growin up there were two days that i loved the most. one of em was 'pay day'. i don't know who was gettin paid or remember how often this day occurred. i do remember that it provided only temporary delight - sort of like christmas or your birthday because the very next mornin after this much anticipated day, the anticipation started up again and grew until it reached a fevered pitch and then once it rolled around again, well of course the waitin started all over and it's all the grown-ups talked about.
it's probably a real good thing i didn't understand how bad it was when i'd hear my mom say there was only three dollars left in the checkin account cause if i had known how bad that was for a family of five i may have been tempted to hit the road with my easy bake oven and try to sell some of those teeny cakes to raise some grocery money. instead, i was able to master the art of eatin whole cakes in one sittin while waitin for pay day again.
what i liked about pay day was getting into the old chevy with my mom and brother and sister and headin for piggly wiggly. now i'm sure there are those of you who have favorite family memories of picnics or vacations to disneyland or such...but for me, it's the trips to the piggly wiggly. when all talk revolves around waitin for pay day and how five people can live off three dollars for i'm guessing even for as long as a week, there's not much vacation plannin takin place. but i could a cared 'a less. i don't think i even knew people went on vacations.
my older sister rode in the front with my mom while my brother and i would ride in the back. since we were not bound to stay alive in case of a car accident by seat belts, we would sit on the floor of the car and stare through the hole that had rusted all the way through the floorboard and look for money as my mother drove probably at least 45 miles an hour. i'm not sure how we thought we would see it or grab it at that speed but we sure had big plans for spendin it.
anyway, we'd stay at the piggly wiggly for what seemed like hours taking turns pushin the cart and lookin at all the groceries and making each other laugh. now that i think of it i don't remember there ever being lots of good things to eat in our cupboards - maybe we just went and pushed the cart...whatever the case - it was one of my fondest memories of growing up and being with my mom and sister and brother. my mom had a way back then of making everything seem like the greatest adventure and i always felt sorry for everyone else that didn't lead such an exciting life.
but here's the bad part. we'd always get to that last aisle and there it would be - that spinning display holdin all those neat doo dads with names printed on em. pencils, little license plates, coin purses and such. there was just about every name you ever heard of - there would be somethin my brother could have and my sister, my mom's name right there for all to see, even my dad's and probably the dog's...but never ever was there anything with my name. there wasn't even anything that came close so maybe i could chew off the rest of the letters or whatever. think about it - how many names or even nouns can you think of that start with m-o...?
i think this never seeing my name printed out on anything available for buying was one of those life definin moments dr. phil's always going on and on about because from that point on i always felt no gift was worth giving if it wasn't made real personal for the receiver somehow. seems from about the time i was six, i personalized every gift i gave by painting or sewing or scratchin a name on on it. it was no surprise to anyone that not too long after i graduated from college i found myself having started a mail order business consistin of personalized doo dads of all sorts.
everything went along all fine and dandy until that first christmas season when i sent out a big batch of pretty little catalogs filled with all sorts of personalized doo dads. i was told i could expect maybe 2000 personalized doo dad orders to arrive over the next four months. that sounded okay and i put me together a band of misfits to assist. jo came of course and it worked out real well cause there was a big place in front of the warehouse for her to put the trailer. i had three really good artists. a real sweet girl goin just by the name 'girlie' who ended up moving in the trailer with jo cause she was deaf and was always over sleepin and we'd get hysterical worrying about her not showin up for work. then there was eugenia. best artist i ever have known. biggest too. she had once been the fat lady in the circus and only owned one dress. and handsome herman - he had so many children that it took him almost a full three hours just to pin their pictures on the wall in front of his art table. he sure was handsome and we figured he was quite the romeo after hours cause three or four different women would come looking for him each week, surrounded by all sizes of teeny kids. after a few weeks he ended up staying in the trailer too.
we had a good time and jo put out lawn chairs and t.v. trays with all the art supplies and everyone would sit outside to work and get a tan and drink iced tea and jo would take requests for what to play on that old jukebox thing she's had in the trailer since high school. at night i'd always stop by after a date with one of my many beaus and we'd all play cards into the wee hours.
