Not the best way to start the day, to be sure. A quick call to customer service, a verification that no, I did not try to buy $18 worth of merchandise and get $300 cash back from a Wal-Mart in Texas last night, and bing! My card has been cancelled, and a new one is on the way.

I loved that debit card. I’ve had it for a long time. So long, in fact, that I had the numbers memorized, which made it incredibly easy to use. Since I didn’t need to take the time to find my purse and dig out my card when I made online purchases, I lost those valuable “think it through” moments where I might have talked myself out of a few transactions. Impulse buying was not uncommon. I think most of my yarn stash was acquired this way.

In the long run, it’s probably a good thing that I have to get a new card. It won’t be on file at any of my favorite online shops. I’ll be able to think before I decide to purchase more fabric online, or get suckered in by the latest Old Navy online sale. Our budget has tightened up drastically lately, maybe by paying with cash in the coming weeks (because with the holiday, I don’t expect to get my replacement card for at least a week and a half) might actually help me save money, and be more cognizant of where I tend to spend more impulsively.

Really, this will be a good experiment. There actually might be a positive outcome to this inconvenient situation.

But trust me, next Tuesday? I fully expect to gripe about this for a few minutes. Maybe longer.

My problem, I’m finding, is that life doesn’t hand out systematic report cards. Sometimes I find myself struggling with a situation, and trying to find the best answer to it, but I don’t have much to guide me. If I knew I was getting a C+ at this area of life, I might try to find a better solution. Without a quarterly report card, it’s sometimes hard for me to see a situation clearly, to understand what the issues are and to better decide if I should try to find a different class, or a different professor, of if I need to change my major entirely. As much as I may love Einstein, it doesn’t mean I’m cut out to be a physics major, you know?

I’m sure this seems pretty transparent, but in reality I just had a rough afternoon. Today made me miss the confident Student Me who knew how the system worked, and figured if college was that straightforward, surely grown-up adult life would be a breeze. I guess I need to look at days like this as my Adult Report Card, and take stock of the grades that life seems to be handing me. No one wants to live a C+ life. Or, at least, I don’t.

Thinking this sounded vaguely threatening, I asked, “My turn?”

“Yeah,” he said. “When a visitor comes in for your office, and they don’t know who to ask for, I call someone different each day. That way I spread it out among you girls in the secretarial pool in there.” He nodded toward our office doors.

OK.

Deep breath.

OK.

Here’s the thing. Our security guard is what one might call a “good old boy.” He’s older, he’s a bachelor (don’t ask how I know this) and he used to be a prison guard (don’t ask me how I know that, either). I assume that in his mind, the fact that there are several women working in our office, doing office-y type things means that we’re all secretaries, because that’s all he can imagine we’d be hired to do in an office.

Which we’re not. At all.

We’re account executives and buyers and a host of other titles. And not to bash on secretaries, who these days are really executive assistants who do a hella lot more than old-school typists who transcribed dictation and kept a bottle of rye in their desk for their hat-wearing bosses (yes, I watch Mad Men). But the implication of his remark is that since we’re women, our jobs must be menial and unimportant and interruptible. He wouldn’t think of interrupting any of the men in our office.

The best part is that the main assistant in our office is a man. Go figure.

Now, I might be overreacting a bit, and I understand that. Everyone has hot button issues that make them defensive and annoyed, and mine is being judged on my competence and intelligence by the fact that my sexual organs are inside of my body instead of outside. It’s just my thing. I’ve been this way my whole life, and my dear friend Ms. Sphincter can back me up on that – we were debating equal rights between the sexes back when we were fifth-graders. I don’t even consider myself a true feminist, more like a “humanist.” Can’t we all just get along, and acknowledge each other’s strengths, no matter if we have boobs or not?

But I do know when to pick my battles. Like yesterday, I just nodded. I also might have shot a dirty look, because while we had some visitors yesterday that needed someone to greet them at the security desk, my phone didn’t ring.

