Beagles

My son has found a beagle. It's a nice dog and obviously has an owner. It takes quite a while for a beagle to get as fat as this one. The problem is that it won't go home. I tried leaving it out so that it could head off to wherever home is. All the dog did is lay on the porch. I didn't want it to come in - no illusions about keeping it - but in the back yard it howled for hours until the neighbors complained. Now I have a beagle infesting my bed.

why my bed?!? I have not tried to get to know the dog, it's cute and all, but WE ARE NOT GOING TO KEEP IT. EVEN IF WE CAN'T FIND THE RIGHTFUL OWNER, WE ARE NOT KEEPING THIS DOG. The dog does not understand this and has chosen me to be it's person. I've only pet the thing twice that I can think of, everyone else gives it tons more attention. Still, it has adopted me. That would be fine if 1. I wanted to be adopted and 2. it didn't try to bite my other dogs when I petted them. He is going to piss off my great dane and get injured if he keeps this behavior up. She's a sweet dog, but can only take so much. A warning nip from her will leave a mark on his stubborn neck.

Today I am going to force my son to staple up flyers. I would have done it yesterday, but the rain was too much. Today we start trying HARD to get this dog back home. I have 3 dogs and don't want a fourth.

Driving in Kansas City.....

is a very dangerous thing to do lately. Yesterday I counted 15 cars who ran red lights. We're not talking pushing the yellow, but actually entering the intersection on red. At one stop light 3 (yes 3) cars went through while my side was green. If I had gone on green I would have been in a serious accident. One guy actually went around me when I stopped on yellow to run the red light, honking and cussing the whole time.

What is wrong with people??????? If you die or kill someone YOU WON'T MAKE IT TO WHEREEVER THE HELL YOU ARE GOING ANY FASTER THAN IF YOU JUST STOPPED FOR THE FLIPPING LIGHT!!! Where are the cops? The situation is getting dangerous. I have noticed the growing trend of running red lights over the past year. 15 is not the highest number I have seen since I started counting. One day 38 people ran red lights where I could see them. I'm only one person. If I counted 38 people then how many actually did it that day??

Quit driving like morons KC.

A year later

It's been a year since I last posted. I guess losing the fight with City Hall took a lot out of me. It was a disappointment to say the least. I had forgotten about this blog until Stephanie mentioned it to me and I decided it was time to pick things back up.

I have a second blog which you can find on http://www.sayohwow.com That one is about things that make me say Oh Wow!! and isn't focused too much on personal things. So, I keep this one too.

We have opened a store/display space in Westport. It's a very tiny little spot in the horseshoe on Pennsylvania. It's right next to Sage & Daisy and across from Murray's. years ago the hat shop, The Missing Piece, was in my new location. They've moved across the parking lot to a bigger spot now.

This is the place as it looks now. Next week we will get window lettering so that everyone knows who we are and what we do. It's been a pain to paint and get ready, but it's finally coming together. I'm slowly gathering everything up to make the place the way I want it. It's hard to find the perfect thing sometimes. You know how it is when you go shopping and you don't know what you want, but you know you don't see it? That's what it's been like for me.

The SCARIEST thing I've seen on TV this year.

I caught an rerun of VH1's 'documentary' on Kiddie Beauty Pageants. Hands down this is the scariest thing I have watched this year. These kids don't even look real. Only one of them appeared to be doing it for herself instead of her mom. That's the one who refused hair extensions, spray tan and fake teeth. She's also the only one who didn't get upset when she didn't win a huge prize. She was ok with it and is probably the only one who will grow up semi ok with herself.

The moms of the other girls all claimed that the kids were doing it for themselves. yeah, right. What kid wants to get up at the crack of dawn to spend hours in a chair getting her hair pulled, primped and sprayed. All the while mom is yelling at her to sit still and smile. These contests are judge simply on beauty and the moms let the girls know that if they want to win they have to rely on being pretty. Great message to give the girls. Oddly enough most of the moms were overweight blondes with huge boobs. Except for the one girl who broke the 'rules' and went as natural as you can get at one of those freak shows. It think the moms are trying to relive their own failed beauty pageant days.

The girls are given spray tans, more make up than your average hooker, fake hair and fake teeth called flippers. Then before the show they are given lots of red bull and sugar to hype their personalities up. The crash after the show must be extreme. All the stress and all the sugar and all the tears if they don't win. Mom's tears. And all the backstabbing. Entering your children in these contests should be considered child abuse.

