CHA Wrapup - Better Late Than Never

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OK, I promised some friends and customers I would do my CHA (Craft & Hobby Assoc.) wrapup and since it's been a month... Well, here goes.

The first rule of CHA still applies. That is, if there is a particular someone you really don't wish to see, you will encounter that person within minutes of arriving at the show.

This year I had two people on my list. One is an old friend and I found out that she used to have the Art Director job that I was doing at the time. And I really wanted to avoid the whole, "So, what are you up to?" conversation. I saw her but was in line for my press badge, so other than a quick hug, we had no time to talk. Whew!

Number two is an artist I booked on Carol and fought to keep her on the show. She sweat profusely under the lights and was really discombobulated on air. I often would take my lunches to go to her house to prep her. After 9/11, she behaved like a spoiled brat and since I left the show, she acts like a five-year-old when I see her. (We belong to the same silver art group.) I was putzing with my cellphone trying to reach friends when I saw the rude artist out of the corner of my eye. I kept right on putzing... Whew #2!

With rule one out of the way, I got to enjoy the show. First, I got so much swag in the press booth, I had to go all the way back to the car first thing in the morning. I came back in and did a quick pass through new products.

Sorry to say, all was lackluster. I am amazed at the lack of creativity. First of all, there is still an overabundance of crapbooking materials. OK, I'm willing to admit I see no ART in this craft form. And what is the point of spending all that time to create something just to shove it in a book?

No offense intended if you are a crapbooker, but it was summed up best on Date /20-20 Minutes/ Primeline. The episode was a "Can this marriage be saved?" type of thing. The husband was saying, "I come home, I play with my kids. We go to soccer, gymnastics. We ride bikes, roller skate."

Reporter: "And what is your wife doing while you and the family are out playing."

Husband: "She scrapbooks."

It's like, you're so busy documenting your life, you actually miss your life???

CHA had a ton of new vendors hoping to break into that market.... Just when you think the market is oversaturated, here's all these new companies trying to break in.

The rest of the new products were not memorable except one. Here too, the lack of creativity astounds me. Someone has come up with a paint by numbers for grownups. They sell a painting on a canvas...really, it looks good enough to hang on the wall as it. But an oil "artist" can paint over it and texturize with the oils to add dimension. Yeah, I want to say I painted that!

I went on upstairs and hooked up with my dear friend Becky Meverden. I was her producer on Carol and we became fast friends. She's like another sister to me. She and her hubby, Curt walked the show with me. I have to say, it's such a pleasure to do a show with Curt. I'm used to having to pay attention and keep things on track. But he did that for us and hauled our heavy bags of magazines and samples all the way back to their hotel. What a sweetheart.

We ran into Carol Duvall at an autograph signing promoing her upcoming book. I begged Carol to write a book when I worked for her and now that she's "retired," she's finally done it! No surprise to me that she wrote it on her favorite craft medium, Paper. It should be a bestseller when it comes out in a few months.

Becky had her own book signing to get to...she's written her first jewelry book after writing many polyclay books. Below is a cell photo of Becky with her book.



While Becky signed books for her fans, I walked the show alone and ordered a ton of stuff for the shop. Show specials such as free shipping, BOGOs, or just percent off really helps a small shop like mine.

Later, Becky and I stopped by JHB to check out their buttons that Becky designed. Just as I was about to give up seeing anything new and really exciting... I found myself racing across the show floor to Armour.

Someone there thinks like me. As a sometime glass artist, I've often considered the feasibility of owning a sand blasting booth. (No room, too much money.) I really wished for some kind of inflatable thing to sand blast in and Armour has made one!
It looks like two swim toys connected by more plastic. You can insert your glass, their sand etch (sand attached to a propellant) and blast away. Their Sand Etch is so gentle, it won't even hurt your hands and it's refillable! No Waste! This excites me!

All in all, a good show but really only to see older vendors. It would amaze me to see any of the new ones back again next year.

We Gone Party, Like It's ...

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MABEL'S BIRTHDAY!!!

I took her for a super long hike... can't imagine what else she could possibly like. Her toybox is overflowing and except for tennis balls, she rarely plays with any of her toys. She also got to go to In-n-Out Burger and got two meet patties instead of her usual one.

It's hard to believe it's been five years! It feels like she's still a baby dog.

Of course, I'm not certain of her "real" birthday but just like with all my other adoptees, I pick a date near the time the vet thinks she was born. My vet was certain it was late February.

