Glamour--A Time and Motion Study

7:00--Roger, Rick and Marilyn alarm-clock
7:01--Go directly to the bathroom mirror to see if grade-ten style zit has disappeared from beside nose during the night.
7:01:30--Nope.
7:02--Turn on the coffee, shower, wash hair.
7:19--Try out new perfume, which turns out to be stronger than old perfume. Become concerned that I smell like a bordello carpet.
7:20--Drink coffee and eat cereal while drying hair with more thought than usual. No electrical appliance or anything, just the air in the room and really intense hope that it won't dry funny. Also, read New Quarterly and write in journal.
8:03--Go check Facebook, write down directions, search for map.
8:30--Turn on ABBA. Start getting dressed (did I mention was wearing Teddy-bear robe?) in weather-inappropriate clothing: black jersey dress, white cami underneath, lucky argyle tights. Move from drinking coffee to drinking pop.
8:58--P. arrives, bearing green-tea lattes and professional grade makeup brushes! Bless her.
9:00-9:04--Hop up and down.
9:05--Drink some latte. Make P. sniff me and say I do not smell like a bordello carpet. Also force her to assess zit. It's a very tough job, being my friend.
9:10--Sit in desk chair. Be made over.
9:47--Except for utter failure to operate eyelash curler (official take: the hell?) am made over. Am stunning.
9:48-9:51--Hop.
9:52--Return to drinking coffee. Run around apartment stuffing everything I own into shoulder bag: all the makeup, hair products, water bottle, yoga pants to go over/under weather-inappropriate clothing in case of cold, coffee in portable cup.
10:03--Freak out and insist we leave. Assorted hopping.
10:09--Run into next door neighbour, who mainly sees me on laundry day. He seems perplexed by my bombshelledness (or maybe the smell), compliments my hat.
10:11--Get the bus.
10:13--Discover destination is in map gully. Enraged at expensive, useless map.
10:32--Disembark bus. Get briefly but alarmingly stuck in snowdrift (rare on foot, but not unknown). Free self and catch up with more surefooted P.
10:45--Arrive at Dave's studio early and feel guilty, but not guilty enough to wait in the snow.
10:46--Greet Dave, remove winter things. Hop.
10:47--Get offered coffee and giddily consider accepting, before realizing that cannot stand thought of rebrushing teeth, reapplying lipstick.
10:48--Remousse hair instead. Hair will never move again. Get P. to remove smudged mascara with Q-tip for me, so that I do not gouge out own eye.
10:55--Point out zit to D., who wisely claims not to have noticed. Manage to restrain self from apologizing for scent issues. Why did I even put on perfume for a photo is a question that occurs to me only now.
11:00--D. points me towards photo area, with professional looking lights, canvas background, small swivel chair in centre. I am instructed that straddling the chair backwards will give my back the appropriate arch.
11:01--Dress, patterned tights, knee-high leather boots, straddling chair. Am harlot. Picture is from shoulders up, only, but I fear viewers will sense harlotry.
11:03--D. produces camera as big as my head and shoulders together, sits on chair approximately two feet from me, takes some pictures. I am very nervous about not showing my teeth (hate teeth today), my makeup, my immobile hair. I find it hard to smile without it looking like rigor mortis.
11:09--D. shows us pictures taken so far on the computer. According to both him and P., there are lots of nice ones and we could probably have stopped at this point, but I become Being John Malkovich-style disoriented, looking at so many me's, and insist that we continue.
11:20 or so--D. makes appropriate friendly comments about the book for which this is all for, and I start to chill out and not smile like maniac/dead person.
11:40--All told, 148 frames of me with slightly different facial expressions are taken. Am appalled, but strangely fascinated.
11:41-12--Finished, and thus freed, finally, from demented self-consciousness, pepper D. with a million questions about photos, paparrazzi, models, etc. That I have never before encountered a real photographer that didn't work for Jostens is painfully obvious. Am fasacinated.
12:07-1:00--Take assorted busses to meet Melinda at Winterlicious.
2:00 and on--Wait for a long time for table, but is worth it--licious, in fact.
Evening--Go home, wash off makeup, put on pjs, go back to writing, and quit acting like a diva. An incredible day, but I'm glad I don't have to many of those. So, probably, is everyone else.

If someone told me you'd be here
RR