There’s the Jack o’ Lantern in all its glory. Or not really all its glory, since the candle has burnt out. I didn’t go out and snap it when it was lighted up, but I will. We have another pumpkin to carve yet, and I bought glow lights to put in them. Being all modern.

Jack o’ Lantern completion is scheduled for today. Also housework. I also have another recipe to practice for my December shows. It has been pointed out to me that I should not be putting time into practice and paperwork, so much as into booking shows. So that might also take place today.

However, last Saturday I spent at traffic school and the Saturday before that I spent out with my daughter, and the previous several Saturdays I had cooking shows, and before that I was working on Saturdays for Back to School, so I am feeling that it is high time for a PSD Saturday.

I baked this Caramelized Apple Pecan Coffee Cake for breakfast yesterday. I picked the recipe up at Starbucks when #1 daughter and I were up there.

I like to pick up recipes in odd places, the odder the better, and I often make them. #2 son and I actually once made a weird cake involving Coca-Cola and marshmallows from a recipe we picked up at a Cracker Barrel in Missouri. I pick up recipes in museums, too. You never know.

But I think that Starbucks must have intended, when they provided this recipe to the public, that we would all read through it and think “Forget that! I’ll just go to Starbucks and buy a piece.”

It’s not a very photogenic cake, I have to admit, but it is delicious. It is made with yogurt and applesauce so it has only a tiny bit of butter in it, and while it is made with white flour and sugar, the quantities of each are relatively small compared with the fruit and nuts, so it is fairly healthy for a cake.

However, it involves caramelizing sugar, toasting pecans, chopping things, melting things, spreading things out to cool, and three mixing bowls.

A person shouldn’t do all that before breakfast without there being a salary involved. In which case I suppose you’d eat breakfast first, and then go do all that stuff.

I also tried out a technique with ploymer clay that I had been wondering about for awhile. The idea is that you roll out the clay very thin and burnish pictures onto it. Printed-out pictures, you know. You press the paper into the clay, and bake it, and when you pull the paper off, voila! the picture is on the clay and you have lovely bookmarks to put in the books you give to people as gifts.

Except that it didn’t work. I ended up with plain white polymer which is to say, strips of plastic. I threw them away. If anyone out there is familiar with the technique and can tell me where I went wrong, I’d love to hear about it.

This is what I plan to sew today, if I am successful in attaining a PSD. I am chary of announcing a PSD, since I have anounced several recently and then had something come up that prevented any sewing from taking place.

So I am announcing my intention to sew this today, once I get some housework done and of course my daily computer stint for the store. It is truncated on Saturday, but still a couple of hours’ worth. And even if I am determined to keep the housework to a minimum, there is that minimum that has to be done. And the grocery shopping. We’ll see whether the sewing intention comes to fruition or not.

Breakfast first, though. Something that does not involve making caramel or spreading things out to cool.

Baking did take place. I made a couple of loaves of banana nut bread, one of which will go into the freezer for this week’s frozen thing on the HGP. They were baked in my old loaf pans, not in stoneware, and got slightly burned at the ends. I have gotten lax about watching baked goods. I sliced them up, and discarded the ends, and no one would ever know if I hadn’t felt I had to announce it here. It’s the same compulsion that makes us point out the wonky zipper when people admire our handmade garments.

Basically, I just worked yesterday. I made up the hours I had missed by napping on Wednesday. I also, since Thursday night is show night and I didn’t have a show scheduled, spent the evening catching up on paperwork.

You might think I couldn’t be behind on paperwork yet, since I’ve only been doing this for a month, but there is a gap between signing up and being eligible for a website, so I had all this paper from shows that had to be transferred into my database. I also had a new shipment of catalogs onto which I had to write my name and address and URL and all those things for which I ought to have a stamp made.

I am not good at repetition. I get bored very easily. Both my jobs involve a certain amount of repetitive work. I suppose all jobs do. But the truth is that I tend to procrastinate about those things.

So I tend to do things like changing all the alt tags on the store blog’s pictures, or checking all the links at our vendors, at the store where I am continually interrupted, rather than at home where I can be frenziedly tracking down the truth about Native American flutes instead.

And I tend to practice brownie recipes rather than doing paperwork.

We also got a start on our pumpkin carving.

Just a start. This one turned out really well. I drew the face, and #2 son did all the work. The rest of us sat around watching The Office and (in my case) writing my contact info a hundred times. We’ll have a lighted picture tomorrow, I confidently predict.

