Thomas, Cameras, and Placebos

I was slightly aghast yesterday when, shortly after taking these pictures, I heard Anders say that Thomas had just run over Sir Topham Hatt. Good heavens! I liked this response from one of my friends on Facebook: “Poor, dear Sir Topham Hatt! Another casualty of a boy’s imagination.”

Speaking of taking those pictures. . . . Not long ago one of my children knocked my DSLR off of our computer desk (my fault – I shouldn’t have left it there). My one really good lens (which happened to be attached at the time – because it nearly always is . . . or was) now focuses sporadically at best. It sent me into a bit of self-wallowing that wouldn’t allow me to get my camera out at all for several weeks. Yesterday I decided that, perhaps, my moping had gone on long enough, so I pulled it out and attached my “it will do” lens. Still . . . I feel . . . loss. It’s silly of course. But I do.

Anyway, this poor child:

He was wronged in every possible way by every possible sibling yesterday -- or so it seemed to him, at the time that this picture was taken. Dear boy. He did wake up fevery and sick this morning, so perhaps the over-reaction to siblings (and life in general) was compounded by illness setting in.

Abe, while mostly pleasant in every way yesterday, seemed, at least momentarily, unduly put out about the wet rag Penny was wandering around with. I think he was laboring under some fear of it actually touching him. But, you see . . . I’m a rather strong proponent of . . . placebo treatments of nearly every imaginable kind. “Your stomach hurts? Lie a pillow under it. That always works.” “Your leg hurts? Here, wrap this blanket around it. It’s a sure cure.” “Your wiggly tooth hurts? Hmm. Maybe suck on a wet cloth. That always fixes wiggly-tooth pain.”

It’s just there are soooo many aches and pains around here. Separating the real from the imagined is already more of a task than I can fully rise to, moving beyond that to actually curing the host of ills presented to me daily? Well . . . that’s asking far too much of any human. Even a mother kind of human. And . . . I suppose my methods typically cure them . . . enough. Once I convinced a child that holding a rock on her skinned knee would stop it from hurting. It got us home. And, Penny was quite happy with her little, wet, duck washcloth yesterday. In fact, her wiggly tooth didn’t bother her again.

And now . . . for those who can press on: a bunch of shots taken with my phone while I was moping over my “real camera” situation.

It would have been better to have separated them and written about girl cousins and crafts, McKayla (our neighbor and babysitter for years in both WA and, by a twist of wondrous luck, UT), Jesse getting to take apart our dish washer, Spider-Man acquiring hair, Mike assembling and hanging clip frames for me, and Mike when he plays his fiddle (which is not nearly often enough), etc. It would have been better, but also . . . more work. And, it’s rather late, and I’m rather tired. So, goodnight, sleep tight you all (if I had any claim to southern anything, I certainly would have said “y’all”).