A Bit About Patience...(you will need patience to read this post, as I am long-winded today)

Today was a fairly long day, and the day isn't even over yet. I scheduled a hair appointment for this morning at 10:30 A.M. Since I have been in a weeklong conference, I hadn't had time to do anything like run errands until Saturday morning. That's never good because I'm usually running late. Since I was getting my hair rebraided, I realized this morning that I needed one more pack of hair. I also didn't have the cash to pay, AND I hadn't cooked breakfast. I left a little earlier, but when I forsaw that I wouldn't make it to the salon on time, I called to see if it was okay or would I need to reschedule. Well, the hairstylist wasn't there either. Good for me because that would buy a little more time.

I got held up in the breakfast line, so I called the salon again. The receptionist let me know the stylist still wasn't there, so I decided to call her house. Maybe she overslept or something. She was so thankful that I called because she was trying to call me at home and obviously I was already gone. She asked for 25 more minutes because there was some problem with the babysitter. (This is what my culture calls C.P time. *Explaination in the footnote.) Again, I was thankful because now I could eat my breakfast in peace and go to the post office - I hadn't been there in days. There was so much mail and I also got three packages and it was raining, so it was a semi-struggle, but I made it to the car.

After leaving the post office, I went to the Korean hair store to purchase that extra pack of hair and I also asked if they sold Styrofoam heads. Yes, they did for $2.99 so I purchased that too. Now I can adequately display my hats and scarves for the pictures. I headed back to the salon, now at 11:25 A.M. and the stylist still wasn't there. That was okay because I had my crochet bag and my Sunday School book. My motto: Always come prepared. I crocheted and chatted with other people in the salon. I realized I had a message on my cellphone. The stylist had called with apologies and said she would definitely be there by 12. Then the clock struck 12. Then it was 12:30 and finally she had arrived. By then I had almost finished the second part of my poncho and finished a really good conversation with a man who said he knew how to crochet. Apparently his 5th grade teacher taught him. He only made granny squares and afghans though. Very interesting.

I could tell my hairstylist was distraught. The look on her face let me know that she was mad at herself and embarrassed for having me wait so long, but I assured her that I was okay. Hey, I mean, I was relaxing and I almost finished the other half of that pink poncho (remember the one I finished half of while waiting in the doctor's office earlier this week) that I long to finish soon. The whole braiding process took a couple of hours because she likes to shampoo and deep condition, plus I wanted a trim since I am growing out my chemically-processed hair - AGAIN.

When the appointment was over I went to my parent's house because mom had invited me for a free dinner. Who could resist. I was also excited to go there because I had a surprise for her. Some time ago her brother mailed her a c.d. of all of these vintage photographs of family members. Pictures that people never let out of there house. Somehow he got a lot of them scanned and put onto c.d.s I uploaded them to one of my favorite sites - Mpix.com and the order came in today. My mom was so excited because there are pictures of her parents when they were in their youth, aunts, uncles, and cousins. There's also a picture of my mom and her siblings with their mom. I hope she doesn't mind me showing this. My mom is the 3rd from the left - I twiddle my fingers like that too! I only wish my granddad would have been in that picture. Maybe he was out working in the fields that day. Who knows.

The other surprise packages were for me. I ordered a tuck and roll organizer from Coyote Bean's Etsy shop. I had seen some of her work through Flickr and when I realized she had a shop, I just had to purchase this organizer. I was tired of carrying my crochet hooks in a plastic Ziploc bag. When I opened the package, it smelled so good inside. I wonder what the fragrance was, but it was so nice. She also enclosed a surprise of a vintage magazine from 1981 that has some crochet patterns in there.

This is the inside of the organizer. Oh I do love the fabric.
I didn't take the hooks out to photograph this, so it appears lumpy. In reality it lays flat.
This is the organizer all rolled up! Isn't this a neat idea?

Now the last package I didn't actually open until a few moments ago. It was a box from JoAnn's. I posted some time ago about not having many options for shopping for yarn and finally just deciding to purchase online. Well, since the yarns were really on sale and the shipping was free, I couldn't resist. The box arrived today. Just looking at it makes my eyes grow wider by the moment thinking of what cool things will be crafted with this yarn.

I'll admit, that it's almost too much to handle. I will close this box and put it away, calmly finish that that I'm working on, and pull the box back out only when absolutely necessary. There are too many spring colors in there and I might get overly excited.

So the moral of this story is "be anxious for nothing." If you want patience, you must be put in situations where you have to wait. While waiting, I crochet (or at least I did today).

* C.P. stands for "Colored People" Time, which basically is a reference used for when people of my culture are always a little behind schedule. So if you want an event to start on time, you must tell people that it's at the regular clock time, not C.P. time. But still some will show up late. I'm working on it. :-)