Yup, a flat tire. Luckily, this was shot in my driveway, so while this was inconvenient, it wasn’t dangerous. It just meant that I’d miss the office holiday open house while we had it fixed.

As I said on Twitter, I never had to worry about this sort of thing when I took the train to work everyday. But when I did take the train to work, I had to deal with grumbling crowds and  yucky smells. That’s not such a problem when I drive myself to work. I smell nice.

There was one bright spot to Friday, though. The tire shop was right around the corner from a shop that sold these:

That totally made up for the inconvenience of car repair.

In the course of that day, we must have seen a half-dozen complexes, and walked through units in varying states of deterioration and stinkiness. We finally decided at the last minute on the apartment we have now based on the model we saw, and the fact that, for the price, we got the bonus of an in-unit washer and dryer.

Because we agreed to the lease based on the model, I was worried that the apartment we would actually live in would be a disaster, a stinky, deteriorating mess with a leaky sink and no water pressure. Happily, I was wrong. But we do have to contend with a lack of sunlight, a view of the parking lot, a management staff that doesn’t quite get the whole “call before coming over” concept, and, oh yes, the fact that one of the buildings in our complex caught on fire earlier this year.

Needless to say, now that our 14-month lease is up, we’d like to move.

I’ve been stalking Craigslist for a couple of weeks now, and I have to say that Louisville is not a town drowning in rental opportunities. Sure, the students at U of L have their pick of affordable apartments near the university, but for working professionals like Mr. Martini and I who don’t want to be surrounded on all sides by students, the pickings are slim. Most people in our position own their own houses, it seems, so the rental units are few and far between, at least in the neighborhoods we want to live in.

Because I do want to live in a neighborhood. A walkable neighborhood, where I don’t necessarily need to take the car to get coffee on a Sunday morning. I’m longing for a place with lots of light, where the cats can bask in sunbeams like they used to in Chicago.  Selfishly, I’d love to have a little more room for my crafts, too.

Fortunately, we have plenty of time to find a place. Unlike Chicago, where you’d be crazy to let your lease lapse before finding a new place, or else find yourself homeless. I’m trying to be calm, and realize that even though we have to let our current landlord know we’re not renewing our lease, that we still have an entire month to find something new, and that’s plenty of time. I will say that most of the listings I’m seeing all seem to say, “Available now!” so the turnaround time that we could be in a new place would probably be very short.

I’m just finding it hard to keep my confidence up about this whole process when the list of rentals on Craigslist doesn’t really change much from day to day.

But then we have an evening like last night, when our HVAC starts spewing a smell somewhere between wet dog and rotting hay, and I think, “Oh, yeah, eff this place. We’re moving.”

Wish us luck, will you? Thanks.

For those who would like to read it, here’s a link to the post. Below I’ve listed the points that are the most important me that I need to express, and beyond that I’ll leave it to the other bloggers out there to hash it out (like the undercut pricing debate). We all have out hot issue triggers, and here are mine – your mileage may vary.

Before I get into the article, here is a brief overview of what Etsy is: Etsy is a site where handcrafters can sell their goods online. In exchange for paying posting fees (20 cents per items) and selling fees (3.5% of the sale price) to Etsy sellers receive server space, forums, and access to the built in audience Etsy can provide. Etsy is a for-profit business, and for it to stay profitable, it needs more sellers to post more items and sell more goods. It is in Etsy’s best interest to bring as many sellers and buyers to their site as possible.

OK, now we can get to the article.

The article’s author, Sara Mosle, starts out with a description of Etsy very similar to mine above. But her sticking point is that the number of female sellers on Etsy far (far, far) outnumber the number of male sellers. Which leads her to the following conclusions and theories:

1. Due to the disparity in the number of male and female sellers, Etsy is a “female ghetto.”

As Inigo said to Vizzini in The Princess Bride, “…that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” To imply that Etsy is a female ghetto insinuates that the women populating the site are there due to discrimination elsewhere, that they are forced there because they can’t escape from Etsy to sell their crafts on other online handcraft selling sites. If that’s the case, point me to this alternative, discriminatory handcraft selling site, and I’ll gladly edit this paragraph to reflect it.

