and clear the garage so that my little Subaru is warm and cozy tonight. And I have a good pile of giveaways stacked on my front porch for Thursday's pick up. We found two gorgeous Christmas trees in the forest this weekend. We took one to the Queen Mother and put up her icicle lights in the bargain. And our home is red and green from the hand towels in the powder room to the snowman curtains in the kitchen.

Still...if I had my camera I'd be posting about my flock of Nativity sheep that have finally reached critical mass. I'd be planning a post guiding you on a Christmas tour of my favorite things. Instead I think I'll go In Search Of, yet again.

Wish me luck.