Take 2 Peeves and Call Me in the Morning

I forgot to post yesterday.

Excellent.

Haven’t gotten any new jewelry finished this week so no pics of that to post.

Bead porn is for tomorrow’s post.

No interesting run-ins at the grocery store lately – buying the pre-packaged sandwich meat and thereby avoiding the deli counter entirely seems to have ratcheted that whole situation down so no humorous episodes to be derived from that.

Kid has actually been pretty darned good lately. No hidden piles of trash have shown up and no property damage has occurred. Biggest event we’ve had is that he (probably accidentally? I hope!) hit another child in the face with a ball at recess which earned him a “major infraction” notice that I had to sign off on. (Okay, can I just add here that, while I certainly don’t condone anyone getting hit in the face with a ball, accidentally or not, isn’t that just sort of a risk that comes with being a kid? Heck, when I was in school, we played dodgeball almost every recess where the entire POINT OF THE GAME was to hit other kids with a ball. And now it’s a MAJOR INFRACTION? Really? Geez…where were these people when *I* was getting picked on every day and having my bike tires deflated and food thrown at me and once, a knife held to my throat (okay, it was a butter knife, but still!) I’m just sayin’ it seems like a teeny bit of overkill to me).

Anyway, the point is, I’ve had to search high and low to come up with something to write about for today’s entry and I finally decided to write about my pet peeves. More specifically, my bead-related pet peeves (cuz you know the ENTIRE list of things that peeve me off would probably take a year to write – I’m easily peeved).

So, here we go (in no particular order):

1. Size does or does not matter.

I’m peeved at myself for my total inability to figure out the actual size of beads I order off the internet from the pictures and descriptions. And yeah, okay, so 50% of the problem is me hitting “buy” without actually READING the description, but it almost doesn’t matter. I can read that something is Xmm and it just means nothing to me – even if I go look on a ruler and actually count the mm’s. I can see the penny or the dime helpfully placed in the picture for reference and still be surprised when the beads show up that they are either WAY bigger or WAY smaller than what I expected. Notice, however, that I never send any of them back.

2. Smoky beads.

I can’t say anything other than BLECH! Here I am all excited to get my latest fix…er…package of beads and rip off the top of the envelope and out comes this STENCH! And I know some of you are smokers and you are probably about to be royally pissed at me, but this is just gross. And I know you SWEAR you don’t smoke around your beads, but I bet you don’t think about the mailing supplies or about how if you smoke in another room, that heinous smell wafts its way throughout the house and gets into EVERYTHING. And then your poor customers who have nicotine allergies, like me, get a nasty surprise when they open up their packages and get sick from the fumes. And I don’t care if you use Febreze or Oust or (as one vendor recently told me) a “pleasantly scented candle” – the smoky odor is still there. Trust me. It is. So then I have to go soak the beads in soap and water or sit them outside overnight if they’re not waterproof to try to get the stench out. Please don’t take away from the beautiful art you create by destroying it with smoke and even more importantly, stop jeopardizing your health and the health of those around you with this awful habit. I want you around for a long time to keep creating amazing beads – I just want the unscented variety!

3. These.

I really, really, really hate these notices. Because what they really say to me is “your new beads are tantalizingly close, but you can’t get them. Nope, you can’t. You can know they are there, but you can’t get them. And we won’t bring them to you. Because we like to torture you.” See, here’s the thing. The USPS, in all its infinite wisdom, determined that my town did not need an actual post office. We have what’s called a “postal annex.” As far as I can tell, that is USPS code for “completely useless waste of space.” Because you cannot do any normal post office type activities at the “annex.” For example, you cannot:

-buy stamps
-get a package weighed
-mail a package that doesn’t already have postage on it
-pick up a package.

Oh, they’ll TELL you that you can pick up a package. But if you have a job and you work a typical M-F, 8-5, work week, you can’t. Why? Because the postal annex is only open from 10 AM to 3 PM Monday through Friday. Not on the weekends. Not before 10. Not after 3. So, I ask you, if they have my beads at the annex, and I have to work from 8 to 5 M-F, THEN HOW THE H*** AM I SUPPOSED TO GET MY BEADS? Yeah, let me just take off a couple of hours from work, without pay, to pick up a package. Great idea. Send a friend? Nope, gotta show I.D. to pick up the package to prove I’m me and not some kinda bead terrorist or something. The USPS has my beads and they are holding them HOSTAGE! Maybe it’s just me, but isn’t this the stupidest thing you ever heard of? Oh, and when I go to mail out items I’ve sold, I have to trek down to the UPS store, next to the dreaded grocery store, to get the package weighed and buy the appropriate postage. Even if it’s going via USPS mail…I have to go through UPS. It’s INSANE!

Okay, that peeve may be more about the whole postal system than beads, except for the fact that they are interfering with my bead habit and I think someone should probably explain to them why that is a BAD idea!

4. Bead Need.

Why is it that I can have a huge and ever-growing stash of beads, and yet still not have the exact perfect thing I need for a particular project? WHY? Like the necklace I made this weekend – I had these stunning faceted blue pearls that would have been PERFECT for it, but did I have the right gauge of brass wire to FIT through the pearls? Of course not. Headpins? Nope. And okay, yeah, so I could’ve gotten my pearl reamer out and made the holes bigger, but did I really want to use up all my beading time to ream the holes out of 25 or so pearls on a Sunday afternoon? Ummmm….lemmeee think…NO! And last night, I was looking at a beadweaving project in a magazine and thought, “that’d be fun to make – I should go round up the materials for it.” Found everything I needed except the “recipe” required 42 Swarovski crystals in a certain color in 4mm size. Did I have 42? Nope. I had 38. ARRGGGH! (that’s pirate-speak for $*#)*#&)!!!)

5. The Beading Schlumps.

That’s how I refer to these periods of time I have where I feel totally uncreative, can’t make any designs I like, and think everyone else’s work is brilliant and mine is crapola. I’m kinda in one now. Part of it is due to just plain old lack of time and energy. I do actually have some good ideas in my brain right now, I just don’t have the time to execute them or else, like last night, I have a small window of time, but I’m too dang tired to make use of it. Seriously, I fell asleep at 8:45 last night. Of course, then I woke up at 2 AM and couldn’t go back to sleep. Lovely.

So, in conclusion, I have no sense of size, my skin is itchy from nicotine-induced-allergic-reaction, the postal annex is holding my beads hostage, I never have the beads I need but am running out of room for all the beads I have, I’m schlumpy and I’m exhausted.

Send chocolate. Or a hostage negotiation team to get my beads out of the clutches of the evil USPS. Y'know - whichever you happen to have on hand.

KJ