The other side

Not everything that happens at Market is wonderful. Most of it is reliably so. I realized this week that where I like to set up is one of the quiet centers of the maelstrom. Even when the edges of the blocks are wild and thumping with rhythms and people passing in every direction, in our neighborhood people can eddy a bit and slow down. We can hear ourselves think. For some reason several people this week asked me if I would take less for my hats. I always say no with a big smile, and will give reasons if pressed. I find it coercive, and I don't get why I should give up my profit, the part I live on, for a stranger so they can feel dominant and special. The price is the price.

Someone I used to know when I worked as an instructional assistant was stopped for a moment in front of my booth, and I called out to him. He didn't say much, except that his mother had died. I jumped from my chair in shock and though I was unable to be of much help to him, I gave him my phone and email so he can contact me if he wants to talk about it.

I was his one-on-one assistant for a few years starting in first grade, when his Asperger's Syndrome diagnosis was a new one, and together he and I and his family and teachers studied everything we could find about the disorders associated with the syndrome. He had a pretty hard time adapting to school, and the school had a hard time learning too. The whole experience took a big toll on us all and his mother dedicated much of her life to it. Things were very intense.

And yet, he grew up and through most of his difficulties, and now her fiercely burning being has changed form. I'm feeling a complicated grief.

Complicated, indeed. My ex-partner called me this week to complain about my last blog entry. He told me I am Soooo Complicated. He apparently doesn't know what a comment like that says about him. Anyway he basically failed to read and understand the entry and tried to run some guilt on me about my failure to mention an extremely generous and lovely gift I received from his current girlfriend.

It was a beautiful gift. She went all out and filled the basket in the picture with goodies, some of which are shown. Many are eaten. I potted the cyclamen and it looks great in the pot she included. I really appreciated the gift! I thanked her a couple of times.

He tried to shame me though, for being ungrateful, and I ended up telling him about a whole raft of the things he does that don't work for me. It was almost all behavior he could improve with just a little research into NVC, which ironically I mentioned in the very same blog.

A little research. Some thoughtful consideration of the things that don't work so well, with some attention to improving them. I took it for granted that all people do this, but apparently some people don't. I lost patience with him and said quite a few things that I have mostly kept to myself regarding how he deals with me. I doubt he heard them. Many times people tend to get stuck in their own hurt and can't really hear what others are trying to tell them. It takes a very open listening style to hear criticism without hurt.

I'm showing a picture of the gift and some of the other cards I received, not because he wanted me to, but because I agree that I seemed ungrateful. One of the things I told him was that he doesn't get to say what I write in my blog. It's personal. Read it or don't.

I'm trying to stick to the positive, but life just doesn't work that way. It's just as important to process the difficult things as it is to celebrate the lovely ones. It's tough to get the balance right. Things we don't plan, come to make us think in new ways or go back to thinking in some old ones. I don't think about my relationships with that ex- or that student and his mother in the same ways I thought when I was immersed in working within them. Most of it is gone, but what remains is whether or not we greet each other with respect, kindness, and a renewed try for improvement.

That's what I want from relationships. One of the reasons we aren't together is that he sat on the couch and told me he wasn't going to change. I was in my early forties, a fairly new mother, and changing a lot right then. Our orientation seemed to be at opposition.

That breakup led to the job and that led to the exploration of neurology and behavior and a lot of therapy. I'm better for it all, no question, but I would not want to repeat any of it. I've struggled a lot with the past and how to integrate the lessons of it without being disturbed forever. I had to change. I wanted to change. I still do.

I told the ex- he would be better off if I didn't write about him in my blog. He might have even more issues with the aftermath of his issue. The concepts of NVC, the various definitions of violence, are useful information. They're not that hard to grasp. Coercion and shaming and passive-aggressive manipulation are tiring and don't work well. You might get your short-term needs met, but you aren't going to have the life you would have if you had just done a little research and a little introspection. Maybe some journaling. It might be complicated, might be very complicated.

Because stuff comes at you. You have to be able to stay grounded and deal with it. You have to learn something about the underlying needs that so many people can't really verbalize, but they usually express, and can be helped to express in ways that will lead to them actually being heard, acknowledged, and even occasionally met. It's important.

