Rowan's Journal

But that's ok; I haven't got much else to do right now anyway.

This client who is the mother of one of this year's Renfaire clients, the oh-so-handsome young man who had to drop out of cast because he couldn't make site day. Anyway, she is a delight and has expressed joy at finding a seamstress to work with. She understands (finally) that I don't do alterations but she has a wonderful sense of style and has garments in mind that she wants made. Plus older garments of her mother's that she wants me to recreate. She's tall and gorgeous and a twin; got to meet the other one today, for whom she had me make jammies out of the bamboo velvet velour and then 2 pairs for herself. This is the stuff I've been grousing about on Facebook. It's harder to work on than regular velvet due to being stretchy, so applying non-bias organza around the neck edge as seam binding to finish it is a nightmare but I am just that damned good. She understands enough about sewing to appreciate the difficulty and time it takes.
She's also the first person to actually buy one of my necklace/earrings sets; the one that I mentioned "if it came in silver, I'd want it", well she did.

I have a promising first date tomorrow evening with a very nice man named Gary. He lives in Parkville and works with the School district there. He's a widower and has 4 children with one teenager still living at home. Ages from 15 to 39 or as he described it, "from diapers to Depends." He has hobbies of oil painting and making stained glass, a good sense of humor and a wonderful communicating style; displays a good and not creepy interest in what I'm doing but doesn't email every single day (doesn't cling as the last one did!) He emailed me yesterday with the greeting "Happy Eve of first date" which I told him I thought was both clever and amusing. So wish me luck.

Now I have to go get ready for the great maybe-shows-up, maybe-not, ooops, now I'm in basic training, out of town client. This is WHY I loathe out of town clients and swear I'm not doing this any more! This is the steam punk Little Red (brown) Riding hood one and I'm SO sick of it. Ah well, to finish it soon, I hope.

Getting the new-to-me car back again tomorrow, now with safer tires and wheels! And then I must get it licensed legally; I didn't realize the tag was expired until the tow guy pointed it out. I DO NOT need a ticket on top of everything else. I'm going to have to find out where to go and what I need to take with me (other than the title) because I have no fucking clue. I also need to get my own license updated (birth certificate, old passport, old license) so I might as well do it all at once. OH, and I MUST get to the bank tomorrow to make a big deposit. This car shenanigans have kept me from getting there.

Tonight I'm feeling very hopeful for the next year. I'll take it. No matter the losses and bad events of this year, I'd much rather look into the coming year with hope and anticipation. Hell, if this date goes well, I may even have a date for NYE which would really be a kick; rushing things a lot, but a kick.

And above all, I am incredibly grateful for my lovely friends.

The foot is still quite painful but then, bone bruises last a freakin' long time. It IS a lot better; Star's Reiki helped a lot.

The hand is a concern, too, as the bunch of scar tissue on the heel of my right hand keeps me from using it to apply pressure to anything; it's a sharp pain whenever I do. Not sure what to do about that.

I am going to order a pair of summer shoes that hopefully will not rub or constrain the top of my right foot, without also looking like I'm wearing an old lady shoe.

And I'm fighting the baby slugs for my strawberries. That 'bowl of beer' thing does NOT work at all.

Crickets in the dating department. The mid-30's doctor just disappeared; oh well, I hadn't counted on that much either. And if David lived closer, I have no doubt we'd be dating more but he's busy, I'm busy and he lives 2 hours away. I'm not too hopeful on that one, nice as he is.

And work...lots of work.

