Photo Op

In a strange Six Degrees of Separation kind of way, I was introduced to the art director of a popular local weekly paper at the wedding of yet more friends-of-friends several weeks ago. KD suggested to me that I send the photos I shot at the wedding along to her. My internal response was something along the lines of 'no fucking way. She is Someone; I am Not', though my thoughts rarely include curse words so I may have made that one word up while typing this.

At any rate, I thought more about it, said 'mmm, yeah I suppose I could. It'd be good practice for being polite in the face of ridicule and guffaws. Sure, why not?'. So I sat down with the digital images I'd shot, cropped and cleaned them up a bit, then sent them along, attached to an email that said "Thought you might like to see pictures from the wedding. Please feel free to pass them along to any other folks who might like to see them" She responded with a lovely note that said she thought they were great, she thanked me for sending them to her and added that she'd send them on to The Bride (a photographer by trade). I felt instantly shy, but I was proud of myself for having successfully overcome the negative What are you doing?? Are you nuts?
thoughts long enough to follow through on something that I knew on a gut level would be welcomed and, I reassured myself, the photos weren't THAT horrible.


I was visiting a close friend in Washington D.C. last week when I received an email with the subject line 'Isthmus Photo Assignment'. It was a note from the art director, who wrote that she liked how I had no qualms about getting the angle I was looking for at the wedding and that she liked the end results. There would be a group playing at a local joint [which used to be a cigar bar until the very recent city smoking ban ordinance was passed, but that's a whole 'nother bag of butts and is, perhaps, best left for another entry]. Would I be available to take pictures of them to accompany the upcoming music column?

Given that it was nearly 2:00 a.m. I decided against issuing out a whoop of overexcited delight, mostly to spare my hosts from being forced to sleepily celebrate this unexpected good fortune with me. I worked out a response that I hoped would sound confident, easy, relaxed. 'Don't be overeager about this, you'll look completely desperate', I chided myself.

One email exchange later, I had the details I needed and she had my agreement to shoot Machiavellian Machine, a techno-ambient electronic musical duo. I had a day and a half to go through the shots, weed out the best from the truly sucktastic, then get an acceptable product back to her. With slight concern about the short turnaround time and my general sense of organized chaos, I woke unconscionably early on Tuesday to ensure a rush-free zone because those are the times I tend to pull my cart (uphill) while leaving the horse standing in the stable. Later Tuesday morning, like when regular people are awake, I received a response to the double batch of photos I'd sent along: The photos were great - I'd captured real feeling in the shots. She also asked for my address so she could send me a check for my work and thanked me again for taking on the assignment.

I was tempted to do that whole 'they like me! They really like me!' routine. It didn't matter to me if anyone ever asked me to shoot photos for them ever again, I'd been given the opportunity to experience the process once, and that was swell.

Yesterday I received another email from the art director. It bore the subject line 'Isthmus photo assignment'. I thought for a moment that she'd accidentally resent her original email to me, so I quickly scanned the short email message while simultaneously considering how to respond with an OOPS message - something along the lines of either "I'm so sorry to bother you, but I think I may have received this in error", or "Grab yourself a cup of caffeine sistah, you're sending outdated emails".

But it was a new request - for an upcoming assignment later this week.
Holy wow. I was truly surprised!

Now I have a new dilemna ... I keep thinking I really can't keep using the fairly outdated Fuji Finepix S5000 I bought several years ago and have been using on a near-daily basis ever since. Not when the camera of my dreams is out there, just waiting for me. Or the big girl's little sister, also a camera I wouldn't kick out of bed for eating crackers. I'm craving a hi-res camera with more functions and lens adaptability. Me want. Me want. Me want. Me will have to wait a little while longer.

Crabby crab crab

Scheduling ourselves has become a very complicated thing as we launch into these days that grant us the earliest whiffs of autumn.

This evening while ripping through a late dinner, KD and I discussed my upcoming school schedule, a trip she's planning that we had hoped we'd both be able to take, the impending arrival of my manchild back to the state after his vacation to visit Dad's side of the family up nort, ya hey dere ... I wondered to myself 'how did we suddenly become so busy?'.