See you in the eddy. Wear your life jacket anyway, even though the waters seem calm. Learn about what causes you to shut down, to melt down. Figure out the triggers to your irrationality. There is a sequence, and while it can not always be stopped or prevented, it gets easier every time, especially if you have hope that someone is listening, someone understands. That's what helped my student and his mother and I get through our hard times. We could have done better, if we knew then what we know now.

So we will do better now. It was good to see my student, pretty grown up. He's a painter, and I can't wait to see his art. We might do some work together. I think that would feel good.

Change can be okay, even pleasant. Anyway, it happens. Rest in peace, N., and strength to your family. I'll be thinking about you.

Feliz Crumple-años

I made it through my 60th birthday last week, not as carefree and celebrated as I had hoped. A few of my worst personality aspects surfaced, specifically the drive to meet unrealistic expectations and irrational needs. Mother's Day coming right after my birthday just adds to the burden of garbage and I tend to distance and sink a bit and revert to the ancient coping mechanisms of early years.
I am the child who is famous for opening a big box, pulling out newspapers, and chirping "Just what I always wanted!" without even looking for the actual gift. I get caught up in the worthy/not worthy conundrum and flail around trying to let people know what will make me feel special without really wanting to think about the whole subject. I am uncomfortable with the attention at the same time as wanting it in a very child-like way. I suppose Mom shouldn't have made those Angel Food cakes every year. We were allowed to choose the menu for the day and I had no idea that angel food cake requires about a dozen eggs and is a lot of work. Mom was good to us.

*Requests that are demands* is a concept I learned about through NonViolent Communication (also known as Compassionate Communication) and I have tried hard, with the help of my son, to stop giving them out. The key is that "No" has to be a valid answer and has to be accepted. As a single person who has a big network but not a huge number of close friends, I have to remind people it is my birthday, let some know what I want or have planned, and mostly give myself the gifts I want. I do this with varying degrees of glee and dread. In a fit of isolation I decided FaceBook should not know my birthday any more, but finally late in the day I posted a picture with my orchid. I went to Down to Earth a couple of times in the surrounding weeks and bought garden tools and fertilizer and seeds, but passed up the plants, thinking I would buy myself flowers. I would have bought myself flowers on Tuesday but there were none at the first Tuesday Market, so I picked from my yard. I bought lots of food I wanted and ate things with lots of fat and calories.

My family wanted to know what I wanted, and I suggested an orchid, which arrived thrillingly mid-day. That wasn't big enough for my brother, who pressed me to stretch, so I thought of a hot-air balloon ride, but my friend who is also turning 60 was not excited about coming with me, and though I did research it online, I didn't get more excited, I got less excited. I hope I will still do it, even if I have to go alone.

I have an old rule about not working on my birthday, but I had a Board meeting, at which I had to take minutes, that evening. I could have skipped it I suppose, but instead I demanded a cake in a pretty request/demand way. Maybe totally demanding. I did get one, but it was kind of an uncomfortable satisfaction and I felt bad about it. It was delicious and I am very grateful to the lovely young woman who baked it, and to all who made it happen and celebrated with me. The "violent" way I got it was a good reminder of my below-the-surface demons, but it didn't stop me.

I have a son, who recently moved out, and I definitely fumbled the delicate position of being in the position of receiving celebration that is freely given. He did call me late that night, after I had walked down to knock on his door, (no answer) and before I had sent him an insulted email, thank goodness. He blew off Mother's Day, which I handled by sending him an email telling him I loved him and I always will, figuring if I couldn't get affection I could at least give it. We had a pretty negative exchange and a day or two later I discovered that when he had borrowed my lawnmower that Saturday, he had brought me a huge pile of clippings from his yard for my compost and I had failed to notice it.

So I got a Mother's Day present, but was graceless nevertheless. He refused to give me any of the unrealistic things I had asked for, but we kind of got back down to the essential argument that keeps us apart, me treating him like my child, and at the very least put it aside for another year. I got the gift of mildly triggering my PTSD patterns which is a very long subject for another place but it reminded me that if I set myself up and work too hard to meet these manufactured needs, I put myself at risk and go backwards. And as always, it brought some clarity to the things that don't work well for me, so I can stop setting myself up for them.

