My LuLu
Hi there! Lulu here...we haven’t met yet, but I have been mentioned in previous posts & as I’m just starting my own bloggy, Ews and I have decided to do some guest posting for each other. In Ewa’s Sep 3 post she mentioned my little friend, Blueberry, who you’ll see here...I’ve been asked many times about my little yellow friend. The most frequently asked question is, “Why did you start doing this?” I could launch into a monologue about a social experiment studying the effects of personifying a piece of plastic to see if I can garner strong feelings from normal, mentally-healthy adults (well, pretty much normal) towards an inanimate object. In fact, that’s what my fiancee would like to hear (since it took him only 2 months to grow very weary of the whole thing). But the truth of the matter is that it’s fun, it gets my creative juices flowing and it gets me taking pictures. We bought our first home together on Jan 1st of this year, moved in mid-Feb and spent the next several months trying to figure out how to live together (we’d each lived alone for the past several years) & where to put stuff. I could go off on several tangents here, but my point is that my camera gear was stuffed into a closet and I didn’t even look in its direction for almost four months. This is really disappointing for me since I love taking pictures. I’m most inspired by travel and with the new house (and new mortgage), I knew it would be a while before I could travel anywhere interesting. There really wasn’t much else that felt important enough to pull out the camera for (Sled Island & Calgary Folk Music Festival were still months away at that point). Oh sure, I still kept my little point-&-shoot in my purse and even used it occasionally, but it’s not quite the same.
So, during a weekend visit to Oshawa in June (see Ewa’s June 20 post) I was able to catch up with my bestest bestie, Squirrelly Monkey aka Sgt Peaches (you know her as Ewa). Whenever we meet up (which is much less frequent than either of us would like, due to the 4-hour plane ride keeping us apart and the unjustifiably high cost of domestic air travel in Canada), we give each other little gifts. These often manifest themselves in the form of inside stories we share and/or pretty little things. And this reunion was no exception. I got her a necklace with a decorated Scrabble tile - unfortunately sporting an “F” on the back rather than an “E”, due to the cute design that was on the front. I considered etching a line on the bottom to turn the F into an E, but decided against it, figuring I’d get caught since everyone knows that an E in Scrabble is only worth 1 point, not the 4 points showing on this tile. Well, maybe not everyone, but wordy wordsmith Ewa would surely have smelled a rat.
But I digress...on that fateful day, my dear, darling Ewa gave me (among other fun things) something called an Ugly Doll. I didn’t know what it was, but I tore open the box and then the opaque silver liner inside the box like a kid at Christmas - or like an adult that hasn’t fully accepted adulthood, in June. And there he was: a nameless yellow monster, as adorable as he is compact. Which is to say, very. I really liked the little guy from the start and wanted to ensure I did something useful with him; I love Ewa’s gifts and didn’t want him becoming a dust collector. So I decided to take a picture of him in front of a wicked rainbow that appeared behind our house. The next day we had our first-ever garage sale in the pouring rain and when I got bored I decided to take a picture of Blueberry to amuse myself. And a new chapter of my life was born. Disclaimer: those first two photos are utter crap, since it was cold and wet outside. I forgot to turn on the macro setting, but wasn’t about to go back out for another shot. I figured these were only going on facebook for a laugh, so why bother?
Anyway, the only strict rule I set for myself once I realized this might go on for a while was that this is not a 365 project, meaning:
a) If I feel particularly creative one day and I shoot several photos, I can ‘bank’ them to post on other days when I’m too busy or unmotivated to do it.
b) If there are any days when I don’t post at all, that’s ok. I’m not cheating because
c) there are no strict rules.
(yes, I realize that c is negating a & b. It’s a joke, don’t take anything too seriously. Seriously, don’t). I tried doing a 365 project in May 2010, but it just ended up being a source of stress and I rally didn’t want that to happen with Blueberry. So there you have it. That’s my long and drawn-out story of how Blueberry came to be in my life. Maybe next time I’ll tell you about how he got his name (but probably not, because it’s not a very interesting story. One of those “it’s funny if you are me or Ewa” kind of things)
See all of Blueberry’s adventures here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150813887165454.734023.636470453&l=eca8c4d524&type=1
