It's been a busy week, and I've fallen behind on my posts. I'm typing this in short bits between times when I'm so tired my face hits the keyboard. We actually had two trips out this week that did not involve grocery shopping. I may keel over from the shock.
Since we moved up here several years ago we've been busy having babies and building houses. If I wasn't changing a diaper I was swinging a hammer. There wasn't much time for a social life. In addition, the area we live in *cough, cough* has individuals who pride themselves on the lack of social opportunities present for those who aren't Conservative Christians.
Wednesday we had a Homeschool Park Day. It was very fun. The girls had a blast, and as the organizer it was quite a feather in my cap -- literally. One of the children I met brought me a handfulls of duck feathers she had found and I wove them into a feather cockade for my straw hat.
The more stressful event was our first show in years. There hasn't been a good local art show close by since before we moved here, and we were too busy to travel. (We don't set up at flea markets and kiddy shows. We found out the hard way people don't go to those events to buy anything over $5 -- at least not in Mississippi.) But this year our town put on an art show for the first time in 25 years, and we were invited.
First off, we couldn't find a babysitter. This meant my husband had to do the show alone while I stayed home with the girls and caused ill feeling on both our parts.
Then all our gear had to be pulled out and spruced up. Last week we were up until 12 and 1 every night getting the cases ready. Then the organizer called and announced the shindig Friday night was going to be a suit-and-tie event, which resulted in a mad scramble through the closets, to the dry cleaners and to the mall Wednesday night after Park Day.
The mall was a strange trip. After twenty-five years of painfully ugly clothes and accessories, there was actually stuff in the stores I liked. There was plenty of georgeous dressy blues, purples and my beloved aquas on things that swung and sparkled. In previous years I've walked through an entire mall without seeing a single thing I liked, even among the neutral basics (ask my husband sometime about the infamous White Blouse hunt.) I'm not used to seeing clothes like that in stores, only in my dreams. All of a sudden frugality got a whole lot harder. After all, it might be another 25 years before I saw them again.
The show itself was -- not as good as we hoped nor as bad as we feared. The crowd loved our jewelry but weren't expecting it, so our sales were almost nonexistent. Even then they were better than just about anyone else's sales. Still, first year shows are typically slow, so the odds are good next year will be better. And we do have our basic setup ready for action again, so hopefully there won't be such a mad scramble for the next show.
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