Sunday, August 29, 2010

baby come back

I want my camera back.  I haven’t disclosed this information on my blog until now because it has been too traumatic for me to talk about, but my camera that I saved my credit card points for and painstakingly researched and finally chose. . . I had for two weeks and then it was gone.  Maybe you had been wondering why the pictures in my posts (not that I’ve posted much recently) over the last two months have been noticeably poor quality compared to the ones with my new camera.  Well, now you know.  On my plane ride from Charlotte to Minneapolis (in route to Denver) back on June 26th, in the midst of trying to get off the plane with my three girls (two of which had run ahead of me and were at the door of the plane with the flight attendant calling out, “Are these girls unattended minors?”) plus my two carry-ons, sippy cups, Emery’s blanket, some stuffed animals, a DVD player, and a carseat, I didn’t realize that I hadn’t put my camera back in my carry-on bag and left it tucked underneath the seat in front of where we were sitting.  It wasn’t until we were back on another plane to Denver about an hour later that I realized it was missing.  I can’t bear to go into the details of all that I have done to try to recover my camera, especially since I knew exactly where I left it, but all I can say is that after exhausting all possible avenues to find it and really believing that someone would find it and turn it in, I came up empty.  Someone found my camera, and that someone apparently chose to keep it.

I was sick for weeks—couldn’t even talk about it without bursting into tears.  I’m done crying about it even though I feel a horrible lump in my throat now just writing about the whole thing.  I felt like an idiot for losing it and was just mad at myself for being that careless, even though anyone who has ever travelled with three or more children by themselves knows how it could happen. 

I was in charge of taking the family picture at our family reunion over the fourth of July weekend—my ONE assignment and I couldn’t pull through.  And I hate that I didn’t get ANY pictures of all the great times we had with my family that weekend because that was the only camera I had brought on the trip with me.  (Thankfully my sister-in-law Erin pulled through and took a bunch of pictures.)

So for those of you who wondered what Patrick gave me for my birthday a month ago that was the ONE thing I really wanted. . . he told me I could RE-buy my camera.  I started crying again, first because I felt so stupid that I was even in this predicament where I would need to RE-buy an expensive camera that I had just barely gotten, but also because it was so sweet of him to want me to have the camera again.

I haven’t bought it yet because at the time I was still in Charlotte and wanted to wait till we got to Denver so I wouldn’t have to fly with it—it might be a while before I feel comfortable doing that again.  So when I get caught up on posting all the pictures I’ve taken over the last few weeks of our exit from Charlotte, moving into our new house, and the beginning of the school year, you’ll know why those pictures are slightly less awesome than I wished they’d be.  Now that we’re getting a little more settled here and life is getting a little less crazy, I’ll hopefully get Nikon #2 very soon.

And if you ever overhear someone talking about how they found a Nikon D90 on a plane out of Minneapolis. . . DON’T HESITATE, JUST POUNCE!

4 comments:

molly kay said...

So sorry Mer!Thatis sickening! And I was one of the people wondering what you really wanted- now i know!I emailed you a link to the blog of the photographer friend who took some pix of Brighton when she was 8 days old if you want to check it out-photographydujour.blogspot.com Miss you!

Unknown said...

That is awful! I kind of know how flights on your own can go. I've done one on my own with two kids (with two car seats, a stroller + baggage) and another with my hubby with three kids (all in car seats). It was hard even with both of us hauling everything!
That's awesome of Patrick to replace it for you! I honestly didn't even notice the quality of your pictures had gone down in the past few months. I look forward to even more stunning photos on your blog in the future!

Unknown said...

That is so crazy! I am so sorry to hear that. I could cry for you too. I thought of these two sites I have seen before. Check them out. You never know.
http://www.ifoundyourcamera.net/
http://www.camerafound.com/
That is so nice Patrick is letting you get a new one.
Congrats on your new home in CO. You seem very happy and loving it so far.
hugs, JL

Kerry and Dave said...

I know exactly how you feel. I left our camera on the train during our trip to Spain and couldn't shake that horrible feeling the rest of the trip.