Groundhog Day

So, there will be six more weeks of winter. What else is new?

This morning, on the way to work, I saw some cows playing soccer. Or, at least that's what it looked like. They were circled up, "kicking the ball around", prodding with their noses and their hooves at this rolling black and white object , but that just turned out to be a very happy black & white puppy that was rolling around doing somersaults. Upon closer inspection, the cows seemed more bewildered and curious than competitive. It made me laugh, anyway.

I really need an extra day to recover from my weekend. Saturday's card party was fun. A few people called and canceled at the last moment. PW did bring some chairs, and no one had to sit on the floor. It was a very humbling experience because none of the people I had here are creative. Only two showed some promise: one was able to copy cards I had made, and the other was able to show a sense of refinement in her card-making style. The other five? Well...let's just say that I spent a lot of time running around helping solve problems and answer questions. I was able to make one card, but only after everyone left. I kept gathering materials at my spot getting ready to make my card, but when I would get back from helping someone with their problem/question, something from my stack was invariably missing. Not a problem. After three hours, I made my one card, and then cleaned up. I wish I had had a camera handy to take a picture of the huge mess we made!

And only one person failed to respect my property. That is, she was oblivious to the care, storage and conservation of items, even after I modeled several times. She pressed the stamps into the stamp pads so hard that now all the woodblocks for those stamps are stained on the corners. She took stamps out of their sets and put them in other containers when she was finished. She didn't clean the stamps off before she put them back, and I tried to go back and clean them all, but I missed a few that are now permanently pink-tinged. I kept reminding the girls that mistakes were okay, that every piece of card stock has two sides, and I still found a pile of shredded card stock by her seat when she left where she had used one side of the whole piece (for some reason she was folding them in half to make huge cards instead of using the pre-sized cards I gave her...) and then decided she didn't like it, so ripped it up. She left stamp pads sitting open for extended periods of time after she was done with them. And she would leave stamps sitting on the ink pads. Once, when Coco came out, I asked her to close the dormant stamp pad so that he wouldn't track red ink everywhere, so she took the stamp that was sitting on the pad off and set it directly on the table, and closed the pad. She didn't set the inked stamp on the gigantic piece of paper that was her work surface. No. She set it directly on the table. I swear. I now have a permanent red smudge on the wooden tabletop as a souvenir. ::sigh:: It was very painful for me to deal with all these situations in a loving, forgiving way, when I really just wanted to scream. It was also very humbling to see my up-until-now well-kept items being marred by carelessness. I would like to say that I won't invite her over for crafty stuff again, but it's too late for that already. She and her fiancee came over Sunday and we made more cards. I will say, however, that it was much easier to monitor her when there were just two of us than with eight other people around. Sheesh.

So, I've given you a hint as to what Sunday held. Eli decided that since the apartment was already clean (a selfish endeavor of mine, he said...haha) that he would invite people over to watch the Super Bowl. I had asked some of the wives if they were coming (discreetly, I thought) but they didn't think so, and that's how my crafting disaster friend found out that we were having people over, so I had to open up the invitation. And then one of the college girls I had invited to Saturday didn't come (though she had RSVPed) so after church on Sunday, I invited her over in the evening. She came and brought her boyfriend. So really, the whole crazy weekend thing is my own fault since it was my people and their respective entourages that came for the Super Bowl. If I had just kept my big mouth shut...

And I think that's it for now. I'm in the middle of a book and I really should go read. Cheers!