Remember these? Better to forget, eh? 

Yesterday was long on several different levels. And it seems like I hardly ever see my children anymore. You would think that was impossible because we are always together. But they are busy people with their own lives these days, as is natural. Evening found me exhausted with a drink in my hand flopping down on my daughter's bed. I find deep respite in her room. A visit to Girl Town, I call it. Girl Town is a place occupied by the psyche of The Feminine. It has nothing to do with actual little girls. Its just a girly place, and oh so restful. 

My son's room is restful too, but in a different way. I love to sit in his big chair in the morning and read quietly near him while he reads in bed. Quiet companionship is my favorite thing, the morning sun streams into his room, and he has always been Good Morning Son to me. He and I are morning people together. The kid is a well spring of thoughtful quietude and just so smart. I love him every bit as much as I love my daughter, of course! He lives in a masculine world that is deliciously foreign to me. 

So last night I flopped onto my daughter's bed with a drink in one hand while picking up a curiously familiar foil wrapper in the other. What's this? "Oh, that held one of these," she tells me, picking up a disposable camera. I couldn't have been more shocked. You might have thought I'd discovered drugs. What on earth are you doing with THAT?! She explained: Bff got a $50 gift certificate to Amazon.com. There she found a deal on these cameras, 2 for $10. So she bought them, gave me one, I gave her $5 back, and we are going to use them to take pictures. Then we'll go to the store, get them developed, and have ShineyPictures to put on our walls--maybe in a heart shape. (Girl Town!) 

ShineyPictures, she called them. I blinked at her. They used digital money to buy disposable cameras online so they can have prints made? Both girls own digital cameras. My girl got a very nice digital camera for Christmas. It was basically her only present. I stared at her and felt a twinge of guilt for not explaining this to her before. I marveled at the girls ingenuity and the weird culture shift I was experiencing where old is new. I explained they can take their digital cameras to the store and have prints, ShineyPictures, made. We laughed for a while. I explained they'll be lucky to each get 2 or 3 usable images off those wretched old disposables. Dear Girl ranted for a few minutes about the eye hole. She marveled at it, tried it backwards, sighted everything in her room, set up a shot of her plastic duck, Quackster. 

Refreshed, I left for my own bed as she pulled out her computer to download the images she took on our trip to New Mexico. These are two of her favorites. The first was taken on the peak of the Sandia Mountain range. The second one made me gasp. She snapped that while riding in a hot air balloon over a suburban desert neighborhood. Either one might make a great ShineyPicture.