2. According to Mosle, the average Etsy seller is in her mid-30s, with a college education and an above average income. Which prompts her to ask, “These should, in sum, be highly employable women. So, what are they doing, often pursuing hobbies, or working only part-time, on Etsy?”

Maybe because I craft in my spare time as my hobby, this seems to be a no-brainer to me. I suspect that many of these woman are, indeed, pursuing their hobbies and selling their products while maintaining full-time jobs, either as stay-at-home-moms (a full time job if ever there was one) or out of home in the workforce. Just because you see a seller on Etsy doesn’t mean that it is their only source of income or employment.

3. The idea of creating and selling crafts as a well-paying career while raising children in the home is a feminist “promise” that cannot be delivered, therefore making this promise a fantasy.

This is the one I just don’t get. It seems to me that the feminist promise is the equality for a woman to pursue her life as she chooses, without restrictions based on her gender. That promise casts a wide net, allowing women to choose to craft items to sell while the baby naps, or have access to a private place to breastfeed between meetings, or pursue a career instead of having children without prejudice. Saying that the promise is not delivered, and therefore a fantasy, because not every woman has the ability or drive to sustain an online craft business from the home while raising a family is incredibly narrow-minded, in my opinion.

4. Etsy perpetuates and “peddles” this feminist fantasy.

As stated above, Etsy is a for-profit business. It is in Etsy’s best interest to maintain and grow the number of sellers on their site. They want their sellers to be successful, because they have a stake in each item these sellers post and sell. Etsy offers articles with topics on how to establish a full-time crafting business through Etsy, or spotlights sellers that have been able to pursue their craft business full-time, not to peddle a feminist fantasy but because it’s good business for Etsy to keep sellers on their site and successful. In fact, it’s in Etsy’s best interest to attract sellers of both genders, because it only increases their profit-base. Etsy knows this, and has tried to attract more male sellers to the site, unfortunately with little success at this point, but I will bet that they are looking for new ways all the time.

5. It is not likely that most sellers will be able to pursue a full-time, highly-profitable storefront on Etsy. Women have been so taken by the fantasy outlined above, that they’re still selling on Etsy despite the lack of profitability. Men, however, have done the math and found that Etsy isn’t profitable, and that’s why there aren’t as many male sellers on Etsy.

Well, if that point doesn’t make all of the female sellers on Etsy sound like they have quilt-batting for brains, I don’t know what does. This is the point that really got my blood boiling, because it makes it sound like women are suckers who are unable or unwilling to evaluate the business prospects of Etsy, and make a rational decision whether or not to sell there, while men are too smart to even set up shop there if the profits will be so low. I’m not even going to spend time refuting this, because I know all of you reading this are smart enough to know that it’s a load of BS.

I will concede the point that not all sellers on Etsy drive large sales and generate huge profits. But let’s not forget that while many people would love to make a full-time living crafting, just as many people craft for pleasure or artistic expression. While many people feel their crafts are valuable and worth selling, they may not want the pressure of selling full-time, because that’s not the driving force behind their hobby. Maybe some Etsy sellers love their day jobs, and the security and benefits these day jobs provide, and wouldn’t be comfortable being their own boss and depending on their handcrafts for full-time employment. I know I wouldn’t, and I love crafting.

Then why post on Etsy? Because maybe their friends and family are up to their ears in quilts or handmade jewelry. Who knows. Who cares? The point is, not everyone needs or wants to be a full-time craft seller.