The part that made the whole experience graceful, at last, was the Saturday Market 40th Birthday celebration on Sunday. I had to get up early to make food for the potluck and do some tasks I had volunteered for, so I was tired and needed my usual Sunday time out, but the party was so pleasant and low-key that I just surfed through it in a soft fog. I danced and talked with people I hadn't conversed with in years, and some I had seen just the previous day.

Dancing zydeco swing with someone I have kind of a lifelong crush on, was nice and juicy. I stood in all the pictures from the 70's to the present. Turns out from my photo collection that I really started in 1976, not '77 as I had been saying. I felt a part of something big and important and yet intimate and private, something essential and shared and deep and wide and strong.

Just as we were starting to take the pictures it started to rain, and we will all look wet to remind us of the storm. Thunder and lightning and wind and so much rain we were an inch deep in it, even under the fantastic new tents! I found it hilarious and powerful, and it was noted that on the Sunday that OCF celebrated their 40th, the same thing happened. I fully believe Mother Nature is letting us know that she recognizes our power and the purity of our intention. I'm old enough to claim my woo-woo stuff, or more correctly I should have claimed it more strongly a long time ago instead of trying to hide my belief in magick. I probably don't fool anyone with my veneer of sensibility anyway.

It always cheers me up to be in nature when stuff happens and people howl. I would be sad if I lived in a place where no one ran outside into the thunderstorms and danced. I am glad we were spared the mud, as fun as that was at the Fair. I am very grateful for the reminder that if that kind of rain out of nowhere had happened on Saturday, I would have been scrambling, unprepared, and for all my 34 years of practice, I would have been caught in a very unprofessional position.

But we have this magical thing on Saturdays that brings good weather almost all of the time. We have our chants and wishes and faith, and we stand out on the edge and hope we won't get blown off. We go every week with undiminished optimism and we go home every week with some kind of satisfaction and some new insight. It is a truly amazing life we have made together and I am one of the luckiest ones.

I may not always get what I expect, but I always get what I need.

The trick is in recognizing it, when it arrives, and allowing it to feel satisfying. I took that one moment when I happened into a spot of sunlight, almost dried off and warm from dancing, to spread my arms and say to the sky, "Thank you, Mom."

Happy to be here. Thank you so much, all of you who try to love me and let me know it.

Got my work done today

Just a quick post to show that I printed the t-shirts, and as soon as I fold them and deliver them, I will have achieved my major goal for the week. I also ordered a ton of stuff to dye and print for my own line and a couple of customers, so the busy season has really started.

So now that I started this, I might not post much. But yay, today I got the shirts done, and it isn't even May yet!

Now, if you want a nice "ladies-style" neckline, this is how you do it. Just cut right next to the stitching. Not much you can do about the sleeves except roll them up.

Oh yeah, here are those new hats. Geezer Gone Wild was apparently a stroke of genius, and my friend was so thrilled to get an Ordinary Hero hat I am considering awarding one every week.


Editing to add a story of something cool that happened today. I was in the Kiva and a young woman approached me holding a crumpled $20 bill. She found it next to my basket which was on the floor in the produce section, but I was pretty sure I hadn't had any loose money in my pockets, so I told her she found it, so it was hers. She was pretty thrilled.

Many many years ago I woke up one morning thinking "I'm going to find $20 today." I walked into the Kiva and there it was, right on the front rug, nobody around. It became an important story in my life, since I was really poor at the time, and it seemed proof that money flowed in benevolent and mysterious ways. Which I have found that it does.

While shopping today I kept seeing this woman whose bad boyfriend ripped me off for a $300 order of t-shirts for his crappy band. In my karmic fantasy it was her $20 that got lost today, and I passed it up, didn't need it. So maybe I will finally be able to forgive her for that debt and stop thinking about it every time I see her. Benevolent, mysterious ways.

Just Keep Working

My shop opens to the east so in the morning the sun pours in and I put my tomato starts on the front steps. In the afternoon I am looking out on the lovely day but I'm in the relative dark. It was hard to work today and I didn't get nearly as much done as I expected to.

Two years ago I was working in constant pain as I learned all about disk injuries (ignoring them is a really bad idea) and now I really have to pay attention. You might be able to see in the picture that the disk between L4 and L5 just completely split open and spilled out its Jell-O and they had to pick it out like crabmeat (that's how they described it). My sciatic nerve was being compressed bigtime and I was losing function in my left leg. All my disks are compromised, of course, because: gravity. And slumping. And working too hard for too long and thinking I am strong enough to carry sheets of 5/8" plywood and such like.

