It Grows Cold
My socks are wet. This is crap! I did get the slippers Emily gave me out of the storage locker when I pulled out the rest of the warmies, so I'm ready. Last night I spider-womaned around the wardrobes and pulled down the two boxes of Christmas decorations. I looked at fake trees today on the Crappy Tire website. I think I'm going to look for a pre-lit tree. I will invite Nick over for joints and bottle of wine and he can help me decorate it, because it is kind of sad to do it alone. Ikea has some AMAZING deals on ornament sets, enough to do about half a tree for 5.99! Beat that, Wal-Mart!!
I did put out a few small ornaments. I'll do it in stages.
I am having good work days now since a few kerfuffles early in the week. I don't understand why, no matter how emphatically, no matter whether it's in writing, and no matter if I say it clearly and purposefully at every single shoot: Standard turnaround time for high-resolution images is 48 hours, firm. that some of our oldest and most frequent clients continue to call and need things immediately. Why would someone get an entire annual report press ready, book the press time two weeks out, and then wait until the night before the entire run of annual reports for a billion dollar company goes to bed to think about the fact that you don't have any pictures.
They get to put on me that if I don't do what they want, they will lose their press time and waste thousands of dollars - and delay the entire project by weeks. They get to put that on my shoulders. And they do - they are very specific and tell me exactly how much money is on the line, and make it sound like I'm the bad guy because I can't take 22 portraits from raw image to retouched and press ready between 2 p.m. Monday, and 10 a.m. Tuesday. So I get to drop my entire life, work late into the evening, busting my ASS to save your bacon, because you are too stupid to listen, or read, and understand. Repeatedly.
/rant.
But that was Monday/Tuesday. The rest of this week I worked on some files for other, more intelligent clients, including a huge and complex composite for an editorial publication that was one of the most ambitious projects I've ever done, and will be a great portfolio example of how I can take three shit photographs of unrelated things, and make one beautiful two page spread. It was easier, faster, and turned out better than I expected, and went out and stayed out with no revisions and no complaints. I spend two days after delivering shit like that biting my nails and worrying it's going to boomerang, come right back at me and bite me. It's been gone for two days and was going to press tonight. So, brownie points for me.
I had an embarrassing moment tonight.
I shop at the Loblaws at Moore and Bayview, because it's never busy and they have a huge parking lot where no one ever honks or gives you the finger, and I like their jolly staff who never mix meats in my bags (even though I don't care), and pack my Green Bins for me when I can remember them. I also always go to the gym after work, and because I'm me, go in and do my shopping in my gym clothes and dirty hair. Also because I'm me, and am usually still on a Runner's High, I always ride the shopping cart around the perpetually empty aisles at high speeds, snatching the now familiarly placed items off the shelf as I go. It's just something I do because we all need a little fun in our lives, and I hate grocery shopping, and I have not had a collision yet.
So tonight, I'm riding down the aisle in my hoodie and big pink mom scarf and toque, singing along with my iPod like an idiot, when I come out of the top of the aisle, look up, and unavoidably encounter the owners of Stott Pilates, one of our BIGGEST and best clients, looking incredibly sophisticated and refined as usual, and looking at me as if I was completely nuts. These people are also two of the most important and prominent members at Justin's golf course.
I blushed deep red and immediately fumbled for ANYTHING to say, searching their faces wildly for any recognition, and I still don't know if they knew who I was. They knew they knew me, and knew they should know who I am, but I couldn't tell if they did. I WISHED I could remember if my bosses decided to invite them to Family Photo Day, because then I would have had something better to say then pointing at a display and mumbling something totally stupid about Christmas coming. (Family Photo Day is a thing we have every year, when our 10 best clients bring their families in and Mr. Big does their Christmas card pictures for free, while Mrs. Big sucks up and our favourite make-up gal fawns over them, and I get them drunk on expensive scotch while we listen to Christmas with the Rat Pack).
It was one of those moments, and I've been having them more and more, where I feel like I need to grow up a little. I try half heartedly from time to time to conduct myself with more grace, dress appropriately for my professional level, act like a little more of a lady in public so as to avoid these situations, but inevitably, I always end up where my mom ended up for most of her life - I can remember being mortified as she danced up and down the aisles, to the oldies they always played in the No Frills - feeling like it's my fucking business if I want to fly around a grocery store in my lululemons and nine foot long pink scarf, sweeping eight cans of peaches into my cart, and singing "Something to Talk About". But singing it well, at least.
