Milly lost her umbilical cord tonight. Karen and I were changing her and handed her off to Amanda in the bedroom, and after we had Karen noticed she had something stuck to her hand. It turned out to be the shriveled remains of Milly’s umbilical cord. Now she has a cute little belly button.
Backing up, last night was not a good night of sleep. It’s been kind of a bummer day all-round, actually. I tried to go out surfing for the first time in I think three weeks, but shortly after I got to Anna and Barry’s it started raining, and I mean really pouring. Thunder, lightning, severe storm warnings and the works. So it was yet another surfing trip to Wrightsville Beach for naught. Michael and I waited to see what would happen then drove home in some nasty weather.
Two bright spots- Mia Kay brought us enough food to feed a small village and Karen decided to buy us the supplies to redo our porch, which has been listed as “the next big home improvement project” for a while now. Right now most of the beams are rotted or rotting, and we’re going to replace them with plastic or vinyl, whatever, posts and beams.
Back to the bad- we couldn’t find the camera tonight. The new camera. The waterproof one that takes HD video that I got for Amanda’s birthday. The one that wasn’t cheap enough that we could just go out and get another one.
I had taken it with me to the mall yesterday and I remembered taking a picture in the food court. I’m a pretty habitual person, so I was pretty sure I’d put it back in my pocket, as I’ve done with our little Sony camera for years now, when I was done with it. Problem was, try as I might, I couldn’t remember the feel of having the camera back in my pocket and I couldn’t remember taking it back out.
We looked everywhere multiple times and just could not find it. I even called the mall on the off chance that somebody had found it and turned it in to lost and found. They took my number and said they’d call if it turned up. I thought back to the table and couldn’t imagine that all of us would have gotten up and left without someone noticing a camera sitting on the table, and I’m pretty sure that I’d have felt it slide off my tray if I’d thrown it away. It’s small but it’s a solid camera.
Amanda was distraught because there were some really cute pictures of Milly on it and the whole reason she wanted that camera was to be able to take pictures of our daughter at the beach. I felt terrible, having just wasted all that money, not having had the camera for much more than a month yet.
Eventually we moved on and settled in for the evening. Amanda had wanted to check out the show Whale Wars and recorded a couple episodes. She, Karen and I watched the first one before Amanda headed to bed.
I was downstairs in the office when Amanda came down with some news. After she’d laid down to go to sleep it hit her- she had planned on taking the baby carrier (the kind you strap onto yourself) to the beach when we’d considered going yesterday, and the camera was in it!
Zach Dotsey