Sunday, April 23, 2006

Beadiful, just beadiful

Obbie and I went to the big bead show anyway.

You knew that was going to happen, didn't you?

Clutching bucket sized Sheetz coffees, we hustled off to Fort Washington in the driving rain yesterday. The show opened at 10:00. We got there at 10:45. No parking to be had. Not even handicapped spaces. So we made our own. Then descended into Bead/Gem/Jewelry mecca.

Oh. My. God. This one is big, but not as big as the Mother of Bead Shows out in Milwaukee (Same week we're going to Nova Scotia, alas) Over 70 vendors, baby. 70 vendors selling beads, jewelry, bead and jewelry related products and books.

We spent 4 glorious hours there. Looking at things, touching beads, and talking to people. And yes, buying. Big Fun, this buying beads thing. We browsed many, many different places, buying a strand or two here and there. Two women from New Orleans were there with a marvelous display of Czech glass, buy 50 dollars worth, get 50 dollars worth free......Um, that cost an hour or so of time, and we hauled off a nice fat little bag of beads.


Someone once told me about some department store having a one day sale on wedding dresses, and the bridezilla feeding frenzy that ensues. I never thought I'd be involved in such a thing.

Until we saw the sign "Gemstone Beads! One Strand $4.00, Ten Strands $3.00 each, Twenty Strands $2.50 each, Fifty Strands $2.00 each, 100 strands $100" Yep. Can you imagine? Sweet mother of Pearl, we were right in there with the hordes of Jersey/Philly beady ladies, rooting thru the strands of gemstones. Amethyst, rose quartz, aquamarine, citrine, tiger eye, garnet, carnelian, moonstone, lapis...and I don't know what all. Yes, we did get 100 strands. But it was hard. And time consuming. and hot, my God it was hot!! I bet that we were in a flock of close to 15 people hunched over this big display of beads, picking and pulling strands off the big mother hanks of beads. But for a buck a strand, man...come on! You can't even imagine how many beads that is. Each strand was about 16 inches. Some strands had bigger beads and there were 30 per strand. Others had these little tiny cute beads, so there might be closer to 100 on the strand. Any way you say it, one hundred strands of beads are a whole helluva lot. Here look, they are being contained in shoebox lids:




If I wasn't such a bead whore, I'd take fifty and put them on eBay as one lot. But I'm a bead whore, and THEY'RE MINE ALL MINE!! (and Obbie's too, he did pick 50 also) After that, we had to leave. As we made our way out to the parking lot, Obbie starts patting himself down for his keys. After one round of pocket patting, and bag searching, he says, "Oh my God, I can't find the keys!" and we scurry back into the building to turn out all our bags and pockets. Nope. No keys. He knew he had a spare....locked in the truck. So we go back into the show and think where we were last (before 100 strand frenzyland) We retraced our path to a place where he remembered using the little knife to cut a strand loose, and asked the nice man had anyone turned keys in. "Ahhh!" The man smiled and scurried back behind the counter, "Are these?" Obbie practically kissed him, for they were indeed the ObbieMobile's keys. We ran out of the building and started home in a torrential downpour.


We stopped for lunch (and two beers) at a good halfway point, and kept on toward home. We were both just fried from the sheer sensory overload of the bead show, and the suckage of driving in a monsoon for 100 miles on the Turnpike.

We turn down our road, and are both breathing a sigh of relief...Ahh...we're almost here. As we crest the hill, I see a truck in my driveway. "Who the hell is that?" I say. As we pull closer, I see the license plate, and see who is in the truck.

"Oh my freaking God. It's Brook"


Yep. All my drunk chickens come home to roost. Drunkbrook had stopped by my place to see how I was and to inform me that indeed, I was right about many, many things, including him fucking up his life. He went on and on, in that earnest fashion that only drunks can manage. Oh my yes, he was trashed at 5:30 in the evening. Just fucking boiled on 100 proof Southern Comfort. Obbie went into the house, and I listened to the boozy tale of woe. Since I last saw the man, 3 short years ago, he has been married and divorced (But still lives with the ex wife, WTF?), quit the coveted over the road trucker job he had wanted so badly while we were together (the wife didn't like him OTR) and is now working as a laborer at some local plant. He got a DUI for 4-wheeling in the mountains on a closed road (Still a brainchild I see), and has accumulated a couple more neck tattoos.

Lovely. Just lovely. "I don't want to fuck up your life" he says, "But I just wanted to stop in and tell you that all those things you told me were true, and that I am my own worst enemy. You were my best friend, and I treated you like shit, and I'm really, really sorry about that...."

By now, my poor head was ready to just explode. He went on to say (again) that he wasn't here to ruin my life, but I was the only person who was his friend for so long. Now, since the four of you have read this blog for awhile now, you know that I did go thru a whole lotta crap getting over this guy, but you also know that I have a soft spot in my heart for the downtrodden, so I stood in the rain and listened to him ramble. I took his cell phone number, and gave him mine, and told him to go home, sleep it off, and we will get together and talk at length when he's sober. But I wasn't discussing anything of substance with him in his present condition.

He drove off after giving me a sloppy hug (Can I use your bathroom? No, go pee behind the woodpile) and promised he'd call when he was sober.

I walked into the house in a daze, and Obbie met me at the door and gave me a big hug and offered me a shot of Stoli. Nope. No Stoli for me right now. I have to digest this for a little while....

And I'm still digesting it. Why on Earth, after 3 years of non-communications would this guy seek me out? Does he really have nobody else in this world to talk to? Gawd. I'm calling in the girlfriends for a powwow on this. I'm not planning on getting chummy with him. Not feeding him, giving him money, or anything of that nature, but is it so bad to just listen to the poor guy? I don't know, but the whole episode took a little of the shine off my beady day. Just a little. He'll never be the killjoy to me he once was, thats for sure.

Gawd. It just makes me wonder what I'm to being doing with these things that happen to me.



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