Has anyone ever noticed that important people in your lives tend to have similar birthdays? That has happened to me time and time again. And so, I picked Feb. 23 for Mabel.

It's also the birthday of one of my childhood friend's as well my dearest production buddy's special day. So in addition to Mabel Lou, Happy Birthday to Theresa and Jim, wherever you both may be. I pray that life is being good to you both.

Mabel is still not sure if we are coming or going with my work schedule. She still wakes me up to pet her around 4. And she got so used to going to the creek at the crack of dawn and seems very out of sorts now that we are on my "let's go whenever I feel like it" schedule.

I decided to air out the jeep the other day as it mostly smells like that famous California perfume "eau de wet doggie." So I opened the rear door and sprayed Oust and just left it while I worked in the shop. Mabel, not wanting to miss her ride, got in and waited...




More pics of a hike a few weeks ago with Mabel's friend, Cocoa







Happy Birthday Baby Girl... and many, many more!

Ma's Brassiere

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I've been trying to get a post written somewhere other than my head but can't seem to accomplish that for a variety of reasons...namely needing to reinstall windows 3 times in the past week and fearing that a 4th is imminent. (And NO, I did NOT upgrade to Vista.)

That being said, I'm going to leave you with one of my favorite short stories. What you should know about my writing: It is basically the truth with the names changed to protect the guilty. I believe the in vogue name for it is "Faction."

Hope you enjoy.

Ma’s Brassiere
By Holly Dare (copyright 2005)

“I want a brassiere,” my grandmother said matter-of- factly between bites of mashed potatoes and the dehydrated mass they call Salisbury steak at the nursing home where she lives. She said it as calmly as if she had asked us to pass the salt.

My mother and I sit there, mouths agape, not certain we heard her correctly. Mother looks at me with her best have I lost my mind look and asks her mother, “You want what?”

“A brassiere. Can ya get me one?”

Mother’s head was shaking left and right in a non verbal no as she answered slowly. “Well… yes, I can get you one …but why on earth would you want it?

“I just do,” was all she’d say.

I suspect the answer is not that simple. Ma has a boyfriend. I am certain she wants it because her main competition at the nursing home is a very svelte lady named Ethel. Ethel is always dressed to the nines.

But still – a bra? Ma always looked rather flat-chested to me. She didn’t have the “big ole’ good ‘uns” as my father called my mother’s breasts. Maybe she is hopin’ for some of that liftin and separatin’ I had seen advertised on t.v. Being a young woman of twelve, I’ve got my first brassiere. After the novelty of having it wore off and the reality of the boys in my junior high hallway unclasping it as I walked to class with an armload of books set in, I pretty much hate the contraption. I just can’t understand why anyone who had managed to make it eighty five years without wearing a bra would suddenly want one. Besides, who would deliberately add another layer of clothing in the Mississippi humidity?

Maybe she’s just decided to live a little. Ma took to her bed when Pa died back in 1960 – four years before I was born. She spent six years there waitin’ to die. “I just want to be with my Kirb,” she’d say over and over. Old age had mellowed her and Pa and they were in love like when they were newlyweds at the time he passed on. It was as if all the times she and the kids had to sleep in the cornfield when he came home drunk and lookin’ for a fight never happened. Or all the times she left him alone with the six children to raise while she explored Texas and California for months on end had been forgiven.

When she finally figured out that death wasn’t gonna come knockin’ on her schedule, she was too feeble to care for herself. She would fall a lot and all of her children worked. So Mother brought her to this dismal nursing home near our house in McComb.

At first she hated it and was determined to go back home. Mother and I would find her sittin’ on the front porch of the nursing home starin’ up the big hill on Locust St. It was as if she was sizing it up, tryin’ to figure out how to get up that hill and on back to Tylertown. She shared a room with an invalid named Louise Thompson. Ma had the bright half of the room with a window looking out onto a courtyard. But the room was tiny and she had no room for a suitcase. So she took to wearin’ her clothes – all of ‘em. Which is quite somethin’ in the Mississippi summer. We once found her sittin’ on that porch wearing her winter coat, two sweaters, fourteen dresses – the record was seventeen – and two slips.

This went on for a year or so. An arts and crafts program got her feelin’ more at home and pretty soon ever’one in our extended family had all the egg carton wastebaskets and lamps we could handle. Ma started selling her stuff and was right proud of the pocket money she earned.

