All I want is what I have coming to me. All I want is my fair share.*

My sister made me curtains recently. They're pretty cute.



We've talked briefly about starting a business together, one where we make beautiful things and sell them. I would be the artsy side and she would craftsy side.

When I daydream about this, I imagine us living at our grandparents' farmhouse (which is for sale) in Dancyville, just east of Memphis. There we would run a kennel for rescued dogs and cats and we would make things and collect things all the live long day.

My brother-in-law would be there, too, of course, and he'd help with furniture building because he is good at things like that. My other sister would come in on the weekends to hug cats and play the clarinet for us. Juicy would have acres of cotton fields in which to roll around.



Our studio would hold a sewing machine, a screen printing area, easels, paint, papers, fabrics, etc.. We would make the storage room outside in between the house and the cotton fields into a wood shop. People would come stay with us, cook with us, clean with us, make things with us. They could take a dog for a walk each morning.



There is a room off the porch of the farmhouse where an old desk and wooden toys and a pad of paper and pencil are kept. I love that room. When I was younger, I could be by myself for hours and it was like minutes. Who knows what I thought about, dreamed about. I think it was training for all the time I'd spend being alone once I was older**, though I'm not as good at it now as I was back then.



Inside the house, in the living room, my grandmother displayed antique purses and make-up cases. I'd hold them, covet them. My grandfather, a former dairy man, collected all things cow-themed and all things dairy. I didn't know the extent of his collection until they put the house up for sale and began cleaning out rooms- bookcases full of cow shaped cream pitchers, butter molds, and milk bottles.



I share this love for antiques, old things beautifully crafted, with my grandparents, I'm sure I get that quality from them, but mixed in is a certain contemporary flair. I am a thrift store fiend (more on that later), so also with our studio-bed and breakfast-kennel, I would have a room stocked full of my findings- vintage clothes and shoes, tinted cut glassware, wooden boxes, mason jars, metal filing boxes, the list goes on.





I'd collect and all of us would make.

And we'd sell everything via the internet and make buckets of money to buy our rescued dogs leather collars, and to make lavish meals for guests, and to send each of us on trips to play with orphans in South America, Africa, and India. And I'd finally get to go to Japan.

A simple life is all I want.

...but I also want the city.

*Sally, from Peanuts in A Charlie Brown Christmas
**I don't mean this as much in a pathetic way, but more being factual about the life of an artist.