That's the sound my mind is making lately. I got really angry a few days ago, and actually did something adult and mature with it. I've been stepping back, taking stock of everything in my life that is ticking me off and from which I deserve better.
Important: this isn't some kind of whiny, entitled, "gimme gimme" anger, although certainly I've fallen prey to that before. No. This is me looking around and deciding that I'm going to make things into the kind of "better" that I've decided I deserve.
Betcha didn't know that anger and depression are related, did you? In some cases, depression is nothing less than (and nothing more than) the exhaustion you get from holding anger back, or turning it inward on yourself (which is really draining, trust me on this). I've found that staying angry can be tiring, too, but not nearly as much as trying not to be angry when you by golly ought to be.
Depression can come from a sense of powerlessness, of time spent beating your head against a wall and somehow hoping that this time things will be different. Of time spent trying desperately to affect things that are utterly and totally beyond your control (like, say, how other people behave, or whether they choose to respect you, or even like you). Let me tell you, anger is really, really good at demolishing that feeling. When you get pissed off enough, you can't help but say to yourself, and maybe your inner demons and baggage, and maybe even people around you, "Oh yeah? Yeah?? Well, watch this, you big jerk."
[Pause. I'm listening to Peter Gabriel on my iPod just now, and discovering once again that the iPod's speakers are way better than the ones in the minivan or on my computer. I shall be basking in the richness of sound and enjoying nuances heretofore unheard for about the next... 4 minutes and 10 seconds.]
*happysigh*
Something people probably don't know about me. I've had, for pretty much my entire adult life, a real problem with determination, and motivation. Determination to me has always felt way too much like anger, and I grew up thinking that anger was bad, categorically and pretty much universally. I've struggled to find motives rooted in something else, anything else, other than anger. Delight has worked. Shiny new exploration has worked, until the thing stopped being shiny and new. Spiritual joy has worked, when I've been able to find it. And, you know, looking around for other sources of inspiration has been a good thing, I think, in that I've gotten pretty good at seeking out the bliss in a given situation, and I've gotten really good at walking away from soul-draining suckitude and mediocrity.
But.
Anytime I started to feel like it was time to dig my heels in, be stubborn, say, "I'm gonna make this work, dammit, just you watch" - you know, show some determination - I'd scare myself right off of whatever I was doing.
Except now (cue the trumpets), da-da-da-DAH, I have a shrink! Okay, yes, I'm being flip; but it's helping a lot to learn that A), yes, I'm not wrong, anger and determination are related, but B), that isn't bad. Anger isn't evil. Anger isn't anything different from happiness - it's an emotion. You feel it, and you use it to accomplish things. How you use it can be pretty unhealthy, but so can all the ways people have of running after happiness.
I don't know many people whose homework assignment from their shrink is to actually be angry for a change, but it seems to be working. And it's why the title of this post is "ka-boing" and not "grrr". Ideas are everywhere right now, to the extent that I'm actually at risk of losing the anger for lack of a single target to aim it at. I've got an idea for a class to teach, the winter market proposal to complete, and a house to tear apart and reconfigure - which means everything from sorting and tossing useless crap, to doing laundry, to rearranging furniture, to painting, to tearing out and replacing light fixtures, cabinet doors, carpet, the whole thing.
Oh, and a marriage to work on - it's apparently way easier to have a marriage when both people are acting like grown-ups, can you believe it? And a kid to parent - ditto the acting like a grown-up.
I just hope talking about it all here won't jinx it, dilute my focus, and keep me from doing anything (again).
So tell me. Have you hugged your anger today?
Friday, November 6, 2009
Thursday, October 29, 2009
Winding down
Well, here we are.
The Farmer's Market had its final day yesterday; I decided to run an end-of-season special and hung a giant "$1" sign on the front of my booth, figuring I would rather do henna for cheap than sit on my behind for three hours and be bored. I had fun doing a couple of large, intricate designs for a couple of ladies who almost certainly would not have stopped otherwise.