Sometimes I worry that I'm so much like my dad, his sister, and my grandmother - that I'm nothing like my mom. So when I realize that there is a part of her living on in me, I tend to want to hold on to it. So maybe I'll stop trying to change it.
I did put out a few small ornaments. I'll do it in stages.
I am having good work days now since a few kerfuffles early in the week. I don't understand why, no matter how emphatically, no matter whether it's in writing, and no matter if I say it clearly and purposefully at every single shoot: Standard turnaround time for high-resolution images is 48 hours, firm. that some of our oldest and most frequent clients continue to call and need things immediately. Why would someone get an entire annual report press ready, book the press time two weeks out, and then wait until the night before the entire run of annual reports for a billion dollar company goes to bed to think about the fact that you don't have any pictures.
They get to put on me that if I don't do what they want, they will lose their press time and waste thousands of dollars - and delay the entire project by weeks. They get to put that on my shoulders. And they do - they are very specific and tell me exactly how much money is on the line, and make it sound like I'm the bad guy because I can't take 22 portraits from raw image to retouched and press ready between 2 p.m. Monday, and 10 a.m. Tuesday. So I get to drop my entire life, work late into the evening, busting my ASS to save your bacon, because you are too stupid to listen, or read, and understand. Repeatedly.
/rant.
But that was Monday/Tuesday. The rest of this week I worked on some files for other, more intelligent clients, including a huge and complex composite for an editorial publication that was one of the most ambitious projects I've ever done, and will be a great portfolio example of how I can take three shit photographs of unrelated things, and make one beautiful two page spread. It was easier, faster, and turned out better than I expected, and went out and stayed out with no revisions and no complaints. I spend two days after delivering shit like that biting my nails and worrying it's going to boomerang, come right back at me and bite me. It's been gone for two days and was going to press tonight. So, brownie points for me.
I had an embarrassing moment tonight.
I shop at the Loblaws at Moore and Bayview, because it's never busy and they have a huge parking lot where no one ever honks or gives you the finger, and I like their jolly staff who never mix meats in my bags (even though I don't care), and pack my Green Bins for me when I can remember them. I also always go to the gym after work, and because I'm me, go in and do my shopping in my gym clothes and dirty hair. Also because I'm me, and am usually still on a Runner's High, I always ride the shopping cart around the perpetually empty aisles at high speeds, snatching the now familiarly placed items off the shelf as I go. It's just something I do because we all need a little fun in our lives, and I hate grocery shopping, and I have not had a collision yet.
So tonight, I'm riding down the aisle in my hoodie and big pink mom scarf and toque, singing along with my iPod like an idiot, when I come out of the top of the aisle, look up, and unavoidably encounter the owners of Stott Pilates, one of our BIGGEST and best clients, looking incredibly sophisticated and refined as usual, and looking at me as if I was completely nuts. These people are also two of the most important and prominent members at Justin's golf course.
I blushed deep red and immediately fumbled for ANYTHING to say, searching their faces wildly for any recognition, and I still don't know if they knew who I was. They knew they knew me, and knew they should know who I am, but I couldn't tell if they did. I WISHED I could remember if my bosses decided to invite them to Family Photo Day, because then I would have had something better to say then pointing at a display and mumbling something totally stupid about Christmas coming. (Family Photo Day is a thing we have every year, when our 10 best clients bring their families in and Mr. Big does their Christmas card pictures for free, while Mrs. Big sucks up and our favourite make-up gal fawns over them, and I get them drunk on expensive scotch while we listen to Christmas with the Rat Pack).
It was one of those moments, and I've been having them more and more, where I feel like I need to grow up a little. I try half heartedly from time to time to conduct myself with more grace, dress appropriately for my professional level, act like a little more of a lady in public so as to avoid these situations, but inevitably, I always end up where my mom ended up for most of her life - I can remember being mortified as she danced up and down the aisles, to the oldies they always played in the No Frills - feeling like it's my fucking business if I want to fly around a grocery store in my lululemons and nine foot long pink scarf, sweeping eight cans of peaches into my cart, and singing "Something to Talk About". But singing it well, at least.
Sometimes I worry that I'm so much like my dad, his sister, and my grandmother - that I'm nothing like my mom. So when I realize that there is a part of her living on in me, I tend to want to hold on to it. So maybe I'll stop trying to change it.