Tralala Lala La

Well, aren't I in the best old holiday mood.  All of my presents are bought, yeah Black Friday. My Christmas cards are designed and ordered and my last wedding is processed and out the door.  Here's me tap dancing around the house. I watched HGTV tonight, and am filled with all sorts of decorating ideas. Stanley Steamer is coming on the 18th and next Saturday, I'm interviewing cleaning help.  Tis the season to be jolly.

I have only a few niggling things left to do.  I have to decrap and declutter, so that cleaners can clean and next Sunday, I have to out and shoot one more horse and rider job. The client wouldn't understand that everybody, horses and humans alike, are going to look a whole lot better in April than they will in the beginning of December, but oh well, compared to the past two months, that's nothing.

Oh yes, here are books, I'm going to be discussing:

1. The Wilder Sisters - One of my all time favorites. If you western gals haven't read it, curl up with it when the winter winds blow.

2.  The Lady of Hay - It starts slow, but after it gets going, it's a real page turner.

3.  Drop Dead Divas - This is drop dead funny.  Just the thing to cure a bad case of the Januaries.

So as I head off to bed, with visions of hurricane vases filled with bay leaves, cranberries and white floating candles; and other vases filled with twigs spray painted gold and ribbons everywhere, I bid you all a good night.

PS:  I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Well Here's How I Became the Unrepentant Sort that I Am

Back int the day when I was fourteen and an avid rider, I begged and begged to go to a summer camp where the emphasis was on equitation.  My parents finally relented, so off I went.  After the usual milling around, getting settled in my cabin, and meeting my roommates for the summer, our cabin counselor arrived. She who will be forever remembered as the SS, was a serious sophomore at some prestigious east coast women's college. She gathered us all together and informed us that every evening she would be reading us a book  and dismissed us to decide what we wanted to hear.

So out we went to decide.  Right off the bat we realized that the racier romances that were beginning to flood the bookstore shelves would probably not be the thing to ask for. Not that we, being very good girls, had ever read one, or spent endless hours speculating with out friends, about that descriptive adjective, the "throbbing manhood," that seemed to appear on every other page, oh not us.  So that genre being dismissed, we marched off to the camp library to find something. And find something we did, Anya Seton's "Katherine," probably the most beloved book of a whole generation of girls.

We picked it up and scurried back to the SS with our choice.  She looked at it with shocked horror.  It was though we had given her a copy of "Love's Throbbing Body Parts," or some other racy romance.  Since we were incapable of choosing a book, she would have to do it for us.  So what do you think she chose, since we had selected, "Katherine?"  If you guessed "Pride and Prejudice" or "Jane Eyre," or even "War and Peace," you would be wrong.

What she chose, and what we were treated to all summer long was Joseph Conrad's "The Heart of Darkness." I kid you not, we had to lie there like trapped rats listening to the most boring depressing book ever written. The book that makes "The Mayor of Casterbridge," look scintillating. It was then and there I decided that just because a book was popular or interesting did not make it trash. And just because it was boring and stupid did not make it wonderful.

In hindsight, I decided that she probably had to read it, or do some sort of paper on it, and decided to kill two birds with one stone. Because I can't imagine anyone wanting to read that for any other reason

A Lapse in My Planned Blogs

I planned a really funny post about how I got this way. You're just going to have to wait. It's coming, I promise and it's all true. However, some of you may remember that I used to say, "that I feed them all from the tall to the small." Well the medium sized came up to my feeding bins tonight. A family  of raccoons. They looked great and they were afraid of me.  A good sign. That means they aren't rabid. Tommy is furious and I'm not. They look wonderful. I don't know what it says about me, but it pleases me that the wild things know that they have a meal and a safe haven with me.

I saw the deer, who were milling around like a group of juvenile delinquents when I got home from work and I told them, "You guys have to stand back until I'm done," and they did.  And then I called out, "OK girlie's and fawns come and get it." I peaked over my shoulder as I was walking away and they slowly came out and began to eat.

I can't hate the raccoons. I don't know what this says about me. But, I just love it that the wild things know that they are save with me.

Now For The Light Side

I decided that it would be nice to talk about something that nothing to do with my insane life. So I decided to talk about what I'm reading now. I am a voracious reader and I have recently read several books that I just love.

Well, here's going to be a huge shock, I'm sure. None of them are weighty, intellectual tomes, currently reviewed by the New York Times. Before we get started on this, there's something you need to know about me.  When I was a junior in college, after slogging through James Joyce's Ulysses. I said to my roommates, "this is stupid in the extreme" and then I tossed it out the dorm room window.  Later as a twenty something, standing in front of a huge, and I do mean huge, painting that looked like a Chimp did it, at the Museum of Modern Art, "I turned and said to my humiliated friend, "I swear MG, I've been looking at this thing over a good half an hour and I still can't find the poodle in the picture."

