Saturday, August 14, 2010

In Which I Turn Into A Gibbering Idiot, But Still Have A Great Day

Okay, so today was just an all round pretty awesome day.

Connor and I went to a birthday party in the morning for one of the kids who goes to his school, so that was fun.  He ate a bit of frosting off the top of a cupcake and did a whole lot of yelling; he seems to be feeling much better and is mostly recovered from yesterday's fun and games.  Then I took him back to the house, dropped him off with Jeremy, and headed up to Elliot Bay Bookstore in Seattle.

April Winchell was in town.

Okay, so April Winchell has done a lot of things, but the reason I was going to see her was that she is the brain behind the wonderful snarky horribleness that is Regretsy.  You all know how much I love Etsy, that awesome crafty website, right?  Well, Regretsy showcases some of the, shall we say, less successful craft projects on Etsy.  Craft projects that should never, ever have been attempted.  I will warn you, by the way, that if you aren't comfortable with off-color humor and/or profanity, you probably shouldn't visit the site.  Some of the craft projects are more than a little racy.  For everybody else, however, it's hilarious and you should go take a look

Anyway, I spend a lot of time glued to my computer.  This is because there are many nights when after Connor goes down, I'm unable to leave my house and don't feel like cleaning up or reading, but it's too early to go to bed.  So I spend my time looking at funny websites; laughter is pretty essential to me keeping my sanity these days.  I'm sure everybody has their own ways of getting away mentally from the stress for a little while; looking at websites of questionable taste like this happens to be one of mine.  There are certainly worse habits I could cultivate.

So I, along with about 100 other people went to see April Winchell down in the creaky old basement of the Elliott Bay Bookstore and she was awesome.  She read us some of her e-mail hate mail (she gets a lot of hate mail, as you might imagine) and then she showed us a slide show of some of the most overpriced items on Etsy, such as this glorious Swarovski Crystal Encrusted Marlin Grando, a bargain at a mere $25,000.  Who could resist buying such an amazing work of art?  I'm saving up right now for it; hope somebody else doesn't snap it up first!  And then she signed books and was extremely gracious and lovely despite the fact that my brain somehow deserted me and once it was my turn to talk to her I turned into a babbling, blushing idiot.  I even giggled.  It was horrible.  But she still signed not one, but two books for me and then she let me take a picture with her and everything.  See?  There we are. 

So that was pretty great, and then I went straight from there to dinner with some friends, after which we all went to a movie together.  Jer and Connor apparently had a good day together, and the little guy didn't have any seizures or anything.  All in all it was a pretty fantastic day!

~Jess

2 comments:

Julia O'C said...

YAY!!! I was afraid that after Connor's performance, you wouldn't go but you did!! You look so cute in that picture!! I'm envious!! And it's making me use lots of exclamation points!! (But excited as I am about your Regretsy adventure, I'm MORE excited that Mr. Connor did not have a seizure! DOUBLE-YAY!)

I can relate to how you felt about meeting the author. I went to meet a woman who writes humorous knitting books (shut up) and was such a wreck. When it was my turn for to get my book signed, I brought up that I'd been to Newfoundland (where the author's husband was raised). I thought this was a good, neutral thing to talk about. She started to tell me a Newfie joke and *before* she even got to the punch line, this horrible, LOUD demonic giggle escaped out of me. In my head, I was screaming, "OHMYGOD, STOP LAUGHING! YOU'RE SCARING HER!" But I couldn't. I couldn't stop it. It was awful. I'm lucky there was no security because I'm sure I would have been escorted out right then and there.

Herding Grasshoppers said...

Hurray for a seizure-free day, and THANK YOU for the laugh! Regretsy!!!

If you need a couple more sites to poke around, try Catalog Living and Unhappy Hipsters.

(I tried and failed to make the linky happen. Sorry. Google it.


Julie

 
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