Week 13 – bag of stuff to Goodwill.

Hazel’s first collection. She almost always brings a little something home from a walk, after carrying it around the whole time and refusing to drop it to catch herself when she falls. How long will I keep these rocks and other bits of nature?

Aaaaanddddd… the April Spotted Box! A lot of people seem to think doing these sample boxes has become a waste of time / product / money, but this one has been featured in Mothering magazine a couple of times recently, so I was excited to take a gamble and try it again. Besides, sending in enough samples to get a full-sized box for yourself is totally worth it. My box contained stuff from:

Moonlodge Medicines
Small Wonders Wipes
Mama Marsh’s Creations
For Crying Out Loud
Polkadot Pickle
Monkey Butt Designs
Knot for Ewe
Happy Booty Boutique
Amy’s Blankies
FOE Your Diaper
Carver Creations
Sugar Chills
Cat and Ace Creations
Mama’s Bug A Boo
Southern Belle Charms
Wee Ones
Creative Cupcake
Frost Fish Cove Soaps
Joyful Rose
Lil’ Outlaws
Jenna E. Krueger
Custom Candy Creations

So many good creations! In addition to lots of generous gift certificates and discount codes, I got candy, stationery, accessories, body products, cloth diapering stuff (diaper stuff, cloth wipes and solution, diaper pail powder, etc.), craft supplies, a full sized bag of herbal infusion, nursing accessories, soaps, cleaning supplies… the whole box looks and smells overwhelmingly delicious!

I might do another one towards the end of summer, depending on when we move. It looks like the end is in sight, and we’ll be moving at the end of June or in September. We’ll know in… June. Eek! We’ll live with Mikey’s mom until next summer. Sound familiar? We’ve gone around and around and over and under and through it and temporary cohabitation seems like the only solution that will keep Hazel in full-time Mommycare and Mikey in full-time school mode. Those are the two most important things to us for the time being – not (gasp) living in a place of our own or avoiding more debt or any of that silly stuff. Hazel at home. Mikey working on his degree. Must. Finish. Phd. Must. Finish.

We really hope it happens in September and not June, because summer in Morgantown is fun. And summer up here on this mountain will be beautiful and shaded and relaxing. And we’re close to Pittsburgh, where Mikey just started recording a new record. And we’re close to university libraries. And it wouldn’t mean moving twice in seven months.

But… yesterday I packed a box. Just in case it’s June. Now I’m going to go see if the Budget Rentals giftcard that you can get for Coke points can be used on a moving truck and not just car rentals. Edit: you can’t, and two free magazine subscriptions is enough (for now!). I will use my points for ordering prints of photos :)

Listening: Belle & Sebastian
(I am) Reading: Jesus Land, which I’m having to take slow since it’s gut-wrenching
(Hazel is) Reading: Strega Nona
Working on: everything but preparation for a week in Toronto is at a halt

(Feel free to move right along now – this is probably only interesting if you have an Etsy shop or something else that you are trying to make visible on the web. And even if you DO find it interesting it’s going to get really long.)

(Happy birthday Mama!)

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Sorry for the disappearance – we made a secret trip to Louisville this weekend to surprise Andy, and I was afraid that he’d connect any little tiny mentions of anything and figure out we were coming so I didn’t warn you that I was about to go missing. Sorry VD, et. al.

We are currently in the ‘Burg for an extra night because our car needs a new thing-underneath-that-is-not-the-tailpipe-or-the-muffler-but-that-is-making-it-loud-because-it’s-broken. I don’t have my camera cord with me, but here are some things that are not photos:

- I love my brother from another mother, and so does Hazel, OH MAN so does Hazel. She loves her uncle like none other.

- I love my Cara – friend since birth, rarely seen since we both moved away from WV. Even an hour and a half laying on a hotel room bed chatting is great.

- I have spent hours and hours in the Etsy forums trying to get caught up on some SEO problems (maybe?) or some sitemap problems (maybe?) or some meta tag problems (maybe?) and trying to figure out what those things are and trying to figure out why we aren’t showing up in google and what to do about it if it’s something only we can fix and not EtsyCorp. Oy. I have either learned a lot or unlearned a lot – I’m not sure yet.

- One of my old Toronto coworkers bought a necklace from me and had no idea who she was buying from. Small world, eh?

- For some reason I have better luck at the Gabe’s in this town than anywhere else. I went to see if I could find some more of these 49 cent tulip tealight holders (fail), and since I had left Hazel with her papa and grandma I decided to look through the clothes. As in… clothes that are my size, not hers. I found an amazing 50s housewife dress for eight dollars. Amazing. Way too big for me, so I sent Maggie a frantic text & photo (so’s not to be one of those people talking on the phone in the dressing room) to see if she could help me take it in. She said yes, and I ran to the checkout line with a quickness. I can think of less than ten clothing items I have purchased for myself since Hazel was born, and man is this dress good. Just you wait. I love Gabe’s. I never would have been able to settle in Toronto without a Gabe’s – I can’t live without it. Erin and Andrea who? Foggy Hogtown what?

