Catching Up . . .

Before I do anything else, I owe a very heartfelt Thank You! from my family to all of you who took the time to send responses to the blog piece about my mom that I wrote on Monday.  I printed every one of them and took them to her on Tuesday afternoon – she was simply overwhelmed by all of the prayers and good wishes from people all over the world that she has never met.  Dad read them too – I talked with him on the phone this morning and he quoted a couple of them.

Mom is doing great – still hasn’t had the first bit of nausea, the lump on her neck is already getting smaller, and she’s starting to get her energy back.  My mom’s “glass” is always half-full – she went to get her hair done this morning.  Today is Day Seven, and she was assured that her hair would start to surrender sometime between Days Ten and Fourteen – but a couple of you told her that you didn’t lose yours, and she has decided to enjoy hers for as long as she can.  We are truly thankful.

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We now return you to our regularly scheduled fun and frivolity . . .

I just cleared my phone of some pictures that I took during my travels over the past month.  I’ll just post them with a quick comment under each – some of these are really random . . .

This was on Saturday at the Anderson, SC show.  I just get a kick out of the husbands who can go to sleep anywhere.  If I had pulled back a little, you would see that he was surrounded by excited shoppers.

Yes, that is a refrigerator in the back of the truck – it is now beside the classroom in our store.  Peggy Gould brought it to Anderson – she and her husband donated it to us.  This shot was taken just before I surrounded it with boxes and boxes and boxes full of Tweety Jill books that I picked up from a fulfillment warehouse in Georgia after the Anderson show.

We had a special guest during teardown after the Fort Wayne show.  Robin and Keia Arnold help us at several shows during the year – they live near Decatur (about half an hour away), and when Robin’s husband Phil came to help tear down the booth, he brought Kisha along with him.  She had a great time visiting with us while we worked – and she was much more patient than Zoe would have been in similar circumstances!

Awwwwwwwww …

Within hours after I got home from Fort Wayne, I was on my way to Tims Ford State Park near Winchester, TN (about 90 minutes SE of Nashville) for three days of golf and fellowship.  This is the nicest of the courses we have played over the past few years – partly because the weather was absolutely perfect (no clouds, no wind, temps about 80).

 

Yes, I shot these with my cell phone and no zoom lens – they were right next to the fairway and didn’t seem to be bothered by us at all.  Late each afternoon, hundreds of deer came out to feed all over the park – these shots were taken in some trees between two fairways.

My birthday was on the Sunday of the York show.  This was only the third time that my mom hasn’t seen me on my birthday (all three because I was at shows).  But there are perks – Bev Parnell and Sue Bomboy brought goodies before the show started on Saturday (they were escorted to the booth by the promoter).  Bev brought a homemade cake, homemade treats for Zoe, and a card, and Sue brought homemade chocolates from the family candy company in Maryland.  All of this was seriously good stuff!

The outside and inside of Bev’s birthday card.  Bev has never met Zoe, but she understands – when I read it, I had to wipe a tear from my eye.

After the show Saturday, I went to Walmart and bought some forks and plates.  Sunday morning, I shared Bev’s cake with my fellow vendors.  I even caught Steve from Toomuchfun sneaking back for seconds (so did I) . . .

This is Rebecca Parkes – she is the new National Sales Manager at Faber-Castell.  She wanted to experience a show for the first time, so when she told me she was coming to York, I offered her a seat at our demo table for part of Saturday.  If you were there, you might have noticed the “newbie light” flashing on her forehead . . .

This is Pam Rhinehart – she was the courier for my friend Judy Jackson, who couldn’t make it to the show.  Judy needed one of the wafer thin Sizzix plates, and e-mailed in early September to see if I would bring one to York and Pam would pick it up.  With the way my memory has been lately, I immediately took one out and put it on the seat of the truck.  I should have collected stickers for it like an old-time suitcase – by the time it was picked up, that plate had gone from Ohio to Kentucky to Tennessee to North Carolina to South Carolina to Georgia to Tennessee to Kentucky to Ohio to Indiana to Ohio to Indiana to Ohio to West Virginia and finally to Pennsylvania!  That “Ohio to Indiana to Ohio to Indiana to Ohio” was not a glitch – I came home on Friday evening before the Fort Wayne show to announce the local high school football game (it was homecoming).

This is another husband who “gets it” – he came in with his wife on Saturday morning, she just about ran to Sue Rothamel to grab a seat in front of her performance, and he settled in with a couple of magazines.  I think he was there for about two hours.

And this was my favorite fellow at the York show.  He was in a pretty long line waiting to get to my cash register.  I hadn’t seen him yet, but I heard him talking about a craft festival where his daughter and granddaughter had a booth that weekend.  What I heard most was “You wouldn’t believe this town – the population is no more than 3,000 but on this weekend every year they have more than 350,000 people on Main Street . . .”  At that point, I interrupted and finished his sentence – “. . . all because of sauerkraut.”  He gave me a bewildered “How did you know?” – and I responded, “Because I live there.”  It is truly a small world when I’m 450 miles from home and the Ohio Sauerkraut Festival is still a topic of conversation.