But Ma was a hard-headed woman once she got an idea in her head. And she pretty much did what she damn well pleased, which is why we knew there was no talkin’ her out of the bra.

Ma was twelfth of sixteen children. She and her older sister Addy were barely ten months apart in age and grew up thick as thieves. They both dropped out of school in the eighth grade to help out on their father’s farm. Shortly after, Addy’s boyfriend proposed to her and she married. Even with a houseful of siblings, Ma was still lonely. So she went out and found a boy to marry her.

Her husband was in his early twenties and had done well for himself, managing to save enough money to buy a farm of his own. Ma set about bein’ a good farmer’s wife. She would rise before dawn to fire up the old wood stove to make biscuits and fry up bacon and eggs. Her husband – no one in my family ever knew his name- would head off to the fields and Ma would tidy up their two room shack. She’d slop the hogs and then feed and water the chickens and turkeys and be off the fields to help out. As the sun would start to set, most farm wives would head to the house to start supper. But Ma was not allowed to do this. Her husband was the jealous type and did not want her anywhere he could not see her. If she had mending or clothes to sew, she had to bring them to the field to work on. This did not set well with Ma. But she was determined to be a good wife and went along with his bizarre wishes - for a while.

The end came when her older brother, Edo, got married. Edo had met Susie Whitaker in Tylertown. Susie had come south from Missouri as a nurse in the army. When she ended her tour of duty on the Gulf Coast, she had bought a bus ticket to take as far north as she could get. That was Tylertown. The bus station was just a two block walk from the hospital. She took a room at the Brumfield boarding house and then she met Edo. Being a good farmer, Edo married Susie in the dead of winter so that he could take her away for a proper honeymoon. The family surprised them both with enough money to make it to Missouri and back so Susie could see her family for the first time in years. Their four week trip turned into six as Edo got on well with his new in-laws and was pleased to see his bride so happy. Ma and all her siblings missed Edo somethin’ fierce. Everyone had gathered at the family home for Edo and Susie’s arrival from Missouri. When Edo stepped out of his truck, Ma was the first one to kiss him. That’s when the trouble started. Ma’s husband was astonished to see all of his in-laws kissing Edo and Susie right smack on the mouth. He accused them all of incest! Ma did not go home with him. Now she knew at this point she was considered a “had” woman and that no man in his right mind would ever marry her, but, she just did not care. Even though her sisters begged her to try and work it out, she refused. “I ain’t gonna live with no man that cain’t trust me! ‘sides, Ma and Pa are getting’ older. I’ll be the one to see after ‘em.”

And with that, she decided her future. At least the next ten years of it. If she ever spoke of her first husband, all she’d say was, “It’s amazin’ I never got p.g. by him.” She always had a smile on her face and twinkle in her eye when she said it. I would look awkwardly at the floor, shocked that she was talkin’ about sex to me.

She was an old lady of twenty six when my grandfather rode into her life on a fine specimen of a horse. He fell for her at first sight. Ma’d been sittin’ on the front porch, shelling butter beans when she decided to take her hair down in the cool afternoon breeze and give it the daily one hundred strokes. She was gorgeous in her colorful, handmade dress with her dark black hair flowing below her waist and framing her pale face so that her green eyes sparkled like emeralds.

Kirby Smith was equally as handsome with dark, tanned skin and eyes as black as his dark hair. His Scotch Irish side, although not apparent in his looks, gave him a taste for whiskey. His ruggedly handsome appearance favored more the four Indian tribes that ran through is bloodline. That made the whiskey a bad idea. Considered an oddity in the community, he was still single at twenty-six. Yet he ran his daddy’s farm and had 160 acres of his own. Kirby was considered quite the catch. He pulled the reins and stopped his steed abruptly in front of the house.

“Pardon me miss, but have you seen any cattle roaming loose? I’m missin’ ‘bout ten head from my daddy’s herd.

“No I can’t say as I have and I’ve been sittin’ here all afternoon.”

“Well, thank you anyway.” Kirby got all shy and rode off.

That night, there was a knock at the door. Ma opened it there stood Kirby, clutching some wildflowers he had picked for her and a basket of vegetables he had brought for Ma’s ma. “Howdy miss. May I speak to yer Pa?”

