You know, whenever I do dishes/wash my tools I end up thinking over whatever has caught my interest at the time. It's like a prefect place to think about stuff, I find. I mean, what else am I going to think about? The cutlery? "Oh yes, a knife. Swipe here, swipe there, dip, put in rinse water. A fork. Swipe here, swipe there, dip, put in rinse water..." I guess when I started doing dishes I would've needed to pay attention to what I was doing; but by now and however many thousands of hours spent doing the exact same thing I have it down to a process as automatic as breathing.

So I just finished up washing my tools after making a batch of Angel Wings (finally!) and I found myself going over and over my interactions with Ryo this past weekend. I used to be friends with her once, when we were still in High School but then she moved to Toronto and I got married. When I moved out there we rekindled the acquaintance and maintained a sort of friendly relationship until I finally got tired of her continual comments and brutal bluntness.

Since then I've kept my distance except for outings as a group, like last Halloween and last Saturday. Anyways, that's not what I was thinking about. What I kept on remembering was a conversation we had in Lee Valley while waiting for the boys to finish ohhing and ahhing.

We're sitting there talking about her business (making and selling handmade sock animals -- beautiful creations and work) and how she's going to one of the One of a Kind Shows. These shows are big, major shows. They cost a lot of money to get the table space. I know this because my Dad has been doing Shows for at least the past 15 years and we talk about it. I mention that Dad's been doing craft shows, kind of offhand (he's been doing them as long as I've known her, not that I expect my acquaintances to remember what my parents do for a living but I also don't expect it to be a complete surprise, you know?) and we talk about what he makes and sells.

Then she says "Well your Dad doesn't do the type of shows I do." -- clearly implying that she thinks he's hawking his wares in some rundown flea market.

I swear to god I was torn between ripping her head off and laughing in her face. I only said "No, he doesn't do One of a Kind, he does Signatures." And tried to leave it at that. (Signatures is the main competition for the One of a Kind shows. They're equal, IMO, in prestige, cost and income.) She made another snarky comment about his product (which she has never seen) and then a woman came and struck up a conversation with us.

On one hand, that's just the way she is, but on another it's a perfect example of this attitude that I fucking despise. It's a mix of arrogance, pride and ignorance. That she knows everything and there's nothing she can learn from anyone else. Almost every time I talk on the phone with my Dad we talk about the shows, about business, about what he does and what I am a bare neophyte at. And I am grateful for every minute of it. I don't agree with everything he does but I don't close myself off from learning because of it.

She in that one sentence displayed her complete dismissal of a business that has succeeded in the area she's just begun working in. He's done shows all over North America, has made enough money at it to finance a comfortable lifestyle with no other source of income, has created a business that is respected and desired at these shows.

I can take snarky comments about my business being part-time or a hobby because I know that I'm unwilling to take the risks I need to take to ramp up to a full time commitment. It's not a hobby to me, but fine. But listening to her snark on my Dad and what he does is hilarious, infuriating and kind of sad.

That's 30 minutes and I still haven't articulated what I was ruminating on while I washed my tools. Ahh well, they can't all be complete essays, right?

... Actually as a final thought... I lost my admiration for her remarkable, beautiful creations because of her rudeness. Losing sight of what you have to offer as remarkable and admirable because you're focused on putting down someone else's remarkable and admirable gifts is a tragedy, an honest to god tragedy.