What this really means is that, apart from one booking coming up in November, I have nothing going on henna-wise, and I would very much like to change that. I have way too much fun drawing pretty designs on people, plus it gets me out of the house. So book me! I've added a phone number to my contact information, over there on the sidebar, to make it easier.
I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that there are plans in the works for an indoor winter market. I've been in contact with the organizer and she has graciously decided to accept my ideas and suggestions for ways to get things off the ground and working smoothly. It's a bit of a stretch to say that we're actually working together, though - I'm presenting ideas pretty much as a volunteer at this point, in the form of a proposal, with no way to predict which if any suggestions will actually see the light of day.
Gives me something to do, though, and I'm having fun pretending that I'm in charge... you know how sometimes, you sit back and you go, "well, if I were the president" and proceed to solve all the world's problems in twenty minutes or less? Yeah. Putting this proposal together is giving me a great outlet for that energy. The trick is to keep from sounding too obviously as if I'm trying to tell this nice lady how to do what really is her job.
***
The garden is nearly put to bed for the winter; only a few more plants that are still kicking and asking for water and the occasional trim. My friend Amy Prettybaby says that if I run out of room over here she has plenty of yard begging for attention, but I don't know. First of all, I'm only pretending to know what I'm doing, I just happen to be very very skilled at pretending - skilled enough that sometimes even the plants believe me. Also I have the Internet, so if I don't know what I'm doing now, chances are good that I will know in a half-hour (I could say "five minutes", but the Internet is like potato chips. You can't just dip your fingers into the bag once and be done, unless there's something wrong with you.)
Second, her yard is way different from mine. I live in a cookie-cutter house in a division that used to be a cornfield; backyards resemble the Serengeti Plain, except when it rains and then they resemble either a mud-wrestling pit or a demolition-derby arena. Amy, on the other hand, lives in the kind of yard I always had growing up - even through college, moving out on my own, all the way up to our previous house - an older neighborhood with actual trees and lots of shade. Deep shade in some places. Where my yard is the Serengeti, hers is more like the Hoosier National Forest, except with kids and a dog. Where I have Grass That Will Not Die, she has rich dark soil underneath pine trees where nothing wants to sprout.
Uh-oh. Writing about this has gotten me thinking about it. Now I have ideas.
Dammit.
***
Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend. Thank GOD. I despise Daylight Saving Time with a passion, and refuse utterly to "let it go already". The logic escapes me: the idea is supposed to be to shift your clock to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight you get when the sun is up for more than twelve hours. That only happens between the first day of Spring and the first day of Fall. So could someone explain to me, please, WHY are we still using daylight saving here at the tail end of October?
I also am perpetually irritated that the experts in Washington DC (which is, of course, the center of the universe) placed our state in the Eastern time zone when geographically we belong in Central. This means that our clocks are already shifted by one hour year-round, and by two hours whenever we have to adopt Stupid Daylight Saving Time. We get two obnoxious results from this: First, our kids are getting up and going to school in the dark, as early as the first week of September. A couple years ago this got a little girl killed in my area. Second, we don't see sunset until a ridiculous 10pm in midsummer. You try putting a preschooler to bed when it's still light out and see how well that works.
There's a third irritating result, though I admit it's pretty minor: people insist that their sundials are wrong, or that we've wasted money putting up the ones in public areas that are "inaccurate". I'll save my educational rant for another time, though.
***
My overall point, though, is that with the garden winding down, the henna season ending, and the days getting shorter, I'm finding my energy shifting inward. I've been re-reading lately the books Digging Deep by Fran Sorin, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, while also slogging through some self-help titles. One thing these books all have in common is an examination of the creative process, and the process of discovering: whether it is discovering your likes and dislikes, or your writing style and voice, or your beliefs and values and power. I'm finding that these books all connect to one another without intending to; and that I'm uncovering new territory, or maybe unburying old territory, that makes me uncomfortable.
Of course I'm uncomfortable. No one likes to feel vulnerable, after all. People might not like your choices, even if they're only the flowers you chose to plant in your bed. They might reject your expressions of self, disagree with your beliefs, dismiss your deepest values as wrong or misguided, or worst of all, irrelevant.