I can work for a couple of hours, depending on the tasks, and then I have to do some McKenzies and sit down for awhile. I've adjusted, and enjoy the breaks, but I used to work 14 hour days during the months of May and June and in early July I would barely sleep.

Guess that was the pattern that did me in. I would still do it if I could. I kind of do...on the breaks I'm usually just switching to some kind of work I can do sitting down. I do manage to get most of the things done on my list each day, week, and by the deadlines. Not without some anxiety of course. I love those nights when I work all night in my dreams.

But it isn't like it was that year, thank goodness. I really was stupid about it, just didn't know what was going on inside my body and didn't have time to find out. As it was when I finally had to have surgery, I squeezed it in 3 weeks before Holiday Market and then did the recovery in January. Dangerous stuff. So many of us in the crafting world have worn our bodies out. Farmers too.

My mom's side of the family homesteaded in Nebraska and I have always thought of myself as a farmer. I'm more passionate about blueberries and eggplants and birds than I am about many things. I watch weather constantly and know the name of just about every plant I have ever seen here, in Delaware where I grew up, in Colorado where I worked in the botany lab of Colorado College, and everywhere I go. I have to identify the plants, though I try to refrain from collecting them now, unless I need them to do some art. Lately most of the products I make are decorated with drawings of plants, too. Birds are harder, but plants are fun to draw.

But today I made hats, new hats for Market and the Fair. I did one that says "bike everywhere" with a picture of my bike on it, and a version with my trailer too. I did one that says "Geezer Gone Wild" for my collection of hats for old men. I made one that says "Ordinary Hero" which kinda chokes me up a little. I hope it brings me some great stories when people buy it as a gift for someone. I'll edit in some pictures after tomorrow, because I already packed everything up and my back says I can't lift any more things today. Except a spoon for some frozen blueberries I got at the Farmers Market last week. I'm getting more tomorrow, they are really good.

This week my family wanted to know what to give me for my birthday. I had a really hard time thinking of anything, and said a card would be fine, etc., etc., but my brother challenged me to think harder. Finally I realized I have always wanted to take a hot-air balloon ride, a real one off the tether. I hope I can talk someone into coming with me. It seems like a perfect choice: a rich life experience, something that is on my list of 100 things to do (made way before that got called a bucket list) and something adventurous but not adrenaline-producing.

I still might hang-glide someday, but maybe not. Maybe I will just dream of flying as I have since I was little. I really don't enjoy rousing up my adrenals and never have. Probably that is one reason I like work so much. I can use it for an excuse for a gazillion things I don't really want to be challenged to do. Sorry, gotta work.

I guess it is a good thing I am not a farmer, because I would now have to be more of a manager and tell people what to do and where to do it. I still climb my trees to prune them and can keep up with the weeds and flowers in my yard, and every year I expand my gardens to take up some more of the grass. I need to give up mowing the lawn by giving up the lawn.

I don't think I will go out tonight to pick off slugs and weevils and cutworms though. I have to take a hot bath and go to bed early. Tomorrow the plan is to spend some time on the east block so I can scope out how the weather works over there. Tuesday Market is moving over to that block and I want to find a good spot with shade, but not too much of it. It starts on the 4th, coming right up. Not quite sure how I am going to fit that in, but I suppose I will somehow.

See you tomorrow. Come and tell me something amazing and maybe I will mention you in here. (That's for you, Rich). Just sayin... (actually that was another hat I made today, as per Jan's request).

Full Load

Another day packed with stimulus, sometimes confusing, quickly moving to exhaustion. I tried yesterday to take photos and make contact with some of the other human-powered market-goers for an article I hope to write. Adding that to my forays for food and produce filled my day to bursting, and this morning I'm moving slow. Luckily it is a perfectly gentle, quiet day and I even have open windows.

I weighed my trailer load as I took things off last night: 407 pounds. I had been thinking it was about 300. It's far too much, though the displays looked great and variety is one of the keys to my success. The weight didn't even include the groceries I brought home and the ten pounds or so of stuff I sold. Time to leave something home, the longsleeve shirts or the hoodies or the extra color choices or the camera.

