What a weekend. As I was contemplating this journal entry, I realized that much of the experiences I’ve had this weekend, which seem quite different but actually can be tied together by one theme:
I hate selling. But I have to do it all the time.
I spent most of the weekend sitting at my jewelry table at a cat show. I was fortunate that I didn’t have to pay for said table. As it was, once I deduct for parking fees, gas, and one snack from the onsite concession stand, I made $4. I could have come into the office and cleared that much by working for fifteen minutes.
On Saturday evening, a family which had been corresponding with me about buying two kittens came to see them. We showed Zoe and Wash. Wash warmed up pretty quickly, but Zoe ended up getting backed up by the boy (I think he was about six) who ended up scaring her half to death. The thing that really gets under my skin, though, is that in all of her correspondence, the woman acted like buying these cats was a done deal. When I asked her Saturday night whether she thought she wanted the cats, she went on about how she was still thinking about it, did she want one kitten or two, an adult cat, an adult and a kitten … in other words, she was still in the info gathering stage. Not what her letters were like at all! I’ll probably never hear from her again. And I really ought to know better.
Sunday night, Joe and I agreed to go to a local meeting of the MoveOn PAC. They talked about “volunteer opportunities” for the Kerry campaign. We want to help, but neither one of us really wants to do canvassing. We don’t really have that kind of time, among other things. We decided to go, hoping there would be something else we could do that didn’t involve knocking on doors. No such luck. We decided to sign on anyway. As I answered Joe’s question of “Do you feel up to this?” — No, I don’t. But it’s important.
I end with two thoughts, tangentially (at best)related to the above and each other.
In medieval Japan, merchants were at the bottom of the social ladder. The only folks who rated worse on the social scale were the undertakers.
You gotta love the Klingons. They seem to have come out for Kerry — in Portland, anyway.