I don’t have very expensive photography equipment. It’s not incredibly cheap crap, but for most people, it’s hardly expensive. Still, I was taught early and well (sometimes with Dad’s belt) to take good care of my stuff, and I still do. I use my camera at least weekly, and when I come back from hunting bugs, the camera goes in its case with the lens cap on, the adapter lenses go in their protective cases with their lens caps on, inside my “accessories” case.

Today, we took containers so that we could hunt some food for Valerie. It’s hard to make sure she has a wide variety, but she must for continued good health, and wild-caught insects are naturally gutloaded, so they’re very good for her. It was fucking hot outside, though, and I didn’t feel like hauling a bunch of plastic containers around with me, so (since I usually have my macro adapter on anyway), I caught anything tasty (to Valerie) that I came across in the hard plastic macro adapter case. I carefully stored the sponge pad in the other case so it wouldn’t get dust on it that might potentially scratch the glass, but left the plastic case empty so I could catch a nice, big horsefly, and two fat grasshoppers. Anyway, P had caught a moth, too, so we were out of containers, and I had to leave the fly in the adapter case until we got home. When we did get home, I looked at the state of Valerie’s house, taking note of various insect parts all over the floor, and decided that I’d clean her house tonight. Her abdomen is still nice and round, which means she isn’t really hungry, so if I put the insects in, she probably wouldn’t eat them by the time I was ready to change her bedding. Wrangling a winged (stubborn, wilful) praying mantis is enough on its own, especially with Miffen Skweken Kricken Katchen Katze Hosen (his full name) in the house, so I decided to wait and give her the food critters after she was in a clean house. I didn’t feel like trying to get the horsefly into a container because she loooooves horseflies, and I didn’t want to risk letting it loose in the house (might lose it, and also the fucker might bite if I didn’t find it right away). My macro lens is still safely clipped onto the camera, sitting on my desk, with the lens cap on. Nothing would happen to it.

After I took a shower, I decided to take a nap, as is my habit on weekend afternoons. No longer sweat-soaked and uncomfortable, I booted the laptop and read some news stories/comments for a while, then fell comfortably asleep…until the dream started. I remember it well enough, but to save time (and because it doesn’t matter), the general gist of the thing was that I was bughunting (nowhere familiar, but it was in NS somewhere–I “dream knew” that), and no matter where I went, I kept leaving bits of my camera equipment behind. First, the accessory case and the camera itself, then after I retrieved that, the macro lens, then the accessory case again, and then I couldn’t find the car in the lot (and had forgot to lock it), and then…on and on until I was so worried that I actually woke up. Some part of my anal retentive brain simply could not trust that even though I had not put everything back in protective cases, as I do every week and have done since I got it all, it would still be okay. That part of my brain was determined to have the macro adapter in its case, and the camera in its case. I guess having a brain like would be handy for selling any equipment I had used, because it would be in very good condition, and I’d get a reasonable price out of it, but goddamn, it sucks for trying to take a nap on a Saturday afternoon before having cleaned the mantis cage! 😉