The Floodgates

Today is Audrey's holiday bazaar. I think I'm ready for it and I'm excited! I have no idea what to expect. No idea at all. But I have a lot of hats and they are pretty darn cute, as well as cupcakes, felted pears, and Cinderella. I'm bringing my milk glass cake pedestal for the cupcakes and I'm putting the pears in my Candlewick salad bowl. I also have a couple of makeshift hat stands and I printed out a bunch of pictures to put in an album if people want to see more of my work. And there has been the promise of appetizers and wine, so that alone will make the afternoon a success!

Despite all this, my state of panic has risen to a new level. "Why?" you ask--well let me tell you. I've just met Anna. Anna visited Venue last week and fell in love with my hats and booties. Anna owns a little artisan gift shop in Burien (from what I'm told, it's in old Burien. As in Olde. Who knew?). Anna contacted me last week about the possibility of buying some of my stuff. We talked inventory and prices for a bit and I emailed her a list. I didn't hear from her for a few days and so you all know where my mind went. Anna hates me. Anna has changed her mind. Anna has found someone much better and cheaper... and then Anna emailed. Anna's email just about knocked me off my chair. This whole time I had been thinking she wanted a few hats. No no, Anna has a LIST:

3 pairs Minnie Mouse booties
3 pairs Bumble Bee booties
2 pairs Duck Flippers
2 Pumpkin hats
1 Strawberry hat
1 Blueberry hat
1 Eggplant hat
2 Viking Boy hats
1 Viking Girl hat
2 Cupcake hats

That is $350 worth of merchandise. Paid up front. And she wants it by November 10th. I was really straight with her and told her there was no way I could make it all before the 10th. No way. Even if I gave my entire family knitting lessons--well, actually that would be a step in the wrong direction, but you see my point. Anna has a big open house on the 10th, so I told her I would get as many to her as I can by then, and then deliver the rest soon after. She seemed ok with that, but let me tell you, the pressure is on. I have less than 10 days to knit as many items as I can. So far I have 1 completed hat and 2 partial hats. I actually need to buy yarn for the booties and making 8 pairs of booties fills me with a little bit of dread. I love the booties, but they can be a little tedious. And I need to make 16 of them.

But before you become too judgemental about how crazy I am, let me remind you that this is gift buying season and my things at Venue are becoming popular. Last Saturday I brought them a Boy Viking hat, a snowman, candycane stocking cap, and some more cupcakes. Diane emailed me that night. The Viking hat didn't even last the day and I sold 2 more cupcakes. So I have to keep up with Venue as well!

I have to keep reminding myself--this is what I have been working so hard to achieve. This is a good problem to have. This is what success looks like. Unfortunately success also looks like piles of laundry, dishes in the sink, dust all over the furniture, and toothpaste all over the boys' bathroom counter. But after I'm done with Anna, I'm hoping success will also look like a big trip to the mall for me!

Separated at birth?

M. I. A.

I have been missing in action from my blog this week. I would have taken a picture of all of the hats I have been knitting, but uploading the pictures takes time and frankly, I can't be bothered right now.

Audrey's holiday bazaar is in 6 days. Less than one week. I have become a knitting fiend. And I have to say, a significant portion of my stress is the fact that I don't know how many hats to knit. I've never done this before and I've developed a sort of bi-polar attitude toward my progress. In a 60 second period I can swing from "Oh my word I'm a crazy person who has just spent the last month knitting 500 hats" to "I'm going to sell out in 10 minutes, and then what will I do?". I don't know what to expect. And yet I keep knitting. Diane from Venue has told me to start bringing the holiday items, so I'm feeling that pressure as well. To date I have:

Cinderella
a pile of plush cupcakes
a pile of felted pears
3 snowman hats
2 candy cane striped stocking caps
1 viking hat
8 cupcake hats
2 pumpkin hats
1 strawberry hat
1 watermelon hat
1 blueberry hat
5 different hats that I think are adorable, but no one on Etsy seems to think so

It's been all knitting all the time. And I have a special order to do, I still working on that birthday cake, I have my mom's socks, and Ryan keeps checking in with me to make sure I have the right yarn to make his Harry Potter bookscarf from my new birthday book.

Oh yeah, and I have a family and a life to lead. And by "a life to lead" I mean it's my job to make sure other people in this house have a life. I cleaned the bathrooms yesterday. It had been a while. A long while. The kids were commenting. So I spent some serious time cleaning bathrooms. Alice's new litter box is in the boy's bathroom and between the boys and Alice, that room is practically a bio-hazard. When I'm not looking I think Alice is sneaking a little shovel into the bathroom and digging a hole in her litterbox, tossing the contents of the shovel over her little kitty shoulder. On to the bathroom floor. I have to clean that up twice a day. NOT that I'm complaining, mind you. Alice has not had an accident in weeks--even though she is too lazy to take her 15 year old bones down to the laundry room litterbox, we are delighted that she has agreed to use the litterbox 7 feet away from our bedroom. I have to tell myself that each and every time I clean up the cat litter.

I have boys to take to school, swimming lessons, birthday parties, kid's choir and playdates. I have laundry. L A U N D R Y. I have thank you notes to write for birthday gifts I received 2 weeks ago. Notes I really want to write because I received some very thoughtful gifts. These people who live here keep telling me they want to eat. Most of them don't actually eat what I give them, but I still feel obligated to provide them with food when they ask for it. And then I feel the need to clean up the food. And today we're having lunch with Ryan at school because he is a Student Of The Month, and Students Of The Month get to eat at a special table, invite their families (who are instructed to bring McDonalds. It's really funny--a big long table lined with McDonald's bags, because that seems to be the universal special lunch of choice) and hear a presentation from the Principal.

