This past year was the Boo’s first year in preschool. We were exceedingly lucky to land, completely by accident, at the school we did. We loved it, the Boo (most days) loved it, and his teachers were exceptional.

Combine that with my own inclination to make handmade gifts whenever possible (we did felted soaps for Christmas) and I was a bit stuck on what to make for end of year gifts. I truly wanted to thank his remarkable teachers for such a great year.

And then I remembered the embroidery ideas from The Creative Family. Although I didn’t go about it the same way, I love the idea of embroidering a child’s drawings. Since the Boo has become such a prolific artist this year, thanks in no small part to his school and teachers, I thought it would be cool to do something like that. But what can you put embroidery on? Pilllows would be odd.

And then I saw this adorable apple fabric and it all fell in place. Tote bags! With embroidery! Too cute and hopefully a useful gift for teachers, right? So here they are:

I have to admit I’m smitten with these. Love, love, love.   Thank goodness there is fabric left over because I want one! A little birdie told me my nieces would like two as well :)

I knew they would be fairly easy to make because, come on, they’re tote bags. However turns out all the patterns I have call for home decor weight fabric. Oops. I have quilting weight. So I had to research how to buff up lightweight fabrics. I had to order linen for the embroidery (well I suppose I didn’t have to, but I wanted to) which I also used for the handles.

I based this bag loosely on the bag in Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing book, but then turned to Last Minute Patchwork and Quilted Gifts for lining help. The dimensions were similar between the bags. (Er, I think. It’s been a rough week.)

I ended up interfacing the bag with plain old flannel. I believe I picked up that trick from Amy Karol but I’m not entirely sure. I thought about iron-on but I’m never convinced of the durability of that stuff. They have a wonderful heft and I’m not at all worried about the fabric ripping any time soon.

I actually have pictures of the inside fabric (polka dots and one Amy Butler print) and closeups of the finished embroidery but I haven’t uploaded them off my phone yet! I figured I should post while I had the time instead of waiting even longer.

At any rate, I do have a very early picture (uploaded to facebook!) when I just started doing the embroidery. This is actually my first ever embroidery so I’m very proud! I spent some time reading my embroidery books too. The bee is done here and the snail/slug picture is in progress. The other picture on the finished bags is a butterfly. Boo is very proud of these because they were drawn without stencils.

Also? I got to use my grandmother’s hoops. Yay for that too.

I rediscovered how much I enjoy sewing with these but how much I dislike sewing on a deadline. I also dislike the prep work. Washing fabric, drying fabric, ironing fabric, cutting fabric (which I’m very bad at), pinning fabric, finally getting to sew fabric but then stopping to press it again! Argh. I ended up only pressing down the seams along the top because I couldn’t figure out HOW to press the seams on the inside without putting creases in the bags. Boggle.

Hmm what else. I wanted to sew and then top-stitch the tops but I couldn’t figure out where to put the handles, so I ended up just top-stitching. Hope they hold up!

In any case. I loved this project and I think Boo’s teachers were genuinely touched. I do have to say these might have been more work than one would normally put into teachers gifts, although they certainly didn’t cost more. We would have spent more on gift certificates, which seems to be the default gift these days. Now whether or not the teachers would have preferred gift certificates is another question! Perhaps. But I do hope they liked them and that they’ll remember the Boo at least a little.  They made an indelible impact on his young life and I am forever grateful for their compassion, patience, and understanding as we navigated this very new stage of life for the Boo. I will miss them very much as we’re going to a different school next year.

Anna, Anne and Laura, you all are the best!

Boo wanted to make a Pointy Kitty for Baby’s birthday. We got as far as picking out fabric, cutting out the pieces and sewing the head before the birthday came and went and the kitty sat on the back burner.

I did, eventually, get it finished! Here it is:

With big bro’s kitty too, of course. I apologize for the crappy photos. Kitty was too busy being played with to have a proper photo shoot. That and for some reason everything is overexposed. Oh well.

This is probably my, what, sixth kitty? You’d think the pattern would get easier, but really, it doesn’t. I just know which parts take the longest now. I still suck at sewing on the head and I still haven’t figured out how to make the butt not quite so long.