My husband brought home a fancy trophy saying “First Place Regional Qualifiers Summer 2007″ and “APA,” with an 8 ball reposing on crossed — I don’t know, wheat sheaves or something. Very fancy, in any case.

He’s still asleep, and came in after I had gone to sleep, so I haven’t heard the details yet, but I guess he won his tournament. He left the trophy on top of the computer so I wouldn’t miss it.

#1 son got up at 4:30 to take #1 daughter to the airport. She is going to Pennsylvania for the weekend. I’m not sure how late I should wait before I begin worrying about #1 son’s not being home yet. Maybe another couple of hours. That’s long enough to bake something for breakfast, for sure.

I worked for about six hours yesterday, with naps in between stretches of working, and then went and did study group, bells, hymn class, and choir, so I was reasonably busy. I do not feel any worse than I did yesterday, so I guess if I was sick, I have been successful at nipping it in the bud. I do not have to go anywhere today, so I think that I will skip the gym and make up the hours of work I missed yesterday, and but otherwise take it easy, so that I will be fully myself for the weekend.

I no longer sound like either Tallulah Bankhead or Earnest Borgnine. I now sound like some dangerous breathy stranger making phone calls asking people to leave $500,000 in unmarked bills or they will never see their loved one alive again. I will not be making phone calls today.

I am on Book Three for the R.I.P. Autumn Challenge: Rebecca, by Daphne Du Maurier. This is a classic novel, of course, and a very good one, excellent at setting up the creepiness gradually as it goes along. I think it might have been made into a movie, and I am thinking that I should track said movie down.

This is the depth of thought of which I am capable today.

Actually, I’m having some trouble with the section of the book I’m working on. It is a subsection on music. We have, in the social studies frameworks for our state in the grade I am working on right now, several requirements related to music. The kids are supposed to know the state songs, the state musical instrument, and the state folk dance.

I am not making this up. Not only do we have four state songs and a state folk dance, we also have an official State Historical Cooking Vessel. If you check, you will probably find that you have some weird state symbols, too. I guess the legislators get bored.

Anyway, there is also a requirement to study famous people from our state, not any particular ones, just the idea of there being famous people from our state, I guess. It happens that quite a few of our famous people were musicians. And our state bird, another of the things on the list, has a song about it.

So I had the idea that I could weave all these things together with a good dollop of state history in a subunit on music. We could begin with Native American music, for which I have done some good lessons in the past on making musical instruments, the physics of pitch, and ostinati. We could move on to pioneer music, neatly fitting in the state instrument and folk dance, as well as some study of the ballad. Next, the Civil War era and that bird song. A neat segue into the blues, the Harlem Renaissance and some of our famous people, followed by the modern ones as reading comprehension practice.

It seems like a good plan.

However, I am having trouble making it work without assuming that there will be a musician involved in it at some point.

It’s like this book we have at the store on music and mathematics, Functional Melodies by Scott Beall. I love this book. It has numerous clever ideas for studying music and math together, beginning with having little children listen to a phrase of music and decide what geometry term it could be a metaphor for. Unfortunately, the book is so hard to read, unless you are a musician and a mathematician, that there are probably no elementary school teachers using it at all. The activities might not be hard to do, even, but you have to be able to understand them first, and the author makes so many assumptions about what people know that the innovative ideas are trapped inside the book.

So, yeah. I need to quit talking about the problem and get back to solving it.

Baking should also take place today, I think. It is much cooler than it has been. Breezes are coming through the windows. Tea breads would be just right.

I woke up yesterday sounding like Tallulah Bankhead and hoping it was allergies. Today I woke up sounding like Ernest Borgnine and feeling that I might be sick.

Yesterday was a somewhat rough day. I have two colleagues with serious health problems. Naturally, this makes me feel that I should ignore a possible cold, though there is in fact no logical connection. But there was a general grimness to the day.

I called our insurance agent that morning with a routine question and he assured me that we had no car insurance, so I went over there at lunch time. The nice young insurance man had told me they would close their office from 12:00 to 1:00, so I went at 1:00 precisely. They returned at 1:30.

They are next to a fast food restuarant, so I had my lunch there, if you can call it a lunch, while waiting for the insurance people to return.

The nice young man clicked around on the computer for a minute and said, and I quote, “Oh, wow, there you are! Seriously, I typed your name in like five times!” I was pleasant about it. Paid my bill while I was there, too.

