The problem with me is...
Okay, okay, I hear you - let’s rewind, shall we? One of the problems with me is that if things
are working well for other people, then I assume they will for me, too, until the opposite is comprehensively proved. Let me give you an example.
This afternoon
at Crafty Group we were making Christmas decorations. We have been making Christmas decorations for a few sessions now but you won’t catch me complaining, especially as I have brought Christmas forward this year, so that October is now November, and
November has become December. Today’s lesson in Christmas Crafting was to take thin cardboard strips and weave, twist and glue them into a kind of 3D star shape, after which we were allowed to spray them silver or gold (or, for one of our number, a combination
of the two when the silver spray ran out.)
My strips simply wouldn’t stick together properly no matter how hard and for how long I pressed the sticky ends
together. Everyone else was doing just fine, sticking-wise. Now to my problem - it simply never occurred to me that there might be something wrong with the way I was doing the Sticking Bit. I mean, everyone else was okay, I just needed to keep trying. I am,
as Mr B is fond of telling people, extremely trying.
At this point our leader, the Lovely Linda, noticed that my fingers were not only sticky but also rather glittery
- was it possible, she queried, that I might be using Modge Podge instead of glue? Guilty, as charged, m’Lord. Do you know, it made all the difference using the correct materials? Well, who’d have thought it?
Some very dear friends of ours once came to visit us on their way back from holiday in Devon. When they left us at the end of a thoroughly pleasant afternoon, they set their satnav for “home”
and drove off in happy confidence, completely failing to remember that, while on holiday, they had set their holiday destination as “home” for the purpose of navigating local journeys. They were well on
their way back to Devon before they realised their mistake.
This story gave everyone but me a good laugh. I didn’t laugh (well, not a lot) because I could
just imagine the same thing happening to me. I would assume all was going as expected, especially as all the other cars heading in the same direction seemed to know where they were going. I do this a lot; assuming that everyone is going where I am going, that
is. Hopefully nobody is ever following me, assuming that I know where I am going...
The Youngest of the Darling Daughters (all my friends want to borrow her, having
learnt of her Cupboard Clearing Exploits in yesterday’s Daily Blog) thinks I am very resilient. By this, I like to think, she is praising my ability to bounce back from every disaster that befalls me, whether large, small or Craft Related. Given my married
name, bouncing back would seem to be a most appropriate talent.
So, yes, I showed my resilience by bouncing back from my Modge Podge error and, despite finding
myself unable to curb my unfortunate habit of overdoing it when it came to the Application of Golden Spray, (“Less is more,” my head advises me, but - “Go for it!” exhorts my heart) my finished decoration was quite passable. It wasn’t,
to be fair, quite as beautiful as those made by my fellow crafters over the course of the afternoon, but I knew that, when I took it home to show Mr B he would be All Admiration, not, of course, having the advantage of being able to compare my creation with
the others’.
One day I will learn not to make assumptions. One day I will not have to rely on my ability to bounce back because I won’t get into
trouble in the first place.
Pigs might, indeed, fly...