Get Your Hanky Ready

I'm making a renewed commitment for the New Year, to help be ONE of the voices for the voiceless animals. Maybe you'll watch this, and be moved as well.

Borias' Christmas Present

Borias loves to open presents. In fact, he's gotten quite greedy about it lol. Reminds me of a little kid, saying "that's mine!" and scrambling off to rip it open. Well, witness for yourself : )

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mo_lt7_n48A

Fundraiser

My fabulous church is helping me out with a fundraiser. It's scheduled to be mid-January, around the 12th. Come one come all! There's going to be food trays passed around, and raffle items, and some of my photos framed for auction. I'll keep you posted with details.

If you don't live in San Diego, or can't attend, you can donate through PayPal. I can have a tax receipt sent to you from Mission Gathering church.

Have a blessed holiday!

Christmas Miracle!

Today, I woke up in a deep funk, unable to get my mind off all those photos I lost. I got ready early, and went to a coffee with our councilmember Todd Gloria, who expressed his sympathy for my plight, and offered some helpful contact info. Then I took Borias for a walk in the rainy weather in his beloved Balboa Park. My mother called, and my funk deepened as we talked about her recent tests that weren't showing good signs in her year long battle with a second round of breast cancer. We were just wrapping it up, when I got a beep of call waiting...

"Is this the person who lost the hard drive?"

My heart leapt into my throat..."yes.."

"Well, I have it, and I'll wait for you on this street corner if you want to come get it"

I burst into tears and said I'd be right there.

Warp speed ahead.

On the street corner of my alley, that I traverse daily, an older man waited by his truck. He totally didn't look like any kind of criminal. He handed over the little white box, that was my hard drive, containing all those many thousands of precious images I had feared lost forever. I hugged him through my car window. He didn't want to say how he came about to have it, but had seen my signs I put up in the neighborhood, and wanted to ensure I had a good Christmas.

It was a Christmas miracle.

I just couldn't believe my eyes. And the goodness of some people. I told him the thieves knew I was in a wheelchair-and he didn't even know I was. I said that my pastor had been robbed, and another lady almost was, and the car was a blue-grey compact. He said it was interesting, in a strange way, kind of like he knew who I meant. Perhaps it's family, or a tenant. He said he was a property manager.

Well, I got the irreplaceable thing back. I'm forever grateful.

A huge weight is lifted from my shoulders, and my spirit. I am thanking God for blessing me. And for the lessons I'm learning from this. It didn't break me, as my best friend wrote on my Facebook page, oh, it caused damage, but it didn't STOP me. I grew even stronger.

I suppose sometimes events happen in our lives, that seem beyond something we can handle. Yet, we learn we can surprise ourselves. And that keeping even a little bit of faith can be rewarded.

Merry Christmas.

Rock Bottom

Well, I thought things were bad with my last post, awhile back. It's been two weeks since I could even post, because a catastrophic event happened just as the holiday season set upon us. My house was broken into, in broad daylight, while I was at Borias' acupuncture session. Thieves took my iMac, Macbook Pro, brand new Canon 5DMarkII, with lens, and worst, my back up drive with 15 thousand photos on it. Worthless to the thieves, priceless to me.

I came home to see my hose had been dragged to the front door, which I found odd. My back gate had been unsecured all month, after losing my keys at the U2 concert. My landlord dragged his feet in bringing me a copy, even coming once when I wasn't home, yet not leaving it anywhere. So the thieves had easy access to the yard, then broke through a back door. I had no renter's insurance, like an idiot. Just never have. It didn't occur to me. Yet I lost over ten thousand dollars worth of stuff, and my entire business came to a screeching halt. Just when it was starting to take off.

It kills me to lose all those photos, all the dogs I've taken photos of, not to mention thousands of my own dog. Images I'll never get back. Thankfully some are online, on my website, but they're lower resolution, and just a tiny drop in the bucket of what I had. A good friend saved all the ones I sent via email, and kindly burned them all on a dvd for me. The thieves left an old external HD that had very old photos on it, and luckily,Borias' puppy pics and such. So that's something to be grateful for. But I had just bought that new camera a week before. I spent a settlement for a Service dog access violation on it, and the thieves even took the box and receipt.

I've gone over those images so many times, spent so many hours editing them, sorting them out, that my mind keeps flashing them. It feels like they took a piece of my soul. There are dogs that I recognize on the street, or at events, that I've taken a few photographs of somewhere. They're like my friends! I had been planning on making a book about Borias, and doing a coffee table version with his many images. I wanted to make a tribute that I could treasure forever, and share with the world. I hope to still do so, but it's just terrible that a good three years or so of his life are now missing in images. Everything I've taken since getting a professional camera and falling in love with photography.

Words can't even begin to express how violated I feel. My sense of security is just not what it once was. They had to have been watching to see when I was gone with Borias, which is truly scary and creepy. Also difficult, I had upcoming photo shoots to do. But I was dead in the water with no gear, no computer, nothing. And it figures, people are really starting to call for sessions just after this happened.

I'm having a tremendously hard time dealing with this. Hard to feel the same way about my neighborhood, my house. I sought solace in going to a church I had been meaning to try out for months. Mission Gathering in North Park, a very progressive, small congregation. From the moment I came in, I felt at home. Then to my surprise, the pastor came to talk to me, and I discovered he "knew" me from around town, and lived just a few blocks away. He's an incredibly cool guy, and the church is going to help me by having a fundraiser in about a week, at a restaurant. The pastor called me shortly after I left that day, to tell me that. Suddenly I didn't feel so alone.

Then the news called to do a story on me, after I told them of what happened. Another blessing. Both channel 10 and 8 did a story, on the same day. I learned there had been 33 robberies this past month in a one mile radius of my place! Wow. That became 34 when the day of that news broadcast, my new pastor's house was broken into...the morning of his birthday! I felt horrible for him. I had even gone up and down his street a few times that night, with Borias, keeping a look out. Thieves didn't take his laptop, but were going to, so who knows, maybe they got spooked.

Here's a link to the 10 news story http://www.10news.com/news/21791178/detail.html

Then a woman I see regularly walking her dog got hit by the burglars, just another block away from my pastor! They tried to take her paintings of all things. Seems those thieves are combing the neighborhood. I just found out that the fingerprints taken for my house are viable, and they're seeing if they have a record. Let's hope so, and that they are caught. I'm sure my stuff is long gone (though maybe, just maybe my hard drive is still laying around!) but it can stop them from hurting anyone else.

What a horrid thing to do at any time, let alone Christmas.

I'm touched by the kindness of people, too, though. A wonderful man who saw the news stories contacted me, and he just purchased a brand new Macbook Pro for me, in exchange for a free photo shoot of his German Shepherd, and anything he wants by way of prints and products. Bless him! I went two weeks without a computer. My only connection to the internet was my iPhone, which doesn't work so well in my house!

So I feel blessed with some of the connections I've made with people out of this horrible event. Some hard lessons have been learned. And I'm trying to recover. I really need to get a camera as soon as possible, so I can fulfill the session requests. That was such an awesome camera, too!! Plus my favorite lens was on it.

I believe everything happens for a reason. Sometimes it's very hard to see, but when we look back, there were definitely good reasons. I am counting my blessings...I have lost many, many images of my beautiful boy, memories of large chunks of his life...but I still have him. And that's what's important.