Do you remember those days when you would go to the mall and all along the walkways would be these vendors selling Montana-sized alpaca hats; or woodsy looking men seated beside their hand carved moose that said “Welcome” on its antlers; or old church ladies burping the lids of the Tupperware stacked high on their display table.  I am joining their honorable ranks this year as I am participating in my very first craft fair. I am not sure why I think people will want to buy the stuff I make, other than to proclaim to a very confused husband, “But it’s MADE BY HAND!” Doggone it, that’s a good enough reason for me.

So if you’re looking to spend between $2 and $35 for something made by small Asian hands that isn’t an electronic item, come and see me:

Saturday, December 17th

9am – 4pm

Real Life Church

2353 Chatsworth St.

Roseville, MN 55113

There will also be a raffle!!!!

Jenna, being the smart and savvy mom, brought a weapon almost no child can resist. Chewing gum. Buddy, stand here and smile and then I’ll give you some GU-ummmmm… And mom and dad didn’t have just one piece of gum per kid (like other sad amateurs might). Like my dad with ketchup packets at fast food places, they loaded their pockets with handfuls of gum, always at the ready, “Do you need gum? Can you smile? Here’s some gum. Spit that out for a picture and I will get you MORE GUM.” I think I’m going to vote for gum in the next elections.

I will miss some aspects of the wedding biz, though. The dinner that I didn’t have to cook, the insanely small suits that must have been tailored by a hobbit, watching the adorable mating dance of drunk single people, dodging the line of dancers who are “doing the Hustle.” In many ways, I was made for wedding photography because the people-watching is FANTASTIC. On the other hand, the job also requires social skills and a strong sense of confidence and leadership. Since I would much prefer sitting in a corner and staring at people while silently eating cake, I know that my strengths are not fully utilized in the wedding photography business.

Is this the end of weddings for me? I never say never (except when it comes to deciding to never watch Two and a Half Men or never eating a fried bug); and since I actually agreed to help my old business partner with a wedding in November, I suppose it’s not the end yet.

The last month of summer chewed me up and spit the sad little pieces so far that some of it landed in September. Not that I am discontent or dissatisfied with life – I just feel like I’m always a few steps behind and a few minutes late, with everything.  After each photo shoot this summer, I kept thinking, hey self, you can probably post a few of those nifty little pictures to display some of your work so that you can GET MORE work. And this thought would get recorded on my magical, invisible “list of things to do” I have constantly running through my brain, like the snow cancellations that take up way more space than necessary at the bottom of the TV screen keeping me from getting the whole view of “Monk” and his hilarious neuroses. This summer has been filled with things I don’t remember now, but I remember how busy I kept saying I was. Some days, I wanted to wear a strait jacket just to get some relaxation time. You can’t drive a minivan safely with those on.

All I want for Christmas this year is to be a type A person who can be calm and sane, disciplined, clean all the time, organize the crap out of everything, and be cool as a cucumber even as my daughter is thrashing on the floor because she wanted to play with the other dolly. And if the likelihood of that is lower than fifty one percent, I would settle for the ability to concentrate on a productive activity for more than five minutes. I must make this note, more for myself than for my three readers out there, that eating potato chips and dip while reading the newspaper is not considered productive (which is what I was doing about 20 minutes ago).

On a more upbeat note, I did work on something that excited and energized me this week. With the 10th anniversary of September 11th, now past, my church asked me to interview a church goer who was there on that day. As expected, I thought I could accomplish this in a matter of days with little to no stress. I did the interview, editing, and audio track in four days and only lost three clumps of hair in the process. We now have a wig for Annie so that she won’t be called “Buddy” quite so often. Even with the time crunch, I ate that project up. I was in my element and I loved the process of the work. I love the story and the documentary. It confirmed for me that the Ken Burns poster I have on the back of my bedroom door is not something I should be embarrassed about.

Here is the project I created for Restoration Covenant, my home church.

