Moving forward...while looking back

Applied for a passport and bought a new camera.

Passport photos were Worst. Pictures. Ever...with the exception of my driver's license photo. And that's even given the fact that we expect those photos to be bad.

I see big, attractive people all the time. I know I've said this before, but it definitely bears repeating. Some people can carry extra weight. Some people can carry a LOT of extra weight. But I'm not one of them. My driver's license photo looks like Jabba the Hut and the passport photos today are only marginally better.

The fact is, I very rarely photograph well. Add extra weight, an official photo op doomed before it starts and, well, let's just say that I will be springing for new documents when the last of my weight comes off. Because I can't imagine carrying such an ugly thing for 10 years.

Strangely enough, although I do tend to photograph really badly, my passport photos have usually come out okay. Probably why I was so disappointed today. Here are my 2nd and 3rd passport photos. The first is when I was about 22, and the other about 31, so of course being younger helped. But even then, I hardly ever kept photos of myself, so it's really not just age.

One of my daughters got to this one with an ink pen during her drawing on walls age, long after it was taken. In spite of the round face, I weighed about 103 pounds in the photo below, the most I weighed until my first pregnancy.


Then, yeah, that's eighties hair...and shoulder pads. After 2 kids, about 108 pounds, which is where I'd like to get back to. 20 pounds left to go.


Believe me, no one will see the ones I took today unless absolutely necessary, and I will destroy them as soon as I can replace them with something halfway decent. It's not just vanity, I've never felt like I had anything much to be vain about, and it's never bothered me. It's just that these latest ones just really look like the worst possible me. And that's after I actually went so far as to buy a couple of new cosmetics! Sheesh.

Truthfully, looking at even decent photos of myself make me a little uncomfortable. There is something about my eyes and nose that seem so freaking feline, it actually creeps me out a little bit. Like I was a cat in another life, or something. And while I think cats are such amazing creatures, I'm definitely a dog person. I've never owned a cat in my life, I just find dogs more comfortable. Cats, on the other hand, don't leave me alone when I'm around them. Hmmm...maybe I was, like, a Cat Goddess.

I like the sound of that. I would use it as an online name, CatGoddess, but it's probably already taken. Plus, I might have to explain it sometimes, and what could I say that didn't sound like a raving lunatic?

Anyway, back to this life. The good news is, I had everything required for my passport application AND I got a new camera at the photo store.

The camera is still a point and shoot, because even entry level cameras have manual settings that can be played with if I'm inclined to learn anything more. No point in buying better camera than I can take advantage of.

It's a Canon Exilim EX-S7, and I mainly bought it because it weighs less than 4 ounces. I'd have preferred a pretty color, or even silver, not only for aesthetics but because black gets lost in my purse. However, they only had one, so black it was.

Ordinarily, I'd have researched and bought online. But both the sales clerk and I had a hard time believing that the battery was in the camera because it was so light. I knew it would be better than what I had, if only due to 2 years improvement in technology. So I bought first and researched when I got home.

The main complaint I had about my old camera was that the viewfinder was impossible to see in bright light. All my pictures of the beach last summer were shot blind, literally. This one has a gorgeous sharp viewfinder. And it's lighter. Weight is everything to me when I travel.

Still, I got a cool surprise when I started checking out the details. It's got a dedicated video record button. I can't tell you how many times I missed a shot because I hadn't put my camera back to still shots after recording video.

So I'm happy with my purchase. I try not to let myself dwell on the fact that I paid full list price plus sales tax. Because a) that would serve no productive purpose and b) it was still only about $150 total, so I wouldn't have saved an incredible amount regardless, even if I'd been so lucky as to find someplace with free shipping.

Anyway, I'm determined to keep moving forward, assuming I'm leaving the country and going places where I will want to take lots of better quality photos than I have in the past. There are a lot of things I need to get done before I can go, but applying for my passport - even with the ugliest pictures in Christendom - and buying a camera make me feel like it's right around the corner.

And it kinda is, because I know the time will fly by. I'm leaving in a week to take my mother and 7yo back to Louisiana and will be gone for about 10 days. That brings me smack up to the end of July. I've got a load of stuff to do just for that trip, then another bunch of stuff when I get back. I'll be a lot more productive once 7yo isn't here, so I think I can get it all done.

One of the (unbelievably many) questions on the passport application was the estimated date of travel. Since I really have no actual information to base that on, I chose my late father's birthday toward the end of August. He traveled extensively, introduced me to the joys of foreign places, so it seemed like a good omen. It also kinda fits with the most likely time schedule we're anticipating, and works perfectly with the 4 to 6 week processing time for the passport. I find things tend to fall in place that way, while stress tends to come from trying to force events to fit the schedule I want. Sometimes it's just sooooo much easier to just go with the flow.

A couple of jarring things related to the passport application:

They wanted to know the birthplace of my former spouse? Didn't have a clue. I put down the town he grew up in, but that was the home of his mother's 2nd husband, whom she'd married when my ex was a year old.

I still carry around my original marriage certificate and divorce decree. They are 2 of the many documents I want to scan into digital copies so I don't have to carry them around any more. But both of those events took place so many years ago that I didn't know the exact dates off the top of my head. If I wouldn't have happened to have those docs, I'd have just estimated the dates. I wonder if anyone actually checks that stuff. Doesn't seem worth the manpower.

They asked the birthplace of each of my parents, as well, which I also didn't know. But at least I was able to leave them blank. My ex-spouse's birthplace was required. I kinda think it should've been the other way around.

A productive day, all the way around. Gonna need a lot of those over the next several weeks. Feel like I will have earned every day of vacation I can squeeze out when I'm done.