Boo insisted Baby’s kitty have a heart just like his. I wasn’t going to do that because the reason Boo’s kitty has a heart was because it was a valentine’s pressie. But if the lad wants a heart, he gets a heart! Isn’t that sweet?

(Finally kitty gets some peace!)

One thing I dislike about this kitty is that I keep forgetting that white background fabric doesn’t generally work as the eye shapes don’t show up as well. Dark fabrics are better. Maybe next time I’ll remember! At least the polka dots are cute!

This last picture cracks me up. Kitty on the prowl! This is what most of the pictures look like. At least the kids were having fun :)

After a long and tearful talk with the hubby, my bike plans are on hold for a while. For many different reasons.

One concern of utmost importance is money, as seems always to be the case, sad as that is. Whatever I get, even if it’s something as simple as the Radish, costs more than we can realistically afford right now. I don’t want to save, I want it now, but I need to save. So there’s that.

Combine that with my need to exhaust all levels of research and come up with the perfect bike combo, and my dream bike isn’t happening any time soon. It may not even exist. (Hello complete long tail with step-through design? Where are you? And can you please come in baby blue with brown leather seat, 8 geared internal hub, internal lights, and disc brakes? Ahem.)

There is a trade-off for this though, which is that I get to join the Y. I am both saddened and heartened by this.

Sad because… it’s just not what I want. I want fitness and food and chores and housekeeping and errands and… all that to just be part of my LIFE. I don’t want to arrange childcare, drive to a gym, ride a bike to nowhere while listening to music or reading a book, lift weights from a multi-thousand dollar machine, and drive home again. It just doesn’t make sense to me. It’s like the McDonald’s of fitness, except that it’s inarguably better for you. It’s just so definitive of our society that we pay for the privilege to use our bodies in ways they were never meant to be used. It actually makes me a little bit sick to think about.

I think that’s one of the reasons I’m in such bad shape — although I actually don’t mind using gyms as such — is that the philosophy behind them doesn’t jive with my developing sense of how I want to live my life. So I don’t go to them, but I don’t do anything else either.

Which brings us to why this makes me happy. At least it’s something.

I feel like I’ve been trying literally for years to figure out how to include exercise in my life in a meaningful way that also included my kids. But all of my attempts ultimately failed, for a variety of reasons. My truth is that I can’t do “normal” exercise around my kids. If I do a video the eldest argues with me about using the TV and the baby crawls underneath me. If I use the Wii Fit I have to compete with the eldest for game time, which isn’t exactly effective. If I try to go for a walk I inevitably get resistance from one or both kids, and even if we make it out the door I end up walking bent over to push both, which isn’t good for my back. Not to mention walking that much isn’t good for my feet. We have no childcare to speak of. There are always needs to be met — diapers, food, etc. There’s always something.

I don’t get a break, I don’t have any time for myself, and I have little resistance to arguments. So while I can do little bits here and there, nothing is consistent or effective. It’s enough to stave off a truly bad back injury (knock on wood) but little more.

I finally reached a point the other day when the only thought that cheered me up was going for a bike ride. I didn’t want the ice cream in the freezer. I didn’t want to buy yarn. I didn’t want to buy anything. (Okay, except a bike, but I was sick of looking for one by then.) I wanted to go for a bike ride and I couldn’t and I was just devastated. I felt so good after my ride the other day and I needed to re-capture that. I hurt every day and I’m so sick of it. I’m sick of me. Something has to change.

But I can’t get a new bike right now. What’s a girl to do?

Join the gym.

So there it is. It means I won’t likely be joining any family bike rides this summer, much to my disappointment. It means I’ll only get to go on bike rides on my crappy bike once in a blue moon.

But it also means I’ll have time to truly shop for a new bike, try out everything I can and make an educated decision, then save for it. It means I can continue biking on my own to become a more confident bicyclist in general.  It means that I can work on myself at the gym so that whenever I do get my dream bike, I’m in better shape and better able to haul the kids around. And truthfully, all of that is a good thing.

So I may be disappointed, but it’s all okay. It will be okay and we’ll get there eventually. I’ve been looking for the slow life — looks like it found me, just in an unexpected way.

Occasionally I am told that whatever I’ve made is wonderful and “you could sell this!” Or I am asked why I don’t have an Etsy shop. This always makes me chortle.

