Letters of the Helfabet: Clueless.

I like to consider myself a person who is good at figuring thing out. Good at navigating, good at puzzles, good at fixing broken crib mobiles. My brain likes the challenge of trying to solve problems, and so far, it has a decent track record, which leaves me fairly confident when it comes to new challenges. Maybe overly confident. Fortunately, this bravado has only endangered our lives once, when we found ourselves driving in circles around Florence, Italy, right about the time our departing plane was set to board, and I was pretty sure Papa J was going to kill me, or at least call me a moron, which at that point in my relationship with his son might have been even worse.

But we made the flight and Papa has only called me a moron a handful of times, so I've continued to swagger through life without asking for directions.

Until now.

On Monday, we got a new computer (eep!) and a printer (yee!) and Creative Suite 4: Design Premium, which is the mac-daddy of design software (great googly-moogly!). On Wednesday, I happily uploaded the software and readied my mouse for an afternoon of "messing around" with Photoshop and InDesign and Illustrator, and realized that I have NO IDEA what I'm doing. Not only that, but I also have no idea how to even BEGIN to figure it out. This is a very strange feeling, this helpless feeling, and I am not quite sure how to handle it.

For the time being, I'm going to choose to ignore these snazzy programs with their fancy elemental icons and sophisticated terminology and wait until a Mac Genius appears to me in a vision.

All is not lost, though. I have downloaded a set of Photoshop "actions" (read: CHEAT SHEET) from thepioneerwoman.com and managed to alter a few photos this morning. Do not be fooled. I promise you, I am a Photoshop moron.