I’m really starting to wonder what’s going to happen to my little town, now that the economy has taken such a bad turn. We were just barely getting back on our collective feet. In the past 2 or 3 years things here had been pretty good, with jobs available for pretty much everyone who wanted to work. These days, it seems like we have more commercial real estate than actual functioning businesses & every other house is either for sale or for rent. Rhi has a job, she barely gets any  hours, but she’s hanging on to it, just in case she can’t find another one. Several of my friends haven’t been able to find anything at all & things are getting tough for everyone.

We never seem to have extra money for anything these days, it’s all about getting the bills paid & buying groceries, after that, we’re broke. I’m okay with it, at least we have a placed to live and food to eat, but a sometimes, I’d just like to be able to go out for ice cream or a movie or something. Hopefully things will pick up for us soon.

I have four books ready to be sewn together & bound for the booth, but I can’t find the memory stick I had the instructions on. I guess I’ll have to look it up on Craftser again & bookmark it on my laptop. I need to go buy some illustration board for the actual cover, but I can do the sewing before I have any of that. I want to sell them in the booth next summer as journals or for nice unique books of shadows. I’m pretty excited about it, we’re expanding the booth into an actual Pagan booth with a lot of spell supplies and other things like that & we have a lot of really great ideas. I’m really hoping we have a great season next year.

I also plan to invest in a lot of stuff that kids will like for the Apple Festival next year, long with my signs & all of that. I always feel better when I start planning earlier, at least I know what I’m doing that way.

I was thinking about the vendors from Saturday & most of them being there make sense, at least in a way. BACA (Bikers Against Child Abuse) are at every event we have around here, which is a good thing, so it makes sense that the Harley Davidson apparel people would be there, too. The guy with all of the antique tools, finding & door knockers makes sense because it’s a small town festival & those types of things are very appealing in these types of places. There was a booth selling hot apple cider & dutch oven apple crisp, which is 100% perfect for an apple festival. There were vendors with handmade jewelry & people selling gift items, quilts and hunting stuff. They all fit in, because of the time of year, the type of event it is & the location.

The one I’m having trouble with is the weight loss pill distributor. I didn’t see anyone at her booth, and she packed up & left fairly early. Yes, there was food being sold at the festival, it was all cooked by the fire department, and the proceeds of the festival all go to the fire department to help them with everything they need. I’m sure there were people there that wanted to lose weight & had thought about using pills to help out, I’m just not sure it was the best time to remind them of that.

We had a pretty good day yesterday at the New Harmony Apple Festival, although it started snowing at about 9am & went on most of the day. That wasn’t nearly as bad as the wind. It’s almost impossible to stay consistently warm when you’re sitting outside in that kind of weather. I sold almost all of my signs, though, and all of the ones that sold were the new ones I made last week. We covered our costs, at any rate. I’m not sure I’ll want to do it next year, but I might if I have enough fun things for kids, because honestly, we were the only booth with anything for them. There were booths selling over-priced, tacky jewelry, diet pills, motorcycle apparel and antiques, but nothing for kids. It was good spending time with friends, though & everything was for a good cause, so it was worth it, we’d have been there anyway.

We were invited for dinner by Dawn’s Aunt after, so we went over there & had a delicious cole claw & sloppy Joes while we visited with everyone & played with all of the little kids. We came back to town at around 6:30, changed clothes, grabbed some mead from the fridge & headed out to the gathering. I guess I didn’t mention that it also snowed here, so we were having our first cold-weather gathering & the yurt stood up well, as long as we kept the fire going. If we let it burn down it filled with smoke & we had to evacuate!

It was a good Saturday all in all. I’m extremely tired today, though & have a headache that I can’t quite get rid of.

Rhi didn’t get the loan for that car. She handled it really well, though. I’m not sure she’s completely given up on the idea yet, but she’s been really realistic about it. She’s been working all of her scheduled shifts, and seems to enjoy her job, no matter how tired she gets. She closed last night & was so wiped out when she came to the car that all she wanted to do was sleep. She had promised her close friend that she’d go to her birthday party, though, so at 2am, I took her up there.

I’ve been doing really well on getting my own things done lately, too. The signs are all finished & in a little while I’m going into the craft area to start looking through stock & deciding what to take & what I ought to charge for it all. I decided against the soap, it’s supposed to rain that day & soap would be a bad idea. I’ve been getting all of my housework done, remembering to wash my face & that’s really helping the adult acne I seem to be plagued with. I don’t feel like I’m sitting around doing nothing all day, anymore. So, go me!

We plan to buy some nice furniture for the yard next spring, along with an easy-up type gazebo. I really want to have a yard that I want to spend time in, and I’m pretty sure that will do it for me. I was wondering if any of you have ever made your own patio furniture covers? If so, what did you use? Plastic tarps or some other weather resistant fabric? I don’t know that I can afford to buy the nice furniture & then lay out a bunch of cash fort he covers, too. If I can’t make them, hopefully our storage unit will be cleaned out by then & we can just put our stuff in there for the fall & winter. Then maybe the next spring I can afford the covers or something!