The answer to why I don’t have an Etsy shop is because I don’t want one. I have had past experience with my own “company” and it wasn’t a good experience, to say the least.

I certainly would love to have an Etsy shop. What more thrilling way to earn a living than for someone to get excited about, buy, and cherish your handcrafts?  What better way to spend your time than making things? Sometimes I do wonder if Etsy had been around when I was starting, if things would have worked out differently for me. (But probably not.)

From my perspective, there are two problems with making and selling things:

1. You may end up not having enough time for your own projects, say, Christmas presents for your family.
2.  The paperwork is a bitch.

Before I had the Boo, it seems I had nothing but time. I made a lot of scarves as gifts and people kept telling me they were fantastic and I should sell them. I was also so taken with yarn combinations that I kept buying yarn and making scarves with no intended recipient.

So I decided to sell them. After I had the baby, though, my time was no longer my own and I had no time to make anything. Any time I did have went to business things instead of my own things. I now know I would much rather have made things for my baby than for sale. Or, you know, for me!

The paperwork is what really got me in the end though. I got some (very bad) advice that my company should be an LLC (as opposed to just reporting extra income on your schedule C or whatever). Turns out that meant I ended up paying a lot more in taxes and fees than I even made.

It was also a nightmare to close down. Apparently accountants that know what they are doing are a rare breed, because we tried to close it down properly when we moved, only to have the whole thing drag out for another few years because it was, in fact, not done properly. I was paying taxes for a company that wasn’t functioning, to a state we didn’t live in, for something that was essentially a hobby for me. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

So that is why I don’t have an Etsy shop.

I’d rather make stuff for myself, my family and friends, and the idea of dealing with paying taxes currently gives me the heebie jeebies.

Of course there is also another side effect of selling items, which is that you can actually get bored of what you’re making. Equally, you don’t want to stop making it if it sells. So in some ways your creativity can actually get stunted, which is ironic. Nevermind the huge cost to being an artist in that while retail establishments can pay wholesale for their goods, artists pay retail and then whatever their time, effort and creativity are deemed worthy, which I can guarantee you is more than the price tag reflects.

I’m writing about this now because my hubby actually said the other day that he wouldn’t be surprised if I wanted to open an Etsy shop some day. I must have looked at him like he had horns sprouting from his head. And then…. I started to think. Well…….. maybe someday. When the kids are bigger and I have more time and I’m not already sucked into a soulless job somewhere. And if I can find a more niche market than my previous efforts. Maybe.

But no time soon. That’s for sure.

I finished the socks I’ve been carrying around with me for 13 months. I know. 13 months. Good grief.

I have a good excuse though! I started these in the hospital before the baby was born. (Literally, the day he was born — thusly why I know how long they took!) And haven’t had a lot of time to knit since!

These socks started out as a few different patterns. The yarn is Numma Numma that I picked up as souvenir yarn in Atlanta, Georgia. I love the colors — mostly browns but also some olive greens and greys thrown in. I thought they would be subtle enough for a patterned sock, but everything I tried just drowned in the riot of color changes. So, a plain sock it was!

Once upon a time I got really annoyed at posts that said they used a “basic sock pattern” because I didn’t know what that was and I couldn’t find anything that was basic enough. Now, however, I know, so I’m going to say it: I used a basic sock pattern and threw in a baby cable on the sides. There. (Fortunately if you don’t know what that is there are gobs of basic patterns on the web now, so I don’t feel bad!)

This is the first time I’ve done ribbing all the way down. I like it. Feels nice and snug. Although they do gap wierdly at the back of the heel. My feet do get narrower there so it’s either that or the heel doesn’t go high enough maybe? Doesn’t really matter — they fit fine :)

In other news, I made some really late cards:

This was experimenting with some new stamps (that I got for $1! For the whole set!) that are clear and you put them on a hard clear block. You can see through them and are much smaller for storage. I was suspicious they would be too indistinct, and they are not as good as hard rubber, but generally they were fine. I like them.

