10-31-03 @ 3:39 am EST

Last Saturday Dad took me to the UAW Family Center where he works. We spent over three hours walking around the place, me taking pictures of everything from the Hub (a round stone room with giant metal signs of the zodiac adorning the wall all around) to the Japanese bridge to the beautiful patterns of leaves on the ground. I got to see a pathway that he himself helped clear; the trees branching over it made it look like a deep tunnel with a light at the end. I took over 160 pictures.

And last night I just discovered that I've lost them all.

I believe it was my own damn fault--in fact I know it was--but the camera DID act up and that was why I was so stupid. I turned it on the other morning to take a picture of the cat because he was looking cute, and the little light wouldn't stop flashing. It just kept flashing and flashing and flashing, meaning the camera was "stuck" or something--it wasn't turning on properly. I waited, then tried turning it off. It would not turn off. I pushed the shutter button--I believe that was my mistake, as when the camera is WORKING that's what deletes pictures from it. Even so, I only pressed the dumb thing ONCE. It didn't do anything. Light kept flashing. I finally had to open the door to let out the batteries just to turn it off. Afterwards it worked just fine. It's done that before--only the last time I don't think I pushed the shutter button. Why did I have to push the shutter button? Why was I so stupid?

I got on the computer last night to format and send one of the pictures to my brother only to find...just the pictures of the cat. All the 160-something I took at the UAW last week were lost. Every single one.

I had not bothered to take the time to save any of them to the hard drive or even a CD. My stupid-assed way of putting things off again. If I'd just bothered to take the few minutes it takes to save them, I'd still have them. Instead I have nothing to show for that entire morning we spent out there. I HAD A DAMN WEEK TO DO IT and I didn't!

It's too late in the year to go back there now; the leaves are mostly fallen by now. As if I could convince Dad to take me again anyway. I'm afraid even to tell him that I lost all the pictures I took. Sure, *I* enjoyed the trip, but who's to say he did? It was probably a chore for him. He'll probably be pissed to hear it was all wasted. I didn't even save a single one. Not even a picture of the moss which I had on the desktop, or the beautiful tree tunnel.

They're just pictures, but more than losing them, I just hate what a waste of Dad's time it was. Sure, I could just ask him to take me there next year...but I'm afraid to. What will he say? Will he call me stupid? He has every right to. I WAS the one who pushed that stupid button, but I can't help it that the fucking camera decided to act up for no reason whatsoever. How come it could not take pictures but it could DELETE them all? That's what I want to know. Why wouldn't the REST of it work, but that function DID? That shutter button isn't even supposed to delete anything unless you have the menu up on the LCD display, AND have it selected to delete photos. Since the camera was STUCK, I didn't have it on EITHER. So how come I lost my DAMN PICTURES?

I wish I could blame this on someone other than myself, but I can't. All of those three hours, lost. Wasted. Nothing at all to show for them.

I had created a new folder in my social_phobe Yahoo! Photos account to upload and show some of the pictures I took from there. It looks like I'll just have to go delete that folder, now. Without ever having used it.

I wish that something would go right lately. I know, it's just pictures and pictures can be retaken...but I hate that I wasted Dad's time...that I'll have to find a way to ask him to take me again, NEXT year (when, with the way things go, we probably won't even have Internet access or something else by then), when I realize how bothersome I am...I just hate wasting people's time. Yet it seems that's all I can do. And even though most of the places there will be the same, I will never have those same pictures. The way the light hit the moss and the leaves and everything...that tree tunnel was so beautiful. I took a million shots of it just in case some didn't turn out...none left! Not one!

You would think that for all the crappy things that happen I could have just ONE really big, good thing happen. There are plenty of smaller things I have to be grateful for, and I am...like Cosmas, and music, and P.'s generosity, and being able to proofread now and then...but why never a really big, good thing? Like a windfall of money to pay off all our debts. Or bam, free therapy. Or a book deal, even with a small publisher. Or SOMETHING. I don't even care what, by now. Just something really big and good. But it seems you have to work for everything that's big and good, and when you're as chicken as I am, of course you will never end up with anything really big and good. So I keep hoping for LITTLE good things, and...when those come along, like taking pictures of the Family Center, I find ways to mess those up, too.

Wasting people's time and messing things up: I guess those are the things I'm meant to be good at. Lucky me.

Yesterday I finished the editing of

ID: 512954 (Rated: X)
Title: The Ameni Chronicles: Part 11
Description: Nehekhi's grateful thank you to Mahakhi evolves into much more than that...
By: Tehuti, Lord Of The Eight

, not that I really care by now. I'm thinking of uploading the rest of my miscellaneous erotica into my port finally and letting others see it before the site goes kaput--it looks like I have only about 20-something stories left to retype--but I don't really care about that now either. You know, when I'm offline I keep thinking of really decent entries I can put in here, but whenever I show up, it seems all I have to post is junk like this. Sorry I can't even keep a decent journal anymore.