- I think there were other things, but right now I just want a bowl of Lucky Charms, which only happens on Plum Street.

(Just kidding about that other thing you know – I love Erin / Andrea / those boys way more than I love Gabe’s… way more than I love most things in life, in fact.)

Here’s some stuff I’ve been working on – or at least intending to work on – over the past week:

Bunnies for Hazel. As you can see, I got no further than printing out the free pattern and choosing fabrics before Hazel woke up. I love them but now that they’ve been sitting here for two days I’m starting to think maybe they are too drab… I might dive back into my stash for something more colorful.

Working on stuff for inclusion in April’s Spotted Box, which I agreed to on a whim and am very excited about – I did one in 2008 and kind of flipped out when my own box came in the mail!

The blue & gold blanket, which I only seem to work on when Hazel is teething. It’s always laying around in a heap somewhere, trailing its two balls of yarn, and when I want to work on it I have to hunt down my (gigantic, purple acrylic, very enticing) crochet hook because Hazel has always found and hoarded it away for her own crochet hook needs, which usually involves lots of waving it at the dog. I’ve lost count since January, but I’ve used a huge one pound ball and a half of the gold, and I think I’m on my sixth ball of homespun. I don’t really see an end in sight for this blanket.

And the work of raising little war resisters… I think a group reading of The Butter Battle Book is notable progress :)

Well… I think that’s over. Three days of sleep deprivation was rounded out nicely by a morning of sleeping in and then a happy baby exploring this foreign terrain known as The Yard.

I realize I’ve gotten behind on my new year’s resolution – I’ve been doing things and just not photographing and posting them, so here is my catch up for weeks eight, nine, and ten.

Thinned a big heap of Hazel’s outgrown / winter clothes – 2/3 put back for future babes and the rest into a box of clothes waiting for the consignment shop to start taking winter things sometime this summer.

Sock & underwear purge – a thrilling Saturday night.

Thinned out some beads and charms – these will eventually make their way into the destashed supplies for sale in my Etsy shop.

Last week we were talking with Mikey’s mom about the possibility of adding her to our family cell phone plan to save her some money. We did all of the research and she picked out a phone and was all set to deposit money for it into our bank account when I got a piece of AT&T junk mail (that I almost threw away without reading) offering a code for a really nice phone for free if you added another line to your family plan. She and Mikey are always, always falling into things like that. She wasn’t even surprised when I told her to forget about the bank deposit because she could get a much nicer phone for free.

So, this morning when I was packaging up Etsy orders I started thinking that maybe I should try something a bit more sustainable when I next need to print business cards. After dinner I opened up my email to find an Etsy newsletter, which included this link – 50 free business cards from moo.com. They do reeealllyyyyy nice, delicious printing, but I’ve always opted for cheaper options. Even though this offer includes a small ad on each business card and $5.00 for shipping, I took them up on it anyway because the ad offers a discount code to whoever gets the card. I wanted to see how they turned out using my photos, and was impressed by the sustainability of the cards: 100% recycled / recyclable / biodegradable, chlorine free, and manufactured using wind power. I hope they are pretty! I really should have business cards that actually feature photos of my products, and Moo lets you do a mix of lots of different photos in the same order of cards. Possibly worth the extra money – we’ll see when they get here.

Listening: Will Oldham
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: Cars and Trucks and Things That Go
Working on: blue & gold blanket (which I always work on to ease the distress of having a molar-getting kid, for some reason); Easter basket goodies; custom jewels

…or my doppelganger, what have you. Her name is Emily. Naturally. She has a daughter named Hazel. Naturally. Hazel Ruth, not Hazel Mae, but Ruth was one of our top few middle name considerations (naturally).

I like to nibble on cheese throughout the day and I think I would like living on the prairie. Oh, and I really love music that makes me want to snuggle up with a steamy mug of tea.

Read her. Love her.

I am so, so, so close to having not a single Etsy thing that needs to be photographed. This feels so good. I have about five things that I knew needed to be redone but forgot to add to today’s mix, a little box of vintage earrings to price/sort/photograph, and anything I might come across that needs to be redone from the hundreds of photos I took today and yesterday… almost, almost, almost there. Almost caught up on photographs means almost 100% caught up with Etsy in general. I’m still trying to decide if I even want to finish a big batch of resin pendants that are partially done, since I’ve started making glass ones that I like much better and will soon start listing. Other than that I have no projects in the works – everything is DONE. Promo things are done. I’ve got a bit of packaging supplies to finish. It’s going to be so strange to be caught up and be able to start working on brand new things for my shop. I will have enough packaging and promo stuff to last me through part of the summer, at least, so I can just MAKE things. New things that have only existed in my brain. Weird.