I've been struggling with this vulnerability for awhile now.
I have this story I've been trying to write. I have a setting, sort of a character, but I've been unable to come up with a plot to save my life. And I'm reading that plot comes from characters, and that characters in some ways have to be naked before their readers. No one in our real world gets to see inside one another's head, but in a story, you get to see the characters' thoughts, fears, dreams. You get to see how those influence the choices a character makes and the actions they take as a result.
Author Holly Lisle, to paraphrase, says that characters who don't make choices are not characters, they are victims. And they are boring to read. It follows that characters who don't make choices don't take action; in other words, they don't build a plot, which means they're not contributing anything to the story itself. They're a waste of a reader's time.
Both Lisle and Demott are telling me that characters have to really feel and choose and move; they are both saying that in order for those feelings and choices to resonate they have to come from someplace real; and that the only real place any would-be writer can pull from is inside themselves.
Yeah. In other words, for your characters to work, you have to get naked. Did I mention I've been struggling with this for awhile now?
It's no wonder my story is going nowhere; I can't let go and loosen up long enough to give my character any real motives, or choices, or feelings.
***
Hmm. Should I have titled this post "winding down", or "winding in"?
The Farmer's Market had its final day yesterday; I decided to run an end-of-season special and hung a giant "$1" sign on the front of my booth, figuring I would rather do henna for cheap than sit on my behind for three hours and be bored. I had fun doing a couple of large, intricate designs for a couple of ladies who almost certainly would not have stopped otherwise.
What this really means is that, apart from one booking coming up in November, I have nothing going on henna-wise, and I would very much like to change that. I have way too much fun drawing pretty designs on people, plus it gets me out of the house. So book me! I've added a phone number to my contact information, over there on the sidebar, to make it easier.
I believe I mentioned in an earlier post that there are plans in the works for an indoor winter market. I've been in contact with the organizer and she has graciously decided to accept my ideas and suggestions for ways to get things off the ground and working smoothly. It's a bit of a stretch to say that we're actually working together, though - I'm presenting ideas pretty much as a volunteer at this point, in the form of a proposal, with no way to predict which if any suggestions will actually see the light of day.
Gives me something to do, though, and I'm having fun pretending that I'm in charge... you know how sometimes, you sit back and you go, "well, if I were the president" and proceed to solve all the world's problems in twenty minutes or less? Yeah. Putting this proposal together is giving me a great outlet for that energy. The trick is to keep from sounding too obviously as if I'm trying to tell this nice lady how to do what really is her job.
***
The garden is nearly put to bed for the winter; only a few more plants that are still kicking and asking for water and the occasional trim. My friend Amy Prettybaby says that if I run out of room over here she has plenty of yard begging for attention, but I don't know. First of all, I'm only pretending to know what I'm doing, I just happen to be very very skilled at pretending - skilled enough that sometimes even the plants believe me. Also I have the Internet, so if I don't know what I'm doing now, chances are good that I will know in a half-hour (I could say "five minutes", but the Internet is like potato chips. You can't just dip your fingers into the bag once and be done, unless there's something wrong with you.)
Second, her yard is way different from mine. I live in a cookie-cutter house in a division that used to be a cornfield; backyards resemble the Serengeti Plain, except when it rains and then they resemble either a mud-wrestling pit or a demolition-derby arena. Amy, on the other hand, lives in the kind of yard I always had growing up - even through college, moving out on my own, all the way up to our previous house - an older neighborhood with actual trees and lots of shade. Deep shade in some places. Where my yard is the Serengeti, hers is more like the Hoosier National Forest, except with kids and a dog. Where I have Grass That Will Not Die, she has rich dark soil underneath pine trees where nothing wants to sprout.
Uh-oh. Writing about this has gotten me thinking about it. Now I have ideas.
Dammit.