There was no dinner time, because I have to go directly from work to pick up Partygirl so we can greet people.

This was my third week as a greeter. The first week I was put in a place where I was supposed to keep people from using the bathroom. The second week I was in a place where I was supposed to keep people from climbing stairs. This week Partygirl and I were together at the front door, welcoming the people in. Much simpler.

Then I went to volunteer in the children’s program. I was put in with the second graders. This was quite fortunate, since I will be finishing up the first grade book this week or next and moving on to the second grade book. I needed a refresher on what second graders are like.

They are like little animals. They snuggle up to you randomly and poke each other. They wiggle around all the time, and are incapable of sitting still. They are also highly enthusiastic. They all want to give the answers, even when they all have the same answer. Even if it is a true/false question.

They can all read, too. There was actually one little boy who could not read, but he was there with his brother, so he might have been younger.

The thing that is most striking is how smart they all were. The lesson was quite boring in parts, to tell the truth, but the children all had their brains going the whole time. In driving school, which was full of adults, there seemed to be some quite dim people.

What happened to them between second grade and adulthood? At what point did they stop being smart?

I have work to do today, but I may go to bed and try to head this illness off at the pass. Or I may have anotehr cup of tea and breakfast and allergy medicine and experience a miraculous recovery.

Oh, I have been meaning to tell you about the book I am reading for RIP, The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris, by Leon Garfield. It begins with a couple of schoolboys who, upon hearing about the Spartan custom of exposing babies on hillsides, decide to try it out with a little sister. It’s quite a splendid book, filled with dark humor.

The director of the Master chorale is a mild man, gentlemanly and calm. He sat down at one point in the Rutter last night, fixed a lambent gaze on the alto section, and asked us to “describe this passage — not musically.”

“Sweet,” someone offered.
“Pretty.”

“Yes,” he agreed, “but what about the text?”

There was a bit of a pause. This was the Winchester Te Deum, so it was a prayer. That seemed a bit obvious, though. I imagine we were all trying to switch to literary analysis.

“It’s a message to the Master,” offered the woman from the Arts Center.

There may have been a bit of relief in the room. That sounded quite good, we thought.

“Okay, it’s a prayer. But what kind? Is it desperate?”

“No!” from several corners of the room.

“It’s something offered up daily,” said the woman from the Arts Center. She was definitely on a roll.

“It’s confident.” That was me. There were murmurs of agreement.

The director nodded slowly, looking over the ranks. We watched intently. Finally, he said, “Then sing it like that.”

We had a lot of absences last night. It had been raining, and it is a busy time of year, so that’s understandable. Still, it meant that we could hear some individual voices.

You never want to hear individual voices in a choir, of course, but people were adjusting to the different sound of the chorus without all the singers in it. In a big, unauditioned choir, you’re going to have some lovely voices and some that are more like braying or honking. With enough people and a good director, it doesn’t matter. The result will still be music.

With the smaller numbers, I had moments of ignoble concern that the director would think I was the one honking or braying. I’ve only worked with him in the large chorus. He doesn’t know that it is my neighbor sounding like a foghorn on those low As.

It was a fleeting thought. Really.

I will be up at the store today, and must go straight from there to the Tuesday class. Partygirl, with whom I travel to the class, signed us both up to be greeters, so we have to go so early that I have to pick her up on my way from work. I have also been asked to help out with the children’s section tonight. And I have errands to run. I am not sure when I will do that.

One of the women at rehearsal last night told me that Monday is such a busy day for her, she always feels frazzled by the time she gets to rehearsal. I asked her what it was that made Mondays so busy, and she stared at me for a moment.

“Well, I have to get out of bed,” she said at last. In another minute she added her physical therapy and housework to the list. Another woman joined in the conversation.

“You know how you can tell when you’re old?” she said. Apart, I supposed, from feeling frazzled by having to get out of bed. “When you bend down to pick something up off the floor, and think about whether there’s anything else you can do while you’re down there.”

I am not old yet, at least not by that definition, but when I am old, I hope I am still singing in community choruses. Even if I am honking and braying and booming by then. I’ll just sing softly.

First, to take care of the suspense. I had another order yesterday afternoon. Delighted, I attempted to submit the show, and could not because of a technical error. I called Janalisa in alarm, and she told me that I actually have until midnight tonight to reach the goal.

