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My mother always said that ballet lessons were wasted on me, and she was right. Never a graceful person, I was always in a rush to get somewhere – a trait that followed me into adulthood. When walking down a hall at school, I frequently got the comment, “You look like you’re on a mission,” which got annoying over time. Yes, I’m on a mission, and that mission is to get to where I’m going as quickly as possible.

When I moved to the Chicago suburbs and took a job on Michigan Avenue, I frequently used my lunch breaks to walk around the city. I went everywhere, making the most of my hour-long lunch break as possible. One day, I decided to be really “with it” and I brought athletic shoes to change into so I could walk even faster and go further during my lunch break.

I took this selfie at Navy Pier on that gorgeous February day. Notice it’s nice enough that I was walking without a coat.

In February.

In Chicago.

As it was, I was moments from disaster and had no idea.

So there I was, walking back to work at the speed of light, when my foot met one of Chicago’s not-so-nicely-maintained sidewalks. I was in the middle of gazing upward at one of the beautiful buildings on my way back from lunch and in danger of running just a little bit late. I was FLYING – meaning walking at an extremely brisk pace – but in a matter of nanoseconds I was literally flying through the air, preparing to meet my maker. I mean, the older I get, the scarier falls become. I distinctly remember those horrible moments where time slows down so you can enjoy every horrifying moment before you land, and you wonder how many bones you’re going to break when you do land.

Amazingly, my left hand was able to prevent my head from cracking against the sidewalk, but my left knee took the brunt of the fall. I took a couple seconds to verify that I was still alive, and I realized I had landed at the base of someone’s feet – a man sitting on a bench.

“Hey, are you OK?” he asked. He seemed generally concerned. “Come sit down for a second.”

The alarming embarrassment was growing on me at a rapid pace. I got up, dusted myself off, and noticed that people had either stopped to stare or were moving toward me to help.

Highlight all the bad stuff about Chicago that you want, but I was genuinely surprised that so many people asked if I was OK or offered to help me. I mean, I see crackheads fall down every day in Chicago when I’m working downtown and they could have easily shuffled me into that category and turned a blind eye.

Horrified by my own clumsiness, I quickly assured people I was OK and blended back into the crowd in the sidewalk. I glanced down at my Skecher leggings and was simply amazed that they didn’t have a giant, gaping hole in the knee, so shoutout to Skecher for the hardiness of their leggings. I could feel that my knee probably wasn’t going to look the greatest when I finally could get somewhere private and take a peek at it.

Back at my office, I peeled back the legging to reveal a bloody freaking mess and a knee that was quickly turning various shades of purple. One of my fingers was swelling, too, and I worried that I had broken it. Thankfully, my boss took one glance at me and let me go home early.

A trip to immediate care revealed that my finger wasn’t broken but was probably just badly sprained.

That day I learned that you never walk briskly while looking up at the buildings around Chicago. The sidewalks will eat you alive.

One time I was walking with coffee in hand (not so briskly because, well, even I learn sometimes) and an area of sidewalk I was on had a rather concerning little hole that had developed along the crack to where you could see a nice 3-inch-wide gap under the concrete. Just as I was getting ready to step over the hole, a huge rat popped his head up, then ducked down when he saw me stepping over him. To my credit, I did not flinch, nor did I spill my coffee. Perhaps those ballet lessons did teach me some poise, after all.

Anyway, back to my penchant for stupid little accidents.

Fast forward to December 22nd. It was a Monday and I had taken the first part of the week off to prepare for Christmas – cleaning, cooking, and wrapping presents. I had just showered and dressed and was walking at my usual 98 mph on the way to my closet, which is at the end of our bathroom, where I suddenly learned a very important math concept:

Tile floor + my fast walk + tiny little sploot of water on said tile floor = falling me.

I went down hard – so hard that my husband, who was in the bathroom with the fan on, yelled, “Are you OK?”

“I’m . . . not . . . sure,” I answered while I slowly sat up. My knee – the same one I had bloodied that day in Chicago, was bleeding again. Clearly, I have a favorite knee to land on. My fingers felt OK and had landed on the carpet in the closet, but the lower half of my body had spun out on the tile floor and my toes had either hit the wall or had just twisted an unnatural direction on the way down, for they felt a little strange.

“Can you move your toes?” My husband asked. I had been moving them around and trying to assure myself that all was fine and that I was just a little bruised.

