Spanx me!

This morning a friend texted me that she had bought a ‘tummy flattening body suit from Odel’ (Colombo’s great department store chain).

I told her it sounded like a girdle. When I was in high school we used to wear them to flatten our already flat stomachs and to keep up our nylons – this was before the invention of the dreadful panty hose!

It was hell getting into girdles. I remember the summer after I had graduated, when I had my first drink (or guzzle!). I was a bit tipsy and I had gone to the loo. While trying to pull and stretch and work my girdle back into place, I fell into the bathtub! Imagine trying to get out of that mess. Finally a couple of girlfriends came in and helped me gather myself!

So, these now famous Spanx that everyone seems to be buying and the ‘tummy flattening body suit from Odel’ are just a step, in MHO, backward for women. Of course, I’ve wanted one when I wear my shape fitting formal dresses (once in a blue moon), but not having one, I just went the au natural way and held in my stomach here and there – depending on how handsome the fellow was that I was talking to!

I am glad though that such things are available in Sri Lanka (leave it to Otara at Odel to bring in the great stuff), and I’m sure, as in most clothes in Sri Lanka, that they will NOT be in my size.

So, suck it up and hold it in, is my personal motto!

Thanks to my friend who sent me the photos of the goodies she bought yesterday at Odel.

Check out our Sri Lankan wedding photography, travel photography, portrait photography, female photographers, commercial photography at our website at: http://www.shadetreeSL.com

© ShadeTree Productions

Mad Love!

The Santa Barbara Writers Conference (SBWC) should be in full tilt by now, after their opening party. I went to the conference for 14 years and loved it like I loved my favorite pet.

The first time I went, I had just gone to an advance writing class at UCLA, given by Phyllis Gebauer. I panicked during a 10-minute assignment to write a scene. The only thing going through my brain was white noise. I was sure I didn’t belong there. Later in the class, Phyllis picked several first three pages of our novels to read to the class, as examples of good or bad openings. The last one read was mine. I almost died when I heard the words I had written. When Phyllis finished reading, she held the pages up high and said, ‘Now that’s how you start a novel!

You can’t imagine the relief and pride I felt. I was an actual writer!

Phyllis told the class about SBWC and I decided then and there that I would go. It was a conference whose workshop leaders were published themselves, famous authors were going to attend and it was for aspiring writers and accomplished, published writers.

After Phyllis’ class I went out and made a business card that said, Lucy Llewellyn Byard, writer. I announced it!

Over the 14 years of attending SBWC, I fell in love a gazillion times – one was with Elmore ‘Dutch’ Leonard, who sat with me for 40 minutes and told me why he liked the opening chapter for my book. We wrote back and forth a couple of times and I just adored him.

Charles ‘Chuck’ Champlin, the fabulous interviewer and film critic, who spent lots of time with me, telling me stories of the Hollywood famous. We went to lunch together in Los Angeles and had a nice slow lunch and then he announced he had to go meet Greg – as in Gregory Peck. I so wanted to go with him!

Ray Bradbury – what’s not to love about Ray? He sent me a fax once congratulating me on getting an article published and signed it ‘Mad Love!’ He inspired me with his talks, his enthusiasm and his being. I called him The Cosmic Cheerleader. I miss him lots and lots of Mad Love!

This is the only photo I could find from one of the SBWCs.

Walter Halsey Davis, the Emmy-award winning screen writer

and my dearest friend on the right and Peter Clarke, a great

writer and funny, funny guy, who photo-bombed the picture of Walter and me!

Check out our Sri Lankan wedding photography, travel photography, portrait photography, female photographers, commercial photography at our website at: http://www.shadetreeSL.com

© ShadeTree Productions

Live and unleashed from Colombo - 'The Inflamable Rock Stars'

The young man on the guitar is my friend Louis Moon. Help spread this video! We often go to Louis' house to play XBox bowling! So far Louis is the champ! Now he's a rock star!

Check out our Sri Lankan wedding photography, travel photography, portrait photography, female photographers, commercial photography at our website at: http://www.shadetreeSL.com

© ShadeTree Productions

Take Care of Yourselves.

Some things are just too painful to think about let alone write about. I woke last night thinking about my friend whose father just died from the nasty virus that’s going around. A life cut off too soon. Then of course, I stayed awake thinking of my own father who died when he was 63 and I was 27. My friend didn’t get to say goodbye to her father, neither did I.

That pain just never goes away. I’d like to tell her that it does, but it stays there in the background and seeps into our being. Unless you put the pain in a closet and never open the door. I didn’t expect that door to open last night, in the darkness. I didn’t even have a book to read to get me out of the incessant thinking about how it was those so many years ago and how I had wish it had been.

I wish I had a photograph to post of my father. He was quite a handsome fellow. But all my photos of him, the few that I have, are somewhere in my daughter’s garage and who knows when I’ll see them next.

The best I can post is a photo of my brother and I at Christmas when we were young and my father and mother were still married.

Check out our Sri Lankan wedding photography, travel photography, portrait photography, female photographers, commercial photography at our website at: http://www.shadetreeSL.com

© ShadeTree Productions