And finally, I did a felted soap class at the Boo’s preschool! These were my samples with the Boo’s contribution on the left. It was an awesome class. The pre-K kids did marginally better than the preschoolers, but mostly everyone did great. I think they had fun. I know I did! And even the teachers enjoyed it, I think. A bit more expensive than their normal art projects, but it was for mother’s day, so I guess that was special :) I loved watching the kids pick out their colors.

Okay, one more photo, because I can’t help it. It’s too stinkin’ cute. These are the boys welcoming home Daddy. Wait, they’re in pajamas. Maybe saying goodbye when Daddy goes to work? Sad that I don’t know, eh? Ah well. Either way, it’s cute. We love our PJs in this house!

Sooo…. Last time I did “bike babble” I had just test-ridden a Madsen Cargo Bike (inserted a sneaky contest link there, go on, click it!) at the Seattle Bike Expo back in March.

When I wrote about the Expo, I had recently come to realize that I needed to slow down a bit; re-prioritize my goals, if you will. That hasn’t changed. What has changed is that I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot more talking — about Xtracycles, about Madsens, about carrying kids, about biking in general. Specifically I also had the opportunity recently to try out an Xtracycle and a Madsen side by side, which was awesome and I highly recommend. Matt in Tacoma is the man to talk to if you are suffering from a similar dilemma as myself!

Trying both bikes was golden because it confirmed what was already a growing suspicion that the Madsen, which while wonderful in many ways, is not going to fit every niche in which I want to bike with my kids.  Of course I’d like one bike to fit all situations, and although that may not be feasible in reality, I’d like to get as close as possible. The Xtracycle is going to suit us for longer, I think. Here’s why:

• My oldest likes it better, or so he has told me. It’s that stoker bar. He really, really likes that. He is fickle and does change his mind, but I do want him to be on board with this project.
• I’ve got a rather large age gap (3.5 years) with my kids. I don’t quite trust the baby to sit in the Madsen on his own yet, and my oldest is going to get big quickly. He’s not too big by any means, but I do want to plan for the long haul.
• I can take the Xtracycle with me on the car. That’s important to me, although I do see the irony. Can’t see hauling around the bucket!
• The Xtracycle will work better for carrying kid bikes. Not that the Madsen can’t do it, I just think the Xtracycle is a more elegant solution to that particular problem.
• The Xtracycle feels more like a regular bike. There, I said it. This is actually both good and bad — I think the Madsen will have more visibility on the streets because it is unique! Also, I love the step-through design of the Madsen. Fits my legs better than any bike I’ve tried so far.
• Although this doesn’t really have anything to do with length of time we’ll use something, I also think the Madsen makes an excellent car replacement vehicle, which isn’t something I’m looking for right now. Again with the irony, I know. But it does feel slightly like overkill. Right now I’m looking more at recreational use.

As you can probably tell, I did finally make a decision — I need an Xtracycle, not the pretty blue Madsen. (Although if I win one I promise it will get good use!)

The other decision I recently made is that I need a step-through bike for hauling the kids. I actually wasn’t convinced about this until a) I finally got to ride my own mountain bike, which is a diamond frame, and b) I tried Matt’s Xtra.

Let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I know I’m out of shape, but good grief. It’s like I have rocks in my shoes. I need to not to have to haul my leg over the front of a diamond frame bike because there’s someone sitting behind me. So while I could convert my mountain bike, I don’t think I will. I won’t feel secure or stable getting on and off, and I will feel plain silly doing it in public.

What else did I learn?

• I want balloon tires — cushy. So nice.
• I can totally see the value in those pricey Brooks/Velo Orange saddles. Instant comfort, unlike my current saddle, which hurts even through bike short padding, much less in jeans.
• Disk brakes are really good. I hadn’t tried those before.
• Xtracycles are HEAVY. I’m not sure putting one on my roof rack is such a good idea after all.

So a huge thanks to Matt for not only talking me through his cargo bike experiences, adventures and discoveries, but for letting a complete stranger ride his bikes. Sometimes bloggy people are the best!

After thinking about what I learned in talking to Matt, I decided to re-visit Aaron’s Bike Repair, the first place I ever went to ask about Xtracycles, and talk to them more about base bikes. I briefly tried out their basic Xtracycle build, and of course I learned a few things!

• First of all, 8 gears is okay.