Then the swelling increased, and so did the pain.

I spent the first day of my Christmas break at the immediate care clinic, getting x-rays that confirmed that I had broken my 2nd and 3rd toe.

Merry Christmas! Here’s a boot.

Needless to say, my Christmas break was not very productive. I wouldn’t label myself a control freak, but I definitely like to have things just so when I’m entertaining, cooking, or cleaning. I hate asking for help. HATE IT. Now I had to ask for help for a lot of things, which included going to the grocery store because driving was out of the question with a boot on my right foot.

The day before my birthday, I was due for my 2nd checkup at 6 weeks, when I confidently believed that I would be getting the boot off.

The verdict: third toe healed; second toe not so much. Happy birthday! You have been given three more weeks in the boot.

Although I my foot is no longer painful and doesn’t really hinder my everyday life, the boot is cumbersome and irritating to wear every day.

I’m also 52, so I supposed this is a test run for getting older and not being a spring chicken with nice, strong bones.

But watch out; on February 25, this boot WILL be coming off and that means everyone has to get out of the kitchen and let me cook and clean the house the right way.

I’ll admit that I went into this Etsy selling a little green. OK, a lot green. My whole premise was, well, if I enjoyed stuff like atomic cats, there were other people out there who liked them as well.

As with any new venture, it took a while to see any results. Sales trickled in, I made a few bucks, and I was happy.

November was slow — so slow that I was a little disappointed that my products weren’t moving.

Then the end of November hit and I couldn’t keep up.

I was ordering so many boxes of ceramic coasters that I would forget I had already placed an order and I’d get both on the same day. My husband could find me in the kitchen, standing patiently by my heat press, with the kitchen absolutely overtaken by coasters cooling on the kitchen counter and the table.

“Looks like a workshop in here,” he’d muse.

“It IS a workshop right now!” I’d answer.

Right now the only “good” place I have to operate my heat press is in the kitchen. I’m hoping that changes in upcoming months, but it works right now. Unfortunately, that means that my kitchen looks like a bomb went off in it most days — a bomb containing dozens of adorable atomic cats.

I’m still finding out what works and what doesn’t, along with what people like to buy. The coasters are an obvious win — and that was a product that I just stumbled across after buying a 4-pack of them at Hobby Lobby. They looked so shiny and beautiful when I unwrapped them after heat pressing that I immediately was hooked.

This morning I got up early to get all the orders out that came in over the weekend. This little venture started as something to keep me busy and let me exercise some creativity. I am grateful that something I enjoy is becoming a rather serious side hobby and business.

Need some atomic cat coasters to call your very own? Love atomic cats and retro design in general? Check out my Etsy store: https://thestarburstcreative.etsy.com

I’ve been a “born again” Etsy seller for a few months now.

I saw “born again” because I started selling tablecloths on Etsy in about 2008, and that lasted for a few years. I enjoyed finding and selling tablecloths, but it was also time consuming because I was obsessed with rehabbing soiled cloths, which required weeks of stain removal and a good amount of hours in sunlight. In summer, this was easy. In winter? Not gonna happen. As my kids reached adolescence, time to rehab tablecloths dried up.

I reopened my Etsy shop under my new name – The Starburst Creative. Shipping is more expensive these days and I have had a couple of orders MIA thanks to the postal service, but I have replaced those items the same day that people reported the problem. I aim to please.

It has been fun to personalize consumer purchases, for I always include a little note into the package, thanking people for their purchase. The other day I sent an order to Iowa – my former home state – and it made me a little nostalgic. I loved Iowa (and South Dakota – my original home state!) this time of year during harvest season. The drier, cooler air, the dust from the combines, the colors of the prairie grasses . . . it was magical. Illinois has that as well, but I dunno . . . it’s just different and not as familiar to me. When I was a fairly new teacher and overcome by the stress of the job, I remember going home to my parents’ farm and just breathing in the air when I got out of the car. It was familiar and calming, and I felt the same way recently when I went back to Iowa to get my granddaughter for a week-long stay at my house. I was getting gas at Casey’s and I just took a moment to breathe the air. It was comforting and familiar. I suppose different places have scents that the brain always remembers, but that science will always fascinate me.

