I'm forcing myself to come back from three days of lethargy. I was planning to let tonight slide and start fresh in the morning, but I got a brief pep talk from Rich, and I'm back at the keyboard. Thank you, Rich.
So, what caused this lethargy? Monday night at the Writer's Exchange I got mixed reviews on my plans for a blog. It's not the content itself that stirred the doubtful reception, but the electronic medium. Of the eight opinions available to me, exactly none of them offered concrete advise on how to proceed in getting a blog to catch on with a regular audience. I was mostly offered shrugs, I-don't-knows, and "is it even possible to make a living like that?" Usually this group is lively, upbeat, insightful, and encouraging. I like these people. But Monday night I was hanging on a limb by myself. Although I should not have, I let the discouragement give me permission not to write on Tuesday.
Then came Wednesday. I already missed one day, so I might as well miss another. No one would notice anyway. So I fell into The Witch's Prison, a computer game, and spent the entire evening not seeing a really obvious search object, and devoted over an hour to solving a puzzle that I didn't understand the rules for solving. Now I understand the rules, but I haven't found the solution.
I was hoping that I would be back in my weird little asylum world tonight, but Tara was on the computer. Searching for used cars!!! Saturday morning we're going to a dealership to look for a car. For Tara. Is that even possible? Then she went to get her nails done at 6:30. Perry took over the search. Jeopardy! was preempted for extended coverage of fallen trees and delayed trains in New York City. I watched an episode of Seinfeld (the frozen yogurt) and then aimlessly flipped channels until the computer was free. I pounced.
I hope all fantasy baseball people are reading this. I know I am the seventh place team. I understand that I was fair to middling all season. But did you see my score on Tuesday? 210 points. That's two hundred ten. And THAT is a Donna first down! (Only Rutgers football fans will get my last sentence.) Gloat completed.
At 7:45 I called Tara and asked her if she was close to needing to be picked up. She said no. I thought this was odd, but I was keeping myself amused. At 8:20, two hours into this nail salon thing, I told myself that she had to be ready soon. I drove to the salon and there she was, hands still resting on the table. The only explanation the manicurist gave me was that they had to put on a whole new set because the place she got her nails done at last time use a different kind of whatever it is they use. According to my watch, she had time to grow a new set. So I thumbed through a promotional book put there by wedding photographers. Then I read a teaching book on my Kindle. Then the season premier of The Apprentice started and I wished it were socially acceptable to tell everyone in the salon to stop talking and blow drying. Not only were they keeping me from hearing the introduction, they were talking about changing the channel. We finally left at 9:15, two hours and forty-five minutes from her appointment time.
Let me go back a minute to that wedding photography book. It was a compilation of the highlights of the work of several photographers. Most of it was standard. A few pictures were exceptionally nice. Three were exceptionally bizarre. The least objectionable was a shot of some older lady's feet. She was wearing a gold dress with matching shoes, and bright purple nail polish.
Then there was a shot of a very short old woman who was having such a good time her grin took on a cartoonishness. She was standing next to a young woman whose head was not in the photograph. But, oh boy, her boobs were just about falling out of her dress. So what I was looking at was a pair of boobs next to a bugged out octogenarian.
Last, and weirdest of all, was a picture of a bride and groom. They were standing face to face. His face was buried in his hands, sobbing. In a graveyard.
The foot picture was not great, but would pass as "what not to wear". The old lady and the boobs could be a candid shot that most people would opt not to include in the album. Both the old lady and the owner of the boobs would be vying for the picture in order to make sure it got run through the shredder.
And some sentimental couple, under awful circumstances, might decide to make a private stop at a gravesite. I'm guessing his parents were recently deceased and in his way he was making them part of the wedding, a bittersweet idea. But why on earth would they invite the photographer along?
I can even suppose that a photographer could, maybe, run into offbeat clients who want these pictures. But why in the world would that photographer choose these prints to represent him in a book meant to drum up business? I do not know the answer to this question, but I do know that we will not be hiring him for Laura's wedding.
Good night. Go live it up.
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