I was honestly surprised by that — I’ve only ever had 21 gears so I wasn’t expecting that to be okay. I know it depends on the size of the front gear thingie (such technical terms!) but whatever ABR used seemed to work for me.

• I also learned that the uber-expensive double brake ABR sells may totally be worth the money.

There’s a lever which drops it down when you stop so you don’t have any wobbly problems getting off. Since so far I’ve proven that I’m possibly the least graceful bicyclist on the planet, this may well be a Very Good Idea. Particularly with passengers.

• I also confirmed that step-throughs are not only preferable for getting on the bike, but also stopping in general (like at lights) and getting off. Probably obvious, but there you go.

The plan itself hasn’t really changed, I just have some direction now as opposed to wandering meaninglessly in a sea of bike lust.

At ABR, they highly recommend the Cannondale Comfort bikes, which felt really good, but unfortunately I’m not crazy about how they look. I know that sounds trite, but I have to admit I have this vision, and straight silver lines wasn’t it. The bikes do come in other colors, but they’re just not bold like I was thinking. I was also thinking curves. So if I end up going Cannondale I’ll need some mental re-adjustment to happen first.

Next there are a few more Local Bike Shops I’d like to visit to try out some bikes. Hopefully child free because lordy, they do not like shopping. Hopefully I’ll be able to pick something out, or at least narrow the field to the point where I can make a list of everything I want and how much it will cost. And of course I can also watch craigslist in case something comes up!

It’s good to have a plan. :)

I tried to take pictures of the baby quilt this morning. Turns out it was too bright. Bah! (Imagine that, complaining about the sun!!) It will be ages before I find time to try again, though, so this is all I got.

Here’s the front (amazingly I also didn’t take a picture of the entire front. Doh #2):

Here’s the zig zag quilt from the Purl Bee that originally inspired mine. I knew I wanted to make the new baby a quilt, but I was having a hard time finding inspiration. I saw this one, and instantly knew that was it!

Since this was my first quilt, I didn’t want to mess with it too much, but I also knew that 1) there was too much white in that quilt for my babies, who are notoriously messy and like to poop in places other than accepted receptacles, and 2) I wanted to include some black and white fabrics in there. Now that I’m thinking about it, I cannot for the life of me recall what I did! I think I made the triangles smaller, got rid of the extra white and added in the B&W rows, then added black around to make it the right size. Or something like that!

Here’s the back:

The back pissed me off enormously because I cut it wrong in a fit of sleep deprivation (I’m assuming it’s that and not stupidity, but I suppose you never know) but I definitely like the pieced back better, so hurray for occasional mistakes! And now I have some extra number fabric to play with :)

Speaking of fabric, shopping for fabrics was fun! I discovered “charm packs” which were beyond awesome for triangles. Cut them in half and voila! Two triangles. Clever, no? :) And inexpensive!

Some of these fabrics are actually from the stash. Some are fabrics purchased for the Boo to play with back when he was a babe. So there are quite a few sentimental touches in this quilt.

If I made any mistakes regarding fabric, I have a mix of off-white and white-white and I’m not sure I’m happy about that. It bugs me a bit. Next time I’ll try to keep it to one or the other.

It’s hard to tell from a distance, but the majority of these triangles are BAD. Bad, bad, bad. Most of the corners look like these. Cutting is obviously not my strong suit.

The binding was much more enjoyable than I was expecting. HUGE thanks to Liane for actually sewing me a sample! I was stuck on the binding for a long time.

At first I could not for the life of me wrap my head around what I was supposed to be doing. So the sample (half completed, the rest for me to practice on) was awesome. Then I tried to follow the advice given here at Crazy Mom Quilts, but clearly I measured wrong (again, not a shock) because no less than TWO of my corners (and hello, there are only four!) have a color change, which means the fabric was twice as thick to sew through. Joy. So two corners look like this.

Oh.. and I also didn’t clip the seams for the binding at all, so it’s ridiculously thick in places. I sat down at my sewing machine with the iron all warmed up and charged through making the binding and sewing it on, all the while thinking I had read about bindings so often that surely I knew what I was doing by now. But no. Not so much.