When I tried again with the software this morning, all was fine. However, I also had an email from a visitor to this blog, saying that she needed something if it wasn’t too late.

Thanks to the technical error, it wasn’t too late. So as soon as I get hold of this lady and find out what she needs, I will send in the show and feel like I won! I won! Which is quite fun.

And no, we never did sell the Theme Pig.

Here is the pumpkin patch. I sat here in the upper 80s October afternoon and knitted Ivy. I reached the point where the decreases for the armscye and the V-neck both have to be done at once, and I have carefully read and re-read it and knitted it with great attention, and we’ll see what happens.

These pumpkins are grown by a Native American mission in Arizona and brought over here, where the kids of the church sell them for a Good Cause. True, adults mind the pumpkins some of the time, but the kids do most of it, and all the organization, thus gaining skills and a sense of accomplishment and whatnot. I figure that makes three Good Causes in all.

 #2 son does not attend church with me, I am sorry to say, but he did come hang out with me at the pumpkin patch and carry pumpkins to the old ladies’ cars, so good for him. #1 daughter brought me a sandwich, too. We bought some pumpkins of our own, too.

There should have been crisp fall weather for this undertaking, of course, but that didn’t happen. Mellow fruitfulness, yes; crispness, no.

Today I have a dental appointment, and eight hours of computer work, and then a rehearsal tonight.

Driving school was surprisingly entertaining. I did not book any shows. I think that all the blood and gore inhibited that part of my plan. However, I did find that I was way friendlier than I normally am, since I was looking for people who might want to have a party, and I think that contributed to the fun of it. I had lunch with an interesting woman who might be able to do technology workshops for the store, too. I would not normally have invited her to have lunch with me just because we were fellow miscreants at traffic school, and I quite like her.

A side benefit.

The barrista at the coffee house where we lunched (really good sandwiches; if you live in my neighborhood, message me and I’ll tell you where) asked me, “Are you someone’s mom?”

Obviously, I am someone’s mom. One glance tells you that. I have “Someone’s Mom” written all over me. However, she was wondering whether I was #1 son’s mom in particular. I was able to confirm it.

Would you feel offended if you were asked that? After all, I am not merely Someone’s Mom. I am not offended. This is a girl who came over to our house for Family Game Night, and I should have recognized her. If anyone ought to be offended, it is she.

After having learned all the horrible ways there are to die on the road, I came home and found another order. I am now $27 away from reaching my sales goal for my first 30 days, a period of time which ends tomorrow. Someone did come by last night and say that she was trying to decide whether to buy a set of appetizer plates or not. That would do it. She will decide today.

I’ve never worked on commission before. I figured it would cause the workers to compete with one another in underhanded ways, like pre-med students, or to quit putting the needs of the customer first. I haven’t found that it has that effect on me. However, it does add suspense and excitement to the experience.

It is like the Theme Pig bulletin board set. We had one at the store, many years ago, and it had already been there for over a year, and no one wanted it. Every now and then one of us workers would think we might have found someone who would like the Theme Pig, and we would carry it over to show the customer.

All the other workers would perk up. The one carrying the theme pig would make an excited face and the rest of us would cut our eyes at her, and there would be a thrill at the thought that we might actually sell the Theme Pig! The exclamation point is there to denote excitement.

Just so, when I think that a mere $27 would allow me to meet my goal, there is a bit of a thrill at the possibility. There are people who are thinking about what they need; one of them might decide by midnight…. Chills are going down your spine, right?

Chills, if any, might also be caused by the proximity of Hallowe’en. I did some seasonal decorating yesterday, and you can see some of it in the picture at left. Along with family mess, because we were having a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon.

Now, it is Socktober. I am not knitting any socks at the moment. There don’t seem to be any cool Socktoberfest 2007 buttons around yet, if nothing else, and this helps me resist the temptation. But I do want to report to you, in honor of Socktober, what Margaret Kim Peterson said about handmade socks: “Hand-knitted socks are completely different from store-bought socks. Hand-knitted socks do not stretch. You just knit them the same size as your feet and then you put your feet into them.” Poetic, isn’t it? She continues,  “Putting on a store-bought sock is like stuffing your foot into an elastic bandage; to put on a hand-knitted sock is to slip your foot into a garment crafted just for it. More significantly, store-bought socks are just socks, whereas hand-knitted socks are an extension of the person who made them…. When you knit a sock, you are not just knitting a sock; you are knitting yourself to the past and to the future and joining yourself to the person who will wear that sock.”

