twelve servings of delicious gluten free lasagna
eleven annoying emails from asscaline
ten black teeshirts packed
nine cane marks on my thighs
eight new amazing pans from dad
seven hundred dollars on my car
six days of sex
FIVE RINGS OF O
four calling girls
three american hundreds
two checks from grandma
ONE DAY UNTIL VACATION

and an adorable boy and pug under a crimma trea

i can't tell you how glad i am that the market season is over. wow am i sore! i'm getting too old for all this lugging-my-shit-around stuff.

the last markets of the season were both good ones. last stop shop was crowded and fun, despite rain all night. thank god for indoor markets! i always enjoy that one, cuz i get to hang out with all my craft mafia gals and extended family. and we even remembered this year to take some pictures, so we can replace a several-years-old shot on our website. i sold a bunch of stuff and fae joined me after roller derby practice, so we had fun together.

then on saturday, i was at elysian fleas. though it has existed for three months now, i only managed to do the first one - well, the make-up market for the first one, cuz the first one got sorta rained out/almost cancelled/went on anyways but half the vendors didn't know it. i didn't do all that well at the first one, so i didn't have very high expectations, but it ended up being an ok day. not super fabulous, but better than expected. and the weather was nice - crispy, but sunny and dry. it felt appropriately christmas-y.

i haven't gone through and tallied all my markets from december yet, but if i had to estimate, i'd say it was probably a less than average year, overall. but that corporate gig boosted me to average levels, probably. saved my ass, it did. i have now paid off all my bills through the beginning of january, except rent, and there's still money in the bank. and i have a sizeable deposit that still needs to go in, from this past week.

of course, we still need to take the car in. so that could eat up all the extra. we want to be able to drive it up to louisville after new year's, but in order to do so, it needs some work. so we'll see how that goes. anybody got a good mechanic in midcity or otherwise close by?

i can't believe christmas is friday. so soon. december always flies by so quick, since i'm so busy making and selling things. our friend maul st. matthews (her roller derby name) from louisville arrives tomorrow night (?) i think. charles comes in the following week - of new year's - to stay for a week. and then we all drive back up to louisville, hopefully.

i've got 2 articles to write sometime this week. and a handful of custom orders to complete. but at least we've got cookies to last us for months! yes, the cookie exchange party was yesterday, and though we had a few flake-outs, we still ended up with 8 dozen cookies, plus lots of fae's excellent red and green snickerdoodles.

we also went christmas caroling last night, down in jackson square. i've never done that before and kinda always wanted to check it out, and fae was really into it. we headed down a little late, but only ended up missing 2 songs - not bad, considering we had to park up by cafe brasil and walk into the quarter. but it was fun.

ok. gotta stop procrastinating. must buckle down. more later.

i know many of you also have chronic pain stuff going on; here's a paid market research interview opportunity (i'll probably be doing it too.)

Schlesinger Associates San Francisco is currently looking for individuals suffering from a variety of Pain Conditions. We are conducting 45-minute in-person interviews on January 7th & 8th, and would compensate $100.00 for your time and opinions.

If you are interested and available, please follow this link (or copy and paste the URL into your browser) to complete a brief survey to help us determine if this study is relevant for you. Thank you,

Schlesinger Associates SF

http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/?p=U2DYA7NZA79U

ah my good old buddy 2nd guessing has returned. And my monkey mind can stop thinking I'm the uber wimp for closing the store today.

Nothing like shoveling to make me see how little upper body strength I have.
Waaaaa, back to shoveling round three. Then house cleaning which I'm actually in the mood for. Weird.

[x-posted to fatshionista]

( Buy my stuff! Vintage dresses & coat blowout! )

What did you do in 2009 that you'd never done before?
published a book in Japanese, Spanish and French

Did you keep your new years' resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Never make resolutions

Did anyone close to you give birth?
Not yet

Did anyone close to you die?
No

What countries did you visit?
Spain, US

What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
A health plan, less debt, a better plan for getting writing done with my current job situation

What date from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
Probably May 10, 2009, when Skim got her Doug Wright. That was pretty cool.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Getting and keeping a semi-full time job and all the writing I've managed to get done.

What was your biggest failure?
Wow. A BIG failure? My wardrobe feels like a bit of a big failure, but only the stuff I've fucked up in the wash.....

Did you suffer illness or injury?
Cat injury/illness only

What was the best thing you bought?
my fluevogs and bootcamp

Whose behaviour merited celebration?
c has had a pretty stellar year I think, huzzah

Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
Wow. Such big judgement words! I suppose I get pretty bummed out by a lot of news stories but not APPALLED per se

Where did most of your money go?
debt and frivolities - the snake biting it's own tail

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
lots of book stuff - traveling and teaching

Compared to this time last year, are you:
i. happier or sadder?
happier
ii. thinner or fatter?
I've flatlined. Thank GOD.
iii. richer or poorer?
bit richer but also poorer. Gotta love that debt payment plan.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
writing

What do you wish you'd done less of?
watch tv

How will you be spending Friday, Dec 25th?
chilling

Did you fall in love in 2009?
stayed in love

How many one night stands?
none

What was your favourite TV programme?
Hoarders

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Nope

What was the best book you read?
Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Girl Talk!

