My run of bad luck with smartphones continues.
The Apple phone my friend Tamara sent me all the way from Switzerland represents the asterisk in all this. Before the steady iPhone, my last flip phone found its demise in a vat (okay, a cup) of yogurt.
This one has a mystery illness. Honest.
One day, it just stopped working. Well, part of it did. I can still text, check on the blog and watch the carnage that is my fantasy football team. I just can’t, you know … talk on it.
Without putting it on speaker.
Annoying as hell, right?
I’ve reset the phone, but it’s not working still. Luckily, I transferred my photos so that in the event I don’t have a guest post lined up (like today), I can rummage through and post 11 random smartphone pics.
They went big for Merica before the Carolina Panthers/Houston Texans game this season. This is my view from the press box. JJ Watt was in a mood so I didn’t get to talk to him. He’s a big cat, though.
I took this one for Grace pregame. The Panthers have a percussion line known as Purrcussion (get it?). They take a path around the stadium uptown before heading inside for the game. Tons of talent in this corps.
Remember that sweet pic of Grace and her pumpkin? Here’s the outtake of her imitating the face she created! “That’s blood on the end of the stem,” she pointed out. Never can get too ghoulish with this one.
I also wrote about this Llama. He was too big for the pen. And he knew it. Obviously I had no qualms about getting up close and personal. Yes, that’s Elise in the background. If I’d been eaten alive, she’d have missed it.
Marie and her friend dressed like Marilyn Monroe and Audrey Hepburn. It was a classy look, and I didn’t even freak out at Marie’s skirt length or the fact that her prop was a fancy lady cigarette. (Fake, of course.)
This creature has undergone quite a makeover since I was a kid. No, not Grace. The spinosaur behind her! When I was a kid, they were docile. Now they’re beastly. Grace can be too. (The dinosaur isn’t real.)
Someone turned 15 on 11/11. (She also turned 11 on 11/11/11. I told everyone we crossed paths with that day.) Marie is special in that she never goes to school on her birthday. It was a great day with my fierce one.
The kid does it again! Marie won a championship in her final middle school season, then followed up with a title in the same tournament I won with my Academy team. I should have documented this day in photos for a post.
My friends took me to lunch at a breakfast place for my birthday, and I got a burger anyway. Chelsea made cupcakes. A blogging friend suggested I wish really hard on any candles that day. I did. Really hard.
There’s a little royal blood in my midst. That all-region and all-conference goalkeeper with the courageous spirit is also homecoming queen. I think that officially makes me the daydream believer. But we knew that already.
Some days just come together. It’s a warm day with cool air. It’s a perfect burger and pickle spears (even if you leave it in the restaurant in a to-go box.) It’s a liquor store run and ice cream in the sun and perfect company.
It’s finding this guy in a downtown park.
It’s a reset, a new outlook, a path to what’s next. Followed in short order by validation and redemption, to an extent. Peace. Sometimes your life moves you through a tunnel, dark and uncertain. If you can just stay the course …
Just a dad ... 
Aww. All are cute. If I had to pic a fave it would be the pumpkin one where Grace is rolling her eyes up (of course). Talking on a phone is so overrated.
I just love all those photos. But the one of Grace and her pumpkin, LOL she’s a hoot 🙂
I may be a little twisted but I love the irony that you can do everything with your phone except talk on it 🙂 Great photos- had to laugh at the pumpkin face imitation. Oh, and thanks for clarifying the dinosaur wasn’t real; I was worried 🙂
Aw, such great photos and glad you got to blow out your candles and make a wish still, too. As for the phone, so sorry to hear and have had my issues in the past as my iPhone 4 was getting up there in years. Apple doesn’t make them to last sadly and just a matter of time before having to replace. Fingers crossed that you got a bit more time still.
Never too old for wishes, right Janine? This phone is an LG and I love everything *else* about it.
I could have had my iPhone fixed – by 2017. That Apple store is for the squirrels.