The science of smell is fascinating. I remember reading a study about how the sense of smell is more acute than any of the other senses, and it stuck with me. In college, I encountered an exam question where it asked which of the five senses depicted the most vivid memories, and I chose smell. It was wrong, and that wrong answer sticks with me as being something I would love to argue today. I smell the perfume that I wore as a sophomore in high school (Tatiana) and it brings back all the senses with it: sights and sound and feelings from the fall of 1990. It dredges up memories I thought I had forgotten. The most fascinating part of the human brain is the fact that I can smell that perfume even when it’s not with me. How is that even possible?

Anyway, back to my Etsy adventures . . .

My atomic cat coasters have been so popular that I am struggling to keep up with demand. Part of that struggle has to do with finding suppliers of tiles that are reputable and reliable. I got a “bum order” of coasters that resulted in dozens of them having flaws; the glaze did not seem to be of high quality, resulting in color gaps and just bad appearance overall. Luckily, I requested a replacement and received one, but it resulted in a lot of wasted time and effort before that point.

Such is life for an Etsy seller, I guess.

My newest obsession is bedazzling – as corny as that may sound. I bought a heat pen and a few rhinestones on a whim, and my mind quickly starting working overtime to think of what I could make with these supplies.

Naturally, my attention turned to Elvis – the king of bling.

I used the Phosphate font to do the HTV in glitter vinyl. I love this font because it has an open strip in the middle of the letters which just works perfectly to contain 16ss-size rhinestones. This first picture doesn’t capture the brightness of it. See below.

Cheesy? Maybe. But we all know that Elvis loved him some bling. I’m working on putting rhinestones on the rest of the designs this week.

So if you don’t hear from me for a while, you can assume I am hunched over my desk with my magnifying glasses on, bedazzling an Elvis bag.

So my last post was in June.

It’s now September.

Obviously, things have been happening around here, including almost letting this domain slip away from me because I forgot to renew it. Truthfully, I would have been devastated if I lost this site because it has kind of been my diary for the past 17 years.

When I was younger, I was diligent about keeping a journal and writing in it nearly every night. Those journals are some of my most treasured books, for it helps me remember all of the trials and tribulations of a teenager. Later on in life, I tried and re-tried to re-establish that routine, but life seemed to always get in the way.

Throw in a couple of bad relationships where my trust was violated from people thinking they had a right to read those journals without my permission, and all of a sudden, writing down my personal thoughts didn’t seem too appealing.

I suppose it seems odd that I have transferred that writing into a very public forum, and I’m sure some psychoanalyst could have a field day with that one, but nowadays I feel more comfortable writing a blog than I do writing a journal. It probably has to do with the fact that I’m choosing what people see, which takes away the awful realization that your privacy was invaded by someone you trusted. Even though those “breaches” happened years ago, it still stings.

Anyway . . . life in the Chicago ‘burbs has gone on as usual.

In one of my posts this year, I expressed the urge to delve into crafting. In June, I made that happen by purchasing a Silhouette Cameo 5 and a heat press. This pretty much explains why I haven’t written anything on here since June. I have been BUSY! Buying a vinyl machine and heat press has rocked my world and has unleashed my creative juices. It’s been a learning curve, but I think I finally have the things I made regularly down to a science.

This past weekend, my husband and I had a show in La Crosse, WI, and I set up my first ever merch table. I went in not knowing what would sell, so I made a little bit of everything – some band t-shirts, keychains, and koozies, and some other items that were non-band related. I thought the t-shirts would sell well; they didn’t. But the bags were a hit and I sold out of those, along with a few inexpensive items like keychains and koozies. I sold two sets of atomic cat coasters, so I was thrilled about that also. At the end of the weekend, I sold about $300 worth of merch, and I was happy about that. Did I recoup all my costs? Heck no, but that weekend gave me valuable insight about what people want.

I think some people didn’t understand the intent of my merch table. They would come by, look at the band merch, and say, “This should say Elvis on it.”

Well, yes, but it’s a merch table for the band, so . . .

Dealing with the public – always an adventure.

I think my favorite items to make so far are koozies, coasters, and cutting boards. Koozies are quick and easy, and I have the creation down to a science, and coasters take longer but the end product is impressive. I use ceramic coasters, and the end product comes out vivid and shiny and beautiful. I love making t-shirts as well, but I’ve found that making a design and then ordering that design as a DTF transfer is a far less messy way to go.

It is important to me that what I make to sell is from my own design. I know Etsy is full of people who just download the same designs as everyone else and slaps it on a t-shirt or cutting board or whatever. I really don’t want to do that. Whenever possible, I make the design myself.

