The Legs Fall Off If You Move It

I would like to apologize to whomever it was I disagreed with when whomever told me “Bad Santa” was a funny movie. Seriously. High-larious, except when interspersed with 21,000 repetitions of Sarah McLachlan and those damn ASPCA weepy eyed animals.  And, wow. Is this the movie that has the most uses of the f-word in the history of human speech? Wow. Even for me.

In between baking and cleaning up from baking (which is way less fun than baking), I got the new computer hooked up. It is a vast improvement over its predecessor, believe me. The monitor has been driving the kittens batty, what with chasing the cursor all around the HD screen, and that, as you might imagine, makes it hard to type or do anything except try to peer between their warm fuzzy little backs and execute all sorts of dive-bombing cursor maneuvers for their enjoyment. 

Off now for this week’s episodes of Hoarders on A&E.

The business plan is finally done.  And thank the sweet baby Jesus and the golden fleece he’s wrapped in. It was harder and took longer than I expected. I had this picture in my head that I had a difficult time translating into words for potential investors.  I sent the final copy off to several people smarter than I am for a sanity check, and the money hunt will start in earnest with the new year.

I saved this little bit that was originally written into the business plan, but cut out in one of the thousand revisions – “Quite simply, when you need a used glass taxidermy deer eye, this is going to be the place to get it, plus vintage ric rac and some cough drop wrappers.” I know that would have made the investors line up in droves, but I took it out anyway.

I would also like to thank my husband, the espresso maker he gave me (early) for Christmas and Wendy’s applewood smoked bacon for supporting me during this phase of our development.

Major cookie baking scheduled to commence shortly – snickerdoodles, frostbite cookies (oatmeal raisin dipped in white chocolate, with raisins zapped in the microwave in orange juice first), frosted lemon cookies, and white chocolate macadamia – and maybe some of the cake-style gingerbread with apple cider sauce, and some of my grandmother’s ambrosia. And, since I have this great Jell-O cookbook I’ve never made use of, I’m going to have a lovely cherry gelatin surprise for Christmas dinner tomorrow. That sounds like a lot, doesn’t it? Maybe that’s too much. Or, maybe I can find someone to take some of the cookies off my hands.

And, when my knees give out as they surely will, I have about 80 hours of sorting, cleaning and pricing to do with all the stuff in the dining room and garage. I do and do for you people.

So, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. Let me know if you’d like a cookie.  Only some have been licked.

PS – Martha Stewart’s Craft of the Day is a recycled six pack snowflake. This year, you are on your own to seek out 12 six pack holders. Next year, I got your back.

PPS — A vote of confidence, or vote of crazy, from Mom for Christmas.

Love Mabel.  Love, love, love.  She wants to do a road trip to San Antonio to see some guy who reportedly has a school bus full of lace and beads.  So, that sort of demands to be seen, doesn’t it?

With the site up and getting more traffic than I expected (hello friends, strangers and stalkers), I am now going to let you talk amongst yourselves and concentrate on finishing the fracking business plan.   See you on the other side.

PS for those of you interested in the kitten/tree situation – Problem solved with slingshot.

Turns out, the boxes of shoes are AWESOME, and the leather is AWESOME too. After the Conroe trip and meeting two exceptionally nice people, I motored on over to an estate sale and hit the mother lode of big wooden spools and darning eggs and shoe forms. Also a great crazy quilt that’s in heinous condition and three little Chinese milking stools and a cast iron birdbath. So cute. The birdbath with be a display item and will hold something — doll heads or beads or McDonald’s toys. Who knows what.

What is really interesting about all of this so far is how nice everybody has been. Seriously, without exception, everyone I have talked to about this endeavor has been encouraging and helpful and so very nice. What a change from my previous work life.

Kitten update — Kittens 85, Me & the Tree 3. It’s not looking good for the decor this year but no one notices that except me, I’m sure. The house has been kicking up my OCD tendencies for about a week because of all the holiday decorating disarray. I think that’s all over now, so I can carry on with my normal life again. Another OCD high point — antibacterial hand wipes in the car so I don’t have to FREAK OUT about my hands not being washed. So, those and a giant magic marker and a box cutter make up my current emergency kit in the car. Never know when you might need to cut someonething, you know?

General inventory rundown for those of you interested in such things:
1. Ton o’ cigar boxes
2. Ton o’ yarn (about 3/4 is is acrylic, leaving 500 pounds to be wool or blend)
3. Decent lot of beads — mostly glass and bone
4. Decent pile of felt
5. Good number of old photos and some cabinet cards

6. Good amount of vintage linen and doily-type things (OCD bothered by the sudden switch to double space, but no time to investigate now.  Promise that I’ll worry about while I’m doing other things, though.)