What did you want and get?
travel time, pictures of me in another country with c, more muscles

What did you want and not get?
time off

What was your favourite film this year?
strangely enough, the new XMen

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
a month off

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
Little House on the Prairie meets Corporate Chic

What kept you sane?
my family (I know, shut up)

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Malcolm Gladwell

What political issue stirred you the most?
the "right" ones

Who did you miss?
my FRIENDS

Who was the best new person you met?
the Scandelles

Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
- we are always better on than off
- I need to embrace me when I'm "off"



Quote a song that sums up your year:

Just listen to Peer Gynt Suites 1 & 2

"Ladies, you're maiden name is a man's last name."
(GOd I love the CBC)

Do you ever wonder what your life would be like if you could have gotten over your shit at an earlier age?

Like, for example, would I be a better person today if I could have discovered my love of running/jogging/exercise at 14 instead of 34? Would I be some sort of crazy jock now? Would I have been the first Japanese Canadian to win the 100 meter dash? Or would I just be me with WAY worse knees?

Another question. Do people I know pose for the clip art that I can apply to my Word documents? Is that like a really crappy job that friends of mine have done that I have been completely oblivious to? Is that a job I can do to make some extra cash? I have a suit and access to an office like space. Looking at these pics is making me want to create a completely useless Powerpoint that's almost completely composed of photos from Clip Art.

And finally, what would possess someone to make quiche entirely out of fake egg in a box? That's BUNKER food my friends. That's like, last ditch effort food. Food for enemies. Why o why.

Going to go use all 50 of my new Crayola marker pack. 1 colour per letter or word? Not sure.

sumxo

ohmygod, i just want it to stop raining! thank you goddess, we are full!

let's see... recap since my last post: kingpin on thursday night was pretty ok, despite getting stuck outside in the very cold temps. i got there at a time i thought was early but as it turned out must have been late, as all the good spots inside had already been claimed. so i chose to set up outside where i could spread out. thankfully at least, heather macfarlane from the craft mafia also set up outside, so i had company. by the end of the night there were 2 other vendors out there, too. i sold a bunch of scarves and a coupla signs, so all in all not a bad night, though not gangbusters by any means. but better than i expected, and considering how few shoppers there were, i felt pretty good about it. the kingpin was doing credit card transactions for us but had a kinda lame process for that, so i think one customer ended up not paying the bar for one of my scarves... but they kindly paid me anyways, which was nice.

saturday was a hell day. it drizzled/rained all day long, including while i was setting up for a short spell. i didn't have any walls for my tent (i was supposed to be getting some from macfarlane but our timing didn't match up, so it didn't work out), so i ended up getting wet while setting up. all the clocks and signs and some of the tshirts got a quick dousing. thankfully fae was with me to help. that prompted us to use the $3 dropcloths we'd bought at homo depot to fashion walls for the tent, using clothespins, which actually ended up working out pretty well. just wish we'd done that from the start cuz everything would have stayed dry. one of the vendors across from me ended up lending me a wall for the 3rd side of the tent, so we were in pretty good shape then for the rest of the day.

sales were actually, surprisingly, pretty brisk, despite the weather. i guess folks who came out were really determined to get their christmas shopping done. and the market had done a 2 hour promo the morning before on WWLTV, so that had generated a lot of buzz. and i actually sold 2 clocks at the promo, since i'd dropped off some stuff for them to use as backdrop. i ended up having my best market day i've had all fall/winter, saleswise, which i guess made me feel like it was worth being out in the damp drizzle all day. until the end of the day...

the skies opened up when we were breaking down. the market folks decided to close up a half hour early due to impending storms, but we just didn't get out of there fast enough. as soon as we started putting stuff away, it was a torrential downpour. it's really hard trying to pack yer stuff up while the corners of the tent are pooling so much water that it looks like they will burst open, and water is dripping in a stream down from those points. everything got soaking wet, including us in our supposedly water-resistant clothing. we finally got everything packed up and in the car, soaking wet, and realized once we were in our un-airconditioned vehicle, that all the moisture and humidity was causing so much condensation on the windshield that i could barely see to drive. of course the monsoon happening outside didn't help either - visibility was close to zero. it was the scariest drive home i'd ever had.

we stalled out once on the corner of jena and magnolia, making the block around the corner from the lot where freret market happens. fae got out and pushed us out of a flooded hole, and somehow, the car started back up again and let me drive it home. i think we barely escaped being flooded in uptown; i kept wanting to pull over because i couldn't see well out of the windshield due to the condensation, but everywhere i could possibly pull over on the side of the road was flooded and it was hard to tell how deep. so i just kept driving, slowly, following other people's tail lights.