I took this pic as I was walking to work the other day:

I go to work hella early in the morning to avoid having to face rush hour traffic twice in one day. Getting home is already a chore; I just want to get to work without any slowdowns in the morning, so I leave my house about 4:30 a.m. to arrive downtown an hour later. Honestly, it’s my favorite time of day. The city is quiet, and after I swing by to get my coffee, I cherish the time that I get to walk, observe, and sip coffee. I am lucky to work in a place where work times are flexible, otherwise, I would be spending even more time in traffic going and coming home from work.

I have used the phrase “the city is waking up” before, but the truth is, it is never sleeping. My husband and I had to bring a bandmate to the airport at 3:30 a.m. a few weeks ago; we thought we would be traveling on pretty empty roads, but the truth is that we had good company. I am still kind of used to life in Iowa; if you ventured out at 3:30 a.m., you would enjoy miles of empty roads. Not true here. In fact, when we were coming home from Midway and longing for bed, we got stopped by an accident that set us back about 30 minutes. We just kept looking at each other and saying, “Really?! At this hour?”

The city never sleeps, and neither do we, apparently.

My Etsy store is online but is a little scant on merchandise right now because I’ve been concentrating on building up the band merch. However, Fall and Christmas items are filling my head! You can find me on Etsy here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/TheStarburstCreative?ref=dashboard-header

Fall is my ultimate favorite season, and this year we are having a storybook fall so far in regard to the weather and the colors.  The past week we’ve enjoyed mild temps in the 70s and virtually no wind, so the trees are holding their beautiful hues.  Some years we’ve barely had a fall, as the cold weather moved in too quickly, or the wind blew all the leaves off the trees.  After the extraordinarily hot summer we suffered through this year, it’s nice to have some mild temps and an incentive to be outside.

Yesterday was a perfect fall day.  My boys had football games in the morning, so I had the privilege of watching elementary kids play games against a backdrop of fall foliage.

I have an added incentive to walk my Jack Russell, Nick, during these beautifully mild days, as the scenery just cannot be beat.

This is the first fall that I have had Nick with our family, but I think he likes it quite a bit.  🙂

Normally around this time, I’d be heading back to South Dakota to enjoy some of the bounty of my parents’ apple orchard.  However, this summer left no chance that a non-irrigated orchard was going to produce anything, so I’ll have to wait patiently until next year.

This is the season of leaves, colors, apples, pumpkins, bright blue skies, and coziness.  Enjoy it!

 

I’ve lived in Iowa for twelve years now, but it took me eleven years before I finally visited one of the coolest retro buildings around: the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa.  Doesn’t sound familiar?  It’s known as the last place that Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper played on the Winter Dance Party tour before their fateful plane crash on February 3, 1959.

The building is open during the day for tours, and the tours are totally self-guided.  The first time I was there, my friend and I were the only people there.  We wandered around for close to an hour.  This time there were some other tourists there, but not enough to ruin the cozy feel of being inside the Surf.

The preservation of this building was done with the utmost care, as retro-loving people are struck by all the great art deco and Midcentury elements that the building and decor still exhibit.  Visitors will begin noticing these elements as soon as they walk in the door.

The coat check area has all the great qualities of early Midcentury design.

What’s really neat (and a little creepy) about this building, as I’ve mentioned before, is your ability to wander around the building at will.  No one is directing you where to go.  You can sit in a booth and look toward the stage and try to envision all of the famous acts that have played there over the years.  The ballroom area is kept quite dark save for the lights of the stage.  My camera lends far more light to this picture than will appear to the naked eye.

The booth tables are still sided with aluminum and still have the original reservation instructions.

Visitors are free to roam up on the stage to see what the view has been for decades of performances. (I assume there had recently been a wedding dance here, hence the row of tables and chairs at the front part of the stage.)

To the side of the stage is a little room for bands to get ready for their performance.  The walls are covered with signatures of all the people who have played the Surf over the past few decades.

Even the bathrooms are cool!

The more you wander around the building, the more your mind starts to work overtime to imagine all the scenes that have unfolded on the dance floor, the stage, the booths, and at the bar.

The best part of about the tour is noticing the little architectural and decorative detail.

The Surf also has a hallway of pictures that is rather fascinating.  It contains pictures of the various bands who have played there over time, along with some of the history of the Surf Ballroom itself.  You can read more about the Surf and its history here.