Cruel and Unusual Punishment.....

I'm not sure whether that refers to Tessie being in the dungeon or me cleaning up after myself..... I got up at 4:30 AM and the first thing that I did was let Tessie out. She went off in a huff, saying "The nerve of some people! I didn't get a wink of sleep!" I think she went home and went straight to bed.

That gave me time to finish what little I had left to do before I left for the museum.

We got most everything settled for the classes. I will be teaching a beginning mini class about tools and other things that people need to know to get started. They will also be doing a small vignette. Then there will be a 3 session basket making class, and the first of 2010 there will be a 6 session class, making 3 pieces of wicker. There will be others, but these are the first ones that will be listed.

Anyway, by the time I returned home, Tessie was up and running. She was on her high horse. First I found her lecturing Friskie about keeping the work area clean. This was on the dining room table, where I had the sewing machine set up.Poor Friskie(In case you don't know, Friskie's name is spelled that way because that is how it was spelled on a food bowl that I purchased for him a long time ago.....25cents at a garage sale in Iowa.). He was cringing and backing slowly away, trying to escape. It usually takes a lot to scare an alligator. Not when it's Tessie shaking her finger and ranting. I noticed that she was not mentioning all of the times I have had to clean up her messes.

I sneaked off to another room. The wrath of Tessie is not a good thing. I got the vacuuming done and started putting things away.

There was Tessie on the kitchen counter. This time she was lecturing Theo. I don't think that it bothers Theo much. He is just a little tiger and he still doesn't understand the big words.

Tessie saw me and yelled at me for not covering the pin box. I have to say that she was right on that one. I am a bad, bad pin person. Theo could have eaten half of them while I was away.

"And YOU left the glue open too!" she said. I was starting to cringe. I kept cleaning.....

She ran into Zar in the bedroom. He barely had room for his bike because of the mess in there. I heard Tessie say, as I walked into the room..."And she locked me in the dungeon all night. Here's the proof. She took out the gargoyles so that she would have room for my easy chair!" Hey! At least I didn't make her sleep on the floor....

I know that I promised to be back to "normal" today.....It is happening in stages. The more I get cleaned up and put away, the more normal I become. At least that's the theory.

By the time I go to bed tonight, I should be myself again. The only thing is, I don't think that I am going to get a lot of sleep. I heard Tessie inviting everyone she could find to her place. "We are going to listen to LOUD music and sing along just for good measure." Do you think that she might be planning this party to get even for an evening in the dungeon?

I will see you tomorrow. I will be the one with an ice pack, a bottle of aspirin and disintegrated earplugs.

Liar, Liar!

I went over to the museum this morning and set up a bunch of classes, now through March. That took up most of the morning.

I am going to be teaching a class on getting started in miniature making and choosing tools to get started. Then there will be three basket classes on the different ways to make them.

The Wicker Bassinet class that I proposed turned into a vignette with a few other pieces to go with it. That one will wind up being a 6 part class since I opted to teach it once a week for three hours at a time instead of trying to cram it all into one or two sessions.

The last one we planned will be an intermediate wicker chair. That one will be a three part class. It will be more complicated than the bassinet.

I chose to teach in small spurts rather than one long class because I believe that you retain more if you do it for a couple of hours and then go home and think about the things that you did before you start trying to cram more stuff in your head. I feel that if you stuff all of the information in your brain in one session a lot of it falls out and you lose it. I know that works better for me.

Anyway, about the table that I started yesterday. I lied. I didn't get it done today. After the morning at the museum, I came home and waited for the TV repair man and cleaned up the kitchen. It was a complete disaster area after the past few days with Luxie. You should see the sawdust.....No.....Strike that. You shouldn't see the sawdust. Anyway, now that I have the class schedule settled maybe things will get back to normal. I still have to do some planning, but now I know what I am planning for.

I did put the table in place so that Zar could see if it was going to work, size wise. He was pleased.

Tessie showed up. She hopped up and sat on the table. Theo was trailing her. I think that, for the time being, Zar has resigned himself to having Tessie in the secret workshop. After all, there really isn't anything that she can get into right now. It probably won't be long before she is banned again, because he is talking about setting up shop as soon as the windows are installed.

I am still looking for Spike. Funny thing. When I was wandering around calling his name Theo showed up a couple of different times. It makes one wonder........

See you tomorrow and I promise to finish the table. Progress, I must make progress.....