Slideshow ... Oops...

So I decided to change my slideshow slightly for the sidebar. I intended to leave the blogged one in color, but hadn't banked on the fact that the embedded slideshow is not the pictures themselves, but the link of the slideshow on slide.com. This means that both are changed in the same ways. Convenient, yes? Except when I don't want that change on both!

So... I'm asking my reader(s?): should I keep it as is, or should I maybe switch the format/theme of Winter and Spring slideshows? It seems that would keep it closer to the style and match the time of year better. So unless I hear differently, I think I'll switch it. But I want feedback first. Please?

Faery Muse. Ings.

So I was rereading my last post written in frustration. I noticed a couple inconsistencies: in frustration and anger I decided to
"guard even more closely the exuberant personality that I have."

Immediately after saying that, I wrote
"I guarded my personality for the first 18 years of my life. I'm done with that."


Ok, honestly I really wasn't thinking straight here. That just doesn't make sense. Hence my emergence from my self-imposed exile.

So, I figure I'll do a little edit here, as well. This time, I'm going to try to think it through a little better:

"If people can't handle it, if it's too embarrassing for them, if I make myself the butt of secret jokes and behind-my-back judgments, then that part of me will be shut up from the casual observer."

This gets to be changed to:
"If people can't handle it, if it's too embarrassing for them, if I make myself the butt of secret jokes and behind-my-back judgments-- well, that's just their problem, not mine. This is where I once again learn to employ a handy little method that saves me a lot of tension headaches from stupid offenses that were most likely unintentional anyhow. Essentially, if I don't hear it myself, it hasn't been said. Now I don't have to deal with their indiscretions and faulty judgments, I don't have to try and give them the "benefit of the doubt". Instead, I get to continue on my Blissful Little Faery Path through the Woods of Ignorance and get to bury my head in the bushes looking for the things I really care about. Faeries. And other things. Like berries."

Aside: You know what sounds amazing right now? Huckleberries. For those of you poor fools who've never had a huckleberry, get on the next plane to Pocatello, ID, head out to Soda Springs and hunt down a good huckleberry patch. Don't ask the locals. They'll probably send you on a wild goose chase to keep you away from their Special Huckleberry Patch. If nothing else, find a place somewhere in southeastern Idaho that serves a huckleberry milkshake. You'll never be the same. End of Aside.

The Spring Faery Goddesses

The World Has Been Renewed...

...thanks to the hard work of Zindia and Sylphe. We were able to successfully banish Winter and Death and replace both with Spring and Life. A full photo documentation is up and coming...

Fall Faeries: Maerilille

Soured

We were supposed to do pictures today. We didn't. It turned out our photographer didn't want to sully her good name with such a shameful, embarrassing venture.

We did yoga pictures instead. A nice, healthy, normal session. I should be grateful that she was ready to do it. I should. But instead I feel soured and slightly embittered. I'm trying to get over it, but what it comes down to, is I'm insulted. I'm proud of my pictures. I think they're artsy and cool and I think I look hot. There. I said it. It's a vanity thing, okay?

But sadly, half of our small group of four was too embarrassed about the humiliating experience known in my world as the faery foray. I guess that being said, I should be grateful they backed out before we got dressed up and were in the woods. I just wish that my photographer had turned me down instead of patronizing me. If she has that huge of a reservation about it (she was worried about being googled and coming up with my pictures), I wish she had said, "No, I don't think that's my cup of tea." Or "No, I'm not artsy enough to appreciate that kind of creativity." Or "No, thanks."

All this has accomplished is a desire in me to guard even more closely the exuberant personality that I have. This is a part of me that I, personally, enjoy and cherish and I'm not about to "cast pearls before swine" to use an exaggerated metaphor. I guarded my personality for the first 18 years of my life. I'm done with that. If people can't handle it, if it's too embarrassing for them, if I make myself the butt of secret jokes and behind-my-back judgments, then that part of me will be shut up from the casual observer.

And you know, another thing. I can take a hard time to my face. I know faery pictures are weird. I know this is not a normal hobby. I know it's nerdy. I'm okay with that. I've come to terms with it and I enjoy doing it anyway. I've stood against criticism for as long as I've been doing this. But at least have the balls to mock me to my face. I can take that in good spirits a lot better than hearing through the grapevine how embarrassed everyone is for me. Nothing will put my back up faster.

Anyway, I just had to vent a little bit. It's been eating at me all day and I have a nasty tension headache over it. This is the post that closes the vault to the few who can see and appreciate this for what it is: a grown woman's last few chances to embrace the youth and beauty that is entirely too fleeting. In a word: I just like to play dress-up & pretend!

Sylphe the Spring Faery

Yeah, I know, I know. Sylphe is really the what an air spirit is called. There's a whole ballet (two, actually) about it. But that is indeed my chosen name for my spring faery. I can be called nothing else.