Saturday, April 17, 2010

You Know You've been unemployed too long when ...

you turn in a proposal to teach a fiction-writing class at the local community college wearing the same clothes you milked the goats in.

In my defense I will say that Olive (my co-teacher http://blogs.myspace.com/aeonnow) and I finished writing the proposal the day it was due and I thought I was just dropping it off at Lane Community College office where it would be put in the director's mailbox until she arrived at work. I didn't know her hours, but I knew she worked some evenings. When I handed the envelope over to the receptionist, she said -- before I could escape: "Can you stay? She wants to talk to you." Uh oh.

I looked down at my shirt, a long-dead leftover from my last professional job. It had been patched with silk-screened swatches of reproductions of another friend's art. But still more holes awaited new art. The whole bottom of the multi-coloured flannel shirt had come unhemmed and I had stopped the unraveling by painting a border in black acrylic along the edge. I hastily zipped my jacket up to cover it. The jacket, though a red fleece, had some soot smears from the woodstove and many bits of hay and seeds that had worked their way into the fabric and won't be coming out until they dissolve in the wash some distant day. However ...

You know you're in Cottage Grove when:

none of this matters and the director greets you by name, never casts so much as glance at your clothes, tells you that you did your homework well in preparing the proposal, and gives you not just a handshake but a double-palmed handhug at the end of the discussion. She also said (from looking at the attached supporting materials) that she would love it if I were to offer a feltmaking class.

Oh dang, I was going to throw in a link for Cada's art but I have to load Joy into the truck for a trip to the vet. Later --