Busy little weekend

This weekend was pretty low key for the most part, just ran around LA doing a bunch of errands. One of the items on my list, was getting a passport photo for my state certification application. Right before I took the picture, I fixed my hair, touched up my make-up, and put on my best camera-friendly smile. The photographer promptly told me that I was not to smile, as the face-recognition software wouldn't be able to pick up my profile. Since when was this a rule?  And why would a smile screw up the software? Shouldn't that be a factor that the passport authorities would be able to adjust for in their software?  Oh well. At least I have item checked off my list!
On Saturday, I went to the Skirball Cultural Center for their "Half the Sky" exhibit, which is based on a book with a similar title that I read last year. In summary, the book is about human rights issues affecting women all over the world, such as sex slavery/trafficking, female circumcision, resources for education, domestic violence, and maternal health care. I was excited for the exhibit and overall was pleased with how they designed it. The ceiling had a neat art piece that looked like a collection of flying wings and the exhibit's layout of artwork, photographs, music and story boards seemed to flow nicely. The one thing that I didn't expect about visiting the exhibit, was how it would affect me. When I first walked into the exhibit, the first items I saw were an artistic tribute to women who had died in childbirth in various third-world countries. As I began to read their stories with each of the art pieces, with a documentary on lack of adequate maternal health care in Sudan playing in the background, I started to feel light-headed and my face flushed with heat. I recognized the signs that I was about to faint and sat down on a nearby bench immediately. After taking some slow deep breaths, it dawned on me how, now being 7-months pregnant, reading these kinds of stories would affect me differently now than compared to when I had initially read them a year ago. I shook my head at myself and felt silly for not thinking about that before I had driven out to the museum. I suppose it is just another example of how becoming a mother/parent will alter your life in unpredictable ways. After that, I decided to skip the rest of the maternal health section and focus on the other parts of the exhibit. The museum was closing by the time I had finished up and I walked through the museum gardens back to my car. As I drove home on the 405, the sun began to set, and I thought about all the things that I am lucky to have in my life. Although I occasionally complain about living in LA, it certainly beats what other women in several parts of the world have to live with on a daily basis. Never hurts to get a little perspective now and again.