Or just the opposite, some people may be so successful that they don’t need to sell on Etsy. Sure, some people have worked hard to create successful Etsy stores, and that’s great! But some sellers have seen that because they list so many items, or sell so frequently, that it doesn’t make good business sense to continue to pay Etsy their fees when they have the web-design, marketing and entrepreneurial skills to open their own storefront elsewhere. Or they’ve seen such a rise in the number of sellers on Etsy, that they’ve seen a decrease in “foot traffic” and have found they don’t need Etsy anymore for that reason (I’m thinking of Splityarn’s Caro and her post regarding Etsy). And I’m betting there are dozens of reason I’m not even thinking of that business-minded men AND women have based their decisions to not sell on Etsy.

If you’ll indulge me a second Princess Bride quote: Let me sum up.

6. The fact that there are more female sellers than male sellers on Etsy means something.

To me? It really doesn’t mean anything at all.

If the male crafters are out there selling their stuff, and are doing a good job promoting themselves, I’ll find them. If I find what I’m looking for on Etsy, I’ll shop there. If I continue to find great shops that don’t have an Etsy presence (like Splityarn), I’ll stalk them for updates. Really, I don’t care about the gender of the people behind the shops. I just want to find the handcrafts that I like and will enjoy.

Phew! That was much longer than I intended, and if you made it this far, I really appreciate your time and attention. It had been bugging me for days, and I know that writing about crafts while there’s so much going on in the world (Iran, I’m looking at you) may seem a little self-indulgent, but there you go.

If you think I’m off base, or think I missed something, please feel free to leave a comment. I’m more than happy to discuss this further if you think I missed a major point or was just too thin-skinned regarding the original article. Just keep it clean and polite, that’s all I ask.

I’m going to cross-post this to my crafting site (Almost Crafty) because I think the themes of the post fit well for both sites, and I don’t want to exclude my readers over there. If you’re one of the three people that read both sites, I apologize for the repetition!

But my day took a weird turn when Mr. Martini called me at work from home at 9:30 yesterday morning, saying, “Do you know what’s going on over here?”

“What?” I asked.

“One of the buildings down the street is on fire.”

We stayed on the phone for about a half an hour, while he stood on the porch and watched as four, then five, then six fire trucks entered our neighborhood, battling the blaze. He described seeing the flames fly up in the air, the intense heat, the amount of smoke, and how organized the fire fighters were, issuing orders and getting people to stay back, out of the way.

Since I wasn’t there, my imagination ran wild with thoughts of evacuation and the fire getting out of control and leaping to neighboring buildings, but Mr. Martini assured me that everything was fine and our building wasn’t in danger. I was relieved, but for the rest of the day until I got home, I checked the news to see the extent of the damage, to see if anyone was hurt, to see just how bad it really got.

Luckily (and really, I can’t stress that word enough), no one was hurt. One resident was treated for smoke inhalation, and two fire fighters were treated for heat exhaustion, but that was the extent of the injuries. By the time the fire was out, 8 of the 16 units in the building were completely destroyed. The other 8 units had such major fire damage that the residents couldn’t go back in. Sixteen families were displaced, most of them losing all of their belongings.

Here’s what really gets me. The cause of the fire, as reported on the news last night? Someone flicked a lit cigarette butt into some landscaped mulch right outside of the building. The mulch caught fire, which spread to the building.

The fire started right behind the scorched pine tree, and traveled up the building.

Sixteen families displaced, all of their belongings destroyed, because some idiot flicked their cigarette butt rather than find a damned ashtray.

Seriously, this makes me so angry. I feel the same way during dry seasons, when I see people toss their cigarette butts out of their car windows. How is it any different than throwing lit matches around? I do not get it.

Smokers, please, please, please be careful with your cigarette butts. Find an ashtray, tramp them out, do what you need to do to make sure that once they’re discarded, they can’t hurt anyone. Because this fire was just too close for comfort, and made for a weird, scary day.