***
Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend. Thank GOD. I despise Daylight Saving Time with a passion, and refuse utterly to "let it go already". The logic escapes me: the idea is supposed to be to shift your clock to take advantage of the extra hours of daylight you get when the sun is up for more than twelve hours. That only happens between the first day of Spring and the first day of Fall. So could someone explain to me, please, WHY are we still using daylight saving here at the tail end of October?
I also am perpetually irritated that the experts in Washington DC (which is, of course, the center of the universe) placed our state in the Eastern time zone when geographically we belong in Central. This means that our clocks are already shifted by one hour year-round, and by two hours whenever we have to adopt Stupid Daylight Saving Time. We get two obnoxious results from this: First, our kids are getting up and going to school in the dark, as early as the first week of September. A couple years ago this got a little girl killed in my area. Second, we don't see sunset until a ridiculous 10pm in midsummer. You try putting a preschooler to bed when it's still light out and see how well that works.
There's a third irritating result, though I admit it's pretty minor: people insist that their sundials are wrong, or that we've wasted money putting up the ones in public areas that are "inaccurate". I'll save my educational rant for another time, though.
***
My overall point, though, is that with the garden winding down, the henna season ending, and the days getting shorter, I'm finding my energy shifting inward. I've been re-reading lately the books Digging Deep by Fran Sorin, and Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, while also slogging through some self-help titles. One thing these books all have in common is an examination of the creative process, and the process of discovering: whether it is discovering your likes and dislikes, or your writing style and voice, or your beliefs and values and power. I'm finding that these books all connect to one another without intending to; and that I'm uncovering new territory, or maybe unburying old territory, that makes me uncomfortable.
Of course I'm uncomfortable. No one likes to feel vulnerable, after all. People might not like your choices, even if they're only the flowers you chose to plant in your bed. They might reject your expressions of self, disagree with your beliefs, dismiss your deepest values as wrong or misguided, or worst of all, irrelevant.
I've been struggling with this vulnerability for awhile now.
I have this story I've been trying to write. I have a setting, sort of a character, but I've been unable to come up with a plot to save my life. And I'm reading that plot comes from characters, and that characters in some ways have to be naked before their readers. No one in our real world gets to see inside one another's head, but in a story, you get to see the characters' thoughts, fears, dreams. You get to see how those influence the choices a character makes and the actions they take as a result.
Author Holly Lisle, to paraphrase, says that characters who don't make choices are not characters, they are victims. And they are boring to read. It follows that characters who don't make choices don't take action; in other words, they don't build a plot, which means they're not contributing anything to the story itself. They're a waste of a reader's time.
Both Lisle and Demott are telling me that characters have to really feel and choose and move; they are both saying that in order for those feelings and choices to resonate they have to come from someplace real; and that the only real place any would-be writer can pull from is inside themselves.
Yeah. In other words, for your characters to work, you have to get naked. Did I mention I've been struggling with this for awhile now?
It's no wonder my story is going nowhere; I can't let go and loosen up long enough to give my character any real motives, or choices, or feelings.
***
Hmm. Should I have titled this post "winding down", or "winding in"?
Monday, October 19, 2009
End of the season
Well, henna is winding down for the season, at least for us Western folks - there are a couple of big holidays coming up yet in Islam between now and the end of December - but the farmer's market will be closing the week after this, and I don't have anything else lined up just yet. I'm considering the indoor fall/winter market that is being proposed over in Elmwood Plaza, but I still have several questions for the organizers and they've been slow to respond.
For the record, data entry isn't nearly as fun as putting henna on people, so don't you want to help me out here? Of course you do.
***
The prairie grass is gone, the clay masquerading as soil has been hacked into a less cratered surface, a couple bags of potting soil have been spread over the top of that - it's pretty much bulb planting time. The challenge will be to remember to hold a few back for my daughter to plant All By Herself.
I've been up off my behind for the past few days, and it's getting to where it feels good - there's a threshold there, I'm sure other people have noticed, when you've been geting not enough exercise for way too long? Where the inertia is telling you to go sit down and get some potato chips, and moving is the last thing on your mind, even when you're already up and moving? Yeah. If you can just suck it up till you're over that hump, it gets way easier.