Her time is to come though. She reminded me of it on a drive home. She asked, “Mom, who am I going to marry?” (Damn those Disney movies about mermaids and their fluttery mumbo-jumbo talk of marrying a human! I should have made her listen to public radio.) I kind of stumbled over words like, grown up, and know-it-when-it-happens, and love. I didn’t venture into using vocabulary such as lifetime commitment, communication, and teaching your spouse how to admit when they’re wrong.

Mike and Terry, these are for you.

This brings me to another non-toy item. Weeds. Ahem, I mean, FLOWERS. Kylie nearly bust a gusset when she saw her dad pulling the yellow flowers out of the ground. So he broke the news and told her that those beautiful yellow flowers and the fuzzy cotton balls on stems are really weeds. And then he told her that Santa is a fraud in a red suit.

This brings me to my family photo shoot this weekend. A beautiful little girl, her mommy and daddy, and the beautiful weeds that she loved. But one day, when she has her own house and her own family and her own yard to take care of, and children who insist on blowing the seeds of torment all over the freshly fertilized lawn, she may not have the same opinion.

(FYI – I have a history with trains, most notably the time I thought it would be okay to just take a leisurely stroll on some tracks, casually as if they were the same things as sidewalks. Too busy listening to my discman and staring at my sweaty feet as I was walking, I didn’t notice the fence that soon had me surrounded, leaving as my only option a very uncomfortable fence-scaling to get to the sidewalk that was just on the other side. For music lovers out there, don’t worry – I threw the discman to safety first.)

I should have photographed our scenario to make this story easier to tell to those of you who are still reading past the first paragraph, but like many of you can tell, I am frazzled and not a planner. There was a large, black, metal fence that went down as far as the eye could see, keeping us from simply walking from the parking lot to the station platform. There was a parking lot on the other side of the tracks (at least 3 sets of them if I remember correctly) as well, with the same black fence partition separating people from trains. We had to go through an underground tunnel of sorts, to get to the other parking lot. Halfway through the tunnel, you could take an elevator up to get to the platform (which is where you would normally wait for, or get dropped off from, the train.)

After finishing up the final shots of the girls on the platform and treating them with a bag of fruit snacks, we headed towards the doors we had entered through that led to the tunnel. Strange. This one is locked. And that one is locked. For the love… ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!? I looked to my left and right and saw these things, in order of proximity to us: tracks, more tracks, big black fence, and finally the parking lot where our cars were looking at us, half shrugging as if to tell us “no help here, phone a friend.” The posted signs were no help in guiding us either. There was one that said “Refuge Area,” but it was just leading us off the platform to the dirt ground in between the tracks, as if it was the platform that we needed rescuing from. While the mom and I were saying, no this isn’t possible, the little girls were happily munching away in fruit snack land. I was thinking about the tall black fence, us two short women (did I mention that it was just the mom, her two precious girls, and me), and how it might be necessary to use the children as small stepstools to get over the fence. C’mon, the oldest girl is ALMOST 4. Let’s give them a chance to help out once in awhile, right? Tough ‘em up a bit. We didn’t have to resort to using the children as household objects as an unlocked door was eventually found. That was close.

Thus, another train adventure goes down in the books.

Exhibit A : my new business cards.

It might confuse some because I am neither in the music industry nor am I still hoarding and photographing my enviable mixed tape collection. I just couldn’t resist these though. When I was a kid, I remember holding up my Sony boombox to the television so I could record my favorite song from “The Land Before Time.” (Embarrassing but not out-of-character confession of the day – I think I just teared up as I listened to the song when I found it on youtube just now). If you want instructions on how to be a copycat by ordering the same nostalgic business cards, go to moo.com.

On other work-related news, I finished a shoot for the Jensens a month or so ago, and here are the shots from a very cozy and boisterous Saturday morning. I put it on my facebook page, but just never took the time to post it here. I think I got distracted by the wafting smell of someone grilling meat.