I've volunteered in Ryan's class, and I've volunteered in Eric's class. I completely cleaned my kitchen from top to bottom--including washing out the pantry and the refrigerator--because we brought fruit flies home from the grocery store (Mike and I spent hours cleaning out the kitchen on Saturday. Hours. And we still have fruit flies). I repaired my garden after the septic tank guy came and I've made about 3 trips to Target this week.

THAT is why I have not been blogging.

People have been shot doing this...

The Viking Hat!

Yesterday was a crazy day. There was a big storm predicted for the Seattle area, but I had plans to go to Venue, so to Venue I went. I had a bag of new hats, including this Viking Hat. When I showed it to Diane, the owner, she squealed. Literally, squealed. Then ran to the back room to show Caitlin. Diane said they're going to place bets on how fast it sells. And I need to make sure I make plenty for Viking Days. Viking Days--I forgot all about Viking Days! Isn't this hat just a scream?!

Eric and I went back home and hung out, waiting for the storm to really kick into high gear. Which it did around 2:30. Our neighborhood lost power and we didn't get it back until 3:00 am. I know that is when it finally came back on because everything came back on. Lights, tv, washing machine (which had been in the middle of a cycle when the power went out)--so I had to walk around the house at 3:00 in the morning and turn everything off. This was about an hour after Eric woke us up shrieking because the little battery powered touch-light we gave him burned out. We all then woke up around 7:30, which is pretty late if your 7 year old has a bus to catch at 8:00. Needless to say, I was very tired this morning, and had quite a bit to do, since I had been without power for 13 hours.

So after dropping Eric off at preschool, I came back home to tidy up and get some laundry done. I decided to take a couple of minutes to check my email in the office when I heard a sound. In the house. I am suppose to be alone in the house and I am hearing noises coming from inside the house. I heard the sound of footsteps, clicking on the hardwood floor. The last time I heard that sound, it was a squirrel in my house. Only the more I listened, I decided they were human footsteps. There was another human in my house. Or a squirrel. Or a human. Or a squirrel. I was really starting to panic when I realized it was the sound of a human wearing size 10 1/2 dress shoes. Attached to the soon-to-be-deceased father of my children.

Mike had come home at 10:00 in the morning. Without calling or warning me. And I didn't hear him come through the door because, well, we have door issues right now. Really, we have house issues right now, as in our house has many many many issues. One of them being our doors. Our front door is always locked and it has a safety lock on the inside to keep Eric from opening the front door. So when we come home we can't use the front door. We've always used the garage door opener, but our garage door needs to be replaced--it's falling apart and the opener won't work. It opens it, but can't close it. Or the other way around. Whatever--it's broken. We can open it manually, but it's heavy and a pain. So we've been using our mudroom door to get in and out of the house. Problem with that is, that door is broken too. It's as ancient as the garage door and desperately needs to be replaced. The locks don't work from the outside and the only way to make sure it is truly shut is to deadbolt it, but the key won't work in the deadbolt, so you can only deadbolt it from the inside. During the day we leave it unlocked and use that door to go in and out. Yes, what I am saying is we have 2 broken unlocked doors, just begging for someone to break in. Only if someone broke in, they would be so frightened and disappointed by what they saw, they would immediately leave and look for better prospects.

Don't get me wrong--I don't take the door issue lightly. But it is what it is and we need about $2500 worth of doors, locks, and openers to fix this problem. This is how we're making due. Only with the windstorm yesterday, we had to deadbolt the mudroom door because it kept blowing open, and use the heavy, broken garage door to get in and out of the house. And this is how Mike got in. He pushed up the garage door, walked in through the garage, and quietly walked into the house. I didn't hear any of this. I just heard an intruder in my dining room. Or another squirrel.

When I realized it was Mike, all I could do was start yelling at him. "What are you DOING? WHY are you HERE? You nearly gave me a HEART ATTACK! You couldn't have called?!" And all the yelling made Mike start to laugh because apparently it never occurred to him that his little surprise visit might startle me. And when I told him I thought it might be another squirrel (and honestly, I'm not sure which I was more concerned about--another squirrel or an intruder), he responds with "Why would you think there was a squirrel in the house?" like it would be totally inconceivable that we would have a 3rd squirrel in the house. Those first 2 made sense, but a 3rd? Please. The more I yelled, the more he laughed. Apparently he had been in the neighborhood and needed to print out something for a client and decided to do it at home rather than find a Kinkos. Not once did he think it necessary to warn me he was coming home at a time that I expect NO ONE to be at home.

And then, just like a man, Mike started to hint...we're alone....YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! I'M STILL RECOVERING FROM A STROKE HERE AND YOU WANT TO KNOW IF I'M IN THE MOOD?! And he honestly gave me a look like I was the one being completely unreasonable. At that point I was actually sorry it had not been a squirrel. Or an intruder. Or that I didn't have a baseball bat in my hands.

When Mike returned home this afternoon he shouted "IT'S ME, MIKE. I'M HOME!" from the kitchen doorway.

I really need to find that baseball bat.

How do you know a 4 year old needs a nap?

When he started crying uncontrollably, lamenting that he is NOT tired and does NOT need a nap, and then proceeds to go down the laundry list of everything in his life that he hates.

Nap time.