(Thus Spake The Not-Actually-Exercising Exercise Guru.)
Point being, the stiff muscles just feel like they need to be warmed up now, instead of being put back to bed, and I'm plotting my next moves in the garden eagerly, as opposed to whining that I'll have to get up and get all sweaty and stuff. However: I went back to bed this morning after seeing the kiddo off to preschool with her daddy, and the next thing I knew it was noon. I mean, it was good sleep, but jeez.
***
Let's see, running through my "tag" list... I was flattered to get an email asking for information and tips on putting together some mosaics that a friend wants to make for her own garden.
A few days ago, my daughter and I modified her school "scarecrow" project and made princesses (you glue paper shapes to the edge of a paper plate that has a face on it). We used the paper I bought ages ago for origami, and every time I use the phone downstairs the book I have with so many bazillion origami patterns in it is now staring at me from its spot on the shelf.
Darling daughter's closet and dresser have a lot more room in them now that the stuff she's outgrown is out of the way...
I finished outlining the leaves in the ongoing epic embroidery project and discovered that using the dark green was a bad idea. So I got to rip all that out and I'm now doing it over in black. Sigh.
***
And that's all I can think of for the time being. Cheers, y'all!
For the record, data entry isn't nearly as fun as putting henna on people, so don't you want to help me out here? Of course you do.
***
The prairie grass is gone, the clay masquerading as soil has been hacked into a less cratered surface, a couple bags of potting soil have been spread over the top of that - it's pretty much bulb planting time. The challenge will be to remember to hold a few back for my daughter to plant All By Herself.
I've been up off my behind for the past few days, and it's getting to where it feels good - there's a threshold there, I'm sure other people have noticed, when you've been geting not enough exercise for way too long? Where the inertia is telling you to go sit down and get some potato chips, and moving is the last thing on your mind, even when you're already up and moving? Yeah. If you can just suck it up till you're over that hump, it gets way easier.
(Thus Spake The Not-Actually-Exercising Exercise Guru.)
Point being, the stiff muscles just feel like they need to be warmed up now, instead of being put back to bed, and I'm plotting my next moves in the garden eagerly, as opposed to whining that I'll have to get up and get all sweaty and stuff. However: I went back to bed this morning after seeing the kiddo off to preschool with her daddy, and the next thing I knew it was noon. I mean, it was good sleep, but jeez.
***
Let's see, running through my "tag" list... I was flattered to get an email asking for information and tips on putting together some mosaics that a friend wants to make for her own garden.
A few days ago, my daughter and I modified her school "scarecrow" project and made princesses (you glue paper shapes to the edge of a paper plate that has a face on it). We used the paper I bought ages ago for origami, and every time I use the phone downstairs the book I have with so many bazillion origami patterns in it is now staring at me from its spot on the shelf.
Darling daughter's closet and dresser have a lot more room in them now that the stuff she's outgrown is out of the way...
I finished outlining the leaves in the ongoing epic embroidery project and discovered that using the dark green was a bad idea. So I got to rip all that out and I'm now doing it over in black. Sigh.
***
And that's all I can think of for the time being. Cheers, y'all!
Saturday, October 10, 2009
On gardening, or, what a pretty way to pound out stress
So my last post was all about the henna fiasco, my stress levels, and the challenge of Just Shutting Up About It and moving on.
When it comes to stress levels, and/or actually getting off my butt and getting some exercise, nothing beats my ongoing battle in my flowerbeds against the Stupid Freakin' Prairie Grass That Will Not Die. Up and down our street, a lot of the landscaping consists of decorative grasses, which are fine, except when you want to have a flower bed instead. I've been spending the better part of this year's growing season trying to commit herbicide, with no remorse or guilt feelings whatsoever.
I make a terrible Buddhist.
(All that "nonviolence toward any living thing" just flies right out the window when I start trying to get my garden into shape. (Or whenever I see a hamburger, but let's not go there for now, 'kay?))