My Job things I Love, things I Hate

I would have to say that I have a pretty good job. I make balloon animals for a living, which is a pretty cool thing to do. Not that there aren't things I don't like about the job, cause there are. Spring is my busy season, so work has been on my mind more often this month. (It's spring despite what the weather would indicate) I decided to make a list of what I do and don't like about my job. I figured that if I put it in writing I might find a way to change some of the don't likes into likes.

Like
I get to look people in the eye and say "I make Balloon animals for a living."
I make people happy.
The Ego stroking. People tell me I am the most wonderful thing they have encountered all day/week/month/year.
I get to be creative.
I don't have a boss other than myself.
Balloon artist conventions are a lot of fun.
The people in the industry are creative and interesting.
I get to meet a lot of cool people.
I don't work in the same place day after day after day.
It pays pretty well in the busy times of year.
My kids & husband get to work with me making it a family business.
The job makes me happy.

Don't like
Paperwork. When you work for yourself, you have to do a lot of paperwork.
I'm my own boss and I'm a bitch to work for.
In the off season money can be tight.
The people in the industry are artists and can get kinda bitch at times.
Balloon conventions are expensive.
Loading the balloon apron takes forever.
Jobs are never close to home or even close together. . I may have a party in Liberty followed by one in Olathe on the same day.
People sometimes have the perception that all balloons are free. This sucks when I am not being paid by the restaurant, but working for tips only.
People think that $1.00 is ok for a sculpture that took 10 balloons and 15 min. to make. Would you want to work for $4/hour? Well, $4 minus the cost of balloons.
Kids who take their sculptures apart and then the parent demands that they be given a place at the head of the line since it "only needs to be fixed." It's not fair to the kids who have been waiting in line.
Parents who let kids chew on the end of their balloons. If the balloon breaks, they could choke to death.

I guess those last ones could be summed up by saying
People who don't think.

All in all it's a great job

My Garden , survival of the fittest - part 3

The frost came and went and I thought many of my plants were goners. I was wrong. This small tree/bush thing has fresh buds coming out where the old ones have started to die off. Soon it will have little pink flowers. The tulips were totally wilted and on their sides. Today with a bit of sunshine they have come back. I'm hoping that the tulips on Troost all do the same.

The ever present mint.

My Grandmother helped make me what I am today.

A post over on The Flogging of America got me thinking about my grandmother. Bessie Lee (Owens) Walker. She was born in 1918 in the middle of nowhere, north Texas. Her father died and her mom remarried making Bessie the oldest of a whole bunch of kids. Between brothers and sisters, full, half or step there were 13 kids. Uncle Jim was the baby and my grandmother took care of him like he was her own most of the time. Even though they lived on a farm she never had a lot of time for farm chores. Too much time spent babysitting. I once had a disagreement with my mom who assumed that her mom knew how to kill a chicken. After all she had lived on a farm during the depression. I said that she spent her time watching kids and the chicken killing was left up to other people. I was right, but not for the reasons I thought. She said her hands were too small to get a good grip on the chickens neck, so she couldn't wring it properly.

Bessie married Dawson Walker and moved first to Louisiana and then to Arkansas. Along the way they had 3 kids, all girls. My mother is the middle sister. The 3 girls gave them 10 grandchildren of which I am the oldest. My dad was in the Army, and we traveled a lot. Whenever it was possible my parents would send my brother and I back to Arkansas to visit my grandparents during the summer. Among the things I remember most are shelling beans, wrasslin and the arguments over air conditioners. My grandparents used a couple of window units to cool their house and someone was always coming up and turning them on or off, the other person would always get mad.

Shelling beans was a way of life for many people back then. You grew them or bought a few bushels and shelling was part of getting them ready for preserving. In my grandmother's house this was either done on the front porch or in front of the television if "wrasslin" was on. She loved professional wrestling and had favorites that she would root for. Once we went to the Watermelon Festival on Hope, Arkansas so that she could see The Junkyard Dog wrestle in person. Wrestling bored me, still does, but the watermelon was good and my grandmother was happy. All in all it was a nice trip.

My grandmother died in 1998. She had been battling Alzheimer's for awhile and the Bessie I knew left a long time before her body quit working. Shortly after she died I became pregnant with my youngest child. I decided long before she was born that I was having a daughter and that her name would be Bessie Leigh. Thankfully she didn't turn out to be a he and I got my wish. I named my daughter after my grandmother not just because of the love I felt, but because my grandmother had a lot of the characteristics I would like to see in my daughter. She was strong, sometimes to the point of being obstinate and she was adventurous. She liked to go and try new things and age didn't stop her. If anything as she got older she got more adventurous. Right before she got sick she announced that she was driving to Alaska. She would have done it too if she had been able. I hope that my daughter gets even a tiny bit of that spirit.