Monday, October 5, 2009

Close-Ups



Above is a close-up of a dead crab near some dead seaweed, on top of some dead pebbles and sand. Welcome to Monday, where I state the obvious about pebbles and use the word "dead" three times in the same sentence.

Here lately on my trips to the county's public beaches, I've taken the perfunctory shots of the horizon, the bay and the surrounding marshes but have suddenly discovered a whole new world at my feet, a world which does not require an exfoliating scrub. Let me just pause for a moment to tell you how much I love the word "perfunctory," probably because "funk" is right there in the middle and it makes me laugh. At this juncture, I'm just checking to see if you're awake. If you aren't, stay tuned, here's a little more to ensure a deep, comatose state of slumber.

Anyway, all of a sudden I've noticed these incredibly beautiful, artistic displays created by Nature and have become obsessed with shooting them. Not with a gun but with my camera, of course. There are other things I may or may not be obsessed with shooting with a gun, but a dead crab is certainly not one of them. Ants, fiddler crabs, houseflies, horseflies the size of buzzards, buzzards, tent caterpillars, spiders, moths, mosquitoes, Mondays, and utility bills are all examples of things I'd consider using for target practice, but this is neither here nor there particularly if you're asleep, and I suspect you are by now.

Furthermore and in conclusion, close-ups of dead crabs, shells and seaweed will likely become part of the repertoire of monotony seascapes and old houses that make up Sleep Life in Mathews.

Welcome to Monday morning Chesapeake Bay Woman style--replete with dead crabs, dead rocks, annoying insects, a subconscious desire to use firearms, and the rants of a person who loathes the start of the work week. If it is 5:30 a.m. or later Eastern Standard Time, you can rest assured I am uttering a few or more expletives while imagining which insect, bill or day of the week I'd like to shoot if I (a) had a gun;(b) knew how to shoot it; and (c) could actually shoot a day of the week and get away with it.

Do you like Mondays? If you do, why? If you don't, how do you make Sunday nights better such that you're not wanting to shoot something dreading the dead-as-a-rock feeling of impending doom known as Monday?

In other news, if you read Saturday's Death of a Silo, you need to check out the exquisite photos taken by Country Girl Kate (go to her Picture a Day section) and Daryl. They're beautiful shots.

p.s. I don't really want to shoot anything other than the bills which require me to work, and I'm not usually this despondent except for Sundays, Mondays, most Wednesdays, the end of summer and the day after Christmas.

14 comments:

Unknown said...

OMG, that's a relative of Crustys isn't it? I'm in a funk too, and for a change I have a full week ahead.

Annie said...

Just in case CBW doesn't get back here for a bit...

try this link to COUNTRY GIRL KATE'S PHOTOS instead of the one that doesn't work:

http://wwwDOTkatespictureadayDOTblogspot.com/

Hope it works for you...of course, you will have to change the DOTs to the real thing when you paste it into your browser..

from Annie..your southern correspondent,

who is also cranky ...because people like my neighbors chop tops and branches off trees for no good reason! To look on the bright side I now have an expanded view out the back from my kitchen window! Would still rather have the tops on the trees and the shade for the summer!

Pueblo girl said...

I was going to say "from macro to micro", because I read a lot of physics a while back, and then I realised that camera terminology is kind of reversed, and if you want to get in close, you have to use macro. Now I'm intrigued: why is that? No, no, not "why am I intrigued?", but why does photography say "macro" for small scale?

Daryl said...

Listen? Can you hear it? Its the Mamas & the Pappas:

Monday Monday, can't trust that day,
Monday Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way


AND my war with the carpet ants continue ...

Word Verif: Consead. This is where the dead carcassi go ..

abb said...

I'm patting you on the back and assuring you that your week ahead will be lovely and full of good people and good things. Promise. No, really!

Margaret Cloud said...

Very nice post, enjoyed reading it. Here in Michigan we like to go on the beach up north and hunt petoskey stones. These are stones left in the Great Lakes when they were salt water and later became fresh water, it is really fun to hunt and very hard to find. Thank you for coming by.

Mental P Mama said...

Don't worry. Oysterfest is just around the corner;)

My word: chesturd And if that doesn't make you laugh, I don't know what will....

Noe Noe Girl...A Queen of all Trades. said...

I am not a Monday girl period. I would love to have every Monday off. And because I detest Mondays so much ~Sunday afternoons sometimes get me down. Come on over...we can target practice =)

big hair envy said...

Let's all go hang out in Noe Noe's new teepee! I'll bring the wine;)

Word Verification: alfnests
Dear LORD, does that mean there was more than ONE of those creatures??? (Sorry Grandma J!)

Erin said...

mondays...got to love them. it is the first day of the rest of the week. once through it, it's all down hill.

now mind you i am not all like perky and happy to get up on a cold monday morning but...i do get myself together and moving. if i don't make an effort on monday i've noticed my whole week kind of goes south.

does any of that make any sense.

by the way...liked your dead crab on dead seaweed on dead other stuff capture.

here's to tuesday and beyond.

Chesapeake Bay Woman said...

GJ-Good luck with your week, I'm thinking about you and your incoming family member 1st Sgt. J.

Annie-Thanks for letting us know about the bad link. Actually I had a dickens of a time trying to fix it,so ended up defaulting to Kate's regular home page. Hopefully people can find the picture from there, it's absolutely gorgeous. Oh, how sorry I am to hear about your neighbors and their tree chopping tendencies.

PuebloGirl-Very interesting point. Maybe some of the true camera folks out there (i.e. anyone but me) can answer that question. WHy macro for zooming in?

Daryl - Carpet ants? Carpet ants? You have my sincerest sympathies.

TSA-Thank you, I needed that.

Ms. Cloud - Thank YOU for coming by. Those stones must be fun to hunt for; I love a good hunt.

MPM-I think I stepped in some chesturd this afternoon.

NNG-Exactly! It RUINS my Sundays. I'll bring my Daisy bbgun. Does BHE shoot too?

BHE-Do you shoot too? Can we have a shootout over there in K&Q? My hair looked like an alfnest this morning. Couldn't do a thing with it.

Erin - I like your perspective, and it's certainly true. Monday is usually the worst/hardest day, although quite honestly I've discovered that in the workpace Tuesdays are brutal. My theory is that everyone is barely able to function on Mondays so nobody does anything hard/difficult. Then Tuesday it's gogogo because you wasted so much time on Monday trying to reacclimate after the weekend. But you're right, generally speaking if you can survive Monday you're good to go for the rest of the year-long week.

Here's to eveyone surviving Monday. Have a great Tuesday.

Country Girl said...

Oh, so this is where all these extra visitors were coming from to my silo photo!

Add Picture Day at school to Monday and everyone yell hooray! Picture Day! Grumble grumble grumble.

Meg McCormick said...

I'm glad I don't have smellevision because I have to believe that dead crab is emitting a bit of funk.

Actually - my favorite word you used is neither dead nor perfunctory, but juncture. I don't know why. Maybe all those consonants bunched up in the middle.

Word veri - shothuhn. Rhymes with SHOTGUN. Just sayin'.

foolery said...

chesturd: what I put in my bra, times two