I've been thinking about Bob Walden, one of the vendors who used to haul his crudely-finished kids furniture to the Market from Springfield, on a bike cart. He's featured in what I think was local writer William L. Sullivan's first book, called The Cart Book, published in 1983. I have a copy because I am in it too, and it's a cool slice-of-Eugene from that time. Lots of young Market people and Eugene people are featured in it, as well as many of the carts that led to the ones familiar to our town now.

Bob was 72 in that interview, and Bill tells about the little scrap-material xylophones Bob used to spread out on his little tables for kids to play during the day, which he said was his real pay. I'm looking at one of the little rocking chairs I bought for my son, paying less than $10 as I recall. Since my son was born in 1990, I guess Bob must have still been there then, which means he was still hauling that trailer in his 80's. I wonder now how much that inspired me.

I remember my ex- coming home with a car for me when I was pregnant, a car I didn't want and grudgingly adapted to. I still have the same car, and hope to keep it for those loads I really can't do without it. There are many places it is just too inconvenient to bike to, and after my surgery I appreciated it a lot once I could drive. Bob had a car too, and I'm thinking he just kept it in case he ever got old. He said "If I'm as old as I act, I'm 25."

His cart was a homemade affair of steel or aluminum plate and tubing, longer than mine and with what looks like a bike-tube hitch. The hitch I have on my hauler, one of the most handy features, is a superior piece of gear, one thing that makes the price worth it. Plus the powdercoat frame and diamond plate deck of my trailer are just so slick that I don't have to hide it in my setup. I'm so proud of my deal, but Bob hauled 260 pounds, he said, and to be realistic, I need to develop a process for getting my load down to less than 200 if I really want to be doing this in my 80's. Raven and I agreed yesterday that was our goal, as we admired his new popup. I might get one, but I don't know about adding 35 pounds to my load for something that won't even do that well in the rain, and technically requires weights to hold it down.

Plus, everybody has those, and one thing I am attached to in my life is what I would call my maverick tendencies if McPalin hadn't ruined the term. I like resourcefulness and doing more with less and being flexible and unique. My DIY is a huge part of my self-image. I'm a throwback. I haven't gotten the full use out of my white fire-resistant tarp yet, and I do like the way those drain off the back, and the way the old-style booths can be lifted one piece at a time.

I'm not sure I can handle the effort of the pop-up popping up. Lots of people get a person at each corner to help them, but I don't like to ask people to help me set up. I suppose if I were next to Raven every week we could help each other, but I think I'll stick with my classic booth. I know how it works, and I only need it on rainy days. It fits on my cart, sort of. I can put it up myself, though it worked better with two, and I think of my ex- when I use it. A two-person team can do a really efficient market set-up. I'm tempted to ask someone to be a team with me for the booth setting-up Olympic event at the Big Birthday Party (May 9 at the Park Blocks), but actually, I only have so many set-ups left in this old back, so I am trying to sensibly pass. I'll be a cheerleader instead. Not that I will be recreating the leaps of my cheerleader past.

Bob said, "The culture has made it compulsory to work for the other guy. It's a new kind of serfdom--to a materialistic society. Sure, people say they've got to make money so they can eat, but they even eat too much. I don't think we're as happy as we would be..." He thought a money-less world would work, and some parts of it might, but I don't think we can throw that far back. Still, he found his place at Market like so many of us who wanted something different. We made it so, despite the compromises we have to make to do it now (liability insurance, fire extinguishers in every booth, security, credit cards, inspectors, rules and more rules as we come up with new ways to get around the old rules.) You can't do it with a blanket now, though I guess you can still do it with a wagon and a sign, and people still try every kind of minimal setup you could imagine. Not that I'm against minimal. I've tried lots of ways to get out of stepping up to what looks like hard work, but usually found that it ended up being harder to do it simple than it was to do it conventional. Not always.

He was a shy guy and an oddity and I do try for a little less of that eccentricity in my own life, but I remember my affinity for Bob and my grief at the memorial set up at his favorite spot back in those niches in the stone walls on the west block. I guess he and another octogenarian, Carol Jacobs, the mathematician who sold triangles of cloth made into a multipurpose tool for carrying everything (The Burden Cloth) are two of my Market Heroes.