Almost makes me want to knit socks.

However, I am determined to make some slight progress on my SWAP first. Ivy is for the SWAP. I will be minding the church’s pumpkin patch this afternoon, and plan to take Ivy along. It is conceivable that I might do some sewing after that. but I really haven’t been in the mood to run a machine recently. Ivy may be the first completed part of the SWAP, at this rate.

Things were very quiet at the store yesterday. We had quite a few homeschool families in, and it was good to have such a quiet day that I could help them thoroughly.

We also had a Spanish-speaking customer. I am usually pretty good with Spanish-speaking customers. I can understand quite a bit of Spanish, and all those years as an ESL teacher have given me a lot of experience with communicating with people who don’t speak English well, but this was not a successful communicative experience.

“Laminas?” she said when she came in.

I imagined that she meant “laminating,” so I agreed with her and indicated the laminating machine. She stared at me for a moment and then said, “Cuantas” or maybe “Quantas” or something like that. I decided that this might mean “How much does it cost?” and told her “Fifty cents a foot” while holding my hands 12″ apart.

For future reference, “laminas” and “quantas” or something like that does not mean “Do you have a laminator and if so what does it cost?” 

The lady looked distressed. After a bit she murmured, “animales” to herself. She was looking down and trying out words, as though hoping to think of the English equivalent. She was not speaking to me at all. I eavesdropped, in hopes of finding some clue to what she needed.

“Do you need pictures of animals?” I asked. “Tarjetas?” I believe that “tarjetas” means “flashcards,” and she looked as though I might be on the right track, so I showed her some animal flashcards. She nodded her head in a dubious manner.

“Mas grandes?” I said, thinking she might want a bulletin board set. She frowned and shook her head. “Vaca,” she said, “I don’t know….”

“Cow,” said I with confidence. She of course had no idea that I had understood “vaca” since she didn’t know what “cow” meant. That is probably not how you spell it anyway.

“Umm… vaca… moo”
“Si, si, cow.”

I felt that we were getting somewhere at last. Resisting the temptation to switch to French, since I have no idea how to say “farm” in Spanish, I took her over to look at farm animal bulletin boards. She continued to look distressed.

“Ummm… mamiferos?” she said, or something that sounded like that.

“Mammals?”
“Yes, mammals!”

At this point, she added Spanish words that seemed pretty clearly to mean “vertebrates” and “invertebrates.” I, feeling that we were getting somewhere at last, nodded and added, “Insectos? Quadrupedos? Animales de todo … uh… sortas?” This pretty well used up my Spanish vocabulary, except “Yo te amo,” which didn’t seem likely to help.

The lady agreed with me, in a relieved fashion.

I opened the box of animal flashcards to show her that the pictures did indeed include animales of all kinds, and she bought them. I did not, however, feel confident that this was what she wanted. I asked her, “Este es que usted neccessitas?” which I hoped she would understand to mean, “Is this what you wanted?”

She stared at me some more. I brought up Babelfish on the computer and tried to convey, through English, telepathy, and mime, that she should just say something in Spanish for heaven’s sake, and I could type it in and get a translation.

“No hablo espanol,” I said, “pero yo comprendo un poco.” This might well have meant that though I didn’t speak Spanish, I could understand some. But maybe not.

She smiled kindly and left with her flashcards.

I must go to traffic school today. If you always read my blog and have total recall, you will know that I got a ticket in August, and going to traffic school will keep me from having it on my record. Fortunately.

This seems like a waste of good sewing time, and I don’t suppose I can take my knitting. However, I am going to wear my Pampered Chef shirt and see whether I can book a show with a fellow criminal. This will, I think, add a sense of purpose to the undertaking.

Here is Ivy. I have not been showing you pictures of Ivy, because Ivy is  a gray stockinette rectangle with curling edges, so pictures are pretty dull.

However, I recognize that as a knitting blogger, I deserve to be hauled into a hollow square of knitters and have my buttons snipped off.

It’s not that I’m not knitting, just that I am knitting a gray stockinette rectangle. It is going to grow up to be a lovely sweater. Really. I hope.

The light reading I am doing, Spying in High Heels, has repeated jokes about “sitting home knitting,” as though that were a bad thing.

I am sitting home working, myself. Although today I will be driving up to the store and standing and working instead.