Though we disagree on very little, we don't always agree on what should be the most important thing, my gal and I. I've been through the burning fires of nighttime feedings, the earliest fledgling days of cries and gurgles and stitches to his mouth which came the one day I wasn't watching closely enough and he whacked his face on my bed frame: all these things that have gone into forging my maternal relationship to my kid. I absolutely do not fault her for not having a constant clinging cobweb of parental guilt hanging over her head like the stormcloud-for-one I seem to stand beneath. Rather, I love her all the more for trying so hard to understand my perspective, and moreso - for loving me despite it.


Now that he's nearly 16, maybe I should focus a little more intently on letting my kid go; maybe I should focus on being nearby. Maybe I should remove all the alcohol in the house in preparation for the day he suddenly develops a taste for something throat burningly room temperature. Maybe I should put him in one of those newfangled playpens (sure, call it a Pack n' Play if you want, but c'mon, we both know it's simply a glorified, wordified playpen), complete with the breathable mesh zippered lid to keep him from climbing out. It's for HIS safety, after all. Yeah yeah yeah, the idea that locking him down is primarily to serve his safety, but my contantly worrying mother mind finds the concept consoling.

Needless to say, my main concerns about the upcoming travel plans initially circled like vultures primarily over the kid. He will be starting his junior year in high school which by definition automatically marks him as no babe in the woods, but I worried: what kind of responsible-appearing mother leaves her kid home so she can have a fun birthday cake eating visit with the out-laws? Would I be able to sit with these people I'm still just in the beginning stages of getting to know as Family when the specter of my child's image floats around me, index finger pointed accusingly?

I was surprised at how long it took me to connect various other scheduling issues into the melee of chattering brain monkeys, but a few days ago it occurred to me that I will also be in school in a matter of weeks. When I thought of this it was 3:00 a.m. and I was lying in the dark, in the Baseball-slash-Guest Room at my friend's home in Arlington, Virginia. I didn't have the copy of my class schedule with me and couldn't do a thing about it so, instead, I turned the Discman volume up just a little higher, rolled over to my other side and hoped I'd remember this issue long enough to check the details when I returned home. A-yup, I've got classes on Thursdays and Fridays, both. Shit. I had forgotten that I'd scheduled that digital photo class for Fridays. Shit.

So tonight, between dinner and my house, my favorite gal (ooh, I think I'll call her MFG now, what a nice ring that has!) and I tried to figure out how all these flagrantly unmatched schedules (hers/mine/his/ours) are going to work out together. I don't go along with her to her family gathering... Check. Neither of us are particularly thrilled about my cancellation, but I do feel grateful and I have a sense of relief for having examined my initial guilty hesitations in some depth. What's more, I won't be double-booking my calendar accidentally - or worse, purposefully - in order to try to make everybody happy. Sometimes things just don't work out the way we hope. It happens and, generally speaking, we live to tell about it.

MFG had a long day today, with some unexpected twists and turns that had her feeling crabby, she said. Once we had waded through school calendars and came to realize that I wouldn't be able to travel with her as she/we'd hoped, she got just the tiniest bit crabbier, poor gal.

But she hung in like a trooper - well, not a military trooper because that image is way too formal and involves weapons - just a loving kind trooper who surprises her girlfriend with roses, just because girlfriend arrived home and was missed. That kind of trooper. We waited to claim the long legged baggage that is my child at the bus depot, and once his bus arrived we zipped home. Shortly thereafter Kid drove off with his friend, and MFG & I were left to do some late-night grocery shopping (while the boy was gone I hadn't powershopped like the provider of a male teenage mouth must do on a semi-regular basis; it had to be done).

One of the items on KD's grocery list was canned crab meat. We hemmed and hawed about which of the three varieties of two available brands would be best ...
'are the expensive cans better meat?'
'that one only has eight ounces in the pack, this one is twelve ounces.'

She picked the largest can (you can buy a pound of canned crab meat at the local grocery. who knew?) and we made our way through the aisles as hastily as possible.

