Check out my balls

 

I took a glass blowing class on Saturday and it was lovely.  I have always wanted to be a glass blower, but it isn't really something you can set up in your basement.  I saw this class at Baron Glassworks of Ypsilanti advertised in the Rec and Ed book, so I signed up.  I realize now that my idea of fun is very different than it used to be.  The class was more interesting than fun, and that is ok with me.  There were 8 people in the class and there were two teachers.  There was no way they were going to allow us to insert the metal rod into the burning hot glory hole (that is what they call the furnace where you reheat the glass) without a teacher assisting us.  This meant that there was way more watching than there was actually making things.  Some of the people made really beautiful things.  Mine are just average, but some of them were beautiful.  My turn was toward the end, and by then the poor instructors were exhausted.  I wanted my second piece to be a drinking glass.  I was torn over whether I should make a drinking glass or a paperweight.  I have a bajillion drinking glasses and they have to be tough to survive at our house.  I have always loved looking at glass paperweights, but decided against it because my papers are rarely flying all over.  It was a mistake, but maybe having two beautiful garden gazing balls (as my dad calls them) will distract from how bad I am at gardening.  When you work in the hot glass arts, you refer to this as "reading the glass."  All the best artists do it.  Sometimes the glass just doesn't want to be formed into what you want as your end result and all the best artists can read the glass and turn it into something better.

As much as I enjoyed the class, there was one big distraction.  One of the other students was getting on all my nerves.  In the picture above, she is right behind the instructor.  I had one where you could actually see her, but the hubby thought it was inappropriate to put up a photo of her on the internet.  Instead, I will describe her in such great detail that you will recognize her if you see her around town.  If you do see her around town, ask her if she is pregnant.

This woman walked into the glass studio like she owned the place.  She was VERY vocal.  She let us all know that she is also a glass artist (she is an artist, but she does science as her day job.  I wonder if it is like when my son does science by dissolving candy in a cup of water) with her own studio in her house (craft room).  She does stained glass and fused glass (when the teacher asked her about it, she didn't know many technical details about fused glass.  I think she mostly takes scraps of stained glass and melts them in her microwave).  She only wears dresses and they are always sleeveless because she wears sweaters (this was fun because it was about 40 degrees in the studio if you weren't working with the glass).  She is very athletic which is why she has two bad shoulders and a bad leg and therefore had to sit down in one of the very few chairs.  She had her badly dyed black hair up in a messy ponytail with a flower barret in the front.

Why do I find this woman SO obnoxious?  Is it because I secretly want to be her?  I want to be an artist.  I want to have room in my house for a studio.  I want to have a distinct fashion that labels me an artist whereever I go.  I sometimes want to be friendly.  No, I don't want to be this woman.  I can't stand her.  I will have to be an eclectic friendly athletic artist with a studio and somehow still be the opposite of this woman.

As we watched the students make their glasswork, this bleepity bleep bleep "artist" looked at me and said, "wow!  Are you pregnant?"  People who live in a civilized society should never ask this question.  Women who also carry their excess weight in their midsection should also never ask this question.  However, I know it happens.  Had that been all she said, I wouldn't have even paid attention.  I responded, "no, I just had a baby."  She should have apologized, instead she said, "Are you pregnant?  Wow, you must have JUST had that baby."  After that, I punched her in the lady parts...emotionally.  She still wouldn't stop.  Then she exclaimed, "wow, you are still a really new mom."  I am never rude to people.  I can count on one hand the number of times in my life that I have been rude to someone's face and I regret all of them.  At this point, I decided I could be rude to this person.  I wish I would have been more rude, all I did was look at her and then turn away and ignore her while I was watching the other students.  After that she started talking to one of the guys in the class.  He was really friendly and she thanked him for being so friendly, "Thank you for being so nice.  I like to be friendly and I like to learn things.  It is so nice to meet someone so friendly."  I would like to say that is when I turned around and told her off while I jump kicked her in the face, but I didn't do that.

So, as usual when I wish I came up with a really good response to something, I thought about it all weekend.  It is none of her business if I am pregnant or not.  I didn't need to tell her that I just had a baby.  Lets work on some new responses, here is what I have so far:

• Why?  Are you?  Are we preggo buddies?
• Why do you ask?  Do you think I look fat in this outfit?
• I can't tell you because you look like the kind of person that would try to cut a fetus out of someone.

Oh, and sorry to be misleading with the title of this blog.  You can't really check out my balls because I didn't get them back yet.  They are still in the kiln.  I will post a picture when I get them back.