It has not escaped my notice that I’m not reading anything spooky. I have the weekend off, apart from traffic school, and I intend to decorate for Hallowe’en and buy pumpkins and otherwise get all autumnal, so maybe I will feel inspired to read some gothic stuff.

Yesterday, #1 daughter’s colleagues at the weight-loss clinic asked her how she dressed when she wasn’t at work.

#1 daughter has a classic glam style, at work or at home. When she’s not going to work, she’ll wear jeans and a T, and there are those Ugg boots we tease her about, but mostly we’re talking classic. A lot of cream and brown, a little pink, very well-fitting and polished.

“Oh, I’m totally goth,” she told them.

We all thought it was funny when she told us about it.

Further healthy baking has taken place chez fibermom. You can find the recipe at my other website under “More on pans.”

I’ve also been to the gym every day this week, so I feel as though I am getting back on track, in spite of the late-night pizza delivered to our house last night. And yes, even though I had already enjoyed a healthy dinner, I had a piece.

Now, today is World Teachers’ Day, and bloggers everywhere are called upon to write about the teacher who made a difference in their lives.

I have to admit that the teachers who are coming to my mind are the ones who sent me to the library because they couldn’t think of anything else to do with me, and the ones who had my kids file papers because they couldn’t think of anything to do with them, and the surprisingly large number who made passes at me in college. None of whom is going to provide a blog post suitable for World Teachers’ Day. Which is, I suppose, why my mention of it has ended up way down here after all that random persiflage.

But, having been a teacher myself for many years, and having had many excellent teachers, and working now with many many more excellent teachers, and coming as I do from a family with lots of teachers in it, I think it is simply that the majority of the teachers I have known have been terrific, and the ones that stand out when I try to think of one are therefore the bad apples.

So, Happy World Teachers’ Day to all the teachers out there!

Kali Mama was talking about being busy. And in fact, everyone I know is talking about being busy. Too busy, mostly. Too busy to clean our houses, too busy to exercise, to busy to read… “Overwhelmed” is a word I’ve been hearing a lot lately.

It’s seasonal, I say. The transition back to the school year, so many activities right now, the upcoming holidays.

And I also say it has to do with attitude. Kali Mama asked if I was “happy busy,” and mostly I am. I enjoy my work, I love the music I’m involved in, I love my family, I feel committed to my volunteer work — and while I am busy, it is not like Back to School. I have a lot of choices.

I also say that being organized helps a lot.

But last night, The Nurse suggested something completely different. She said that our society forces excessive busyness on us. Not, as many of us might think, by holding up unreasonable examples of women who have it all and do it all, and men who provide that lifestyle and change diapers, too. No, she says that we are forced into this by other people’s lack of responsibility.

The nation, she says, is divided into people who take no responsibility and people who work like dogs to make up for the slackers.

Smoking, meth, and Big Macs came up in the conversation, probably because she was thinking about health care providers. But she meant it in a larger sense. If we always do things for other people, she said, they’ll just continue to be irresponsible. She thought it would be good to refuse medical care to people who continued to smoke, for example. Possibly also for those who continue to eat Big Macs.

There was a point in the conversation at which I felt I had to mention that Jesus never said, “Get it together or I’m outta here.” I don’t know that “What would Jesus do?” is always a useful question for health care providers, though, since “He would allow the sufferer to touch the hem of his garment” doesn’t offer solid practical guidance for them.

I went directly from this discussion to handbell practice, where I not only failed to hold up my end of the Handel, but also made excuses.

There is a woman in bells who normally keeps us all entertained with an unending stream of excuses. She can’t see properly, her wrists hurt, she can’t stand for long periods of time, the music is written wrong, she can’t play the particular bells she has been given …. it never stops. She wasn’t there last night. Perhaps I felt that I needed to cover for her. Perhaps I was driven by the thought of the other players having to work extra hard because I am too irresponsible (or too busy) to practice on my own and get better.

I have to say, though, that the only thing worse than having to pick up the slack for the slackers is having to listen to their excuses while you do it.

My cooking show for tonight is canceled. This means that I had time to make these virtuous sweet rolls. Whole wheat bread with half a teaspoon of caramel sprinkles.

No need for excuses.

I will be working during the show time on booking more shows for the future. I also have the day’s computer work, housework, and a clogged kitchen sink (doubtless caused by some irresponsible slackers) to deal with. So, even though I was counting on this show to meet a sales goal, I am also somewhat relieved not to have to go out this evening.