7.  More law books than can be imagined

8.  Some vintage Xmas decor, including some bottle brush wreaths that are decorated with very tiny old mercury ornaments.

9.  Lots of single shoes, ages very little to very big

10. Some really nice leather pieces in a rainbow of colors

11. Misc containers, coffee cans, cardboard tubes, bottle caps and other such.  Oh, and one label that covered the silver spout on the Morton’s salt I just bought yesterday.  Got it off without tearing, which counts as another success in my business day.  Now all I need is another 2,485 and someone could make something out of those.

Oh, and ha. Guess what I found in the living room today? Besides the 14 ornaments on the floor, although that was a good guess. Yes, I found a piano. And, in front of that piano was a piano bench with a stack of music books on top. This is funny, because I’ve been keeping my eye out (ow) for sheet music and have been finding none. There is an auction warehouse sale I have scheduled for tomorrow specificially to see the sheet music they have advertised. Anyway, on top of this bench are books filled with sheet music. So, that was funny.  Duh.  Right there.  And then I picked out a book of Christmas songs and sat down to play for a minute, which I haven’t done in years, and plinked out a few things. Pretty bad, and mostly melody only. So, was there a point here? Yes, there was. It was this — while I’m sitting there congratulating myself on discovering this sheet music, it dawns on me that the piano bench opens up, that there’s a little storage area underneath and stored there is … what? Homemade jam and some potatoes and onions for the hard winter ahead? Nooooo, it’s more sheet music. So that made me laugh some more. Maybe you had to be there.

Now I’m off to Mabel’s house to see what she has for me.

Is there anybody out there? I wonder if anyone will ever read these words I am slaving over. I don’t mean these words right here, I mean the words on the Art Asylum website. I’m slaaaaaaving over them, choosing each like it is the perfect pearl. I should seriously get over myself and get on with it. There are a lot of other things to do, and it’s still not showing up in google searches anyway, so I can fiddle with it later.

The plan for all of this communication is:
1. Blog occasionally to let people know what’s going on, tell funny stories about people and things along the way, and help create the sense of community that is necessary to become the tribe you can trust.

2-3. Facebook and Twitter. Argggghhhhhh. I get Facebook less than I get the Twitter concept. With Twitter, I figure I can send out something that says, “This just in — a giant box of teeth. Plus, velvet flowers.” And the people will rejoice. I guess you do the same thing with Facebook, because not everybody is on both? Or do people get everything x2? Seems like that would be irritating.

4. Emails to a customer list, once there’s a customer list — this should include upcoming events from the marketing calendar, maybe pictures of stuff people have made, and links to the This Just In page that doesn’t exist yet.

In today’s news — Made some progress on the website, including those annoying page descriptions and metatag things, and have almost finished the first page.  I have had to scale back the lofty promise of the whole endeavor several times, because, it’s broken irons and old law books, you know? 

On the agenda for tomorrow, more exploits in the field:

1. A trip to Conroe to pick up 87 single (meaning unmatched) shoes from a nice lady who is driving them from somewhere north of Huntsville.  Can’t wait to hear how they came to be in her possession;

2.  Meeting another lady in Conroe to look at some leather and;

3.  Seeing if that nice Mabel lady that packed my car so full of yarn a couple weeks ago that I couldn’t get it into park once I got home has anything else she’d like to clear out of her house.

Today’s business development activities thus far:

1.  Get kitten off the Christmas tree.  Put two tinkly bell ornaments on strategically placed low branches as early warning system.

2.  Drink coffee.

3.  Get kitten off the Christmas tree.  Bells work just fine.

4. Clean old Thanksgiving food out of refrigerator and put scummy pots and pans in sink with delightfully hot water to soak.

5.  Get kitten off the Christmas tree.

6.  Stop other kitten from LICKING THE GINGERBREAD HOUSE.  Should have held firm with Dennis re: skipping Christmas decor when there are three 7 month old kittens in the house.

7.  Created blog.  Thought of hysterically funny name for it that no one will get unless I recount a long and old story, the details of which are pretty foggy, but which involve a new patio and a smoke detector and an old dumpster grill and some yelling.

8.  Get gd kitten off the gd tree.  Tinkly bell system foiled by kitten stealth.

Still to do:

1.  Finish business plan or die trying.

2. Write front page for main website.

3. Fashion nooses to hang kittens from tree.  That should kill two birds with one stone.   And three kittens, although only one of them is the real tree climber.