…is the hardest part. I’m sitting here, eating some pecan sandies as a snack, waiting to hear from Rhi and drawing my initial lettering & outlines on the signs. Why am I waiting for Rhi? She’s in the middle of making her first major purchase (no, it’s not a Slingbox, she doesn’t even watch TV!!). She’s signing paperwork & such on a 1999 Land Rover & she’s pretty excited. I’m excited for her, and excited to see it. I’m also hoping it’ll give her the incentive she needs to keep going to work every day she’s scheduled & to do her very best while she’s there.

I guess she’s waiting to hear back from the bank & that’s not going to happen until tomorrow sometime, so I can stop being all anxious about it until morning!

As soon as I finish the Apple Festival, I need to get started on Christmas crafting & shopping. We’re cutting way back on the buying this year, with two presents each for Erin & Rhi & one for Troy & I. Thankfully, everyone I’m giving a gift to is pretty much past asking for toys (other than 2 or 3 little kids I shop for), so that lets me out of having to get into the crush in that area of the store when I do get a chance & the money, to go shopping. I’m crafting for my niece, and probably an extra gift for Erin & Rhi, too, just because I think what I’m making is a neat idea & something I’d like to have myself. I may even make one for my mom, or something similar.

Anyway, that’s something to start worrying about in the middle of the month & not now!

I woke up this morning to my cell phone ringing, so I jumped out of bed to answer it, it was Troy, letting me know that we forgot to renew his drivers’ license yesterday & that he was now expired. Since we can’t do anything about it with him being on day shift right now, it’ll have to wait until Monday & we’ll just hope for the best between now & then.

I’m not sure if I slept wrong or pulled a muscle when I jumped out of bed, but my back is absolutely killing me now. I took some ibuprofen when I got up, but it hasn’t done a thing yet & may not. I’m at the point that I’d do just about anything to make it stop. If I thought that going on vacation & getting one of those Barbados villa rentals would help at all, I think I’d seriously consider it, that’s how bad I hurt right now.

If it ever does today, I want to get those signs started, since I didn’t get a chance to yesterday because I got behind early in the day by going out to breakfast with Dawn & Troy and then hanging out with her for awhile. I have 11 days to get all of this done, so I’d really better get on it, you know?

Our best friend, Dave (yes, we have a lot of best friends, I have more than one favorite movie, too) flies out here every year in July. He generally comes out & helps us with faire, because over the years, he’s come to look at our faire as his, too, even though he lives in Texas. Lately, it’s been way cheaper for him to fly into McCarran International in Las Vegas and have us pick him up & pay for our gas, than it has been for him to either fly there & rent a car or fly into our town. This year, Troy was working the day his flight came in, so it was up to me to drive down there, navigate Las Vegas & the traffic & pick him up.

I asked Dawn early on if she’d go with me, to keep me company on the trip & help me look for the right exit signs on the freeway. Melissa wanted to go, too, so we took her with us, since she’d never been to Las Vegas. I did a lot better than I thought I would in getting us to where we needed to go & didn’t even have problems at the airport, I took the right exits & followed the right arrows without having to circle around (unlike the trip back to drop him off!).

We got there right as his plane was landing, met him & went to the bathroom while he was waiting for his luggage. We left & went to find a place to eat. We went to a place we had gone the time before, but it wasn’t as good as we had remembered. Dawn, Melissa & I had all dyed our hair in bright colors a few days before we went & there were two women in their late 40s or early 50s sitting at the booth next to us. We got into a conversation with them about our hair & one started talking about how she had tried blue once, but it faded out quickly & looked gray & they asked about the brand we had used & where to buy it. They in no way, looked like the type who’s dye their hair in brights colors & it made me feel 100% better about mine, since I really don’t either.

We decided to stop at a convenience store to get drinks before heading back & there was one just across from where we were, so I headed there. I pulled into the parking lot, put the car in park, and a clerk at the store smacked my fender with his hand & started yelling about me hitting his leg. He walked (note, he wasn’t limping) over to my window & continued to yell at me through the closed window. I opened it & he starts haranguing me about hitting him & accusing me of being drunk, threatening with the police until I finally said, “Look, I wasn’t drinking, I’m not drunk. I didn’t hit you, so call the cops if you feel like you need to.” He looked at me & said, “Okay then.” and walked back into the store. Dave was getting out right as this happened & followed him in, listening to him gripe about how his back had already been hurting & now his leg hurt too, and a bunch of other stuff, so I’m pretty sure he was either looking for a lawsuit & the big bucks, or wanting to go home from work.

Everyone teased me all the way home about being drunk & claiming I wasn’t really drinking tea & that I was maintaining my buzz so I could run other people over. They teased me on the way to take him back, too. It was pretty funny & was their way of getting my mind off of it & making me not feel bad for being verbally attacked by a loser. It worked really well, too!