Anyway, the struggle/kampf/jihad/violent-outlet-for-my-aggressive-tendencies took a massive turn for the better Saturday, when beloved husband agreed to put his bigger stronger self behind the shovel and uproot nearly every single clump of the stuff taking up space in my garden.
I am so far beyond tickled about this I can't even tell you.
Try to imagine having a really pretty picture in your head, and all the crayons and markers and sparklies you need to put it together, and then having to wait months before you could finally get a blank piece of paper. And now I got one!
*happy squeak*
About a month ago, I bought roughly 100 bulbs to plant – for non-gardeners (which still includes me if I'm being honest), most bulbs need to be planted in autumn so they have time to settle in and start growing, otherwise you won't get to see any blooms the next spring – and I am now less than two days' work away from being able to plant them. Let's see…
- Ripping out grass was interrupted by a visit from friends we haven't seen in over a year, so there's a little of that left to do, and then
- a bit of time making sure that any roots still left are dead;
- I need to add some decent soil to the clay that we have,
- smooth out the craters – each of these clumps of grass had root systems at least a foot wide and about 8-10 inches deep
- plant, plant, plant!
I've got tons of crocus for early spring, some red allium (I think; they're in the garage, it's cold, I don't want to go check), some Asian lilies I've relocated so they can actually have some sunlight to grow in, and these really gorgeous exotic-looking things called crocosmia that I stumbled across at the grocery store earlier this summer.
Plus if I'm feeling ambitious, I have a pile of gigantic hostas that I think I'm supposed to dig up, divide so they don't get overcrowded, and then replant… anyone want some? The leaves right now are the size of dinner plates, and each year they send up stalks over 6 feet tall, with these very very pale lavender-white blossoms that the hummingbirds actually seem to enjoy. If you're not familiar with them, hostas like shade, so they're great for all those places that, y'know, don't get enough sun.
Wow, do I sound brilliant or what? Real Live Garden Expert, that's me.
The crocosmia, still in its pot after all this time, actually produced lots of seeds, so I'm hoping to start some of those over the winter as well, in which case I may have some babies to give away in spring. You want hummingbirds, holy cow, expect to be buzzed by annoyed hummers every time they come to feed and find you in the way, watering them. I've never seen hummingbirds so fearless outside of nature programs on TV. They WANT your crocosmia.
For that matter, I even got unexpected seeds from some of my daylilies, and I may still have some seed pods from the cold-hardy hibiscus; so if anybody's interested, just let me know.
Pretty colors! Plus butterflies and hummingbirds, aka flying pretty colors! Whee!
Hmm. Wonder if I have enough dirt to fill all those craters in… if not, I was sort of wondering what a multi-level garden would look like. I just wasn't planning on part of it to be a pond.
Because you're all just dying to know…
…and because I feel like it's a good thing to stay relatively current on the blog even when not much is happening.
Octoberfest was a bust on many, many levels. Rotten weather, rotten turnout, rotten income – all connected, naturally. Compound that with the organizers being extremely short-handed (and a much smaller planning team compared to the year prior), and the knowledge that I could have been at any one of four or five other events that I would have really enjoyed, and you end up with a Bad Day.
The capper was when the tent threatened to blow away, and my beloved husband was forced to come dashing out of the restaurant where he and darling daughter were having dinner, so he could help me drop the tent legs and keep the thing on the ground. I ended up bent over inside getting things put away, and whacking my head on the exact center of the roof frame… that would be the part where all the nuts and bolts come together, and stick out, and HURT when you walk into them scalp-first.
Yeah, after having been near tears from stress for much of the previous hour, hitting my head ended up being the final straw. In other words, I wasn't near tears anymore, I was in tears.
Oy.
I had an extremely strongly worded (read: blistering) lecture/rant/email all planned out in my head, until I found out about the organizers' own problems, and then I just couldn't bring myself to send it. Those guys had enough on their plate. Plus, let's face it, I wouldn't have actually unleashed fire and brimstone on a real live human being no matter how tempting it might have been. I have this pesky ability to put myself in other people's shoes, along with a very strong internal censor, which means I'll think a fiery blue streak if I get upset enough, but I won't actually say any of it. Very few people (in my world, at least) actually deserve to be ripped into, so I don't; it's that simple.