More than 10% of Saturday Market vendors have been members for more than 20 years. We're there for as long as we can be. We work to make it simpler, lighter, and easier each year, and we get more help from our family and neighbors and maybe new neighbors as we move to the 4x4s as Carol did. There are lots of ways to do it, and I have faith that the Market Board and staff will continue to work toward sheltering us and assisting us when they can. I think Bob got a free booth space in those last years. I probably won't get that, and I have a long way to go until I hit my 80's, but I don't object to free booth spaces for people who bring so much history with them. It might add up to way too many of us though.

Sixty isn't old! I have changed a bit since the days shown in the book. So has the Market (we were on the butterfly lot then) and so has the technology. My old cart was made by someone who runs a very successful company that now focuses on accessibility in construction, and has changed the world for the disabled and elderly. My first cart then erected into a triangular booth made of two-by-twos (didn't hold up, though it was an elegant concept) and I did it with a car for lots of years in the middle when I had a child and a playpen and a big crop of t-shirts. My folding table of last year has morphed into my present boothless setup that depends on zipties (even bungies have been replaced). Each piece of that rack weighs 26 pounds, I discovered last night, so maybe I have to go further. I talked with Elise after market about figuring out a way for her to turn her shelves into a ramp so she can get up the steps, because there is always an elegant solution if you keep looking for it.

Bob's gone, but his little chair hasn't aged a bit. I search it now for remnants of his personality, the familiar signature, the way he didn't varnish the center of the underside of the seat (waste not, want not), and the way he carefully carved the spokes and rails, stopping short of removing the pin-holes from the lathe, and every splinter. The marks of his tools and hands are all over the chair. He said in the article he spent five hours on a chair he sold for $5. I wonder how many people will work for $1 an hour today.

I know I will, if it means I can still stand in the sun on the Park Blocks and watch little kids smile. It's a really, really good life. Thank you, Saturday Market, for providing so many with a home and family.

Appreciation to Tyler, my fabricator from Human Powered Machines, who stopped by yesterday, and for all the others who make it all work, protect it, or just watch and approve.

And thanks, Bob, for doing it your own way.

It was Pluto

Pluto in Capricorn, that is the one causing all the secrets to come out. I think the effect it is having on me is that I expect things to be exposed, so I help it along. At last night's meeting, I just silently willed someone to ask a particular question, and they did! I'm not really supposed to contribute, when I'm taking minutes, so I try to keep my opinions to myself and reserve input for procedural things, like whether or not I should keep minutes during executive sessions. (The answer is no, though I would love to. Not that anything juicy might be going on, but it could be, and I definitely want to listen.)

Sometimes that is very difficult, and sometimes I do speak, but I have found that if I wait, there are almost always others who are having the same concerns. As with volunteering, many times if you step aside, others will come forward who might have seemed to be willing to let you do it all. Things work better if people who might hang back are given the space to step forward. They won't do it if the over-enthusiastic are always jumping to the front, dominating. It takes practice to let the silence settle when no one volunteers, and not be the first to fill it.

I had thought about some behind the scenes collusion to make the discussion happen last night, but vetoed that as dangerous. That tangled web again. Funny to think I am guided by something I heard at age seven but that does seem to be the case. I'm sure it was the reinforcement of that over the years that cemented it in place. I'm grateful for a moral compass of some kind, though, even if it did come with some shaming, because obviously she was letting me know that I was a little liar back then when I was her daughter's best friend. Survival trumps morality, with us humans.

In my work world, I printed something yesterday that came out kind of bad. The separations hadn't been made properly because I forgot to give the client, who was also the artist, strict instructions on how to make them, and the deadline was very tight so I didn't do all the pre-press checking I usually do when it is my art. By the time I remembered all the ways I make sure my results are the best possible, the stuff was almost finished and I knew she wasn't going to be happy with it. It wasn't a lot of shirts, so I took a tiny little brush and fixed most of the places where the two colors hadn't quite met perfectly.

I have often resorted to the tiny brush. One time I missed a section of a color completely and had to go back and paint in a lot of shirts, and I always have to repair hat prints because it is very hard to print those pesky things with that seam down the middle. It's embarrassing to admit to the client that I made bad products. Even though I have a fairly cavalier attitude about it ("It's just a t-shirt!"), the clients and the retail customers really do expect perfection. Here's one I had to do over, because I got the kerning a bit wrong, and it seemed to say "JUST ICE". That one bit hard, because I did them for free. Twice.

