Happy Mother's Day Ethel!

In the never ending mess in the studio and now stacking pots on the floor my alter ego Ethel popped in and read me the riot act.  For those reading this and not having an alter ego, I strongly suggest you get one!
Ethel makes me toe the line when the dust fuzzies in the house are bigger than turnips and Sandy walks by to get to the studio or garden.  Ethel rises up and whacks me upside the head with her best broomstick.  Oh by the way; Ethel was my Grandma who was one tough cookie
at  4'10" in her sweet Hungarian, Emily Post, Hitler kind of way.

Tip toeing over the stacks of pots on my way to the wheel to make more pots, Ethel reared up with her broomstick and said Hey Princess how about that ETSY thing you have been rolling around for two years?
Stopping to look around and sighing a very heavy sigh, I thought;  Why not?  It's cold, windy, rainy and the last thing I want to do is stick my stiff fingers in a bucket of cold water.

At 9:30 am I glanced around and decided I need to black out the windows from all light to shoot those iron red glazes.  This means a trip to the attic to dig through the yardage of fabric.  Finding half a bolt of black polyester I retreated from the attic.  Duct Tape in my teeth and push pins in my pocket (yeah, the word pin cushion butt comes to mind)  Set up the photo booth, get the camera, spend an hour trying to adjust the lighting, find the camera manual, find the thingy that fits on your camera and clamps to the tripod (when you buy the tripod there is a package of 3 and do you think I can one?), figure out which pots to shoot first and step over the rest.  Realization........ all you have is dinnerware!  You need something besides plates, glancing up I see 300+ bisque pots waiting to be glazed.

The dog sees the camera and thinks its time for his close up he dances among the pots and then throws himself of the floor for a belly rub and a close up shot.

The dog was finally banished from the studio as cute only gets you so far.

By three o'clock and two pots of coffee later I was slowly figuring stuff out and making stellar progress.

By 6 p.m. I had shot what I thought was enough photos to attempt setting up an ETSY shop. 

Having several friends who thrive off ETSY and have told me how easy the process is, I really thought this would be a cake walk.  How can I be this old and this naive?   I'm praying I don't sell anything as I still don't know how the money goes from ETSY to my pocket; a cyber vacuum hose?  I really need to touch stuff; like clay, food, dogs, dirt, seeds, .......... and money or it just isn't real.

Rationalizing why this is good idea I hunt for power cords, IFB cords, card readers.  There are miles of cords I have no idea what they go to, one looks like the power cord to my mixer in the kitchen.  

AND I DO NOT have the ONE cord I need?  The hunt leads me to a dusty recess in a back drawer and finding my back up external hard drive, I hear Ethel saying: "Well you procrastinated about backing up that hard drive long enough" so I did that too.  Who knew backing up 2,493 photos, files, gazillions of glaze formulas, infancy of a book and tons of correspondence would take over 2 hours!  But that gave me time to hunt for cords, balance my checking account, balance out the month of April (again in the negative, giving me more reason to forge ahead), find old baby booties tucked in ancient tissue paper and precious photos of trips gone by, old political buttons, old Earth day buttons from 1973, a 1980 button proclaiming THE YEAR OF THE COAST (do ya hear that BP? 1980!)  and still.........  no cord!  Finally, rigged a cord that looked like it should fit to my external hard drive and it worked. But there was Ethel;  "For GODSAKE,  JUST DO IT!"  So I pushed the button......  spent two hours making a pot roast and drinking another pot of coffee.

I question how one buys pottery or anything that needs to be felt, touched, fallen in love with and simply can't live without purchases, on line.  I buy ice cream like this, I drift past the freezer the door and drool.  I pick up the butter pecan, put it back and go for the pistachio, head for the check out line but realize how great Moose Tracks would be!  I would never buy ice cream on line, it's a well thought out impulse buy.  

By two in the morning I had sat at the computer so long I forgot I had feet. In Ethel's words; "Honey, you have a dead end!"  But victory was sweet as I had set up an ETSY shop, linked my webpage, facebook, blog and ETSY shop all together.   Also found warranty cards from stuff that broke ten years ago, old tic tacks (the dog now has minty fresh breath!), soft white leather hand embroidered baby booties, the id bracelets from both my daughters when they came home from the birthing center, old Petosky stones found walking the beaches of Michigan with my Mom,  a handful of arrowheads dug up on an uncles farm when I wanted to be an archeologist at age 6,  my old ranger whistle, my naturalist name tag, homemade and lots of cards from my daughters and husband and all the flotsam and jetsam from a journey through life.......

Stumbling up the stairs I tripped over the dog and rolled victorious into bed.

Thanks Ethel....... miss you and happy Mother's Day!