Friday, August 06, 2004

Voodoo

Something weird happened today. Michael doesn't like me to tell people about his "voodoo" but I'm going to because no one reads this and I want too.
Today Michael was by himself in our booth over at the Anacortes Arts Festival. I stayed home with the kids. He got a volunteer booth sitter to stay in our booth while he went to the bathroom. After he gets back and the booth sitter has left Michael discovers that someone has gone into his backpack, leaving it open and stolen our digital camera. He immediately calls me and tells me that it's gone. He knows because he NEVER leaves his backpack unzipped. He then says that he has got to find the person who took it. It was obviously not the booth sitter. I ask how are you going to find this person and he says he is going to use his "voodoo".
Michael is a telepath and very psychic. He calls me a couple hours later to tell me that he found the culprit. It was a middle aged woman, well dressed, with long brown hair. He saw her walking on the opposite side of the street from our booth. He caught up with her and invited her into our booth to have some privacy and confronted her. He told her that he knew she had the camera and she could either give it back or he would get the police. At first she denied everything but then she gave him the camera and two pens that she had stolen. It was kinda funny...like the pens mattered. And off she went ... a criminal at large. I bet Michael scared the hell out of her. He is really intense and who knows what he actually said to her to make her believe that he knew that she had the camera. I imagine that he told her some dirty little secret that she had hidden in her mind. He probably blew her socks off!!!
I don't know all the details yet, we didn't have time to really chat about it. Michael said that he had a whopping headache. Poor guy, he really put himself out there to catch this person. He was determined. He was so distraught because it would be such a struggle for us to replace it.
Even if he did the call police what would he have said? "Well officer my psychic vibe says that this woman has my camera" or "I know what she's thinking and she's thinking about my camera".
We did agree that the promoters of the show need to know that a thief is around and to let other vendors know. So he was going to call them and let them know.
Weird huh?
Other than that I feel like I'm fighting off a cold.
Blessings....V

Thursday, August 05, 2004

How to mend a broken heart and other parental challenges

Today my daughter, Xan calls up one of her buddies to wish her a Happy Birthday. I had seen said friends Mom in town yesterday and she told me that today was her birthday. Well come to find out said friend is having a Birthday Party and Xan was not invited. Said friend's Mom felt pretty awful about the whole thing. She is a yacker and went on and on about how bad she felt. Finally I had to tell her that I had to get off the phone and take care of my daughter who's feeling I could tell where hurt.
Poor Xan. She has a broken heart because she is feeling left out and not liked. Poor Me. I have a broken heart because Xan's feeling were hurt. I want to make it all better for her. I want her to be well liked and feel secure in her friendships. I don't want people to blow her off and have her feelings hurt.
We talked. Xan expressed how that in the last month her friend has not been returning phone calls and has snubbed Xan when she has seen her in town. Xan cried and went upstairs to be alone. She came down later and when I asked her how she was doing she said that it felt really good to say out loud how she had been feeling about her friend. We got Xan on the phone and called around and got her a playmate for this afternoon. Someone that she really wants to play with summer and our schedules haven't worked out. So all seems good. But is it? Xan has a few friends in Saratoga and less here on Lopez. All my buttons are being pushed. Are we doing the right thing? Do we need to move back to Lopez , like yesterday, so that she can get involved in the public school so that she can socialize? My baby is lonely and I don't know how to fix it. What a crappy situation!!!! Because we were gone from Lopez for four years she lost all the connections that she had with other kids her age and the reintergration for her has been challenging. Artie remembers all her old friends as they do her but Xan was only 4 when we left and remembers none of her old playmates or they her. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck, Fuck!!!! I worry for my children's' well being.
No one told me that with mothering came such intense emotions and the desire to slay any mere human that would cause my children emotional turmoil. Maybe I need to heed the cliche that rolled off my tongue yesterday like dew off a petal..."Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger". Loneliness, not belonging, feeling like no one likes you, these are all feelings that we all have at all stages of our life. I can't make these things not happen or the hurt to go away...I can only let her know that she's a good person and well liked by more than the few and help her to love herself.
I am going to buy her an address book and let her get the addresses of all her friends here so that while we are away she will keep in touch and keep the friendships going.
Parenting is a difficult task and somewhere along the line I lost the directions!
Blessings.....V

Wednesday, August 04, 2004

It's not a small world after all

It's been a long time since I blogged. I needed to spend some time away to figure out what is this that I am doing. I've decided that I will continue to blog. It is good and cleansing to write.
This weekend we went to the Faerieworlds Festival at a place called "Hornings Hideout" in North Plains, OR. It was attractive to us because we sell M's artwork at the Florida Renaissance Festival and we thought this would be just a fun. It was. I do not know how to do links yet but the web address is www.faerieworlds.com.
Anyway it was a weekend of music (Celtic and ethereal), faerie artists (Brian and Wendy Froud, Amy Brown etc...), and a craft village (people like us). I went with the expectation of learning more about music and making a lot of money. Well, the girls had a blast!!!! They mingled with the faerie artists, got autographs and danced up a storm. Michael and I worked very long hours, we barely slept, and we made a moderate sum of money. Two stores approached M about wholesaling and that is good and exciting. These two stores made our weekend. I learned some about some new bands. I listened to Solas, Woodland, Taarka, Rasputina, and Trillian Green. All of which I liked. Music for some reason is not one of the things that we spend our money on and it was a treat to hear so much of it!!
Now I am back home and today I went to the Froud's website. I learned over the weekend that they are one of the promoters of this event. Ahhh, a light goes on in my head. That is why the festival was the "all about Brian Froud show"! I was thinking it a bit odd over the weekend. Michael had had a conversation with one of the promoters a couple of weeks before the show. They talked about him making commemorative mugs. He did and they were a bust. All that work for not..because everyone there was into getting there Brian Froud print or book signed by Brian Froud. We have about 24 Faerieworlds Festival mugs (with dragon skin and dragon handles) if anyone wants one. We need to have a talk with that certain promoter about the whole thing.
So today I am thinking that it is not a small world after all!!! I spent just about an hour at the Frouds website and that led me to the Mythic Journeys website and I also went to the Desert Sin website. Desert Sin is a dance/performance company in LA that focuses on middle eastern dance and performance art...very cool!!! They look like a bunch of blue Krishnas in their publicity photos. And then I was Comic-con a comic book conference. All of this came from the Frouds and where they have been and what they are doing. There are a lot of people out there doing and experiencing things that I very rarely think about. My world is puny and hopefully not insignificant. Right now my brain hurts with the expanse of humans and thinking of all their puny lives like mine. That's a lot of lives and worlds and experiences. There are so many of us. So many who know and experience so much that I can't even imagine. I feel really, really small at the moment. It's a humbling, good small.
I'm back.
Blessings.....V