So now my phone camera is clear, and I’m caught up (I think) . . .

The Only Thing I Want for My Birthday … Next Year

I have been off the blogging grid for several weeks.  There were/are stories that I wanted to share . . . things going on during shows and in the store . . . but there was a story from my personal life that I wanted . . . needed . . . to share first.  And I couldn’t until the time was right – and until I got permission.

You might remember this picture – it was taken on my mom’s birthday on August 28, during a family outing to a Dayton Dragons’ game that was arranged by her sister, Nancy.  We had such a good time – it was a simply perfect day.

Three days later, I found out about the lump on Mom’s neck.

If I hadn’t had a sinus infection, Blake and I might not have known about it for some time (Mom is a very private person), but since we happened to be at the doctor’s office at the same time, a simple “What are you here for?” led to the news.  We weren’t terribly concerned at the outset – our doctor suspected it might just be a thyroid problem and ordered some tests, which unfortunately ruled that out.

At this point, I started to type a step-by-step narrative of what we (yes, “we” – Mom has done all of the work, but we have gone through this as a family) have done and seen and experienced since that point – but my high school English composition teacher would have written “wordy” all over it.  Suffice to say that we went to an Ear, Nose & Throat Specialist and an Oncologist, to at least two hospitals for tests and a cancer center for treatment.  Mom has had an ultrasound, a CAT Scan, a needle biopsy, minor surgery to take a “frozen section” of the lymph gland for further testing, a PET Scan to see if the cancer had spread anywhere else in her body, and an Echocardiogram to check the strength of her heart because one of the chemo drugs can stress it.

And somehow through all of this, I missed only one appointment in three weeks while traveling to shows in Anderson, SC, Fort Wayne, IN, and York, PA, and a golf trip in TN – Mom would never have allowed me to adjust my schedule.

The final results came last Wednesday – “Stage Two High Grade Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma” (along with another couple of words that I missed – the oncologist went through them pretty fast).  Stage Two is not as good as Stage One, but it’s not horrible – the cancer was in more than one lymph node but they are side-by-side.  High Grade is better than Low Grade because the cancer cells are fast-growing and that’s the type of cells that chemo is most effective on.  And Non-Hodgkins is better than Hodgkins because it can be cured.  The oncologist recommended that Mom start with three chemo treatments three weeks apart – a five drug combination they refer to as “R-CHOP” (the first letter of each drug).  Then he will evaluate the results and continue with three more chemo treatments, switch to radiation, or do a combination of the two.

A nurse came in and went through lots of sheets describing the treatments, side effects (nausea, fatigue, hair loss, etc.), diet, and such.  And they were ready to start as soon as we were, so we scheduled the first treatment for first thing in the morning this past Friday – it was supposed to last seven hours.

There is humor in almost any situation if you look for it – and my laugh came when we arrived at the cancer center on Friday morning.  Mom was the first patient to arrive, so when she walked into the treatment room, a nurse told her to choose any of the 14 easy chairs in the room.  It looked like a scene from “The Three Bears” as she went from chair to chair – one was too soft, one was too hard, one sat up too high, and finally one was just right.  And her first chemo treatment went so smoothly that she got finished an hour early.

I took this picture three hours after Mom got home on Friday – when I walked in, she was washing silverware because she had run the dishwasher and found a bug on one of the spoons as she was emptying it.  I am very happy to report that it is now three days later and Mom is doing great – she’s tired, but has had no nausea at all.  And she is preparing for her new look (Dad will probably '”help” her with that later this week since he cuts his own hair) – she has bought a couple of do-rags and a skull cap, and is giving some thought to a wig.

When we first started this process, Mom was not ready to “go public” until we knew what we were dealing with.  During the chemo treatment on Friday, I talked with her and she gave me permission to write this piece – I have shared a lot of our life over the past few years and so many have told me how much they enjoy it.  This isn’t nearly as enjoyable, but it is part of who we are.  And as the holidays approach, there will likely be pictures of our family gatherings and the inevitable questions will have already been answered.

The title of this piece has had nothing to do with anything I have written so far.  But my birthday came in the middle of this process a week ago Sunday while I was at a show in York, PA.  Ever since I moved out on my own, my phone has rung at 6:53 a.m. on my birthday (the time I was born) – when I answer the phone, Mom and Dad are on the other end singing “Happy Birthday.”  I thought it was a little hokey in the early days, but now I really look forward to it.  (My brother has never experienced this quite the same way, partly by his own choice – he was born at 1:52 a.m.)  And the four of us usually get together for lunch on my birthday when I’m in town.

The only thing I want for my birthday next year is that phone call – with two healthy voices singing on the other end.

We Go Virtual While Sue Rothamel Goes “Big Time” . . .