My favorite story about that is when I made some shirts a long time ago, for Nice Rice the original, which said "Fresh Squeeze" for their orange juice. When I was crafting the hand drawn letters, I left out the U in squeeze (Freudian, I know). I printed the 50 shirts, all handsigned because he wanted that, and it took a couple of weeks before a little kid said "Mommy, what is sqeeze?" No one had noticed. I had to redo the art, the screens, and print 50 more for free.

Here's the second version, almost worn out. I have one of the originals, probably buried in a deep hole. On Pluto. We call those kinds of things "collector's items."

Perfection is an unrealistic expectation, but not to most customers. They're paying 'good money' and they have no idea of all the variables which have to be aligned to create consistency and high quality. It's not that I'm lazy, but things happen. Sometimes it is really not my fault. Sometimes it is.

I didn't tell my customer yesterday about the little brush, though I skated around it. I told her I use one all the time, and I told her that I am not a perfectionist and my feelings wouldn't be hurt if she found another printer who is. You couldn't tell from the shirts that I had fixed them, and I told her about the art preparation problem so we could do better next time. So, not full disclosure, unless she reads this or gets out a magnifying glass. Or unless Pluto conspires with some other planet and the things wash funny or something. Or unless I am fooling myself, which is likely.

In any case, I will have to re-do the art and screen for next time because she loves the design and will want more, and I am enough of a people-pleaser to want her to be satisfied. I suspect she is a perfectionist. I should find out her birthday. Maybe I ought to ask clients about it first thing, and not take on any Virgos.

Really I want a more forgiving world. One thing that was so perfect about the Jell-O art is that it wasn't controllable, and perfection wasn't even an issue. I have tried over the years to build in some slop so I wouldn't have these kinds of problems with my own shirt designs, and I don't do the kind of precision work I used to. As my vision has changed, I appreciate a more fuzzy outlook. It's wearing to constantly strive for perfection. I'm not convinced it even exists.

But perfectionists are still out there. Some of my clients haven't given up on it like I have. I posted a sign on my wall that says: Price, Quality, Speed: Pick two.

You can't have it all. You do get to choose which parts have to ease so you can keep the stress level down. At some point I am going to retire from custom work and just do my own, so I can eliminate the pressure of trying to meet someone else's expectations. I will try to retire my own inner critic when I do that, and find ways to only do work that can be fuzzy and flawed and still just right. I might have to change media though. Ever since we got these newfangled computer things, everyone expects life to look just like it does on the monitor screen: brilliant sharp color, infinite detail, precise alignment, a gazillion colors in the palette.

I'm going in the other direction. See me for your funky, crooked, uneven prints. I'll lend you a tiny brush and some gold and silver paint if you want to fix 'em up. We need to prize the variation that comes with hand-cut separations and ink mixing without a formula and a scale and a brand new color matching system swatchbook.

I'll just tell people I'm from Pluto, the not-even-a-planet, where we don't care about perfection, but always tell the truth. Somewhat imperfectly.

NRE

I have total New Relationship Energy for my new blog. It's cracking me up. Someone I know from another site called it the Narcissistic Souffle.

I just have so many things I want to write about. Quite a few people have remarked positively on my writing, which I love and can admit, crave a little. Though I do not so much crave criticism. Don't deflate my egg whites.

I journal on another site, which shall remain unnamed, as it is a "dating site" where I discuss more intimate topics. They have comment systems which work really well, and over the couple of years I have been there, a super journal community has developed, and many people have met, and even married through those connections.

We had a small meetup this week when someone from England came on a PNW tour and drove all the way down from Vancouver to meet me! It was pretty thrilling. Last summer I had a weekend party with a whole crew of folks I had never met. It squicked out my son (internet people are weird, you know) but it turned out really well for me and for those who came from all over the US. Meeting in person makes you real and heightens the intimacy we have developed there from reading each other's journals for all this time. It can be a middle-distance experience, like this one is, when you don't get to talk about it through the comments or in person. But that sets up expectations, too, like the expectation of some anonymity, which is a false one, these days.

