I miss Halloween.
I caught myself shopping for Halloween craft books and realized I was shopping for kids I'm never going to have. I really can't decorate my classroom for Halloween safely, because so many people out there have their heads so far up their butts with religion that they honestly think they have the right to keep everyone else from having fun, just because they are afraid to.
I really think that if God had a problem with me liking Halloween, He'd have ensured that I didn't have any fun on that night when I was a kid. Aside from the pseudo-alternate religion silly Wicca and goth type people calling it a religious holiday, it's really no more than a fun folky tradition. Just a good reason to be silly and strange one day of the year.
If you don't want to have fun, fine, but just don't pee all over my parade, okay? Life has so few fun moments as it is.
The truth is, I want to do something creative, like making some of those primitive-style decorations, but I don't know where to begin. One minute I thought, "Hey, you could make all the Halloween stuff you want and just sell it in a craft fair," but then I wised up and realized there is only one craft fair around here anymore, and it's gone to hell in a handbasket over the last decade. I hate to say it, but these days I just go to Reelfoot for the food, mostly.
Besides, I know good and darn well I don't enjoy doing production work, even if it is a really neat and fun project, knowing I'm doing all that work for nothing if nobody buys it. I did sell (or try to) some stuff at the last craft fair I even saw here in town, and it was a horrible disappointment. I couldn't even get anyone to sign up for painting classes with me.
I can't exactly decorate my house with Halloween stuff -- my house is absolutely too tiny, and I definitely don't have a "decorating scheme" in here anyway. It's just day-to-day survival, and this just happens to be my shelter. Being a homeowner isn't that great if you know your house sucks and there's nothing you can do about it.
So I've been toying with the idea of seeing how many original projects I could come up with, and seeing if I could possibly get a book published. But I already feel discouraged, because you have to have an agent representing you just to get a publisher looking at your book. That's such a longshot I don't even know if it's worth the effort. I guess that I could always put one together and get it printed at Cafe Press, so at least I'd have a completed project to show for my efforts. Right?
It's just that voice I keep hearing in my head... the one that tells me it isn't even worth the effort to get started on yet another project that is doomed to failure.
I have an entire freaking library of "how to" books. If civilization fails, I'll be the one making my own soap effortlessly, still able to make sweaters, blankets, and clothes for my loved ones, and good tasting food from scratch, just from what's growing around here wild.
That's really sad, isn't it, that I'm well prepared for an apocalypse?
And I'll say something about our local Wal-Mart "Supercenter" -- they took out all fabric and nearly all craft supplies to make more room for their sporting goods department, and now I can't even find new stuff to play with unless I drive nearly an hour to a real craft store. They even took out 3/4 of their craft paint colors, leaving on the shelves, only the most basic of colors. The ones I already have a ton of, because they're common colors for the decorative painting I do.
Seriously. Do you know anybody else who literally has 25 bottles of sunflower yellow paint? Well, that's my own fault for thinking that anybody around here would actually be interested in taking classes from me. I should never have set up supplies for classes without some of them actually going through first.
The other night I went in Wal-Mart to get a styrofoam cone. I was planning on making a candy tree with it - sticking pins through one end of the wrappers.
They didn't have styrofoam ANYTHING. They had a couple of small things in floral foam, but that stuff isn't the same, and you really don't want the crumbly dust off that sitting on a candy wrapper. :(
I really think that if God had a problem with me liking Halloween, He'd have ensured that I didn't have any fun on that night when I was a kid. Aside from the pseudo-alternate religion silly Wicca and goth type people calling it a religious holiday, it's really no more than a fun folky tradition. Just a good reason to be silly and strange one day of the year.
If you don't want to have fun, fine, but just don't pee all over my parade, okay? Life has so few fun moments as it is.
The truth is, I want to do something creative, like making some of those primitive-style decorations, but I don't know where to begin. One minute I thought, "Hey, you could make all the Halloween stuff you want and just sell it in a craft fair," but then I wised up and realized there is only one craft fair around here anymore, and it's gone to hell in a handbasket over the last decade. I hate to say it, but these days I just go to Reelfoot for the food, mostly.
Besides, I know good and darn well I don't enjoy doing production work, even if it is a really neat and fun project, knowing I'm doing all that work for nothing if nobody buys it. I did sell (or try to) some stuff at the last craft fair I even saw here in town, and it was a horrible disappointment. I couldn't even get anyone to sign up for painting classes with me.
I can't exactly decorate my house with Halloween stuff -- my house is absolutely too tiny, and I definitely don't have a "decorating scheme" in here anyway. It's just day-to-day survival, and this just happens to be my shelter. Being a homeowner isn't that great if you know your house sucks and there's nothing you can do about it.
So I've been toying with the idea of seeing how many original projects I could come up with, and seeing if I could possibly get a book published. But I already feel discouraged, because you have to have an agent representing you just to get a publisher looking at your book. That's such a longshot I don't even know if it's worth the effort. I guess that I could always put one together and get it printed at Cafe Press, so at least I'd have a completed project to show for my efforts. Right?
It's just that voice I keep hearing in my head... the one that tells me it isn't even worth the effort to get started on yet another project that is doomed to failure.
I have an entire freaking library of "how to" books. If civilization fails, I'll be the one making my own soap effortlessly, still able to make sweaters, blankets, and clothes for my loved ones, and good tasting food from scratch, just from what's growing around here wild.
That's really sad, isn't it, that I'm well prepared for an apocalypse?
And I'll say something about our local Wal-Mart "Supercenter" -- they took out all fabric and nearly all craft supplies to make more room for their sporting goods department, and now I can't even find new stuff to play with unless I drive nearly an hour to a real craft store. They even took out 3/4 of their craft paint colors, leaving on the shelves, only the most basic of colors. The ones I already have a ton of, because they're common colors for the decorative painting I do.
Seriously. Do you know anybody else who literally has 25 bottles of sunflower yellow paint? Well, that's my own fault for thinking that anybody around here would actually be interested in taking classes from me. I should never have set up supplies for classes without some of them actually going through first.
The other night I went in Wal-Mart to get a styrofoam cone. I was planning on making a candy tree with it - sticking pins through one end of the wrappers.
They didn't have styrofoam ANYTHING. They had a couple of small things in floral foam, but that stuff isn't the same, and you really don't want the crumbly dust off that sitting on a candy wrapper. :(
posted by Me at 5:52 PM
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