Photographic Memory

Since February, I've been stationed at the Shades of Grey Photography studio in good ol' Cleveland, Tennessee, during the afternoons. It has offered a way to get my writing done without the distractions of two little people pining for my attention. Granted, I'd love to be at home with my nose to the grindstone, but every time I heard one of the kids calling for me or doing something I imagined was unimaginably cute, I had to get up to find out what was going on.

While the office is a much more serene location, it is not without its distractions.

Example A: Middle school students. They may be cute and cuddly, but middle schoolers are also rather noisy and tend to have little if any understanding of the rules that govern public life. (Not littering, keeping foul language to a whisper, etc.)

Example B: Random people. While the studio isn't set up to be a walk-in kind of place, it does have a fair share of stragglers who wonder in. One of the most memorable was a young woman who needed photos for a contest in Knoxville. The contest was for the sexiest woman who just had a baby. She would be wearing lingerie in the photos, and she pulled her shirt up enough to show off her belly as proof that she didn't even have stretch marks.

Example C: Us. When all else fails, Robert and I tend to distract each other enough to keep us from getting much of anything done. Thankfully, there are usually more than enough middle schoolers and lingerie-wearing new moms out there to keep us from having to distract each other. Unfortunately, today wasn't one of those days. And that strawberry banana milkshake I got from the Shake Shack is breaking my stomach.