Amateur

Here's the thing: I'm pretty sure that no one would ever accuse me of being crafty. The kind of crafty that actually has to do with arts and crafts, that is. As for the other kind of crafty...

Anyway, I was always that kid in elementary school with more glue in her hair than on the page, and I have to admit that not much has really changed since then. However, the thorn in my side this year is that my job requires me to come up with a craft three mornings a week for children under three, and then lead them through it. All this means that for the last six months, at any given time, one could easily find such things as glitter, paint, and/or glue on my clothes, on my skin, under my fingernails, etc. And I can't express to you the humiliation I experience when I (being, as aforementioned, no good at this sort of thing) have spent so much time (like minutes and minutes) trying to turn one of my ideas into a successful craft when one of the moms walks in and, with a quick flick of the wrist, tweaks my idea slightly and instantly creates with her child a precious keepsake that they will enjoy for all the years to come. For example, this week I have been helping the children to fashion caterpillars out of egg cartons and I have had a hell of a time getting the little goggly eyes to stick to them. But today I spied a mom as she deftly removed a bit of paper from the back of one of the goggly eyes and simply stuck it to the caterpillar face. They're stickers! Stickers! I'm ashamed to admit how much time I've wasted holding those eyes in place until the glue dried. It's embarrassing, really. I mean, sure, when I came to Scotland, I expected a lot more of this and this, and a lot less of this, but I really shouldn't complain.

Good things about today: I sat at my desk for a while opposite my boss, David Barrie, and giggled quietly while he grumbled to himself and cursed at his computer in an inscrutable Glasgow accent. Ah, Glaswegians. They're always good for a laugh. And I also found this website, that I'm sure I'm the last to find, where you can download hundreds of bootleg Ryan Adams songs. It has something to do with something called FTP, which everyone else probably knows about, but is a complete mystery to me. I just keep listening to 'Goodbye Honey' and 'The Sweetest Decline' and 'Hard Way to Fall'. They're just such good songs.