Serene smiling knitters. Old ladies with freshly made peanut brittle or peppermint bark. Smiling snowman ornaments.
The craft fair scene in my head seems to be this way.
The reality is: vendors complaining that its slow. Women setting up show and asking where you are working next weekend so they can get a foot in the door. And then sayng hi. To some of them you are only as good as the fair that they didn't know about but still have a few hours to try to get into.
There are the craft fair children. The child labor devices that help set up while the moms treat them like little husbands ("okay, next the headbands. No, not there. Go get the dolly and bring in the other boxes.")
Mine is one of them. Only she is currently only on earring duty. I keep tree branches in a vase and Humanling likes to be in charge of hanging and at the end of the day, removing and putting them into the box, in her own particular way. I heard her at the last show correcting my mother, who missed the webinar on how to fold the baggies in HL's universe, just so.
I am not a good game player. I sit and keep to myself unless someone engages me in conversation. I wrestle with myself when people are at my table browsing - do I keep reading my book and leave them alone to feel free of pressure or do I brow beat them with happy smiles and suggest what would look fabulous with their rosacea!?
Whenever someone chooses one of my pieces, I feel a huge humility bullet. Wow. Really??? And you're going to give me your hard earned money for it? I love you. Will you and your husband and your grandma over by the scarves marry me?
There are those fairs where you can literally Christmas shop while you're selling. Those ones that cost you extra because you had to cover the cost of the rental space AND now you're purchasing that Red Sox gift basket for your boss.
Yes, I did do that. Today actually.
My boss ROCKS!!!! He has made my life so sweet this year by flowing with my schedule and saying yes where other people would have said no. (It doesn't matter if a flail was involved. Just play along.)
And he has had to endure a little. At a recent cake event at work, we were all sitting around, savoring a moist chocolate cake, when one of the co-workers needed to go down the "vegetarian" menu and ask if I eat:
chicken?
fish?
Eggs?
No, No and Yes. The first two to me, are not vegetarian. Those things shit. Pardon my Non French Englais. Eggs don't. Or maybe they do and I haven't been informed. End of my rant.
So the inquiry went further when I answered yes to the eggs. I basically said that well, its like when a woman has her monthly, people. It's a wasted period if it isn't fertilized and most likely, these aren't fertilized.
I never saw three men mini jolt in unison anywhere off of America's Funniest Home Videos. One of them being my boss.
He apparently, I am told, is still working on deleting that day's "enlightenment" from his akashic records.
So, there was a gift basket and at the end of the day, the person selling it heard me mention it earlier and knocked money off of it if I would just please take it. She's a Yankees fan and had a hard time dealing with it being there. Even though its not really in my budget, I wanted to get him something special to show my appreciation (and no, being newly single again doesn't add to the gift). Not only that but I fully believe in making the money flow round and round so if I can get by this week on what I have after buying the gift and contributing to this person's own flow.
And did we contribute. When I left I couldn't believe how much I spent unneccessarily. I bought myself a beautiful necklace that was $20. It was just so ME and so unique. To be shown with the artist's name and website on another upcoming blog. The light is bad this time of night for photos.
Humanling loved a couple of things as well so I had to make sure that she had those. And the dark chocolate peppermint bark. IT WAS ONLY $2.50!
So the Red Sox gift basket it was. If I could spent money on myself, surely my boss, who now has a negative sort of Pavlov response when he thinks of eggs, deserves to have something. The man allows me to save all kinds of money by not having afterschool care. I get to run home a half hour before the bus shows up to deliver my genetic creation, and then boot my computer back up and continue working. I am so lucky.
It's been such a fabulous day.
One of my good friends sent me a gift card in the mail to Barnes & Noble. I'm on my way to her house after this to ask her and her two kids and husband and bees (they used to keep bees so if any are lingering) to marry me as well since this is basically the best gift anyone could give me.
On that note, I will have to try to blog tomorrow night about my experience with Robert Taylor last night. He is an energy healer and I was just so happy that I was able to have about 20 minutes with him during a radio show.
