Not much going on sort of

Happy Fathers day... We are going to a graduation party today and that is about all the special stuff for today. I have spent most of the last week caning or rather re-weaving a chair.

I got so frustrated that I wandered around the kitchen crying after ripping out all my work 10 times. I just could not see what I was doing wrong. Finally the mote was cleared from my eyes and it made sense. Sheesh that was painful... even after I figured out the pattern it was very easy to mess up and I had to back track several more times after that. 60 hours of labor later though it is finished. The catch is that I under charged him (my fault) and this is just the back of the chair.... it goes back to the refinisher to attach to the chair and then comes back to me to do a whole seat that is even bigger.

I told him in an e-mail that if he got another one I would have to charge $300.00 for it and think twice before accepting the job.

It was good to have it done.

I did take a couple breaks last week. First we all drove to Janesville on Tuesday. I needed to renew my drivers license and Maddie needed to apply for her passport. They dropped me off with my book at the DMV and I jumped through all the weird hoops set up to confuse us. I even managed to pass the eye test (Whoopee!) I actually got done fairly quickly and read a chapter of my book (Thanks Sonja) before Puck and Maddie got back... they had a much longer wait.

On Wednesday a group of us displaced support staff got together at one woman's house for a sort of farewell bitch session. She has a very lovely home in the country and just built a terrific bar in the basement. We sat around and talked and laughed for 5 hours. It was great and wonderful not to be caning a chair.

Thursday Maddie and her boyfriend went to a movie and stopped at Goodwill. She called me saying "Mom, somebody just unloaded a whole crap load of piano rolls and they are priced at 99 cents each, what should I do?" I do have the vintage shop on ETSY so I told her we probably could resell some of them. I instructed her to check them carefully, get only the ones with boxes and cute names. Don't pass on any jazz, blues, or boogie woogie and look for Scott Joplin, and Jelly Roll Morton. We limited it to $50.00 and she came home 2 hours later with a box of piano rolls.

Unfortunately the person was mostly into marches, but there are some fun songs. Red Red Robin, On the Trail of the lonesome pine, On Wisconsin, and more. I carefully soaked the labels off (grrr) and cleaned up the boxes... now I have to photograph them and list them. We shall see.

I spent most of yesterday listing books in my vintage site. It is a little sad, but it is time to set some of them free. I hope I get some hits. I did sell one little pamphlet called George Washington in Verse to a girl stationed in Germany who wanted it for her father for Fathers day. That was very sweet. I hunted up a card and asked if she would like me to write something in it for him. I did and hopefully it got to him in time.

I am still trying to find places for all the crap I cleaned out of my room. I gave away a mess, but still kept a mess as well.

The good news is that Yami is looking much better. I think I will have them do another test when we get to the end of our Ringers bag to double check the diagnosis.