After the client was here all day Friday working on her dress, I ended up working a 10 hour day but she ran me to my chiro appt and then took us out to lunch so it was great; she's a pretty nifty gal if a bit emo and well, actually a bit crazy but who am I to judge, right? She had a rough time and was hospitalized for awhile after a nervous breakdown. But I believe that being excommunicated from the Mormon Church, I can certainly understand. I'm very fond of her and feel very comfortable with her. Thing is, she and I have gotten pretty close and we have the agreement that we'll be totally candid and so I tell her when I think she's screwing up and why, from the benefit of my screwing up but I do so lovingly. And she takes it well; she may not listen to me but that's part of the deal. I advise her and she gets to take it...or not. But then we discuss it and we're cool. See, that's the deal with a close and loving friendship; you get the chance to tell someone that you think they're full of shit but that you still love them. And then they get the chance to either take that advice or not. She's been there for me lately when I was down, as well. She's the gal who fell through on taking me to Oklahoma for that sewing machine run but it worked out alright. Friends like that, no matter of how long a duration are not friends to toss away lightly.

So I was pretty whopped Friday night but had to get up on Saturday morning anyway. I had to get up to go to some fucking thing but damned if I can remember what it was I had to get up and go to at 10am. Literally wracking my brains and damned if I can remember. Huh, oh well; certainly made an impression on me, whatever it was.

Saturday afternoon I worked on Edina's costume and didn't get enough done. I almost decided not to go but decided at the last minute to make up a quick "what do I have on hand" recipe as I won't go to a pot luck party empty-handed. So I grabbed a jar of yoghurt dressing and a head of broccoli at the store. Then at home, I cut up the dozen or so cherry tomatoes I had, finely chopped about 5 of the broccoli florets, combined with an equal amount of the ricotta cheese and stirred in a cup or so of the dressing. Tasted it and then added a shake of poppy seeds, a dash of vinegar and a shake of Penzey's creamy peppercorn dressing mix.

Then I made sure I was feeling good enough to the birthday party decided to go, and glad I did. Quite a large crowd of choir gals and other friends of the birthday gals. And AMAZING food! I didn't allow myself to get bogged down by pondering who was glad to see me and who wasn't. I did notice that Judy's partner, Judy, wouldn't even look at me much less greet me but since I had pre-determined that I wasn't going to let one person or my insecurities weigh me down, . I didn't let that confirmation of her being upset with me slow me down. I flitted from group to group, conversation to conversation, ate my plate, assumed that I was welcome in every circle of discussion and shared a wonderful, laugh-filled conversation with Tara's partner who is not only a professor but also an expert sewer and museum-rated historical garment curator. We traded sewing disaster stories and horrid client stories, to the amusement of several standing around. Soon as I started feeling a tiny bit anxious about my work pile-up or like I wasn't really fitting it, I said general good-byes to friendly gals and took myself away. I came home and worked on the costume some more and made blueberry/lemon/almond bread for church the next day.

Yesterday, I got up and made the bundt cake but realized I'd screwed up and opened a white cake mix. Crap. So I used three whole eggs rather than just the whites, dumped in the rest of the box of Hershey's chocolate, added a couple teaspoons of mint extract, mixed it all together and then folded in mint chips and the remaining special dark chips and put it into the bundt pan. I thought, "well, if it totally sucks, my entire reputation doesn't rest on this." So I packed it all up and drove to the church which is sort of a mess since they're starting remodeling on the 2nd floor. But it's still lovely there and they so appreciate everything we do. The rehearsal went well and then the service and Heidi's sermon containing stories about Billy Mills, Olympic gold-medalist runner, was really thought provoking.

We went down to prepare the Coffee hour goodies before the last hymn and as usual, Gabi annoyed me by her preoccupation with food and her general cluelessness. I TOTALLY get that this is MY problem and that I'm letting her get to me and that she doesn't intend it; she is just the sort of shallow, self-obsessed, insecure, un-empowered woman that I generally want to slap but I can't because it's truly not her fault at this point. She'll either get it and become a real and vital woman or she'll remain a scared little virginal spinster and turn into her mother plus cats. It makes me nuts. But for her to say, "Oh, there's probably not enough cheese" as she's slicing it and arranging in on a plate, all the while she's eating slice after slice of it, just made me nuts. I finally said, "well, if there's not enough, don't you think you should stop eating it?" and she just said, "but it's so GOOD!" So I sighed and kept slicing the cakes.

