Ze petite book club

Generally, I don’t belong to things.  One fairly significant church affiliation is about the limit of my claustrophobic soul’s ability to commit itself.  Oh, and marriage and motherhood, both of which took some serious consideration.  This is why I stopped doing theater—they want you there for rehearsals.  And why I don’t take classes in things. Or get a real job.

But Rachel read this potato peel pie book (which is actually about the Nazi occupation of the Guernsey Isles) in which a book club became a place of refuge and community.  So she decided to make a tiny one, which I insist on calling The Ladies’ Literary and Equitation Society.

These are pictures from the last meeting.  I thought it might be interesting to write about this tiny bunch of silly people, so I took my camera.  You’d have thought I’d smuggled in the Black Death.  Such lamentation.  Yesterday, Misty’s hair looked great, and Rachel had on make-up and Kathy’s hair was normal.  But not today, evidently.

Daphne in real distress over the fact that I caught her with her hair down.  Notice that my own cuffs need hemming, and are simply turned up?  Yup.  True character.

Yes.  And this isn’t lovely?  Oh, please.

And this face isn’t beautiful?  My left foot.

And this one?  The gorgeous thing.

  As we started to talk, people more or less ignored me.  Rachel excused herself to go upstairs to the room no one names and we continued to talk, and I took a few more shots.  After a while, I began to worry about Rachel—had she gotten lost?  Had she drowned?  The conversation went on—and Rachel finally slipped down the stairs to take her place quietly on the couch.  I think I’m the only one who realized the truth: the little cheat suddenly had full make-up on, and had evidently washed and dried her hair.  The minx.  Here are a few shots of the brazen thing.

Is there shame on this face?  See what I mean by brazen?

Even worse.  Here, I use Pioneer Woman’s Lovely and etherial PS action.

This one is the “soft” action.

Here we have the vintage action, with a little edge burn.  They’d have burned her at the stake for that look on her face back in the day.

This is just plain old cropped and color balanced, and it STILL doesn’t take out the brass.

Here.  More like it.  Much more life-like and familiar.

Julie, with an eye-full of her mistress.  Can you see the consternation in her eyes?

Not only that, but Rachel retaliated and got our her camera, which wasn’t fair, because what I was that day, I am always – silly, histrionic – and she caught me telling stories.

Nice little grandmother.  Yeah, well, she just isn’t wound up yet.

This is the way it starts.  Nice and quiet.

Yep.  What my children actually grew up with.

 These were stories about driving on the wrong side of the street in Wales; YOU look up at what you expect to be the driver of your car and find somebody holding a huge map  in front of his face as we barrel down a tiny road in heavy traffic at sixty miles an hour—see what kind of face YOU make.

Me shooting Rachel (having no other weapon at hand).

Rachel, shooting me.

So here is fair: Rachel with her perfect painted face, and me, naked to the world.

Action shots:

We have deep and analytical discussions.  No. We do.  Really.

You can laugh when you’re being deep.

And sometimes we just plain shock each other.

So now you know.  A book club sounds such an innocent thing, doesn’t it?

Don’t be fooled.