Like Juggling while Herding (more) Cats…
(or Belly Timber’s new adventures in Portland, a three part introduction)
2. In which MizD goes crazy with the crafty thing.
Freshman year of high school, I had an English teacher I couldn’t stand. I’ll call her Ms. Rhubarb. Ms. Rhubarb was new to our school and had her own peculiar way of seeing things. This way included the rather brazen assumption that her Freshman English class was the single most important class of my entire high school career. Now, don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an academic slacker. If anything, I was a nerd. The sort of nerd who cluelessly wore flowered underwear under white pants, and never missed a day of class even if it meant pockets stuffed with Kleenex and cough drops. I did my work for Ms. Rhubarb, but apparently my nerdly efforts weren’t good enough.
"She takes on too many things," she announced at my parent-teacher conference, "Theater and soccer and art classes and all these other extra-curricular activities. She needs to focus."
My math teacher nodded in agreement. At least I assume he did — I haven’t been good at math since sixth grade.
My mom (who’s always appreciated my scattershot attempts at finding life’s purpose) searched for something appropriate to say.
My advisor, who was, thankfully, also my theater teacher and had a rather Gandalfian presence which served him well, rose to my defense. "If she can’t try all these different things now, when can she try them?"
Ms. Rhubarb, who would have been fearful of a follow-up firebolt had she any interest whatsoever in genre fiction, backed down, muttering all the while that one day she would be proven right. My appalling lack of focus would do me in.
And to this day (conveniently ignoring the "now" part of my advisor’s remark) I am still determined to prove her wrong.
Oh, I have a calling. It’s not that I don’t have a calling. It’s simply that my calling is rather…
Okay, I admit it. It’s scattered.
Playwriting, fabric art, painting, film, comics, sculpture, decoupage Easter egg depictions of the complete works of John Norman… Honestly. Do I have to make up my mind?
Now, here’s the thing. For the past twenty months, I’ve been on a crafty starvation diet. Oh, I’ve had my compy and my camera and my sketch pad here and there, but damn, the craving for my old art supplies has been extreme.
And now that I’ve got access to them again at long last…
And now that I need to buckle down and kick some freelancing butt…
Well, the short ending to all this is, yes, I’m working with Chopper to build a personal chef business, but that’s not all: I’m rebuilding my arts and crafts studio and I’m hitting the marketplace. With a vengeance.
Scattered, you say, Ms. Rhubarb? Just watch me.
Next up: Part 3: In which we embark upon the rescue of our wayward house.
Note: This is a repost, as the first edition was devoured in a server crash, with chocolate sprinkles on top. Some of the first edition’s comments and final edits may have gone the way of the Seven Up Bar; my apologies to all.
November 17th, 2006 at 12:47 am
I love that drawing, Miz D! That’s how our 3-cat household feels sometimes. Speaking of households, can’t wait for Part 3.
(BTW, what happened to Part 1?)
November 17th, 2006 at 1:26 am
Wow, Kimberly, you’re up as late as I am, again!
Also — ack! Thanks for catching that. Erm, Wordpress has an odd habit of occasionally switching a post to “private†after I’ve reopened it in edit mode. It should be back now. :-) (For a horrifying second, I thought I’d pasted over the last post with the new one — yikes!)
November 17th, 2006 at 9:18 pm
Mm, I recognize myself a bit in that (well, not the flowered underwears part…).
My particular Ms Rhubarb was a he, but he did his job well too!
November 17th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
Ha! Scattershot is where I live. Knitting? Crochet? Sewing? Felting? Beading? Soapmaking? Dyeing? General Crafting of all sorts? Cooking? I love em all, do them all damn well. Not a thing wrong with that.
Can’t wait to see what you’re putting out there! If only I could get focused enough to *sell* some of my craftyness, it’d be great :-P
November 17th, 2006 at 9:21 pm
Hi miss souris! I bet just about everyone had a Ms or Mr Rhubarb somewhere in their past. Not many of us around here listened, eh? BTW, I had a good friend who came to my rescue on flowered underwear day and loaned me a sweater to tie around my waist. Phew!
Hey Kathy, join meeeeeee. Join meeeeeee!
You know, I live just a few blocks from Abundant Yarn & Dyeworks here in PDX, if you ever want to get together for a yarn store excursion. Also: Soapmaking — cool! That’s one thing I’ve yet to try.
November 17th, 2006 at 9:22 pm
Miz D,
I seriously like that drawing. I want to own an original Miz D.
And although I did get sent to the principal’s office once (for missing recess because I was reading) I mostly had all my teachers snowed — even the phys ed coaches who were impressed with my willingness to try to overcome my “severe” asthma.
November 22nd, 2006 at 9:28 pm
Kevin, thank you! (And sorry your comment disappeared in the server crash immediately after posting!)
I may not have had many teachers snowed, but a few of my classmates were rather confused about me. During the spring months, my eyes were always bloodshot from hayfever, and oh, I can’t count the times I was mistaken for a total stoner!
November 27th, 2006 at 1:55 pm
just bumped into this while traversing the world of food blogs and was quite happy to have encountered a fellow epicurial thespian. was chuckling at the picture of a food poisoning opening for a play…
hope to visit again soon.
cheers!
November 28th, 2006 at 11:49 pm
ccw, thanks for stopping by! As I get back into doing more crafts, I may dig out a theatrical story (or prop) or two! Hope to see you around!