Happy Friday, everyone...The new column is here, and I’m off to shoot photos with the new photographer today, so ya’ll think good thoughts for me, please. It’s been awhile since I shot with anyone besides Tommy Edwards, so I have no idea what this’ll be like. But I think it’ll be good to have a fresh eye, and I’m pleased to be getting new pictures.

Website photos are a tricky thing. You want to get images that make you look your best, and yes, Photoshop is a wonderful tool. But you have to go easy with the editing, because that photo has to match the woman who’s going to open the door, or you'll have some disappointed clients. I have a lot of clients meet me and tell me I’m prettier than my pictures. I think my personality is what they’re responding to, because I think energy and personality are what make people truly attractive. But boys will be visually-stimulated boys, so pretty pictures are a must. I’m looking forward to seeing what Don Conrad does with me.

And I’m also really looking forward to the end of the week-long Photo Shoot Diet. I do not diet, as a rule. I mean, I don’t gorge myself, but within reasonable limits, I eat what I want, and then I work it off at the gym. I was raised Catholic, so the whole sin/penance cycle is familiar to me. Eat French fries, run on the treadmill, it all evens out, and I’m happy with the shape my body is in.

But the camera adds weight, no question about it, and one has to compensate for that. So when I have a serious shoot planned, for a week prior, there are no French fries. Nor pizza or pasta, no bread, no candy or processed sugar/carbs of any kind*.… You get the idea. Fresh fruit and vegetables and lean protein, that’s it, and a restricted amount of them, to boot.

I can’t maintain such a regimen for the long haul, and I wouldn’t want to. A life entirely without Stellars pizza is not a life I care to contemplate. In the short term, though, it’ll take about four or five pounds right off me. Some of that’s water, of course, but it doesn’t matter. It just has to not be there for the one day.

Another restriction: love-bites and -bruises. My sex life with Max and with Roman is such that I have to remind them, “Honey, I have that shoot, so don’t mark me up, okay?”

So cantaloupe, grilled chicken breasts, and careful love-making have been my life this past week. But I’ll have pretty pictures, high-calorie treats, and bruise-inducing sex this weekend. I can’t wait.

* I made an exception for the cupcake Max brought me a few days ago. I mean, it was such a sweet thing to do, how could I not eat it?