Fecal Matter & Algae

After my fun-filled bike-ride on Thursday, I wanted Friday to feel just as healthy, and maybe to even bigger proportions, so not only was I going to ride around the lake a few more times, I was going to go down to the marina and rent myself a kayak. For a mere $10 an hour, I could tool around the lake and take a closer look at the island, which I've never stepped foot on. I could also cool down a little on a hot day without actually having to go into the water (which isn't allowed anyways) and step on what I presume to be a super mushy goose-poo covered bottom.
I haven't kayaked in probably seven years since I was at summer camp, so I was excited to re-try one of my favorite water activities.
It was just as fun, but left me more sore-shouldered then I remember. I only needed half an hour to zigzag my way around the island, get in the way of some speed-rowers, and be jealous of the experienced kayakers, in their streamlined-super-speed machines that flew past me.
I had fun, I got wet (I'm glad I took along a plastic bag for my wallet) and deffinatly am willing to take myself again soon. I was going to go on Sunday, but thunderstorms prevailed, and left me soaking wet when I decided to chance it and walk through the park instead of ride.
Instead I made up for the calories lost by sitting around and drinking whiskey all night Saturday.

Knuckle Toes Channels the Crocidile Hunter

Most of the time, I hate having more than one day off in a row.
Usually I spend my days off being productive. Doing laundry while watching the X-Files. Sewing. Buying groceries. Lately it's been packing up various areas of my house and cleaning others.
These are not things I ordinarily do after a day at work. Usually after a day at work, I'll have whiskey, watch a movie, or play Scrabble with Smyrish.
After a productive day at home, I have nothing to do the next day but feel like a lazy bum. I'll eat crackers in the couch, and sit in the crumbs bare-assed and uncomfortable.
I'm the schedule maker at work, so I don't often need to deal with a crumb-bum.
Somehow though, I ended up with Thursday and Friday off.
Determined not to let the hours crawl by, I figured I would take advantage of the fantastic weather, and ride my new bicycle, Ingrid, around our inner city man-made lake (slough)
This is not a lake for swimming. If you were to swim in this lake, you would probably smell alot like fecal matter and algae, as there doesn't seem to be any sort of filtration system.
Either way, I took Ingrid out to test her legs, and ended up riding for about two and a half hours.
I often forget that she is not a mountain bike. Infact, she doesn't have a very complex brake system (just pedal backwards) so you can't expect much in the way of shock absorbency and general toughness. Since she is currently sans-bell, I have no way to warn the walkers/joggers/stroller mommies that I'm fast approaching, so instead of rudely cutting them off, I chose to offroad it around them, and my knees are a little unhappy with me after four circuits in one afternoon.
However, I did get the great idea to go home and find my camera so I could write a lame blog entry about Canada Geese.
I don't know what they're called anywhere else in the world, and frankly, I'm too lazy to look it up. Don't let their appearance deceive you, these bastards are mean, and nothing to mess with. They hiss, they bite, and they will break your arm with one flap of their wings. Much like a grizzly with her cubs, these bastards will turn on you if you so much as look at their young. They're pretty curious though, and will stalk you around if you seem like you're going to pay any attention to them.
I also managed to watch one poop, though I didn't catch it on camera, and it was pretty fucking funny, considering it was the last thing I expected to see. It came out like a graceful little green arc that you might see come out of a fountain. Of shit. And believe me, there is goose-poop EVERYWHERE in the park. (Which by the way, is the largest inner-city park in the world, if I remember correctly) Somewhere in it is actually a bird sanctuary, which surprise surprise, is pretty much full of these Canada Geese. Although, it seems there's a few pelicans as well.

Packing

A couple things make me happy about moving.

One of them is being able to go through all of my shit (and there’s allot of it) and organize it. It also gives me a chance to get rid of a bunch of shit. Somehow over the years I ended up with three lava lamps. That’s right, THREE lava lamps. Even though I probably haven’t had any of them set up or turned on in five years, I felt the need to keep them all, and move around with them (probably three or four times) while they were being infinitely useless in a milk crate.
I just spend two and a half hours going through my hall closet, bedroom closet and my bookshelves. I ended up with three big shipping bags of things to get rid of, and about seven or eight boxes of stuff to move with. I find it crazy that I, a single, twenty year old woman, could possible own as much shit as I do.

Another thing I like about moving is the idea that I can put whole new rooms together. Like any slightly domesticated woman, I like making things pretty! I like deciding where to put my couch, my slightly broken folding screen, my crazy colored glass friendship orb, and my giant hand-me-down gun rack. Maybe one of the reasons I own so much shit is because I like to decorate. I don’t NEED to own a floor rug, but I do. I don’t NEED to own a massive dining room table that seats six, but I do. Infact, I sort of am moving to a bigger apartment because I didn’t want to replace said table with a sewing space.

I’ve got two and a half weeks to pack up my apartment, clean the joint, and take all the stuff away that I’m finally getting rid of. I get a couple days off to go to Smalltown for Abigail’s wedding, party it up with the booze hounds, and then it’s back here with a day and a half to spare for that whole physically moving all my heavy, heavy stuff.

Woo!

Moving

I’m moving!