Most of their courtin’ was done in her father’s parlor. Her past or her head-strong ways did not matter to him. They married a few months later. The early years were good. They were followed by years of Pa drinkin’ too much and Ma gettin’ fed up and leavin’ but she would always come back. The bad times were buried with him and she saw their fifty plus years through rose colored glasses. So I find it somewhat astounding that she has taken interest in another man – especially one she would be willing to don a bra for.

We walk her back to her room and she’s still talkin’ about the bra when my mother confesses, “Ma, I have no idea what size to buy you. I’ll just have to bring a tape measure next time we come.” This is a ploy on my mother’s part. She will forget that tape measure next time and the time after that, hoping that her mother will forget. But Ma is on to her.

“Honey,” Ma says to me, “go out to the front desk and ask for Nurse Wilson. She likes to sew and she’s got a measure in her pocketbook.”

I find Nurse Wilson and am soon back in my grandmother’s room.

Mother looks at me, exasperated, and turns to undress my grandmother. I look away as my mother stoops to wrap the measure around Ma’s chest.

“Here, hold this one for me. Now, lift this one up…Now hold ‘em up high. I have to get the measure around your chest.” My mother gets the number and writes it down in the back of her checkbook. “Now we have to measure from the top to the nipple.”

I walk out in the hall and shut the door but I can still hear them. “Now we have to measure around each one.” I decide to stand by the door across the hall.

My mother emerges shortly, checkbook notes in hand. We get in the car and head to the Kelwood Factory Store. Kelwood makes all kinds of ladies lingerie and the factory store sells them for a fair price. You can buy it much cheaper than if you drove into town to the J.C. Penney or the Sears Roebuck. We go inside and mother explains the situation to the gentleman behind the counter. I make myself busy in the panty section, wanting no part of this.

“Holly, come on. I’m ready.” Mother is by the door, package in hand.

We get in the car. “I think we oughta go back over t’ the home and take this to ‘er. She seems to want it so bad.”

“Did you find her size?” I ask.

Mother laughs, “Yeah! She’s a 44 double E!!

I look at mother in astonishment. How could this be? “That’s bigger than you are!!”

“I know!!”

As we drive, I stare at the road and ponder the impossibility of the size of Ma’s breasts. I finally conclude that Mother must have measured wrong.

We arrive and Mother takes Ma in the bathroom. I hear a series of grunts and then Ma says, “How does this thing work?”

“It snaps in the back but it’s best to put it on upside down and backwards. You can snap it and then turn it around. You lift the straps up on your arms and then adjust your boobs.”

I was praying no one in the adjoining room could hear them. I decide to take a walk. I come back into Ma’s room a few minutes later and there she is… sitting up straight and proper with boobies big enough to set her lunch tray on!!! And a skinny waist!!! This is NOT my grandmother.

“Where did those come from??” I ask to no one in particular.

My mother answers, “Well she had ‘em all along… there’s no paddin’ in there!”

Mother and I stand side by side, admiring my grandmother’s new body, awed by the transformation.

“But Mother, where were they before?”

“Well honey, that was her waist.” I look up at her, more confused than ever. “That’s what happens when you don’t wear a bra and breast feed six children.”

I make a silent vow to always wear my bra and never to breast feed.

But while we were talkin’ Ma started squirming. “Cather’ne, take this blasted thang off me.”

Mother rushes to Ma’s side, “What’s wrong Ma?”

“This thing hurts! Take it off me, NOW!”

And with that, Ma’s brassiere wearing days were over. After all, Ma was the type of woman who would choose her family’s trust and affection over an unloving husband; she chose divorce in an era when it was socially unacceptable; she chose flights of her own fancy, husband and children be damned. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me that she would choose comfort over a chance to win her beau’s affections. And if her potential beau liked her any less, that was just his loss. After all, Ma had hidden assets.

Just the facts - Bead update

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For those of you who were following along on this post, here's an update and I'll just let the facts speak for themselves.

Jan. 8 - Confirmed beads available, ordered beads & paid for beads.
Jan 19 - 20 - sent several emails to different email addys, phoned skype # and left messages.
Jan 22 - ready to file a claim with Paypal, noticed different phone # and called. Chatted with beadmaker for a bit. She explained she had no money to pay for postage and promised to priority mail the next day.
Feb. 1 - Filed claim with paypal. Published blog.
Feb. 2 - Beads postmarked and mailed.
Feb. 3 - Received refund from beadmaker through Paypal.
Feb. 6 - Beads Arrive???!!!???!!! Working 16 hour days.
Feb. 13 - Purchase postal money order and mailed it to pay for beads.

