So I asked my daughters what they wanted to do tonight. Anything. I don't care. I thought maybe I'd get, "Go see a movie, have a sleep-over, Disneyland.", or some other normal request. I don't have normal children and their idea of entertainment proves just that. What did they want to do, you ask? Go visit The Canby Psychic! For those who don't know where I call home, Canby is a small town that isn't exactly known for it's alternative ways of thinking so the fact that we have a resident psychic is a little odd.

We drive by it everyday and my girls have asked to go about a million times. I recalled the sign that read, "Psychic reading $10" and I saw an opportunity to give them their silly request and not break the bank. Hell, if I took them out for pizza, I'd spend that in quarters and only have a purse full of vending machine crap at the end of the night. Besides, who needs any more Billy Bob teeth and Pokemon tattoos when you could have your fortune read?

So I called the lady and expected to hear, "Oh hi Gretchen. I've been expecting your call." but I didn't. At this point she's already losing credibility with me. I asked her if she would do a reading for children and her reply was, "No, their energy is too high and I can't get a good reading."

THEIR ENERGY IS TOO HIGH? NO SH#% SHERLOCK!

If she was a better business person she would have offered to do the reading and taken a few extra bucks to tell them what I wanted her to. Take my money, wave your hands over your crystal ball and say something like this...

I can see here by your soft hands that you don't help out much around the house. This card is telling me that you're lazy and would rather watch TV than do your homework. You have also drawn the squawking eagle card which tells me that you're a smart mouth and you hit your sister. The wolf and tiger on this card mean that there is much dog poop to pick up in the yard and I suspect that it was your idea to get a cat, but yet you never feed it. You see this tree? This is letting me know that you don't eat your vegetables and all your hair is going to fall out.

If they are already making stuff up, make up stuff that helps parents. I will gar-on-tee that would be the last time they ask me to take them to a damn psychic. Hold on while I jot down a new business idea.

So I asked Madame clairvoyant if she would do a reading on me and let my girls watch. That's almost as good, right? I was going to take one for the team. So I made the appointment, but a second red flag occurred when she asked me to call her when we were on our way. Whatever.

We pulled up to the little yellow house with the purple neon lights and knocked on the door. I expected an old woman dripping in gold jewelry and with long finger nails to open the door and wave us into her lair.

 But instead, it was a young woman who looked about 20. She explained that the ten dollar reading lasted about a minute and a half, but for an Andrew Jackson, she'd tell me my past, present, and future. I tried to negotiate, because after all, I know my past and present, it's the prediction of my future that I'm willing to pay for. I could not sway the young gypsy-girl, so I handed her my $20 and we walked into her room that was about half the size of a walk-in closet.

My girls sat cross-legged on the floor with eyes as wide as saucers and mouths all agape. I sat across from her and she asked me to shuffle the cards and choose 9--3 for my past, 3 for my present, and 3 for my future. She lined them all up and stared at them for a very long time. I practiced my very best poker face and maintained a respectable level of skepticism.

When she began to speak, my body was covered in goosebumps as she read my past and present like it was the biography I'll never get around to writing. I was looking for generalities that could have been applicable to anyone, but she was specific and the eeriness is difficult to describe.

Do I believe in psychic powers? I'm not sure. But I do know that starting when my oldest child was 2 , there were a few bizarre instances that I don"t know how to explain.

One night when she was about 3, she woke up crying and kept telling me over and over that the princess was hurt and it was making the prince sad. She said that the princess was under the bridge and she wouldn't wake up and the prince can't stop crying. The next morning I learned that a couple on their way to their senior prom had crashed into a railroad trestle about a mile from our house.

Later that day we drove under the trestle and it was covered in flowers, balloons, and homemade signs. Buckled in her car seat, my daughter said, "That's the bridge I told you about where the prince and princess were."

Did she truly have a vision? Is it possible? Maybe. I would have passed it off as a bizarre coincidence between a child's nightmare and a tragic event, but she continued to have episodes like this. They became so vivid that when she would have them, I took them very seriously.

