Monday, January 26, 2009

Candid Camera

Right now there about a thousand images I wish I could capture for you -- the sight of my pale, ballooning belly, laced with pale blue deltas of veins, the delicate wood carving on the antique wardrobe I've spent hours painstakingly stripping of years of paint, the giant pile of softness in whites, pinks and pale yellows: all of Layla's newborn babygrows, jumpers and blankets sent all the way from her granny Sally in South Africa...

{this pic of me was taken at Christmas time: I am now uncomfortably rotund at 33 weeks, though the midwife says my uterus is full-term/40weeks in size: GULP!!! And how will the next 7 weeks pan out?! Can my skin really stretch anymore?}

But alas, the awful little camera we bought from a colleague of Craig's needs 2 brand new batteries to take just 3 or 4 grainy photos before agitatingly konking out. My 5 weeks of working at Avondale Juniors (blood, sweat and many, many heartbroken tears later)and the money I earned was used to pay my dad back - though I was promised, as part of my employment contract, reimbursement for mileage driven and 7.50GBP a day for lunches. HOWEVER (insert 'thunderous glare' here) the company who processes the payments, MyKeyPay, insists they have absolutely no record of me - and because I am on maternity leave, there is nothing they can do about it. To put it kindly, I'm bloody pissed off as all hell!!!! I followed the correct protocol in terms of registration, filling in forms and posting them back etc. I EVEN received a telephone call from one Gaelic-sounding Sean CONFIRMING my registration two days after the fact. SO. WHAT. IN. THE. HELL. HAPPENED?? A South African colleague of mine who teaches at the same school, hired by the same company, blah blah blah: SHE gets all her expenses paid. So why not me? The most frustrating part is that I was hoping to use that 200quid to buy a camera and various other things for Layla Rose's arrival. And now I can't. You can't have a baby without having a camera. (I know it sounds somewhat insane - but after my own mom has documented our lives so exquisitely in album after gorgeous album, I can hardly imagine not having captured Layla's growth from wriggly little newborn all the way through to first steps and messy icecreams...)
I have someone from my employment agency looking into it for me - so perhaps I may be paid after all: I told him I was writing about MyKeyPay on my blog - and that he better warn them that a feisty little journalist was gonna take 'em down if they didn't sort me out with some cashola!!! (Said in jest. Sort of.)

Anyway, if any of you have an old camera lying around you're not using, could you please send it my way? THANK YOU!!

PS. I thought I was a really cute 'n cuddly baby - but since I put my baby photo up on Facebook as my profile picture, absolutely NO-ONE has commented on it. Think I better take it down - and replace it with one of my arty pics which always elicit enormously good responses. lol

2 comments:

Andrea said...

I agree with you about the camera, an absolute HAVE TO HAVE especially with family far away...my folks have LOVED following Nicholas's blog Nic's Pics and it has helped them to feel involved in his day to day life.

xxx
A

P.S. You look lovely pregnant, hang in there not much longer now.

Lisa said...

Thanks, A. That was awhile ago - don't feel quite so lovely now: puffy face an' all! Even I've enjoyed Nic's Pics and we're not yet even aquainted! (Though hopefully soon?!) xx