It’s official. We’ve come to July 6 and there are 30 days left until the beaver festival. It’s that blooming, buzzing time of year where I lose my mind in a gasping panic. Things don’t get done that said they’d be done, last minute changes to the program stretch the limits of my capacity to woefully apologize to the printer. Offers of help get mashed between the grinding gears of knowing what needs to be done and actually doing it. I spent two hours last night sorting out 114 bracelets into small untangled groups of ten, and checking if we have enough links for 800 charms. My kitchen table has been covered for weeks with 600 pleather beaver tails waiting to be glued together and trimmed for the children’s art project. Musical acts cancel, promises go unremembered and it is often a battle of wills whether I can bear to ask for something more times than the amnesic donor can comfortably forget it.
There is only one thing to do in the face of such sulfurous conflagration – watch this over and over while I paint my tail.