Oh well. Doesn’t harm the functionality, right? :)

The actual quilting part was…. interesting. I tried to use coordinating colors for the sewing, i.e. blue on blue sections, orange on orange sections, white on white sections, and black on black sections. I used white for the bobbin thread in all cases but the black. This turned out to be a bad idea. The back looks goofy. You can’t tell from a distance but the black thread just looks wierd on the back. Of course it looks fine on the front. I think I was afraid the white would pull through (and it did on some of the others but you can’t really tell).  Next quilt I’m doing one color for bobbin and top thread and I’m going to quilt it continuously and there won’t be any of these fifty bajillion threads to tie off afterwards! Sheesh.

I also didn’t “stitch in the ditch” as recommended in the original pattern. I talked to the only quilting diva I know (that would be Kathy at Pink Chalk Studio) and asked if that was such a good idea. Seems to me that if you press your seams open (which seems logical, else you’d end up with triple thickness fabric on whatever side you pressed the seam) then when you stitched along that seam you’d mostly be sewing down thread and not fabric. Doesn’t sound sturdy to me. Kathy confirmed that it was probably a better idea to stitch along the fabric. Thus I stitched down both sides of the seams. In coordinating colors. Ha. Why yes, I live for making my life difficult!

I do like the result, though I wonder if the whole thing should be quilting in lots of little lines. Oh well.

I do love the whole shebang; errors and all. I love the layout, I love the fabrics, I love the black part (does that count as sashing?), I especially love the pieced binding. Love, love, love!

I haven’t measured it yet, come to think of it, but for a reference shot, here’s the four year old holding it up with arms outstretched:

See? Sunny day! Still.. love the sun. And the quilt!

A few days ago I finished the baby quilt! SO EXCITED! It only took a year and half! Ha.

I haven’t taken proper photos yet, but I did manage to take this one:

Quilt in use. So sweet, yes?

I am really proud of myself. I know it took ages and I know it has some pretty major flaws, but I really don’t care. I’d never made a quilt before and I love it. It’s exactly how I envisioned it (well, from a distance anyway). It was incredibly frustrating to make, and that’s really what I’m most proud of. I suffered but kept right on going. Honestly I don’t always do that, so yay me!

I also wasn’t sure I was going to ever make another quilt again, but I’m already plotting my next one, for the Boo. Collecting fabric has begun! However, this time? No triangles. Nosireebob. Also? I’m aiming for this one to take under a year ;)

I have some very special people I’d like to thank for their help on this here quilt. Liane for making and sending me an actual sample of how to do a quilt binding, and both Liane and Megan for support, ideas, and commisserating with me over the course of making this sucker. Kathy was also indispensable, from the very beginning, for tutorials, emails, and even personal help early on in the pencil roll class I took. Thank you thank you thank you!

I sound like I’m writing a forward to a book!

Ah well.. It’s my book, my life, so there you go. Baby quilt! Love it.

Lately I’ve been feeling very perplexed about the economy and the environment.

I willingly admit I don’t know anything about economics, perhaps a smidge more about the environment. However, I do know a mixed message when I see it, and I’m getting some serious mixed messages here.

On the one hand, we’re supposed to reduce, reuse, and recycle, right? We do that. Probably the same amount as friends out here; a lot more than some people I know back home. I generally feel quite good about our RRRs, with the exception of all the packaging at TJs — why do you have to be so yummy, Trader Joes?

Anyway. I’ve almost become a fiend in some ways. I save everything. You should see the number of glass jars in our house and plastic tubs in my craft room. Everything has possibility. It’s both wonderful and exhausting at the same time.

So that’s good, right?

The whole handmade movement has really put into focus what was already an impulse (I always think I can make everything), but not necessarily my first. I grew up thinking, what do we need to buy when a problem presented itself. These days, my initial reaction is almost always either “what do we already have that will work” or “how can we make that?” which means I don’t buy nearly as much as I once would have.

For example, I apparently have a clematis growing in the backyard, which is a climbing plant. Previously it apparently grew up the side of the house, which I know isn’t good for the house, so I don’t want it to do that. However, I like clematis and don’t want to rip it up. So clearly it needs something else to climb up. I thought about buying something, one of those bamboo teepees or something (nevermind the irony that I also have live bamboo in my yard), then realized I could use the plethora of sticks in our yard to build some contraption over the plant that would provide climability. Presto! Problem solved and didn’t cost a thing.