Star keeper AND homecoming queen? I’m lucky if I get Crash to get ready for school by himself. Maybe when he’s 15. And like jannatwrites said, the irony of not being able to talk on your phone is comical. They don’t make things to last these days.
She’s kind of the renaissance woman, Eric. If she could only put her clean clothes away.
The phone does everything else, man. Everything.
Some of the greatest minds are disorganized. And that phone does everything except what it was intended for in the first place. Still hilarious.
It reminds me of Hank Gordon’s line (the dude Woody Harrelson played) in Doc Hollywood: “I could have been a doctor. It was the science part I had a problem with.”
I kinda miss the days of just the flip phones! Life seemed a little slower back then. Such wonderful photos of your life! Thank you for sharing that part of your world with us!
Back in the day of flip phones – did you ever think you’d say that? I have told the girls that I remembered when the only way I could see a Rockies game was online.
Glad you liked the photos! I had an awesome guest post lined up today that couldn’t happen. It would have been incredible, and I’m hoping that someday she’ll be able to come back and post it.
I also have a lot of food photos on my phone. A lot of food photos.
i love to take pics too, and you have some wonderful keepers here. happy belated birthday, eli and here’s to the mysterious and annoying world of tech.
thanks beth – seems like I take a ton. my phone is like the shark in Shark Tales that wouldn’t eat fish.
Eli! Are you still on the SOP tour?
Sincerely, Norine Dworkin-McDaniel Co-creator of Science of Parenthood norine@scienceofparenthood.com
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Just emailed you!
Wonderful pics..one and all. I’m sure your kiddos are very special! Thanks for sharing! 😉
Thanks Courtney. It’s the whole ride of parenthood that tends to rock. I hope that the intended guest post for this space can happen one day – it was an awesome idea from an incredible writer.
We actually have a llama farm through our woods! There are about 20-30 of them. And they will eat you. Or stare at you and continue to eat grass peacefully. I can never remember which.
Marie makes a lovely Audrey.
There’s always a light at the end of the tunnel, right? Hang in there and stay the course is a great message – thanks. I needed that. It’s been a rough day with finding chicken nuggets everywhere and marker drawings on feet. It’s almost bedtime… I can make it!
Yes Kim, even if it’s the oncoming train. Glad you could take away a little encouragement. Anything’s possible, and that runs an incredible gamut of possibilities, it’s true.
Here’s to an easier day today (or at least the time to blog about the nuggets and foot art!)
They are all great pics, each telling their own story. Weird about your phone though. I would have suggested turning it off and back on again. That’s as technical as I get.
Thanks Nikki, and you’re right – they’re at least chapters in the story, each. LG wants me to send my phone to them for repair, but what do you do in the meantime?
(Two cans and a string come to mind.)
I did try the turn-it-off-turn-it-on-again procedure (my kids roll their eyes when I suggest this), but no results. I even did the factory reset.
What did we do without mobile phones?!!!
I like your face Coach… we should see it more often. 🙂
And your girls of course it goes without saying: Stunning!
Thank god that dinosaur is a fake though! because literally, there’s an entire movie franchise about why it’s a bad idea to go to a park with real dinosaurs. har har
Good thing you didn’t lose the pictures, and good thing you’re sharing them here with us, thank you, I love them! Too bad my phone died on you.
Way to have a burger on your birthday!
Glad you like the pics! The iPhone you gave me lasted quite a while and served me well – better than this one!
Birthdays and burgers ought to always go together.
Grace and her pumpkin face is cracking me up 🙂 What beautiful children you have and I’m so sorry to hear about your phone snafu! What a pain in the arse!
Happy happy very belated birthday to you! XOXO
Me too, Charlotte! Thanks about the kids, and I probably will get Marie’s phone – today the iPhone she wants for Christmas will come by mail, and that could be my gift, too.
It’s a pain, but I did love that phone! Thanks for the birthday wishes – those are never too late.