What I'm Listening To: September by Earth, Wind and Fire (this one's for Greg!)
There's a big world out there. And basically, it's divided up into two types of people. Those people who can craft, and those of us who have tried crafting and failed. Miserably. So therefore I believe I can say with a lot of resentment, anger and jealousy, CRAFTING SUCKS ASS AND YOU PEOPLE ARE DORKS. (Except for my sister, who is awesome and I love her very much.)
What is crafting, you may ask? Well, if you just stepped off your spaceship, crafting is the art of making some amusing trinket by hand. Usually it involves fabric, yarn, glue, thread, and glitter puffy paint. For me, it usually involves frustration, sweat, tears, screaming and stomping off in a huff.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I've tried to craft. I've tried reallllllly hard. I've bought so many crafting supplies that my basement looks like a Jo-Ann's pop-up store (don't get me started about Jo-Ann's Fabrics -- that place is like the fashion-challenged Mecca of Milwaukee.)
And with all those awesome materials, I've tried making things. To get started, I looked up the instructions on the interwebs. First of all, there's like A MILLION CRAFTING BLOGS. Yes, I said blogs. Does everyone in America have a blog now? Hey, I have a blog!! You have a blog!! BLOG BLOG BLOG BLOG!!!
And all the crafting blogs look like other crafty people actually read them, and comment, and are always sponsored by tons of companies that probably give the blogger actual shwag and promote them. Jeez, where do I sign up? Does Marlboro Ultra Lights sponsor blogs? That would be AWESOME.
Once you find the item you'd like to make, the bloggers' directions all say the same thing. "OH IT'S SO EEEEEEAAAAASY!!!! I made this life-sized chocolate fondant replica of the Washington monument and matching cake stand in like 15 minutes while I fed my twins on both boobs and knitted a tea cosy at the SAME TIME!!!" WTF! When I see the word easy, I cringe. Easy in crafting language means "We're going to make the assumption that you've crafted before, that you know all these crafting terms, that you're in the crafting nation and that you've drank a gallon of the crafting kool-aid before you started this project. Hey, newsflash, not every one of us knows how to do anything useful so don't make any assumptions that I understand words like "seam", "wrong-side out" or "bias".
So I give up. I can't craft. I suck. I am a horrible human being and worthless and weak. But I'll tell you one thing that isn't two things -- I bet the bloggers can't type 80 words a minute, create amazing powerpoint presentations that will literally wipe your nose for you, and pound out a pivot table in their sleep. (Ok, that last part, about the pivot tables...yeah, I can't do that either.) *grin*