The end.

Everybody's Talking About...

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Anna Nicole. It just amazes me that so many are obsessed with someone whose proverbial 15 minutes should have expired a decade ago. I mean, we're at war. Politicians are already developing platforms for next year's election...Isn't there anything more important to obsess over??

That being said, I'll keep my two cents brief.

I feel so sorry for that baby. I've always said my number one question for God is, "How do you decide who you give children to?"

That child did not ask to be born into this chaos. I pray that whomever she ends up with loves her and not the moolah. I sincerely hope she finds some peace and calm in this life.

And as for her mother, Dorothy Parker summed it up best:


You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.

Pop Quiz: Creek Hiker Lives With:

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O.K. Gang, now that you've had a little time to get to know me, it's time for a pop quiz. It's multiple choice with no right or wrong answers and only one question.

Creek hiker lives with:

A) A crazy dog - Last week, I almost had Mabel in the car after our early morning hike. For ages she would sneak away from me as we neared the car, making me rather angry. So, I build her wild run time into my hike. As we get near the car, I lift the bottom of the fence that borders about an acre and a half of city owned land. It's mostly fenced in and Mabel can romp about while I do some power walking along the fence line. I was holding the fence up for her to scamper down the hill and get into the car when I heard something over my shoulder.

Two of the biggest coyotes I've ever seen were running startled out from behind the overbuilt McMansions beside where we park. My first thought was that they were wolves. Miss M sees them as takes off to the west... her instinct was that they would head into the creek and she was right. There is a hole in the fence down there and she met one head on the the two of them took off across the fenced in property. The other hole in the fence is on a busy street! I screamed bloody loud for 7 a.m. to no avail. As they neared the street, I couldn't watch. I turned toward the creek and listened for the sound of screeching tires. Seconds later, I heard Mabel's collar. She was at the fence ready for home like nothing exciting had happened.

B) A thief! Yes, I'm confessing here for the world to see - my dog is a thief. But she only steals from the same dog - Melvin. 97% of the dogs we've met like Mabel. None have been terrified of her and the rest would like to eat her for lunch. And then there's Melvin.

Melvin feels for Mabel utter indifference. Mabel does not cope with this well. It really pisses her off! Melvin lives on a hill just above dirty creek ( the south side of where we hike). He's the type of dog that you can leave on the front porch all day. He won't go more than 20 feet into the creek alone. He won't wander the neighborhood. He just stays on the porch.

Mabel often tries to steal away from me to run up to see him. Since he lives on a cul de sac, I gave up trying to stop her years ago. Some days, Melvin, a chocolate colored, mid-size terrier type, plays with Mabel and all is well.

But most of the time, he simply ignores her. And when he does, she steals a toy from him. She used to bring them to me and when we left, I would drive around and throw the toy back to Melvin, usually to Mabel's dismay.

Recently, she did this; I took the toy back. The following day, she took off for Melvin's and I continued hiking running into several of our doggie friends and their dad. Chloe, the pit bull is one of Mabel's favorite running buddies and there's always a commotion when we run into her and her sisters, Winnie and Abbey. I know I was making enough noise for Mabel to hear us, but she never came. I finally realize she was burying the evidence.

Sure enough, about five minutes later, here she comes, a mound of dirt on her nose!

The next day, we were hiking with Ivey, Uncle Bill and their dog, Baby. They wanted to hike behind the houses across from Melvin's on our way home. I knew Mabel was ripe for another toy and sure enough, she did it right in front of our friends! Only this time, I chased her and found where she buried it! And would you believe, the dumb-dumb was burying it right on top of yesterday's take? I dug up both and took 'em back.

Here are some pictures of my little con artist's haul from this week.
Can you see the evidence? This was two days after she first buried it. I sometimes leave her take hidden for a few days just to make her think she got away with it.
This picture required quite a bit of maneuvering on my part. After I dug the toy up, Mabel snatched it again and ran off. I had to run, get in front of her and take the photo behind my back as I ran (hope you all appreciate my efforts!). It required a it of photoshopping to get my early morning shadow out of the picture.

Here she is headed back toward dirty creek with the toy. In the end, she saw a lizard and lost interest. I grabbed the ball and took it back.


