I'm depressed today. Despite having a wonderful Mother's Day morning, complete with a sleep in, pancakes, kisses, hugs, and flowers, something is missing.
You see, I broke my camera. My lovely new Nikon that I've grown very attached to over the last 4 or 5 months.
Last weekend we took the boys to the botanical gardens for the day. It was beautiful and we had a great time. Until the end.
I fell trying to catch Holden, my daredevil child. I twisted my ankle (pictures to follow soon), gouged a nice chunk out of my knee, and almost saved the camera. (Hmmmm.... That falling part sounds so familiar....)
When I landed, my right hand came down on the concrete while holding the camera. My hand and the LCD screen took the brunt of the blow, but the lens popped off. One of the threads that holds the lens onto the camera broke off. The camera itself seemed to be fine. I've been using my 50mm manual focus lens on it for the last week. But a few days ago the exposure started going all wonky while I was shooting some photos of the boys.
So yesterday I brought my lens and camera into the repair shop. The bad news? When we popped the cap off of the camera body, a broken piece of black plastic fell out. One of the seals around the sensor and mirror inside cracked in half and is lodged down in the camera. The good news? Nikon can probably fix the camera and the lens for between $200-$300. (Better than buying a new one!)
More bad news? It will take 4 to 6 weeks.
I, who have carried my camera absolutely everywhere for the last 4 months, am now cameraless.
Well, I do have my little Nikon Coolpix point and shoot camera, but it's not the same. I tried to take some photos of the boys with it today and found myself incredibly frustrated. It's slow; I can't manipulate the settings or focus the way I'm used to; and the picture quality just sucks compared to my Nikon D40x.
There is some more good news in all of this. When I was refamiliarizing myself with my point and shoot camera, I found a treasure: 5 photos saved in the camera's small memory, not on the memory card. I somehow missed them when I uploaded the photos from the camera 2 years ago.
Here's what I found:
Holden, 3 weeks
Now that's a reminder to be thankful for my blessings.
Happy Mother's Day.