I found myself a great little two bedroom apartment in the same building as Schmutzie and Abigail, so I am foreseeing some random coffee parties with some pickup Scrabble games coming my way.
Also, for the first time, I will have my very own craft room (wow, I suddenly feel like a lonely sixty year old scrap-booker) where I can make all the sewing messes I want! Where I don’t have to face an empty corner and sew in gross phoney lighting. Where I can have room to organize my fabric properly and maybe have more space to get shit done, displayed, properly photographed, and maybe even sold! A space that is not my living room sofa for me to use my new laptop, though I’ll probably be just as unmotivated.
Now I’ll need to invest in some fancy-ass curtains if I want to keep running around my house naked. Now whenever I’m bored I can sit by my new fireplace (eee!) and gaze out the window as stabbing victims stagger to the emergency ward of the local hospital. Now I’ll have a neato walkout door/window to a courtyard where people smoke, drink coffee and hang their laundry to dry.

I see myself actually starting to buy groceries and cooking for myself again. I see myself letting go of all that shitty break-up stuff I’ve finally been starting to deal with in the last two months. I see myself sewing more. I see myself doing all that cheesy ass home maker bullshit stuff and having people over for tacky wine parties.
Woo!

Woo! The first festival/street fair of the year was a success. More than a success actually, because now my Partner in Crime and I have to basically make an entire new stock. We were left with only a dozen or so purses between the both of us, and a few shirts, a few skirts, and one dress.
We sold items yesterday that we had almost given up on. Wrap pants I made four years ago and could never quite display properly, simple bags we had thrown together with weird looking fabrics which we’d slowly marked down over the years, and tank tops which I was unsure would fit anybody except maybe that anorexic Olson Twin.
It’s amazing how much proper mannequins help sales. It’s great to see how every year our booth comes together a little more. Last season I managed to “borrow” a roll bar and mannequin from that hellhole clothing store I worked at, and manage not to return them before the company shut down all the stores. The too bad part about that was, I was invited back to take a couple more of each, but became lazy and forgot. Abigail managed to buy some cheap mannequins from a lady who switched from selling clothing at those girly house party things, to selling Tupperware.
Both of use have basically given up on selling jewelery, which doesn’t seem to be much of a loss, because it looks like everybody makes and sells jewelery now, and I just don’t care.

Im finding it strange though, how we can have such a great day, and yet I had such a bad one at the same time.
It was beautiful out side, sunny, hot, not a cloud in the sky (which is the exact opposite of the weather we’ve had so far this spring) There were people everywhere, and we sold more than we had expected to sell. Many people took our business cards to check out what else we’d be putting up online. Somebody even asked me about the corset shirts I’ve started making and said that something like that would be perfect for her grad outfit.
To be honest, the people everywhere were driving me insane. I only managed to leave the booth once or twice to go to the potty and get a henna tattoo, but every time there were more than three or four people looking at our things, I would have these strange sort of panic attacks and not be able to deal with the situation. To cure this, I got drunk on cheap white wine at the community centre, and watched a pretty wicked French Canadian band do their thing. I also didn’t eat dinner, after only eating a footlong smokey and a poutine from Mr. Spuds, all day.

No More Coffee

The other night, when I got home from drinking the molten-lava-chai-thing at the coffee shop, I suddenly had a burst of creative energy, and over zealously did a bunch of strange random things.
I decided that I would feel really important if I used my briefcase, so I filled it with stationary, receipts, and various items I would need for the festivals that we attend.
Then I re-organized one of the steamed trunks to fit all of the items we would need for displaying things (tablecloths, baskets, easels, etc.) although that now leaves me two steamer trunks worth of merch to fit into one trunk.
Then I made a bunch of signs using crazy hyped-up coffee scribbles and a really wonderful pen that Smyrish gave me. These signs seemed like a really good idea at the time, but really make me feel kind of silly (even though I’ll still totally use them) I feel they really show off my personality as an artist (right) they say things like:
“HEY LOOK! PMS cards for $3-!!”
along with a stupid stick-drawing-esq. scribble of a card with an angry looking figure that happens to be shaking a really tiny fist. Beside this, an arrow points to the inside of the card and says “sassy sayings inside”
Then I made a sign that says
“HEY NEAT!! $5 Rings”
along with a terrible drawing of a ring, that doesn’t look anything like a ring, and an arrow pointing at that ring that says “I guess this is supposed to be a ring”

Medicate me now.

PMS Cards

After realizing that I lost a bunch of stock which I probably wouldn’t have sold anyways, I ran over to the photo lab to see if I could make a re-go at whole PMS Apology Card line, which originally met a peely doom after an unnamed party told me it would be perfectly fine to use a plain white glue stick to put together my product.
Plain white glue does not like humidity, and for some reason it didn’t occur to me that maybe if I put the cards into those individual protector Sealy pack things, they might not only withstand the elements, but not get dirty and bent up.
Either way, what happened was this:
The photo lab was closed, and therefore couldn’t help me. So I took my handy new laptop (which I bought for business in the first place) down to the coffee shop, bought myself a $5 soy-chai-whatever-the-fuck-yuppie-latte-thing-that’s-always-boiling-hot-like-molten-lava-and-never-cools-off-because-of-the-foam.
I sat down on the couch and spent the next short while cursing at the slow internet wireless I was not paying for, trying to track down decent pictures from my Etsy shop that I could get Filmstar to crop down and print out for me, so I can make a new line of PMS cards, featuring pictures of angry women, sassy sayings, held together with acid free photo tabs, and individually sealed in wasteful flimsy plastic envelopes.
Finally, I’m motivated on a project. I seem to be full of ideas, with no get-up-and-go.

Woo for run-on sentence paragraphs! (I writes like I’s talks in real lifes)