We are in Anderson, South Carolina this weekend – and Saturday I heard the same question all day long.  “Where’s Sue?”  Seems that our good friend Susan Pickering Rothamel from USArtQuest impressed a few people when we were here last year.  But Sue has bigger fish to fry this weekend – she is in Florida rehearsing for her big national TV performance on Monday.  If you haven’t heard, Sue will be on the Home Shopping Network at 7:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. EDT on Monday, September 26.

But thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we had “Virtual Sue” in the booth . . .

Sue’s new DVD Art! Craft! Create! came out just in time, so I popped in into my laptop – and just like in real life, Sue demoed all day long!

OK – so it may not have been quite as exciting as in real life, but she was still surrounded by her products . . .

I never got a chance to get a shot of our booth while it was jammed full of people (and it was for most of the day), but I couldn’t resist sneaking away for a second when I noticed this shopper who was overcome with joy at the opportunity to spend the day with a group of creative crafters!

Inkpad Mania and Silent Movie Fallout . . .

If you’re on the e-mail list, no doubt you saw the note I sent out late yesterday about the Tim Holtz Seasonal Distress Ink Limited Edition 3-Pack Set.  What a mess – first Tim and Ranger offered only 12 sets per store/business (those were gone in no time), then yesterday they apologized and offered 48 more (those lasted about six hours).  When those ran out, we started a waiting list in case more could be found.

Give Gary some credit – he is the best scrounge I have ever encountered.  Today, he talked with one of our suppliers and found more sets.  So if you weren’t able to order yours last night/today, click on the picture or link above and order yours now!

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If you enjoyed the World Premiere of our Silent Movie yesterday, you weren’t the only one.  My inbox filled up with really nice feedback – and two of you apparently enjoyed it enough to subscribe to my YouTube account in case we ever do this again!  (I didn’t even know you could do that)

Last night, Ryan was dreaming up all kinds of different things we could get Zoe to do in a video all her own.  One of these days . . .

This Could Be the Start of Something Big . . .

Karen called me this morning to come to the store and take pictures of cards that Pat Adams created for a class she’ll be teaching at some point in the next month or two.  Now I am not a terribly creative person, so a lot of times I’ll see a new project and more or less roll my eyes.  And after this long, it takes something really different to make me go “Wow!”  In my mind at least, this one is a “Wow!”

Pat calls this a “Neverending Card”, and she made three of them.  Every angle – every time you unfold one – you have a completely different card.  But I couldn’t figure out how to do them justice . . .

  

I took pictures, but they just didn’t seem to tell the story.  I could show all of the angles, but really couldn’t show how Pat got there. 

I tried opening a card to show the angles . . . but does this really tell you anything?

And then I remembered that my phone shoots video.  I have had my Droid 2 for over a year, but I have never tried that.  So it seemed like a good time to give it a shot.  But I’m a technology neanderthal – it took me nearly five minutes to figure out how to switch my phone from shooting pictures to shooting video.  Then Pat and I went through the cards several times before I learned that the “mute” button would keep us from having to start over if the phone rang or someone else started talking!

When we finished, I took myself and my phone back to the mail center to figure out what to do next.  I knew that it probably had something to do with YouTube (and it did).  So after about half an hour of education and preparation, here’s the World Premiere of our first “Silent Movie” . . .

If you’re new to this, just click on the arrow in the middle of the screen!

One other thing that I learned – I was holding my phone the wrong way.  So you’ll have to tilt your head to the left to see the video as I intended.  You would think after a lifetime of watching television, I would remember that the screen is wider than it is tall.  But I didn’t.

Now my head is swimming – this opens up so many possibilities.  Step-by-step instructions . . . promos for classes or new products . . . convention fun . . . live-action clips of Zoe . . .

“Nice to Have Some New Blood” . . .

That was not my comment – Karen says that’s what she heard from several of the Make It/Take It crowd this morning after they participated in a “project trifecta” designed to introduce the masses to our new instructors Chris Mach, Corinne Jones, and Debbie Cosenza.

Even with all of our floor space, it takes some logistics to do three projects at the same time.  When I arrived, Chris was holding court in the classroom area . . .

Debbie was in the prep area behind the classroom . . .

And Corinne was next door in Marco’s Too!

Normally, the Wednesday morning activities are finished by about 11:00 – which was when Rose Banwart needed Marco’s Too to start setting up for her Artsy Book Club meeting that started at noon.  But today, things were still going strong . . .

So Chris gave up half of her space so Corinne could move her project into the classroom!  At the outer edge of the classroom, folks could take a look at a table full of the new Spellbinders dies.

 

Meanwhile, I was taking pictures of Rose’s next two Artsy Book Club projects.  I try to make up sheets for each project to display near the front door, with a description of the project and pictures from several angles to show how the book is made.  That book at left is called a “Doll Book”, and it left me with a dilemma . . .

Can you understand why I might have been just a little uncomfortable taking a picture to show the construction of this book?  I thought so . . .