i got us all the way to midcity, taking napoleon to broad, broad to palmetto, palmetto to jeff davis, over the i-10.. but when i came down on the other side, i remembered how badly jeff davis floods on that side of tulane in midcity. so i took tulane over to carrollton, knowing i'd at least gotten past the i-10 underpass that always floods. carrollton was ok; got onto canal which was fine, though people were driving like 20mph. got all the way to bernadotte, and was hoping for the best. it just didn't look like the side streets had flooded yet, as nothing was piling up on canal yet. and our street very rarely floods. so we took a chance and turned onto bernadotte. it looked ok at first, and i was driving in the middle of the street which is always the highest point.. until we came to our street, iberville, and all of a sudden, we sank into nearly waist-deep water. the car stalled. i didn't even try to start it, knowing i'd just push the water into the engine if i did.

fae got out and started pushing, since i was driving, so i could keep steering. she pushed us all the way down iberville towards our house, in water that was above her knees, but the street was flooded the whole way. at our end, we realized there was no way we could push it up onto the sidewalk so we just kept going, hoping to get into the school parking lot in the next block, which is where we'd parked it before when the street flooded. it was very deep at the entrance to the school lot, and a steep incline. we'd switched positions because fae was exhausted and soaked, so she was steering and i was pushing. i tried to push it up but there was no way. lucky for us, a good samaritan dude who lives in the next block must have seen us and came running to our rescue, and helped me push it up into the lot. it took us quite a while of rocking the car back and forth, trying to gain some momentum using its weight. but we finally got it.

mind you, the car was fully loaded with all my wet art market stuff. so it made it heavier. but i think it might have also been our saving grace, as it weighed the back end of the car down and popped the front end up some. so i think it actually helped keep the engine above the water line. water never came in to the front seat area of the car, but when fae got out the back seat, it poured in. so we had a lot of standing water on the floorboard in the back seat.

we just parked it and left it there in the lot overnight. we walked back in the downpour to our house, wading in water that was literally knee-deep and sometimes deeper. i had longjohns on under my jeans, because it had been cold that morning when i woke up, so it was really hard to walk, weighted down like that with all the layers and my big winter coat that was soaked all the way through. we actually undressed on the front porch when we finally got there so we didn't have to bring all the wet stuff inside!

i was not having a lot of hope that it would start in the morning, cuz that was a lot of water we pushed it through. but i was praying. the next morning when we got up, i went to try to start it, and miraculously - really - it started almost immediately. and frankly, sounded better than it had before! crazy. so i was able to drive it back over by our house and park it on the street in our normal spot. since then it has not been running so great - stalled out a few times on the way to the bank yesterday - but after warming up, it seems to still go. we are gonna take it in to get looked at sometime soon, though i imagine all the local mechanics are pretty busy with all the flooded out cars.

when i woke up on sunday, i also got the horrible news that the man who vends across the aisle from me at freret every month, rudy rowell, who i was not close with but was friendly with, as we were neighbors every month for a few years now, had died on his way home from the market. they think he had a heart attack while driving. not sure if weather played a factor, as he was driving home to bogalusa and i think the weather was crappy the whole way. but who knows. he had been packing up like the rest of us in the downpour and we'd all just jumped in our cars as soon as we could and left, without our usual goodbyes. several of my other vendor friends were very close to him, considered him family, so i'm really sad for them. his funeral is this morning, as i type, in poplarville, ms.

i guess it's just another reminder to tell those you love that you love them, every chance you get, because you never know when it will be your last chance. none of us said goodbye to rudy that afternoon because of the circumstances, and now he's gone forever. sometimes it just happens that quick, with no forewarning. life is so short....

anyways. i had to cancel sunday's appearance at soulsister's crate dig because we needed time to shop-vac the car out and i needed time to dry everything off. and also, one of my friends who was close to rudy came over to watch the game and it just felt more important to hang out with her, be there for her, than to go to an event i wasn't even sure i was gonna make any money at. it just all seemed too rushed, considering i had committed to mallory's home shopping party later in the evening. so i was sad to miss it - and it sounds like it turned out to be a really fun event - but i think i made the right decision.

mallory's was low key, but i sold a few things. and i was really glad to be home after that, that night, and be done with a really hard weekend.

yesterday we decided to do our grocery shopping early in the day so as to avoid the continuing storms, and when we came back, parked the car up on the sidewalk. it's still there, and it's still raining. they are saying we will continue to have a chance for heavy downpours for the rest of the day til 6pm, so street flooding is still a possibility. so we'll leave it there til then since we don't have anywhere else to go.

today i'm trying to get into a writing frame of mind so i can crank out this article that i seem to be blocked about. i'd much rather be printing up more tshirts for thursday night's last stop shop at the big top - the new orleans craft mafia's annual holiday party and shopping extravaganza - but i'm gonna give it a good effort today cuz i really need to get it over with and sent in. if i feel like i'm making no progress later in the day, perhaps i'll switch to printing mode.

alright. well that catched me up to now. god i'll be happy when the markets are over. just thursday and saturday left to go! whew.

All you need to do is use a binary system of keeping track.
Did you have sex last night?
If no:
   have sex
else:
   rest up for tomorrow night

That is all.