Driving (Literally) Myself Crazy

Today started out as I believe all days should:  peacefully.  When Kevin is gone, Violet does not feel the need to wait until 6am to crawl into my bed for her morning snuggle.  I am not sure what time she actually arrives but I think it is around 3am or 4am.  Mimi comes up anywhere between 6am and 8am.  This morning, I woke up with a girl on each side and both were in pleasant moods.  We had some snuggles and laughs which is a really a blissful way to start the morning.  Things were going so well I proclaimed:  "Let's go to Ikea for dinner tonight."  Oh, the girls were so excited.  Vi was yelling, "I want meatballs."  Mimi was yelling, "I want tubes (pasta!)  They love Ikea so much.  I figured since it was a yucky, rainy day we all might benefit from a night out.  Well, to quote Robert Burns, I would use the translation but my father might not approve:

The best-laid scheme o'mice an'men

Gang aft agley,

An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,

For promise'd joy!

I picked Mimi up at school at 3:15pm and we immediately left for Ikea.  There was a lot of excitement in the car.  It was cold and rainy which equals lots of puddles so Ikea and wet weather equals excitement.  Everything was going as planned.  However, traffic starts to back up around the 696/I-275 interchange which I just attributed to the time of day.  Then the traffic just slowed to a ridiculous crawl.  Fortunately, Violet was taking a snooze and Mimi was talking my ear off.  I turned on the radio to find out what was going on.  Turns out there was a jackknifed semi on 275 around 8 Mile.  Ugh!  We did not get to Ikea until 5:00pm.  It was horrible.  Mimi was getting hungry and every five minutes would ask, "Are we almost there?"  It was torture.  Not because of Mimi but because my body wanted some meatballs.  I seriously felt like my body was eating itself.  However, when we were finally rounding the exit ramp all of a sudden Vi shrieks, "I see it!!!  I see Ikea!!!  It is right there on my side!!!"  Happiness once again filled the car.  Shortly thereafter, happiness filled our bellies when we all at dinner for $11.00.  Cheap and tasty - my kind of dinner.  

Initially, we were going to Ikea just to get out of the house and have a little fun.  But, thanks to a call I got while stuck in the traffic jam from hell, we also had a purpose.  Earlier in the day, I inquired about buying a table at the local craft fair in Berkley which is scheduled for December 10th.  I thought, this is my experimentation phase of life.  I know the connotation is completely different for someone maybe under the age of thirty, but for me it means how can I get some income during a recession.  So, the phone rings and it is the chair of the Candy Cane Lane Craft Show.  She says she will e-mail me an application and a table costs $45.00.  I told myself I would do it if a table costs $50.00 or less.  Well, I tomorrow I am going to drop off my check and my application.  The first 26 crafters get a table.  I'm a crafter?  No! I AM A CRAFTER AND PROUD OF IT!  There, I said it!  I am a crafty lady!  Okay, I have a lot to do.  Get my Etsy store up and running by the end of the month and sew a lot of pillows for the craft show.  Lucky for me, Ikea sells fabric.  Mimi and Violet went straight to work picking out fabrics.  Mimi made herself at home at the cutting table finding all the supplies I needed which would be fabric cutting scissors.  She is almost five and so proud that she found what I needed.  I bought two fabrics.  One is a bold, colorful floral and the other is muted gray and white floral.  I am quite fond of both.  We paid for our fabric and raced out of the store into the cold rainy elements with the hopes that we would be home in about a half hour.  

Bold Floral

Muted Floral

Here we go again!  Now would be a good time to quote my friend Robert Burns, again.  It was raining really hard.  It was dark.  There was a glare.  My kids were talking a lot.  I was distracted.  I ended up on I-96 headed for downtown Detroit.  So out of my way.  My GPS is in my house.  Because of my GPS and the brain I was born with, I am dumb when it comes to finding my way home.  I get off off on I-94, then onto 10 which I thought was the Southfield Freeway but is not but took me it took me to Southfield Road. (No this sentence is not written correctly.  This was my mind set:  Rainy, dark, two kids who want to go home in the backseat, one needs to poop, and I am ready to be done with this day.)  Southfield Road is of course under construction and it took forever to get home.  Like around an hour and fifteen minutes.  It sucked.  But the girls are in bed and I think they had fun even though I did not enjoy all the driving.  It seems as though the execution of my little outings with the girls have been a little off lately.  Things can only get better!

Now I am home.  My craft show application is complete.  I am mentally configuring what my table will look like.  I am visualizing my bold printed pillows being purchased by my fellow Berkley residents.  I am trying to picture what I am going to wear.  Crafters often wear crafty clothes.  My clothes are either drab blacks, browns, and greens or bold florals - kind of like my pillows.  Maybe I will go with bold floral and clash with my product.  I will make sure everyone knows that I AM THE CRAZY PILLOW LADY OF BERKLEY.  

Crazy Pillow Lady