I haven't really "dated" on that site, because I am such an isolationist, but I have certainly learned more than I would ever have in a lifetime of relationships about how to be an adult, and a person in connection with others. I think a lot of internet people are more isolated than they might wish to be, and the changes places like (okay, I'll tell, okcupid) Facebook have brought are mostly positive. You have to laugh about people Twittering to each other around the Market during the day, but it just adds to the fun. I used to complain about people being on phones at OCF ("I AM at the chicken booth, what chicken booth are you at?") but that is almost out-of-date now. I am out-of-date, in more ways than one. I don't really want to be in constant communication with a bunch of people. But I do check my FB news feed all the time.

I have learned that middle-distance is way more comfortable for me, and very often I choose not to engage, when engagement is exactly what is called for. I like that I am forced to, at Market, I see that I tend to bring some kind of job to most of my social situations. Even with this week's meetup, I thought it was my job to show this visitor something life-changing about Eugene. Turns out what he wanted was to find out something possibly life-changing from me. About me. Talk about your souffle.

I do have things to tell, like we all do. That's why I write. Most of my short stories are really just thinly veiled nonfiction. I process through writing, and I journal every day. I have different types of journals, for different subjects, but the closest I have gotten to publishing is this right here. On the dating site I have a screen name, but because FB uses real names so often, something I like about it a lot, here I can be identified as me. It's scary and also really great. It takes away one of my major excuses regarding publication, that I won't like the exposure.
Fiction is another way of limiting the exposure, though lots of readers project autobiography on authors, and my style would definitely foster that. So what, I guess. I don't really need to hide my past at this point. And I don't really need to hide who I am, for the most part.

I'm trying to face the fact that at the end of my life, most of this one little person's life will go to the dump. No one is going to read my dozens of journals, and probably I wouldn't really want them to. My golden words may already be concretions and goodness knows my Jell-O Art Museum will not be able to pay the utilities to keep itself open (though you never know, do you?) Even this blog, as it grows, will fade away. I have a couple of hundred entries at my other site, and no one is ever going to read all the way to number one. Even my biggest fan.

However, if I don't explain Fishhead Barbie, she will be buried in plastic crap like so much expired mayonnaise. If I do explain her, somewhere on the intertubes, someone will chuckle. Whether or not their life will change is not really important. What is the coolest thing about this rapidly devolving or expanding universe we find ourselves in, is that I can throw my stuff out there right now, and feel meaning in that. It will please me. And that is the best reason to get up and do that I can come up with.

I know I'm an extraordinary snowflake just as important as all of the other billions of us in this blizzard. I can see that I am so much more important to myself than to anyone else. Since I didn't manage the 30-year marriage as I expected and I am at middle-distance with pretty much everyone, this is my best avenue to expansion, journaling to myself and throwing it out into the tubes to whatever end it finds. It's exhilarating. I will look stupid, I guarantee.

So I will talk more about my Jell-O, and might end up writing a thinly-veiled fiction about the Radar Angels too. I have some people coming over tomorrow to view the Jell-O, which I haven't been able to put away yet, and I hope I will hear some of the stories again, the ones that are the same stories I tell but with completely different facts. Because it really is all fiction, when you come right down to it. We take our dreams and our viewpoints and our memories and whip them all up into our versions of the standard recipes, and that makes the banquet that we get to taste before it becomes garbage.

That's one of the things I love about the Jell-O show, the end, when people toss their art into a black plastic bag and drag it to the can. I don't do that, of course, because of my lofty self-importance, but I know it will be inevitable. I watched Sunshine Cleaning last night in my exhaustion. I just hope there isn't too much blood in my recliner, or Jell-O stuck to my floor, at the end.

Oh, and Fishhead Barbie? Barbie as an icon for the feminine needs no explanation, and she was often present in Jell-O art until she was largely replaced by marshmallow peeps. Putting the fish head on her was a stroke of genius, because I was making so many big-world Fish things at the time, and it took her from beauty to something vaguely slimy and dirty. Connotation is everything in Jell-O. She became my alter ego in my displays, representing what I was doing in each particular year. She can be found in lots of my old Jell-Os on mcwho_photos on photobucket (I will go there now and organize my albums, promise). She finally fell apart after being immersed in a soapdish bathtub of Jell-O which rotted (the smell of rotten Jell-O is just like cow manure, if you were wondering) but I thought it would be good to bring her back for one last appearance.

Of course, she will live forever now, on the internet. At least until the big Sun Spot.