We live in a rather large apartment complex. For the most part, it’s a pretty good community to live in. All of our appliances work, we have good water pressure, the walls are solid enough that we can’t hear our neighbors. Management is usually quick to respond to issues. The grounds are kept up, they’re clean and for the most part, it’s a nice, quiet community to live in.

Except.

We live on the second (top) floor of our building. Our neighbors downstairs are quiet and fine and I’m sure very lovely people except for one thing. They smoke. They don’t smoke inside (which is fantastic, and I really appreciate the reduced fire risk). They smoke on their front porch.

The thing is – their front porch is directly under our front porch, which is right off our living room. Which means the smoke travels right up through the slats in the floor of our patio, and drifts into our apartment. In the winter you could just barely smell it. But now that the weather is nicer, we would like to open the door to the patio to get some fresh air circulating.

But the people downstairs? Smoke ALL THE TIME.

Early morning, before dinner, after dinner, late evening, overnight. There is someone on the porch at 6 in the evening, and someone on the porch at 2 in the morning (I know, because the smoke wakes me up from a deep sleep).

As you can imagine, Mr. Martini and I are not smokers. So we’re not used to the smell of cigarette smoke in our apartment, and we don’t like it. Worse than that, the smoke seems to be a trigger for my asthma, which is annoying and unpleasant. (This is another reason I’m so, so glad for the “no smoking in restaurants” rules. I know many folks find this invasive, but I’m a huge, huge fan.)

We’ve resigned ourselves to closing the patio door when we hear the neighbors screen door open below us. There’s not much else we can do, since they pay rent the same way we do, and the property doesn’t have rules against smoking. We’re just going to keep the windows closed and run the (beloved) central air and suck it up and be grown ups. And look for a new apartment when our lease is up.

It’s just frustrating that this one aspect of our living arrangement is such a stinker. Literally and figuratively.

Can we please call white sleeveless men’s undershirts something other than “wifebeaters”?

It just creeps me out so much.

Seeing articles like this (found via Jezebel.com) just reinforces the ick factor to a level I find sickening:

“The website… gave a discount to anyone who could prove they were convicted of wife-beating.”

Thankfully, this story had a “happy” ending, and the website was pulled down. But can we look on this as proof that “oh, it’s just a goofy name” is just not acceptable? Please?

OK, I’ll climb down off of my soapbox now, and try to shake this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach with some thin mints. Anyone have any they want to share?

I was originally scheduled for the first appointment of the day mid-week last week, but I rescheduled once I saw the approaching ice-pocalypse (tm pending). The only time they could fit me in this week was today at 9:30 am, which wasn’t so horrible, really. But this was a fasting test, meaning I couldn’t eat anything before the test. No matter – I figured I’d treat myself to an Egg McMuffin afterwards (oh, Egg McMuffin, it has been too long since our last meeting).

My plans were foiled, though, by a 45 minute wait at the doctor’s office. Right after I arrived (early), an elderly gentleman arrived, and was taken back to the lab area. He was bantering with the lab techs on the way in, and I’m sure bantered up a storm when he got back there.

Here’s the thing – I was hungry. I needed to get to work. I needed my Egg McMuffin. I get grumpy when I’m hungry and late.

But the worst, worst part? Remember I mentioned the “pee in a cup” portion of this test? Oh my gods, I had to go so bad, and was told “Just a few minutes longer – the patient before you is taking awhile!”  It was excrutiating to watch the lab techs banter with the older gentleman as they walked him (SO VERY SLOWLY) to his next exam room. My foot was tapping, my legs were crossed, and when they finally called my name I RAN to the lab area.

The lab tech tried to be nice to me, too, but I was having none of it. I was hungry, and I knew that if she didn’t pass me that little plastic cup right away, something very very bad was going to happen.

Don’t get me wrong. I hope that when I’m as old as that gentleman, that doctors and lab techs and everyone else treat me as well as they did him.

However, this feeling was overpowered by a full bladder bladder and empty stomach. What can I say, biology trumps social etiquette when an Egg McMuffin is on the line.