you win some, you lose some

Today, I decided to go to the big kid's consignment sale. In the rain I loaded up my two kids into the car, got there put one in the stroller, the other in the Ergo. So far so good. We looked around for a few minutes, then Lil spotted all of the toys. She demanded to get down. I tried distracting with Dora toys, no go. Then I decided that it was the fact that she could see kids playing with the toys that was making her the most crazy. So we went and looked at clothes. That worked for a few minutes, enough for me to get Lil some winter clothes. Then things rapidly deteriorated. The crying got louder and more intense. I gave in and decided to go home. Lucky for me Laura was there and was willing to pay for the stuff I found. Lillie was beyond mad and sobbing so sadly. I got them in the car as quick as possible and got the hell out of there. The silver lining on this dark little cloud was that they both fell asleep within 5 minutes. A quiet nap time again today. Not so bad, but I could have done without the meltdown.

I got my contract in the mail for an upcoming publication that I did design work for. I wasn't even sure which projects they chose to use. It's exciting that they asked me to work in it, yet at the same time I always end up at least slightly disappointed when I work for this company. They always change my work around, adding stuff (sometimes stuff that OTHER people have done!), removing things, basically whatever they choose. They combined two of my albums into one, basically using the form from one and all of the embellishments from another. I admit, it really bothers me. The embellishments include a letter "M" and baby booties that were for an album for miles and put them on another album that says "Ellen". Goofy if you ask me, but they didn't. Another thing they did is to edit my instructions so that they were simpler, but in doing so totally change the project. There is no way someone would get the same results doing it the way the directions tell you to. But, alas, it's a paycheck. Makes me think hard about the phrase "sell out". Truly, who are we to judge why an artist chooses to sell a design to a certain company? Maybe they just need to pay the bills, just like me. You know who really sells out, those nasty politicians who have received between 250k-730k in the last month from health insurance companies. Some people wonder why the issue of health care reform is so heated, but not me. But, that is a whole other post...

I'll leave things on a lighter note. Look at my big baby boy. He has decided that he simply loves sweet potatoes, and a big metal spoon. Gotta love that spoon, it gets me through dinner most nights. Ain't he cute?