Stress is much lower now

Having a new home.  I know other potters who have moved recently...and hat's off to them.
This move was painful, physically and psychologically.  Muscles just don't do this kind of work any more...and my body complained.  But the biggest surprise was how my mind just went into freeze several times an hour.  Then of course there were a few times when I blew my top without much reason.  Ask my son about that.

After first load, or maybe second, on Friday....you can still see the carpet!

But my wonderful crew all had a major handicap of pouring rain over 99% of the time...and it was cold...unless you were lugging furniture or a few zillion boxes.

I have moved more than most people have in their lives.  At least 25 times.
I'll try to count the places again when I'm falling asleep.

My ancient TV is hooked up to cable again...now if only there's something broadcast I want to watch!

What was I doing now?  I think I've been overwhelmed most by getting up to go get exactly one thing, and being waylaid by about 30 others, and sometimes forgetting completely what I started to do.
But the good news is that I've started the 30 other things, and maybe finished one.
And I keep coping with not knowing where things are packed...so a paper towel was the coffee cone filter this morning.

Set up partially completed.

Just a few golden leaves at early morning sunshine

Quote for today:

One morning, I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I’ll never know.

Groucho Marx

Another WET day!

We put up the tent this morning, in drizzle.  We discussed how we'd be able to keep dry, as well as display most of our 5 potters' works, and offer a dry spot for customers to stand as well.

A 10 foot by 10 foot pop-up tent can only do so much.
So we cut our tables to just 2 six-footers.

We still used table cloths, which got soaked.  But no risers, no business cards, no special display stuff at all.  This was the nitty gritty of a Tailgate Market.

Mud Buddies Rule!

The rain got better for a while, but it got colder out...in low 60s I'd guess. Then by 11:45 it was pouring rain.

Our vendor next-door-neighbor had an extra panel to hang from the top, providing a side to protect us from the drips off the top edge.  That let Cathy and myself sit in comfort, relatively speaking.
There were 24 tents displaying, I think the manager, Joannie said.

Last week they didn't hold the market at all, thanks to Hurricane Joaquin.  Joannie said this was the first time in (sorry, I don't remember how many years...) that they'd canceled.

And we had some sales too!  I was glad to finish my order for a plate from Joanne, and then another woman gave us an order for a special decoration on a particular shape mug.  She paid in advance.

Manager Joannie is making sure things are going as smoothly as possible.

If I look bedraggled, it's because I sure am!

Quote for today:

“Be as simple as you can be; you will be astonished to see
how uncomplicated and happy your life can become.”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda ~

Eureka! I found what I was looking for!

Chapter One
I've packed everything I owned and moved it only a mile.  But I'm not a simple person with just one this, and one that.  I have at least a ton of pottery of various shapes.  I have many less clothes than towels and sheets.  And even fewer shoes and purses.  I know, what kind of woman am I really?  The kind that has at least 20 cardboard boxes still to unpack...many of which hold books.

And I made a plate on order for someone at the Tailgate Market about 3 or 4 weeks ago.

That was before the Mud Buddies canceled their participation in a market on Sept. 26, and then the whole market was canceled on Oct. 3, due to incessant rain.

As many other retailers in the area, that hurt us, to miss 2 out of our 4 Saturdays a month.

But my big problem this week has been to find the plate for Joanne.  I called her 3 weeks ago to say it was ready, but then we weren't there.  She finally called me to see if I was really going to come to market this week.  Oh yes.  And determined to find the plate.

I never expected to unpack all my pottery first, but that was where it was most likely to be packed.  I knew I myself hadn't packed it, but nobody else remembered where it might be...it was among the last things packed.  And tonight I found it, where one more plastic tub had been buried under blankets which had been wet when we finished the move.  (They were used to protect my wonderful furniture, and then the blankets took forever to dry).  You must know that my furniture is pretty much what you can get at used furniture stores, except for the new bed.

Still unpacking, too many files to keep half of them!

So Joanne can come get her plate this Saturday.  And I hope to see many of my friends from the market...even though the weather-man has been talking about rain again.  Oh no!

Chapter two
I also want to give credit to the hard work and enjoyable posts over at Sepia Saturday, which is publishing for the 300th time this week.  The theme is based upon a very old photograph, and I just read what Alan posted in his own reference, showing unknown people who lived at the time of WW I.

Rosie B. giving her sweet smile!

My choice to honor Sepia Saturday is to also honor a friend who has been fighting cancer...and she is a tough cookie indeed.  Alan's photo is giving honor those who showed courage in the past.  Rosie still is!  So I'm a bit off topic (again!)

Rosie and myself in 2007, Brevard, NC

Rosie and I were in 7th grade through 12th grade in High School together.  Then we went off and married and had kids, and had very little contact from 1963 to 2001, when we again touched base with the miracle of the internet.  This visit was my second to NC to see Rosie and her husband George, and I moved here just months later.

Several years after that Rosie moved to Washington state to be near her family.  We're still talking daily over e-mails.  I love you, Rosie. You're my best friend!

Today's Quote:

In all chaos there is a cosmos, in all disorder a secret order.

It all depends on how we look at things, and not how they are in themselves. Carl Jung

How many years of blogging about pots and...

Alchemy of Clay First Edition LINK HERE came out Oct. 10, 2010.  After 195 postings I closed it Dec 2, 2012, mainly because I ran out of space on Blog for more photos. And I gave up WordPress because of photo limitations.

But Goddess in Clay (Here) was before that.  This is fun, I've now found it started on Oct. 9, 2008 HERE  and the last post was May 17, 2011.

Goddesses I've made

I been blogging not quite as many years as I've lived in North Carolina, namely eight.   So this year marks my 7th birthday as a blogger.  I'm also not mentioning the three other blogs to which I kind of contributed daily for several years.  Goodness, when did I find time to live?

Who really cares?  Me. I like having an independent source of my memoirs of blogs as well as pots.  Oh my goodness, there were so many chunky learning ones back then (pots, I'm obviously still chunky!)  And I found I could review a year's postings at the end of the year and actually delete the ones that were less than stellar. Now I think I was a bit heavy handed on the delete key last year, so this year I'll be a bit more careful.  Once deleted from blogland, things are gone.  But wait, I do still have those posts, because I send each one to an email address, and don't delete those ever.  Ah, double backups for saved files!

Thought for today:

Stop using the past to poison your present. Don't let who you used to be prevent you from getting the things in life that are available to you now.

What you seek is seeking you.

Rumi