but not long after that pretty lil personalized doo dad catalog went out, the phone wouldn't stop ringing and the mailman told us there was too much mail and we'd have to start pickin it up ourselves and to bring a big container. disaster was headin toward me in the form of over 10,000 orders and they all arrived in just under four weeks. i have never been so horrified by success in my life. it was as bad as all those nightmares everyone has rolled in all together - you know - where it's the day of finals and you had never even gone to class and don't even know where your locker is but there you are - standing naked in front of everyone and all your teeth have fallen out. it didn't help that at that very same time, after years of looking, girlie found her birth mother and moved away and herman got put in jail for not paying child support. i still had eugenia and she brought along her husband, a tattoo artist which sounded good but in no time we discovered he couldn't spell worth a darn and all the orders he did ended up comin back and i swear if you were sitting still too long he'd start eyeing any bare flesh and we all feared if we dozed off we'd wake up with a dragon or some such thing permanently stained into a forearm.
why, you ask, is the doo dad artist with the delayed store bloggin on and on about this today- when you just stopped by to find out where the second part of dorothy's kitchen is! well....when i started taking orders myself for digital designs to be delivered via download (or cd), i had sort of guesstimated how many orders would come in by the sales previously reported to me by the downloadin duo. since jo was coming to help she could certainly handle that many! and maybe even twice that many since i was offering a lower price to thank everyone for all the support they'd shown to me over the last year and maybe people would might be ordering more than they usually bought at once. but since i wasn't going to advertise or try to drum up any doo dad desirin business, we would be fine while i also worked openin my own little store on the internet.
well lo and behold we got about 10 times more doo dad orders than we had imagined and the whole time jo and i have been trying to fling these doo dads out around the world, we couldn't help but compare this adventure to that other time we were more successful than we had anticipated. we have laughed til we cry about all the things we went through to try and get all those personalized doo dad orders out and all the people we ended up meeting in the process. jo still keeps in touch with many of em and some have even met up with her when she's travelin on her wal-mart tours. we may just get all these doo dad orders out too and sure have enjoyed getting to know so many new people and jo is already plannin on meetin some of THEM in person next time she hits the road.
the problem is we have been only doin doo dad orders so i fell behind in getting the second edition of dorothy's kitchen out on time and have fallen behind in getting the store open - even the temporary FAKE store! but we all put our heads together this morning (me, jo and the honorary board of doo dad devotees) and think we have everything back on track and are shooting for having the ugly temporary store (the doo dads will still be beautiful!) open in the next week or so.
for those of you who have just plum given up on me...well...i will miss you but there are so many talented designers deliverin art via downloads nowadays that i can certainly understand why you abandoned me and my doo dads so don't worry...and we'll still be here waiting for you if you change your mind. to all of you who have been hanging around and waitin for me and jo to write back or send your downloads or get a new blog logged or have been sending me your art and little notes cheering us on........it has been such a pleasure to get to know each and every one of you and and please accept my apology for things not going as i thought they would. i sure do hope i can repay the love and patience you have extended to me little by little once i get the store open! thank you oh thank you! this most certainly includes nancy from idaho sendin those shiny baubles for mini mo and pam writin me such a sweet thank you note and sending it through the mail and janet - well, you'll have to wait and see what janet has been working on for tracy squirrel and of course miss peggy, a fine digital artist herself, who included a picture of the little bag i made for her doo dads right smack dab in her blog.
so here's the plan for now...i thought i'd pop in and blog to show off a little of the beautiful art sent to me using dorothy's kitchen part one and apologize for it appearing i am sitting around here eatin lil cakes mini makes me using my old easy bake oven when in fact i have been setting those uploadin pipes on fire sending the downloads around the clock. i mean - if 'they' can put a woman and some fellas in space with a broken space ship you'd think 'they' could come up with a faster pipe for sendin doo dads! anyway, once i wrap up dorothy's kitchen part two i'll come back over here to the blog and let you know when it's on the site for you to download. hope this plan meets with your approval! i think you'll forgive me for takin so long to get part two of dorothy's kitchen ready for you to download once you see it...all your patience has resulted in a pay day full of lots of pretty kitchen doo dads you'll wonder how you ever lived without!