I still kinda wish I could at least share the rant I would have ranted, but in the interests of professionalism and karma, I'm thinkin' it's time to just let it go.
Um, if you see me anywhere in the next month or so, make sure I'm letting it go, okay?
***
This post was almost three times as long as it is right now, until I chopped the gardening stuff out and put it in an article of its own; so instead I'll just say that the embroidery is making progress and I'm getting all excited, again.
For some reason, it worked out that each area of the design has its own family of colors, and for the most part, the colors don't overlap. So starting the ground meant breaking out the yellow/orange/warm browns; the only reds anywhere in the picture are in the lady's sleeves (rust shades) and the girl's gown (pinks); the only blue will be the background; and so on.
Right now, the only colors I have left in the bag are about six different greens, and the blues to go into the background. And last night I finally started on the greens.
The green tones are actually the only ones that show up in more than one area; the leaves on the trees, the lady's gown, and possibly some detail on the ground where the figures are standing, are all green. I've tried to keep the olive greens in the tree and the cooler shades in the gown; and the leaves will only have two shades, while the lady's gown has five covering all the highlights and shadows. Regardless, green to me says "home stretch" even if only about half the total area is actually filled in right now.
What can I say, I'm easily amused. Throw pretty colors at me and I get all excited and distracted and stuff.
Cheers!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Post-Octoberfest recovery
Well, the festival was an utter disappointment in many, many ways. The weather and resulting low turnout were a part of that, but the rest will have to wait until I've gotten the opportunity to speak with the festival organizers. I'm wondering if I'd have been more forgiving if the weather had been nicer, or if maybe I've just been spoiled by the way previous events have gone for me.
Regardless, I have a big new batch of henna waiting for people to let me use it on them, and a discount that will continue till the end of the month for anyone who brings me one of my old business cards. That thought cheers me, and the Indigo Girls in my ears right now are helping more then they will ever know... although I could send them an email... I guess...
***
It's a very old line from a very old Steve Martin routine - back when he still did stand-up comedy, which ought to give you some idea how old - but I still hold it to my heart as a Law of the Universe: It is impossible to be depressed around banjo music.
***
Daughter and I have made a habit of getting her a little snack right before bedtime, so she doesn't wake up hungry at 1am. At her request, a new part of this routine is that I sit at the couch and work on the embroidery while she plays with her yogurt and eventually gets it all into her tummy. So progress is in the "very slow, but steady" category. Right now I'm working on the ground the figures are standing on. That's right - I'm stitching dirt.
Regardless, I have a big new batch of henna waiting for people to let me use it on them, and a discount that will continue till the end of the month for anyone who brings me one of my old business cards. That thought cheers me, and the Indigo Girls in my ears right now are helping more then they will ever know... although I could send them an email... I guess...
***
It's a very old line from a very old Steve Martin routine - back when he still did stand-up comedy, which ought to give you some idea how old - but I still hold it to my heart as a Law of the Universe: It is impossible to be depressed around banjo music.
***
Daughter and I have made a habit of getting her a little snack right before bedtime, so she doesn't wake up hungry at 1am. At her request, a new part of this routine is that I sit at the couch and work on the embroidery while she plays with her yogurt and eventually gets it all into her tummy. So progress is in the "very slow, but steady" category. Right now I'm working on the ground the figures are standing on. That's right - I'm stitching dirt.
Friday, October 2, 2009
Octoberfest Henna Special
It looks like my new spiffy business cards have arrived in time for Octoberfest, and I am very excited. In fact, I'm so excited that if you have one of my OLD business cards and bring it in, I will give you a 20% discount on your next henna design.
This offer is good at Octoberfest and the Farmer's Market until it closes at the end of the month. Come on in, bring a friend, get them hooked on introduce them to henna too.
Cheers!
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