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Etsy does it
Oh my goodness, I have a shop! How many commenters does it take to get me to do someting? I know. I lag. It’s just that these sorts of things intimidate me. I want to do it right and I know I only have the attention span of a gnat so this sort of creates a problem. Gnats do not make nice pretty shops. But enough of you hinted and cajoled that this is something I should really do so I finally buckled down and opened up an Etsy shop.
I’m not 100 percent happy with it. I want to ship to places like Canada and the UK and Paris ( because Paris is a country on the map of SAJ) and maybe even Japan (love you guys!) … but I don’t know how to yet. I have to walk down to my local UPS shop and inquire. So if you live somewhere outside of the United States and you really want a print, do not despair! Just contact me the old fashioned way and we will use you as a guinea pig to figure out how to do it right for my Etsy shop.
Another thing: Everyone who ordered a print via email in the last week… You got a deal! I didn’t realize shipping is so expensive when you need a box and you are sending glass… I just lumped it all together as a flat rate thinking I’d have plenty of profit to cover shippping.
Well guess what? Shipping costs bucks! Ack! Way more than I expected it to too. Maybe someday I will find a way to do it cheaper but for now I’m charging $25 to cover it all. It really does cost that much. Well, it’s actually $23 something. I’m adding two bucks for my walking because I’m worth it.
You don’t know how hard it is to schedule a walk to the UPS store with a toddler that you have to wrangle into a stroller. Or maybe you do and you’ll probably be happy to forward two bucks for my latte fund.
So anyway that’s that. I will probably upload more over the weeks to come. I’ve got some other digital art in the works and of course I’m selling prints unframed substantially cheaper.
But believe me, the frame is totally worth the $55. I thought fifty-five dollars was a lot at first but then after I blew dust and fiberboard sawdust out of the frames over and over, cleaned the glass over and over and then spent hours trying to match the matte up juuuuuust right (which took several tries of course) and wrestled with the matte and the funny bendy things on the back, I was so over it. Fifty-five bucks is mere pittance for my efforts.
Well maybe I exaggerate just a little bit but it did take a bit of tender loving care. Because I do care.
And with that I bid you farewell to go snoop in my Etsy shop. Don’t feel obligated to buy. This is just an experiment. When I have my real shop, I will have way more stuff and then I’ll really put on the hard sell.
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All’s fun and games until somebody poops in the pool
It has been Hot! Hot! Hot! here. Hotter than dog’s breath, as I like to say. It really feels like dog’s breath too because it is so humid all the time. When I was out in the sticks it was about 109, sometimes 115 but it seemed way more bearable than the 93 degrees in the shade of my hot humid house with no air conditioning.
I would kill for some air conditioning. I try and try to imagine that I am in Paris or that I am the sexy señorita slaving away in the kitchen while sweat drips down the tendrils of my curly hair slipping out of it’s romantically loose bun BUT my imagination is in need of some anti-freeze or something because it just poops out and starts panting.
How do I always forget that summer is like this? I used to say that summer was my favorite time of year but this year… I’m thinking I’m way more into Fall. Fall with it’s pumpkin pies and crisp apples. Give me your tweeds and wool sweaters. I think I should move to Sweden.
Anyway! This post is not about me belly aching about the heat. It is about our NEW NEATO FEATO DEETO BLOWUP KIDDIE POOL! Yes, I wheeled the stroller down the hot-enough-to-fry-an-egg-on sidewalk this morning, to our local hardware store and bought an eight dollar blow up pool! I think it is one of the best investments I have ever made.
Baby Bug and I nearly died of heat stroke getting it at 9:30 this morning but it was so worth it. When we got home, Baby Bug took a nap and I begged Toby to blow it up for us. I tried to blow it up myself but I almost passed out. I have the lung capacity of a mouse. I saw stars and everything.
It took Toby quite a lot of trickery to get it blown up too. Who knew you need a bike pump for these things? We don’t have a bike pump. But we do have a bugaboo stroller with a handy dandy mini pump for pumping up bugaboo tires. It wasn’t a good fit but with sharp knife (for reasons I’m not sure of) Toby managed to get the silly thing blown up just in time for Baby Bug to wake up.
I take that back. He managed to get it blown up while she ate lunch in her high chair. You should have seen her excitement as the pump made it’s whoosh whoosh whoosh sound. I’m sure she had no idea what this giant blue and red plastic expanding thing was but she knew it had something to do with Fun with a capital “F”. Whoosh Whoosh Whoosh went the pump. Swing swing swing went Baby Bug’s dangling legs under her high chair. She could barely eat she was so excited.
Finally, we got the thing blown up and out on the porch to fill with water. It was so great. Playing with water is always fun with a baby but playing with water in a kiddie pool on a super super super hot day is even better! I think the only thing that might have topped it (thinking of you Laurie) would have been eating popsicles while playing in the neato feato deeto kiddie pool with a baby on a super super super hot day.
We had a blast. The best part for me is that this little body of water somehow made the temperature on our patio drop a good ten degrees. I can’t say for sure since we have no thermometer but it sure felt like it. It’s amazing how much cooler you can feel when you have your feet submerged in cold water. Bad mood heat stroke instantly gone.
And then Baby Bug had to go and poop in the pool. Yeah. You knew that was coming. She wore her diaper and bathing suit for a good hour but then the diaper became the GIANT ABSORBING DIAPER and swelled up bigger than her. She looked like a queen bee with a giant abdomen.
I changed her out of the GIANT DIAPER and into a swim diaper and that worked for about three minutes until she decided she wanted to run in and out of the house and sit on the couch and leave giant wet butt prints all over the place. So we ended up taking the swim diaper off and just standing around asking each other what we should do. Get her dressed? Block off the patio and keep her from playing in the pool? Put her in another swim diaper? What to do… what to do!
While Toby and I stood around like clueless parents, it suddenly got very quiet and next thing we knew there was a silent toddler squatting in her new kiddie pool taking a poop as if it was her own private toilet. Nothing good ever comes from a silent toddler. And poop, ugh poop. I am quickly becoming immune to the horror of poop.
I scooped the poop out with a plastic bag and Toby dumped the contaminated water over the side of our patio into our neighbor’s garden below. We made jokes about the five second rule and the fact that our pooped in pool water is probably a hundred times cleaner than the beaches in Huntington. But the sad fact was, our super duper neato feato deeto kiddie pool fun was officially over.
Until tomorrow or something.
