The newly instituted Drink Before Calling Mom policy went into effect Sunday night. I figured that either I could avoid calling her and get bitched out later for everything plus not calling her or call her when I�m supposed to and get bitched out for the usual- in other words, pay now or pay later. So I chugged a wine cooler down in a half hour (yes, that�s a chug for me) and called, and no yelling occurred. Yay me. And only five minutes of bitching about dental crap- two minutes where I had to say to Mom �Do NOT GO THERE RIGHT NOW� and three minutes of Dad screaming at me incomprehensibly to brush my teeth. Mostly it was at a very wary truce, though I made sure to rub it into Mom that not only had I not gone to Dave�s this weekend after her bailing, I wasn�t going next weekend either. She immediately said �He�s coming to visit you, though.� Well, yeah�

And wouldn�t you know, I had a damn dentist dream last night?

Today was a very long, hot, and tiring day. Got up fairly early to catch a bus out to Vacaville and to the nearest JoAnn Fabrics to get the supplies for my costume class. Most of the stuff I needed I found fairly easily, despite the store being laid out crappily- it would really help if the fabric thread and ribbons and whatnot were actually nearby the fabric instead of on the diagonally opposite corner- and I got them for cheap. Yay me.

However. Most of that I didn�t really need for a couple weeks. What I really needed above all other things to have by next class was upholstery fabric to make the bodice with. The store claimed, via a lot of signage and color-coding, that they had upholstery fabric on sale. But guess what, I couldn�t find anything with upholstery markings that wasn�t a sheer fabric. The hell? Then I stumbled across some more signage, saying that if you�d like to order upholstery fabric, it�ll come in in two weeks. Oh, that�s helpful, I�m supposed to have the bodice DONE in two weeks. I finally asked a clerk about it, and she said �Oh, we don�t have much of that. There�s a little bit in the remnant bin if you want to look.�

So I spent, oh, the next HOUR or so pulling on and rifling through very heavy piles of fabric, looking for ANYTHING suitable. I found three, count �em, THREE fabrics labeled as upholstery. All were ugly. I found three unlabeled fabrics that looked like upholstery fabric, and got my hopes up, only to find out they were all something else.

Adding to the misery, according to the teacher, if you want to want to attend a Renaissance Faire wearing this and not end up as one of the squares in Bad Costume Bingo (I�m not kidding), you have to have certain requirements of this fabric. It (a) cannot be red, bright yellow, white, pastel, or purple, (b) it cannot be a print- must be plain or striped, (c) it must be double woven- same print on both sides, and (d) it cannot have glue all over the back of one side of the fabric.

By the time I got through checking for all this stuff, there was ONE fabric in the entire store that qualified. It is a tannish-brown ucky linen-looking substance. It is plain and it is ugly. I was hoping to find plain, colorful shades so I could do a double-sided bodice, but instead, thanks to my lack of ability to travel all over Northern California looking for suitable fabric after today, I felt stuck having to buy this crap just so I�d have something to take to class.

After the bus finally dropped me back at campus, I got the bright idea to try walking over to an upholstery store in town I�d seen listed online. It was in the downtown area, which was close by, right? Wrong. It was located at the dead end of the street it was on, on the far side of town. As I was turning blood red, gasping for breath, chugging my water bottle and staggering through 104-degree heat in no shade, it finally dawned on me that perhaps this hadn�t been the best idea to do today. And wouldn�t you know it, the upholstery shop was not only empty of all people, they didn�t have much in the room besides a messy desk and stacks of fabric sample books. Yeah, that would have been helpful.

So I staggered on home, resting in the air-conditioned co-op for awhile before I continued the trip, and managed to find a cheap henna kit. Hill and I shall be having fun with that in the next couple of days� She was so pleased about that she offered to haul me to another fabric store tomorrow to look for decent upholstery fabric. I�m not terribly thrilled at leaving town before I hear about the job, but I really do need to get this done ASAP, especially if Dave�s coming Wednesday night.

Before I close tonight, might I point you to my two favoritest Pants entries so far? Stef's want your own leah? ask me how! Hot Pants entry rocks. If only I could write a Hot Pants as good. Alas, I think I'll just be skipping that topic for myself. And chicagowench's guest pants entry on her mother-in-law and her bear will make you die laughing, as well as horrify you and make you think that your own MIL isn't so bad after all.

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