I'm a declasse, plebeian jerk.  I like music to have a melody line, I like fiction to have a plot. I like films to have something other than gratuitous sex and violence to recommend them. Art should make you feel something. You should walk away changed in some way. I'm also an unapologetic southern gal, although the sight of grits makes me want to puke. I also prefer Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds and if after reading this, you'd like to know what I like stay tuned,

The Bond

OK, my friend, Ms. D is going to email me and say,"Maia how many time do I have to tell you, you can't say these things about your relatives and clients. Oh well and then I'll think to myself, your right and thenI'll delete this and walk away. But for now, here goes. I was privileged to photograph a woman who has cancer, who is dear and sweet and loves her horses. And you know what her horse love her back. To watch and photograph the dynamics between them was a privilege.  I couldn't make her look like a super model, OK, Ms. D, this won't be up long. She has cancer and she looks like she had cancer, and there was nothing I could do, that wouldn't diminish what I saw. Here is a shining example of true love. I hope some of you see it before I get quilted into getting rid of it.

Sometimes Things Happen For A Reason

I overslept today.  I shut off the alarm and went right back to sleep. Yikes. I woke up at 6:00. Oh crap, there's no time to do anything but throw on my clothes, thank God I iron and get everything ready the night before, and fly out the door. There was a line of cars going down this narrow windy road I have to go down.  Double crap. I get to the bottom and there all sorts of lights flashing and I'm turned away.  Obviously BGE is doing their thing, again. Thriple crap, I now have to scoot ten miles out of my way and am an hour late.  Could this get any worse? 

As a matter of fact it could.  It wasn't BGE down at the base of the hill it was several ambulances, fire trucks, and police cars.  There was a multicar pile up, complete with several fatalities.  If I had gotten up on time, I probably would have been part of it. It makes me think, it does.

Where I Am and Why I've Been Absent

OK, guys here I am. Well, I have to process and deliver my niece's wedding pictures. So what's so wrong with that. Except I have to process and deliver a client's shots. Well she's going to have a double mastectomy on December 3rd. Well she wins, except that my services won big time and I have to shoot and deliver for the winner. And then I have to cook and clean every day and show up for work. And I get up at 5:00 am and deliver at work. And I don't know what to do.  By the time I've gotten up at the crack of dawn, shown up at work, and then come home and cleaned and cooked, I'm toast. But yet I still have to deliver, tile the basement, deal with my niece's issues and keep on keeping on. I have no time for you guys and it breaks my heart. Oh yes, the deer still depend on me. And I can't let them down. Maybe next year things will be different.

Can I Do It?

These are the questions that haunt the creative professional when you get to a certain level. Are the shots that were perfection a fluke? Can I produce this kind of quality consistently? Am I qualified to do this job? For those of you who took the class and now think you can produce, when you never have had to on demand, within a specific time frame, I think you probably can.  It depends on what you ask of yourself and what your client demands.  I have now been asked to produce for the millionaires, and I don't mind telling you I'm scared s'less.  Who knows? I've tried my damnedest and I've succeeded.  But guys, I've been invited to produce at a whole different level and it, at the same time, thrills me more than you can know, and scares the dickens out of me. Can I do it? I think so. But the neurotic little piece of me is whispering in my ear "who do you think you are? You piker, you."

Halloween Update

OK, here's what happened last night.

I'm pretty sure none of you are southern enough to understand the word, piss ant, as in a little nothing who thinks they are something.

So here's who won my piss ant award. There were a gaggle of lumpy teenage girls who came up to my candy bowl. They arrived at the same time two seven year old's did. I said in a loud voice, "all of those who are here and are under ten years old get to choose first." One of the lumpy teens smacked a little girl away in order to grab the candy. She wins hands down. This amazes me. Oh well, it's nothing compared  to what comes next.

The Maia's tarted up pole dancer award goes to: There was a sixteen or seventeen year old floozie who had this outfit on and I kid you not, Daisy Duke short shorts, where half of her butt was hanging out, a crop top, that left nothing to the imagination, and stiletto heel, knee high leather boots.

Gentle readers, when I first saw this nastiness, I thought, what did you do to your parents?  Did you stick socks in their mouths, swaddle them in duck tape and then shove them in a closet? And then I thought, "ooh la la, were you the young lady, I saw stopping cars on Howard Street.