C) A brat - who misses her mommy. Mabel is used to being with me 24 / 7. This work thing is new to her and she is not adapting well at all. This past week, sometime after 1 a.m., she wakes me up trying to get my hand on top of her head! She wants a petting session in the middle of the night.

D) All of the above.

The Moss Thing

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I was struggling with what to post and Velvet ( you are an endless resource, dear lady!) requested more info on the giant moss project I spent the whole weekend perfecting. So here goes.

I am working on a home dec. show... one of the oldest on HGTV. We are in the process of redecorating the most perfect home I've ever seen in Glendale. The show is a spring special and we have to come up with ways to freshen up a home for spring.

One of the ideas my director had (but is up to me to execute) is to create monogram out of moss. The home owner's last name begins with "L" so I found a sufficiently swirly font and then redrew the loops in Illustrator. Next, I blew it up to the size of the wall over the fireplace - roughly 2.5 feet square. The document was emailed to Kinko's where it was printed.

I cut it out and placed it on insulation foam.... great tip here: if you ever need ALOT of Styrofoam, you can buy and 8 ft. x 4 ft. piece for around 10 bucks at a home improvement store. Craft stores sell a 2 ft. x 3 ft. piece for that much! (I got Lowe's to cut the foam into three pieces at the store.)

A jig saw made quick work of the cutting but covered my clothes, hair and arms with a solid coat of Styro-pieces...which Mabel managed to take a nap in! The cutting was the easy part! It went downhill from there!

You see, there is NO glue that will not burn / eat through Styrofoam AND hold reindeer moss in place. Foam glue is too malleable for too long. Silicone, hot glue, contact cement, etc. etc. would not work. After a number of trips to the hardware store, my best friend B calls... she owns Horsepower Golf and is one of the craftiest ladies I know.

"Oh, you need grip tape," she announces matter of factly.

Apparently some kind of miracle double stick they use to keep grips on clubs. She showed up with a roll... it costs 10.50!

I spent the afternoon and evening coating the dang L with tape... only to find out our reindeer moss was so very fresh, it wouldn't stick! (I had tested the tape with dry moss.) I then realized the tape at least protected the Styro well enough I could glue... but the darn thing still wasn't quite right.

I ended up wide awake in a panic today at 5 am and decided to "bake" the reindeer moss to dry it a little. By 9, late for work, I realized I had to beg my director to let me use floral pins...something he had hated when I built a prototype.

He acquiesces and let me use them. By noon, I was home again and frantically pinning... I used well over 100 pins to finish but I did it!!! That silly thing ruined my weekend, but I'm bulldog... I don't give up easily.

The sad part: This will account for around 2 minutes in a one hour show! Gotta love show biz!

Foot note: since these projects are copyrighted by the network, I cannot post pictures but promise to link back next month when the show airs.

Answer Me This

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Well, yesterday's post sure hit a nerve! So today I thought I would write about crazy customers. I first thought it might appeal more to you artsy types but, I've decided anyone with a BRAIN can relate.


1. Can anybody tell me, if someone knows EVERYTHING there is to know about a given subject, WHY would she spend perfectly good money to take a class? Just to annoy the teacher? Is she that lonely?

This person was in my class yesterday, again! Interrupting my lecture and correcting me. It's ART lady! There is no RIGHT way, there is only the way that has worked for me. I left class emotionally exhausted and still can't figure out why this know-it-all keeps showing up.

2. Why is it when people are dealing with a small business run by an individual, they feel the need to ask for a discount? "Gee, my total is $100 bucks. (A hundred bucks! WOW! That'll pay the mortgage!) You need to give me a discount."

I hear this daily (even for 20 dollar orders!). A) Do they possibly think this is original? B) Do they do this at Walmart (Macy's, Michael's)? It's not like I'm Williams Sonoma with a 300 percent markup! I'm a little business. I pay cash for everything. I carry accessories as a convenience to my customers and when you take into account minimum orders my vendors have, stuff can sit here for months. I'm barely making a profit.

As for my jewelry, I have to account for my TIME. If you could make it, then go home and do it.

3. Do I appear to be crazy? I ask this because of a woman that calls every time our cookie show airs on television. She insists I should mail her a cookie kit and some stamps and she will, in return, mail me a post dated check for a few months down the road. Her excuse is, if she had the kit, she could make some money to pay me.

