Guess where I was!

Today's picture is one you might recognize, because it's been on my blog before, but let's see if anyone can figure out where exactly it is.

The Courage of Children

Sometimes I look back on my life and think about what a waste of time it was for me to be so shy for so long. What good did it do me? It's not like it got me out of any work, it just made those assignments more painful. Instead of working extra hard on a project, I'd just spend that energy dreading the presentation. I eventually grew out of it (mostly), so if I was gonna get over it anyway, why did I waste my time fighting it?

Yesterday, my nephews showed me what I missed out on as a child. We went to our local cemetery's Memorial Day Ceremony, and I let one of my nephews use my camera to take pictures. What kids don't love using real cameras? This one took and amazing picture of my niece. It is SO cute!!! But that's a topic for another blog. This is about the things they do in their day to day life that I'd never do. While we walked up and stood in the back, my nephew took my camera and walked right up to the front row of seats. He just sat there in the middle of a row of old men. It was adorable to see. (too bad he had my camera so I couldn't get a picture!) Then a few minutes later, he'd disappeared. We scanned the crowd looking for this little man, a little concerned, but knowing that he's been raised to hold his own if someone were to mess with him. Eventually we found him--standing past the line of spectators, with a real photographer. I thought for a moment of sending one of the other kids to bring him back behind the invisible line and in to spectator land, but thought against it. That photographer almost tripped over him as he sat on the floor, but instead simply patted my nephew's head and continued looking for his photo-op.

A few minutes later, another nephew (older brother to the above mentioned nephew) approached me and asked if my phone had a camera on it. It does, so he took it and ran away. I watched as he ran straight to the gun line who were hiding behind a van, awaiting their turn to participate in the shows 21 gun salute. All I could see were their feet as my nephew disappeared behind the van. The feet I'd seen clumped together and the casually waited, soon formed a line as they stood at attention and posed for my nephew's camera. Unfortunately, my phone doesn't automatically save pictures (it just prompts you to press the "save" or "erase" button) and the flip phone was flipped closed before the picture was saved.

I'm amazed that these children were uninhibited in their lives enough to see something they wanted and, respectfully, get it. I'm amazed that these people so willingly allowed the children to not only be involved in their day, but even altered their activities though to include them. Children truly do have a magic power, and when raised well, they can do anything.

Five Things I’m not good at:

Inspired by Liz, I decided to share my 5 things list. I'll warn you now that in my quest to be perfect, I am usually pretty good at hiding these things...so I might have to go into hiding after posting this

1-Writing. I'm bad at this in every sense of the word. I'm bad at writing in general, my stories/essays/blog posts/journal entries generally end up being a random, unorganized stream of consciousness usually irrelevant to life and all things interesting; I'm bad at writing in the sense that spelling and everything grammatical are beyond me; I'm bad at writing to people, and even if i do, there's no guarantee that the letter would make it to the mail; and I'm bad at physically writing, my chicken scratch is hard to read and is usually situated on some imaginary curvy wave instead of a line.

2-Messages. As with Liz, I feel completely flustered and totally self conscious when leaving messages. I forget who I called, or why I called, or what my name is, etc. I would much rather just try calling back later...except that with caller ID you'd know that I called you every 10 minutes until you finally answered. (Oh, the simple days). Maybe this is some how related to #1 and the problem lies in my lack of coherent thought processes. Or maybe it's my lacking ability to describe/explain things.

3-Dreaming. I think this is because of my inability to remember my dreams when wake up in the morning, or maybe it's my fear of failure. Why dream of living in a mansion with a beach view and a personal assistant when I know that the closest I could ever come to that is being the personal assistant to someone who lives in a beach side mansion? ...and even that is probably not going to happen...Easier to just accept the life I have and try to maintain it.

4-Confrontation. I hate it. It's much easier for me to suffer through a bad situation than to open the can of worms that would be my attempt at resolving the issue. If there is something I do that annoys you, I expect you to tell me, because I can fix it. I can at least avoid doing it in front of you. And that's why I often want to tell people about things like that. "Hey, could you please not eat your fish near me?" or "You know how I hate being scared, right? ...so why did you just jump out at me?" or "Could you please, please, please, pretty-please, just clean up after yourself and not leave dirty dishes everywhere, and trash on my desk? Please?"...but when I've done that in the past, most people make a big deal about it and get offended and complicate my life. I don't care that you eat fish, scare people, or leave crap everywhere...as long as it isn't in my personal space. I really think I'm easy to get along with...but in these situations it would have been easier if I had just focused on keeping my mouth closed, and then everyone can be happy after.

5-Keeping my room clean. I can keep a house clean, and I hate dirt...but my bedroom usually ends up being the dumping ground for all the stuff I still need to do/finish/think about. When I lived with my BFF in our little basement apartment, I was really good about being tidy...although this may be simply because she is OCD about organization (which I love about her). And when I was in Brazil, I was really neat because, well, when you only have 2 suitcases worth of stuff it's really easy to put your 25 possessions away because 20 of them are books that sit nicely in a pile on your desk. ...Right now I like to use the "I don't have time" excuse, but who knows--maybe I am just a slob.

So...Are we still friends?

Guess where I was!

I've decided that everyone else has a series-blog, and I want one too. This will not be on a set schedule, it will be whenever I feel like I haven't posted anything in a while and know that I really should. As I've explained before, I like taking random pictures of things we see every day, but in a different way. So, I end up taking a lot of pictures of things that are visually pleasing to me so that I can manipulate them later...I dream of one day making one of those pictures using tons of mini-pictures, so for now I'm just stocking up on pictures. Well, now I'm going to blog pictures of random places and views, and you get to guess where I was/what the picture is of--I want to see some comments people! First picture: I know, it's a little dark, but it was taken at night on my cell phone...I only have access to a few pictures right now. I promise the next will be better.

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

I don't know why, but I've always loved this holiday. Probably just because it is such a part of the culture where I life, but since it's not my culture I often get strange looks. A few years ago, my friend (also not of the Hispanic culture) and I took the metro into LA to spend 5 May wondering around the shops of Olvera Street. It really was one of my favorite days what with the bright colors, great food, fantastic deals and mariachi music. If you haven't been there yet, call me and we'll plan a trip. It's fantastic!

Random, but cool

This picture caught my eye as I was surfing today. Isn't it intriguingly cute? I don't know what it is that captivated my attention, but I sure was inspired to click on it...Did you know the oldest known love song was written 4,000 years ago? Me neither--and here are a bunch of other tidbits for you.