The one where I bitch about my frustrating day, really, seriously, don’t even read this post

Is that not the creepiest thing you’ve ever seen? I made it for Aunt Gay and Uncle Joe more than 20 years ago (it’s held up well) and as I’ve had a lot of people asking me about gnomes lately, I’ve been meaning to snap a photo of it. I didn’t line it up very well (I was being attacked by thorns while taking it) but he’s pushing a wheelbarrow full of flowers.

Normally I’ve been writing my daily recaps in the morning of the next day, but I don’t even want to think about today tomorrow, so I’m writing this before I go to bed; I’ll just set it to appear magically first thing Monday morning.

This day can go DIAF. You know, I didn’t want to fire the kiln on Saturday. I think that’s why I took so long to finish up the big thing that was going in there — I knew the plates were going to explode again and I knew something would go wrong with the big thing I was making, and … I just knew it! I KNEW IT IN MY BONES. So last week when I was supposed to be glazing I kept not finishing, and the Friday came around and I was supposed to fire the kiln and I didn’t, and I did it Saturday, reluctantly, and SURE ENOUGH when I opened it this morning those damn plates had exploded again. One of them was brand new (new bisque, new glaze) and one of them was carefully cleaned in rubbing alcohol and reglazed and refired. AND STILL. So I’m cursing and trying not to slam things and Tim was all, “well this [ big thing ] looks really good” and I was all, “HIS EYEBROWS SUCK!” (mostly because I only did one coat on his eyebrows and I should have done two and you really can’t tell he has eyebrows at all and really? one more thing? SURE! I only fired the kiln with three things in it, sure, they can all suck, whatever, can I have a beer?). These plates are killing.me. I feel so terrible that my customer has everything EXCEPT THIS ONE PLATE which at this point has taken two months longer, and likely to take longer than that. I feel small, and untalented, and really it’s not even that it takes talent, it takes SKILL, which I spent today telling myself that I didn’t have.

So I went to dye some yarn while I was doing paperwork and whatnot, Sunday being OFFICE DAY, and some of what I was dyeing was black and white. And I was doing the black, poured the dye in there, and then – not realizing that I had somehow gotten black dye on my hand, reached up and pulled on the white part of the yarn to swirl it around in the pot… leaving a black hand print on the white part of the yarn. I can’t believe I call myself a professional.

At this point I’d kind of had it with the day, even though it was only about 2 in the afternoon, so I went to run a few errands, including going to the grocery store to get stuff to make lasagna for dinner (even though by now I worried that should I try to touch the oven, I might burn down the house). While running my errands I started texting with my friend Erin, who also wanted to get out of the house today, so we decided to meet for snacks and beers and she, being awesome, talked me off the ledge. Even though when I had run home in between going to the grocery store and meeting her, I had the idea that I could just overdye the white/black yarn solid black (which was a great idea)… and just as I had that idea I realized I hadn’t bought any cheese to put in the lasagna. So after beer and chatting, I went back to the grocery store.

When I came home, I redid the black yarn and also flipped over the other yarn I was dyeing; it was white and silver and blue. I’d done the silver and was getting ready to do the blue, and OMG GUESS WHAT HAPPENED. No, really; guess. I’ll wait. … … … Did you guess that I didn’t notice that I got blue dye on my hand and touched the white and silver parts of the yarn? And got blue on it? If that’s what you guessed, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT.

Pretty soon after that I got into my pajamas and poured a drink.