All Grown Up

My youngest daughter is 18 years old. Wow. What the hell happened?

I asked her if she wanted to join the army, she said no. That's a relief, really, because now that she's 18, if she said yes to that question, in the presence of, say, an army recruiter, she could be in for a terrible haircut and a ridiculously long-term contract. Well, that's not really a danger I suppose with her autism. Verbal Q&A isn't really her forté, neither is following orders.

But conceptually, the idea that my kids could get a job dropping bombs on people, well I guess the fact that there even are jobs in that industry is bizarre. Actually, having watched Mo play Fruit Ninja, I bet she'd be an ace drone pilot if they ever did recruit her.

I offered to take her to sushi for her birthday dinner. She loves sushi, doesn't get it very often. It was my first choice, too. But she wanted me to make pizza. I offered fried chicken (one of her all time faves), I offered the sushi thing, she wanted pizza.

And of course I made a cake, and I asked her what color she wanted the frosting to be and she picked orange. I really love taking the picture of my daughters blowing out their birthday cake candles. It's a semi-tricky shot, I've learned you need to take your UV filter off or you get reflections of the candles bouncing between the lens and the filter, and of course the light is low except for the candles which are super bright, and then there's the timing of the shot. But Mo wasn't having it. Last year, after we lit the candles she ran to her bedroom and wouldn't come out.

This year, she was ready to go to her room when she saw me put the candles on the cake, and I finally talked her into staying for her party by promising not to light them.

Her Mom got her to blow out the candles on the ice cream cake at her party the next day, go figure. But while I really wanted to shoot her blowing out her 18th birthday candles, it was her party, not mine.

I did have fun making the pizza, though trying to photograph it was probably an extraordinarily bad judgment call. I realized this when I put down my Nikon, realized I'd just grabbed my expensive dSLR with flour-coated hands. I know it has good dust seals, but damn.