I explain to her that I am a cash and carry business, no cash, no carry. I explain to her that she should just mail me the check when she has money in a few months and when it clears, she'll have her kit. She does this several times a year. Funny thing is, when the few months later rolls around, I never see a check. Yet, like clockwork, the show airs, here she is on my 800 number again...

4). Do I attract the mentally ill? At least once a month since I took on this business, I get an email from a woman on the East coast. I remember her because we share the same first name and her last name is very unusual.

Her emails are always the same for several months, then she changes tactics. Her first emails read, "Send me a free catalog." I wrote back for months with the link to purchase my catalog. (Too many catalog collectors out there...just can't afford the $10 bucks to print something and give it away.)

Then her emails changed to "Do you take money odear?" (her misspelling, not mine.) I would write back explaining that I do take money orders and give her my address and ask her to please contact me before purchasing the money order to be sure she is allowing enough for shipping. A few weeks later, "Do you take money odear?"

Now her emails are asking for my "tole free number" which is on my website but a little hidden on purpose (easily found in the shopping cart). I cannot simply pay to be some one's new best friend.

All thoughts and comments appreciated. Thanks for letting me get this off my chest. I promise a funny Mabel Lou post next.

Disappointment - UPDATE

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(UPDATED 12:57 PM Sunday 2/4/07) - Refund recieved... now she wants to sue...


Why am I such a believer in second chances?? And yet, so often I get hurt.

This time, I'm speaking of a well known bead maker... and I have no qualms about listing her name - it's Corina of Corinabeads.

Maybe it's because she has been so wonderful to me in the past. I own a phenomenal bead of hers called the Garden Prayer Bead. She had listed it on her site for 75 dollars and even though I was broke, I offered to buy it. I didn't tell her I was broke; I only inquired about the bead - the only one available form her offerings that particular day. She wrote back that she was really hoping to give it to someone who was willing to pay for it!


It was so stunning when it arrived, I, in return shipped her one of my favorite bowls.


She has always been quick to reply to emails and very helpful and encouraging. But last year, she suffered some kind of mental break. She is bi-polar as well.

I lived with a bi-polar girl from Baton Rouge in college. It was one of the most trying experiences of my life. I watched daily as my roommate struggled to be normal, fought with her own mind about taking her meds, and struggled with alcohol as well as her own inner demons. In the end, we had so much respect for one another but knew it was best not to live together any more.

Maybe it was this girl I was thinking of when Corina started listing specials for sale on her site again recently. I wanted to help her out and hey, I love her beads so I ponied up the $100 bucks she was asking for a set. (This was before I had my severe financial miscalculations late last month.) And now, it has been almost a month and still no beads.

Several phone calls later (both Skype and to her cell), we connected and she gave me a detailed story of how paypal only allows you to withdraw $500 a month with no bank account and how she's trying to live on that and she simply didn't have the postage to mail me the beads. She promised to put them in the mail the following day....two weeks ago.

Yet, she keeps listing more. And more and more people are buying. And while I simply cannot stand someone who would speak ill of the mentally challenged, I also would hate to see any more of beady friends get ripped off. So Buyer Beware.

In the end, it's me I'm mad at... I'm always such a sucker. The word must be stamped on my forehead.

Much Ado

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With all the excitement about the bomb scare in Boston and other cities- two men placed light boxes around several cities as part of a Cartoon Network promotion - has me chuckling. Our local yocal p.d. actually blew up one of the boxes.

One of the basic tenets of production is verify your location. And rule one of that would be: do you have permission to be there? These idiots had to know this would cause such a commotion in a post 9/11 world. It reminds of a story from my film school days...

Three guys decided to make a freshman film about a bank robbery. (Are you laughing yet?) USM has a widely publicized film department in a small, supportive community. I NEVER had any problem getting someone to give me a location during my four years there. But these guys go to a bank, two of them don masks and grab toy guns while the other gets out a camera.

The guard sees them coming and...locks the doors! It was only then that these geniuses realize that maybe they should've talked to somebody at the bank first.

So, now they're all scared and jump into their car. The guard calls the FBI and there's a freeway chase complete with helicopters. (This was the early 80s - back when people used to stop when a lawman flashed his pretty red / blue lights.) The three would - be filmmakers were all arrested.

In the end, my professor had to go to court and testify. The prosecutor asked if the professor thought the kids should be charged with bank robbery. My professor said no.

"Well then, what do you think the appropriate charge should be?"

To which my teacher replied, "Certainly not bank robbery... maybe practicing stupidity without a license."