When it came time to check out, the clerk swiped the can across the scanner. The can price rang up as $9.50 (give or take a few cents). I asked my gal, 'wasn't that price marked at $8.99 back on the shelf?'. She'd had a long day, she was crabby (and I'd perpetuated the feeling somewhat); this was late night for her -- as much as I wanted to fight in the name of accurate pricing, I also totally understood how ridiculous this could seem to someone who is not-me. Really, who the fuck cares about a 50 cent difference?

The freckle-faced clerk said he'd take over bagging if the bagger dude would go back to doublecheck the shelf price. KD and I chatted away as the clerk scanned and bagged the rest of her items. Bagger Dude returned, mumbling 'Eight ninety nine'.
DING! I did remember that correctly! I can't remember what I'm doing from day to day but hallelujah, I can remember the shelf price on a can of crab meat.

Clerk was about to go back into the register tape to review the scanned price when I noticed a sign next to the ATM swiper machine and quickly interrupted him. "Say, does that mispriced can count in this 'if you are charged incorrectly for an item and you bring it to our attention, the item is free' deal?" He thought for a few seconds and responded that yes, yes indeed it does. He'd forgotten about that program. After all, he said, it's not like the higher-ups at the store like to remind staff to actually catch errors or encourage customers to do the same.

So the $8.99 can of crab meat came to KD totally free, making my previously crabby girlfriend quite smiley indeed. In noticing and standing up for her mispriced can I certainly couldn't have erased her sense of disappointment at my trip cancellation but I hope I was able to adequately communicate that even during our crabbity crab crab times I'll have her back.

Tunes for wing-walking

As much as traveling completely excites my electrons and my sometimes napping restlessness, I'm not terribly fond of the thirteen million others traveling with me.

Strangers, to be more clear, are strange.

I have a thing about sharing my body space with people I've never laid eyes on until the awkward moment we meet while tossing our bags about, grasping for a book or a pillow while shoving the unnecessaries out of our way.

I'm not sure what the fabulous Universe is trying to teach me about men and fear, but I seem to have a peculiar knack for being seated next to (probably otherwise very sweet) nervous single male fliers. The foot-tapping, nail biting, fidgeting praying eyes shut men who would never admit to the fellas at the club to having kissed that golden crucifix dangling from a gold chain (and no longer hiding under their business shirt) while summarily kissing their own asses goodbye, just in case. But there it is, my dumb luck and the Universe's amusing little sense of wry humor.

I don't mind sharing the space that exists between the hair on his arms and the hair on mine, but there seems to be a slightly discourteous attitude that accompanies nervous fliers which causes them to completely forget courtesy in the midst of their unravelling. You see, if they're going to be sharing any part of my body at all, my unspoken rule is that they're going to have to make eye contact with me at least once before we buckle ourselves in for the adventure. And it would behoove them to make the eye contact right off the bat because I WILL have eye contact before we land, dammit. I will talk, I will ask questions, I will counter-wiggle against his shifting nervousness and silently mouthed praying ('oh god, I really wanted to date that woman from the next floor up. Please just let me live and I promise I'll talk to her. Please lord, do not ignore this plea, please let me live and land safely and I'll fuck her in the name of all the saints, if that will please you and get me from here to there and back safely').

Pray all you want, sweetieboy, but until you look me in the eyeballs and exchange one simple pleasantry with me -just one!- I will make your nervewracking trip something out of a Hitchcock film, I swear I will. Try me. Wanna know exactly how many times I can have to get up to use the airplane bathroom in two hours? Keep not looking at me and you'll certainly find out.

Pretend I'm not there, will you? Fine. I hope that wasn't an engine falling out just now, did you hear that noise? Naw, probably not the engine. Maybe just a thingie that is supposed to be underneath one of the wings. See how that works?

Where was I? Oh, yes. Sharing body space. We don't have to exchange personal details, nor will I expect a greeting card from you to let me know you've remembered my birthday. I won't follow you in your dreams, mocking your terror of the friendly skies ...

That's all. Yes, that's it, the whole shebang. I'll pop in the earbuds to my discman and go merrily on my photographic playtime way. Just please very simply admit I exist.