One such time she told me that "Papa and the other cowboys were sad because the cow was sick and stuck in the mud. There's a baby cow there too, but they don't see it." I called my mother and she said that my dad and two friends were out helping a calving cow whose calf was stuck and she'd gone down in the creek bed.

There were many more like this and then they stopped. I wish I could get her to tap back into whatever that was, because at $20 for a 15 minute reading, she might have a lucrative summer job.

I am not one of those people who runs around talking about "energy" or believe that your astrological sign has anything to do with your personality. The only thing I know about zen, is that it can be a high scoring word on Words with Friends, and my yoga experience is limited to owning the pants. I do believe in deja vu though. That's weird. I don't even know if I believe in karma, because I know people who should have had it bite them in the ass but it hasn't.

So the question is...Do I believe that this girl is truly psychic or just a well trained master manipulator? I don't know, but I do know that she gave me some really interesting things to think about and she was much less expensive than a therapist. In fact, I would highly recommend going there so you can decide for yourself. Just make an appointment, because she's good, but not THAT good.

I'm 37 years old and I find myself planning a wedding for the second time. Things are a lot different out here in wedding planning land.
Circa 1999, we would grab a few bridal magazines, hit the bridal show to sample cake and collect brochures from a million vendors, and watch a fashion show. We would then assemble them all into a scrapbook and begin our planning. We would cut our dream dresses out of magazines, take the crumpled pages to the lady at the bridal boutique, and hope that our pocket books would allow us to say 'yes to the dress'.
If you didn't have a fabulous wedding planner, you were really just left to rely on your own creativity and imagination.

The only real inspiration for cleverly done weddings we had was Martha Stewart. Her staff was able to stage just about any photo shoot to show us what we can't do, we couldn't afford, didn't have the staff to assemble, and flat out what wasn't going to be seen at our own wedding. We just got a little glimpse of what a beautiful wedding SHOULD look like, but then it was back to reality where we had to tell our local florist to back off the ferns and baby's breath.

In the end, it was fine because most of the world (at least those in my world) was also DIY wedding planners.
But now there's a new Martha in town and her name is Pinterest. We get to see a bazillion images of beautiful weddings and we get to make little cyber-scrapbooks of all of the really cool things that really cool people did and try to copy it. Before I go on, let me tell you that I LOVE Pinterest and I could spend hours looking at the lovliness, but she's the devil!

For example...

We are planning a simple-ish affair that sort of has the feel of an old-fashioned county fair or carnival. Pinterest told me that it could be done beautifully and EVEN I could make the corn dog a lovely menu option. So I set out to make it happen. I interviewed guys who make-corn dogs-and-will-travel and I responsibly asked for a picture of their set-up before booking them for my pin-worthy wedding.

Here's what I think. Using Pinterest to gain inspiration or get your creative juices flowing is wonderful. Maybe take a few elements and put your own twist on them to make them somewhat original. I do it all the time. But it can also make you feel inadequate or frustrated like how Cosmo can make us feel fat. If I actually did everything that I have pinned, it wouldn't make me creative, it would make me a broke copy cat. Here's a question for you die hard pinners. What have you pinned that you've actually followed through with?

pausing while you think

ME TOO! It's all pin pin pin pin pin, but no DOING! For example, I've spent hours looking at pictures of chicken coops (yes, I did switch from weddings to chicken coops in the same paragraph, but its my blog) and I have a half-built chicken coop staring at me through my kitchen window, while I write to you about the dangers of Pinterest. It's saying, "Gretchen...finish me!" in it's chicken coop voice; but, instead I sit here and write to you.

In summary...
I have been on a wild goose chase for shoes that don't exist. In the words that Cinderella may or may not have said, "HEY BEEYATCH, GO GET YOUR OWN DAMN SHOES!". So I'm unpinning those super cute shoes, and though I doubt I'll go with blue hooker shoes, I'll find my own. Heck, maybe I'll hot glue something on the toe, pin it, and send brides on a never ending hunt for my adorable shoes. BWAHAHAHA!  I am also going to put the sexy back in the corn dog and the curly fry. Coming soon to board near you.