I did not want to have to deal with ordering new displays this year for the autumn art and craft show chaos.
We've needed them for well over a decade, but naturally, when I wasn't flying solo, I got stonewalled with 'what we have is good enough!' while it was falling apart and looked like such crap that we got booted from some of the better shows we did because my dear sainted mother just refused to admit that her jury-rigged dimestore bullshit really, really looked like jury-rigged dimestore bullshit. (And by the time she finished making whatever, it barely cost less than the professional version of whatever it was -- sometimes it ended up costing more, and often enough it always required way more maintenance and thus cost over time, all while looking like hot garbage.)
So, yay. Creative control and I can finally start phasing out the crap... with almost zero budget. That's not ideal but it's an improvement.
What's less good is ordering stuff from all over the damn planet, splitting things up amongst accounts and my husband having to get some stuff and me other stuff, since all of our accounts are still separate, even if we share expenses for things and whatnot, and hoping it all shows up in time.
This year, it's gridwall hell. Bunches of huge heavy boxes that cost a bloody fortune to ship. $30 to ship a frickin' $25 triangle stand, people. What in the actual fuck.
When my husband saw that a few days ago, he spoke the magic words: 'screw that, I will just rig something up!'
(Because that's totally served us so well in the past, right?)
The rant he got was more blistering and hyperbolic than anything I've ever said here or on any version or variant of WORA through the years, but with the added bonus of cheesy impressions, living cartoon wild take expressions, and agitated Italian woman hand gestures a-plenty. By the end of it, we were both in tears laughing, but he immediately understood why we were going to order that goddamned triangle base without further carping on about the admittedly ridiculous shipping and we were going to like it.
(And then they dicked us around further, increasing the price because it's being shipped to a residence, despite not having disclosed this anywhere on their site or had any tick boxes or anything to indicate we needed to tell them that or that they were primarily geared toward sending shit to loading docks exclusively, and goddammit, I looked, 'cause that shit'll fuck you unexpectedly like that.)
For the past three days, he's been trying to forward the ship notification and the tracking info.
It finally came through late into last evening.
It will be here in the morning... possibly the early morning... so I am stuck sitting through insomniaville, chugging coffee like it's going to globally run out, trying to prepare myself to lug 3 60lb+ boxes into a house that is similarly and laughably ill-prepared to house 3 60lb+ boxes on my own, 'cause he decided to stay up north last night to catch a special art theater showing of a movie this afternoon with his gaming friends.
I'm under lifelong doctor's orders to never lift anything over 5lbs lest I finish completely fucking up my spine. Since no human can readily live this way I regularly ignore that, but I try not to do so to this degree, especially in the 'and it all gets thrown through the door at lightning speed' pace this is gonna doubtless entail. (Which will be after I finish moving everything away from the door. Yay. It is the first break from that bullshit now.)
FML.
That we have to go through this same bullshit next year, potentially with international shipments, is not giving me a case of the warm fuzzies right about now.