On the one hand what I did was brilliant, if I do say so myself, on the other hand, bad for the economy. So confusing!

Generally I can’t help but think, screw the economy. Except… you can’t really say that. The economy is vital to our lifestyle, no matter how much we may dislike it or wish it were different. So I keep feeling this very tangible and very real push and pull that on the one hand I need to buy things to support jobs and companies and the government but on the other hand I need to cut back, live more frugally and use what I’ve already got.

Well, shit.

Having gotten rid of most of our catalogs (I have to admit to keeping a few that I just adore and that I find inspirational), having pretty much stopped shopping unless I need something specific (my children and stores do not go together well), I’ve realized I don’t need a lot and I don’t miss what I didn’t know existed.

I’ve also realized recently that part of the problem with my life and my internal struggles that keep spilling out on these pages, is that I’m surrounded by crap. I’m surrounded by the very things I’m trying to avoid. And their very presence is slowly destroying me because of my very own philosophies.

Let me try to elucidate that one!

I generally believe in moderation. I don’t do denial of desired objects. I believe that just increases one’s desires for them, be it ice cream or video games or whatever. Of course my preferred option is to not know it exists — out of sight, out of mind, if you will. However if something happens to BE in sight, well then you have to do mental gymnastics about whether or not you splurge, coming up with good reasons why not, etc. This is complicated ten fold with children, nevermind just doing it for myself.

The other day we were at the zoo on a glorious spring day. I couldn’t help but notice they were getting ready for summer crowds. There was a cordoned off area where they were stocking ice cream vending machines, at least 10 if not more. There were dippin’ dots stands all over the place, I swear nearly around every corner. Then of course there’s the regular stands that offer all the other crap — more ice cream, popcorn, pretzels, etc. And THEN there’s the official food place which also offers mostly crap. ARGH. Hello, can we not have a fruit stand? Small farmer’s market maybe? Geez.

Fortunately, while my kiddo noticed them, he was easily dissuaded by the fact that they were closed, although that didn’t stop him from asking for ice cream on the way home. So you see? I’m surrounded by crap. How am I supposed to enjoy a visit to the zoo with my kids if they’re assaulted by ice cream every time they turn around? The entire visit will be spent explaining why they can’t have yet another one, because undoubtably they’ll have one at some point, because we will want some too, and the screaming will commence and we’ll leave and no one will be happy. I understand the zoo needs to make money, but for god’s sake. That’s not going to be fun. What the hell?

So, I’m saying in a very long-winded way that I’m frustrated. I’m frustrated that the government, the media, billboards, magazines, web sites, talk shows, commercials, radio, just everything is all buy buy buy for stuff I already know I don’t need! I’m surrounded! It’s like being in a virtual hole I can’t dig out of. Well I suppose I could, if I lived on a ranch in Wyoming where nothing was in sight. But then we wouldn’t have our life and we like our life. We’re city people.

Not to mention the whole “It’s eco-friendly! It’s green! Buy this instead of that!” Buy buy buy. Marketers jumping on a bandwagon that doesn’t really solve anything, because the real problem is over-consumption, and if it did solve the over-consumption problem, all those folks would be out of a job as would the people who make the product, not to mention the farms that grow the product and… sigh. The only solution to over-consumption is to stop consuming, but the effect of that is apparently devastating.

Even if we did live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere running off our own solar power and drinking from our own well, we’d still need to invest our money somewhere, which brings us back to the stock market and the damn economy. Some members of my own dear family invest in things that are totally and completely against their own moral code, yet it’s okay because it will make them money. So we all bitch and moan about fast food being the bane of society but it’s okay to own stock in it? That’s just not okay with me, except look at those other people earning their retirement with nothing more than a click. How much are one’s morals really worth? What am I supposed to do about that?

It’s so perplexing. And exhausting.

Looks like Madsen are giving away two bikes in July!

I’ve already written about them twice; what’s the harm in one more blurb? :)

You could enter the contest too if you were one of those people who think this is a cool looking bike and you’re on any of these new-fangled “social media” websites. Normally I don’t go “do” advertising, but these guys are really nice. I know, you never win anything, but you never know, right?