I’m freaking out a little bit over here.
We leave town Friday night to fly down to the OC to do a quick weekend Christmas visit with Bear’s parents. And I have to have everything finished by then. And I’m no where close. And my friend is coming over tonight for help with a lesson for church. And I just started my period.
I have to make a 20 page 6 x 6 scrapbook for Bear’s sister, do all the laundry in the house for our trip, pick up photos, finish the Christmas cards and get those in the mail, pick up a mess of gift cards, and pack for the trip. In a day and a half. While my guts are trying to kill me. And I’m all out of glue.
Last night was my birthday. And I spent it at this super cool craft fair/indie music concert. It was put on by my friend Julie and her organization hand born. She’s so awesome because here in boring old Modesto, she and her crew are working like mad people to inject some culture and fun, so she created this whole underground art movement to get the scattered cool people together and working towards something that could make a difference.
Normally I despise craft fairs because I can’t handle the rejection. They each have their own crazy rules for how much space you’re allowed, if you can use power or can’t use power or if they’ll charge for power, and some of them charge you a fortune for the chance to sit there all day and pray someone will actually give you some money after you’ve worked for three weeks to create enough whatever to fill up your table. But usually they don’t give you money, they walk by, say your stuff is so cute and so neat and smile and walk away. And you die inside a little bit more each time.
But this one turned out great for me. Julie only charged us $20, and she hustled to get people there. We had a great turnout. A lot of people were there for the show and to drink, so most vendors had a bad night, but I did pretty good because I priced my stuff CHEAP. Everything was $5, whereas most other vendors didn’t have anything under $20. So I had a great time, met a lot of really cool people, got invited to a couple more fairs, made some nice money, and I ran into Ruben there. I had a great time.
Although I nearly didn’t. The night before the craft fair I was working like mad to finish off the stuff I wanted to sell, but I totally ran out of time and had a breakdown. Tami, the woman I work with at church, asked me to come and supervise the teenagers at a service project that I was totally planning to get out of, but she stressed to me that she really needed me there. So I dropped everything and went only to find out that everybody was already taken care of and I was extraneous. I was pretty frustrated, so I went home and SURPRISE! Bear had thrown together my 7th annual surprise party. It was so sweet and he really did surprise the heck out of me. I was so stressed with craft fair and church and Christmas, I didn’t even notice his traditionally suspicious behavior. Turns out that Tami knew I wasn’t needed, but she was in charge of keeping me out of the house so the guests could come over.
I had a blast, and it was really smart of Bear to force me to drop my stupid self-imposed stresses and have some fun on my birthday. But at 5 in the morning when I was still painting and hadn’t slept in two days, I was not so much thinking about my wonderful, caring husband and how much he does for me, so much as I was thinking, “How could he have planned a party the NIGHT BEFORE a craft fair! How am I ever going to get everything done now, what was he thinking.” As I’ve said, I may be able to knit and crochet and sing a song, but I am not a nice person much of the time. I woke him up that morning by sobbing into my paintbrush, so he cleaned me up and put me to bed and practically sat on my chest until I fell asleep so I wouldn’t try to get back up and paint one more box. I have no idea how he lives with me, but at least I’m productive.