It turned out that, rather than being a disaster, both cakes were a hit. I described the not-quite-chocolate cake as "blonde chocolate" and told the process, but not that it was caused by a mistake on my part. Everyone thought it was clever and they really loved it. I did share that the blueberry/lemon/almond bread was my own recipe but didn't have the recipe with me. I do feel some pressure there since the owners of Function Junction go to church there and somehow, impressing them with my cooking and baking seems important to me. And yes, we ran out of cheese quickly. I am trying to suspend judgment and appreciate Gabi for her truly sterling qualities but it's hard. I may have to talk some more to Tony about this because he totally gets it and will help me to find good ways for me to deal with it. That's such a nice friendship 'cause we can each call each other on our shit, ask each other for advice and be silly and enjoy each other's company. I loves me a Tony, who is my gay boyfriend. That makes him chuckle.

Then in the evening I went to KWC rehearsal CD practice. I'm really enjoying working with Lamar; this is a side of him we hadn't yet seen; the light-hearted, talented musician who is empowered to make arrangement decisions and direct us, without any fear of stepping on the toes. Ida made a comment something like, "See how relaxed and easy-going this is?" for which I wanted to slug her. I'm still a bit touchy over Michael's quitting and having her suck up by making a comment like that was insensitive at the very least. Nobody has been comfortable about the obvious elephant in the room but Lamar has taken the high road and shown his professionalism by picking things up and moving on without a beat or a single comment. That was really a tacky thing of Ida to day and to everyone else's credit, we all let it just drop. She really think the world does revolve around her opinions and she really didn't like it that Michael didn't treat her specially as Joe did. She's intimidated by Lamar so she respects him. I'm so glad.

Gabi wasn't at the rehearsal; no clue why. She did say while we were working on clean-up at the church that morning that she was worried about and afraid of Lamar; I kept my mouth shut. The time Lamar jumped down her throat last Fall in rehearsal CD time was when she, and only she, kept dragging and Michael kept reprimanding the whole Soprano section when we ALL knew it was HER. So next time when it was Lamar running rehearsal, he simply said, "Gabi, you're the one dragging; you must keep the proper rhythm and not drag. You're pulling down the entire song" and she found that abusive. I think the rest of us about cheered because it had been making us ALL NUTS. So no wonder she's afraid of Lamar; he won't let her get away lingering on each note because she's enjoying the sound of her own voice. I know she's sensitive enough to realize that she annoys other people but not conscious enough to want to figure out why and to change it. I guess that's part of what drives me so nuts about her.

I must rehearse music today before Elijah rehearsal tonight. I'm in the double quartet and since the other Alto doesn't seem to get the right notes, I MUST be secure on mine so I can hold my own.

One last frustration: I have been wondering why my rent check hasn't cleared my account. I have known that my landlady was selling her house and had bought a condo or something but didn't know the status of her move. I have already established that I don't like calling her because she is so nosy and intrusive and controlling so I hoped that a note would suffice. So last month I included a note with my check asking for her forwarding address when it was appropriate and heard nothing back. This month, I included another note asking for a forwarding address. SO. This morning I get a phone call. From my Landlady. Asking where my check is. So I said, "Well Linda, I mailed it out the 4th. You haven't received it yet?" She said, "no, I haven't" and then said, "Ooooohhh, I haven't given you an updated address?" No, she hasn't. And apparently she has already sold her other house and the new people are living in it in the last month. And apparently she didn't put in a change of address at the post office 'cause she said that the gal living there had called her and told her she had some mail AND HAD DONE A CHANGE OF ADDRESS FOR HER and *I* am the one who is irresponsible and out of touch with reality? Huh. And no, I still do not have her updated address.

And still have not heard from Chip to know if we're going out for my birthday tomorrow. I'm going to send him a chatty, "hey, it's my birthday tomorrow and I feel like steak, wanna help me celebrate?"

Anyway...this is me using my journal as just that; writing stuff out blowing off steam, using this as a place to get stuff out of my head.