If I hadn’t “lost” my macro filters for three months I’d be so much further along. “Lost”… because all along they were in a box clearly labeled “camera stuff”. Mikey kept saying “are you sure they aren’t in that box?”… and I’d say “yes, I’ve had them out since we moved home”… and ugh. I can’t trust my own memory anymore. Is this what it feels like to be 75? Is it the same as having a toddler?

Since I unearthed my filters two days ago and could finally dive into everything I had waiting, Hazel has been so ignored for the past two afternoons while the light is right for pictures. Today when I finished I tried to make it up to her by reading her a massive pile of books, including these spring-ey books. Then I gave her my old cell phone to play with while I cooked supper – she had many long and important conversations, with lots of gestures and yelling. She looked like a tiny executive. I don’t know where she learned this. Mikey and I don’t yell at people on the phone.

Here’s last week’s resolution, which I kept forgetting to photograph: a garbage bag full of clothing and toys to consign whenever we get out of the house and down the interstate:

Listening: Tom Petty
(I am) Reading: The No Cry Sleep Solution for Toddlers
(Hazel is) Reading: all of the above
Working on: blanket; pajamas; Etsy catch-up

This weekend was awesome. There were SO many people at the show for Danielle – the door made $1600, and we made over $2500 in total. That will get her SO much stuff that she needs. It was really surreal to be in the same place as so many people from high school, and to be drinking with my friends’ younger siblings (and my own little bro) who are all 21 or older by now.

The drive down was terrible – it was snowing all through NY & PA, and it took me TEN hours to get to my parents’ house (I left Mikey in Wheeling so he could practice with Sean on Saturday afternoon). I sang the Mr. Plow song continuously in my head & arrived in one piece. The drive back was less terrible. It rained the whole way, and for the first time the sight of the CN tower and all things Toronto made me want to run screaming in the opposite direction. Usually when we get to the city I’m happy to be back to our own “home”, at best, or indifferent at worst. We stopped at the Target at Dallas Pike so I could buy the new Nicholas Sparks book for the drive. A few hours later it was Mikey’s turn to drive, so I started to read. Two minutes later my booklight died. I got out the car’s maglite & THAT immediately died. So I couldn’t read my new book until we got home at 11:00, and I stayed up until 4 a.m. to finish it. Now my sleep is going to be inside-out again unless I take a pill tonight, and I didn’t even like the book. Guh.

I need to completely overhaul my Etsy – redo all my shipping prices, and I’m going to do my listings in a little bit of a different way that will hopefully get more sales. So I set up everything to rephotograph stuff and set out everything that needed redone, plus whatever I have that’s new that’s left over from the show… and then my camera battery died.

Mikey is really sick for the first time all year, and I can’t stop sneezing. I hope I’m not getting it.

I got back to a friend’s blog entry that I understand completely…

I’ve been browsing jobs at WVU recently…wondering if I should apply in the future. Truth is, I like my job just fine and the benefits are great and so are the majority of the people. But I’ve not yet met anyone like the people I know in WV…and I don’t necessarily mean my good friends in WV. Even the acquaintances I have here are inferior to the acquaintances I have at home. Hell, at least at home there are people with enough personality that you can hate them. At least they aren’t just blank. And more than anything, I sometimes feel like my blood might turn to powder if I don’t get home. I can’t really explain that. I just find that being around here makes me feel dry or wilty or just generally drawn in and not expansive. It’s gross. I can’t wait to come home and I’m hoping to be there for at least a week this summer to ride bikes and whatnot.

I hope summer is good. I don’t even know when we’ll be able to go home again since my job situation is up in the air, and that’s the most gross feeling ever.

I just deleted my myspace account. Four years, 600 comments, and 182 pages of messages down Rupert Murdoch’s drain. If I let myself, I would have copied and pasted all of those into some kind of text file to keep them concrete. But I didn’t let myself. I’m trying to simplify. I would delete my facebook as well, but it’s the only thing keeping me in touch with cousins that I NEVER see. Until we work ourselves up to some other kind of regular contact, the facebook will stay : )

Here are some happy pictures:

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I’m kind of less than stressed out about finding a new job. I don’t know how that’s possible, but I’m not really worrying about it. Typical-Emily would be in a panic and crying every day. I sent my resume to the temp agency down the street and applied for ten jobs online (jobs that I’d actually want). I’d planned on walking around handing out resumes for crappy jobs, but it’s so windy that I (literally) almost fall over. And I don’t want to fall over, so I’ll do that tomorrow or Wednesday. I went to buy contact solution and meet Colin on his lunch to get the next two volumes of Fables, took Paisley for the longest walk we could manage (three or four block loop – she wasn’t having that much fun because of the wind), and came home and got right back into my pajamas.

Now I am making soup and I just listed some supplies in my Etsy shop – spring cleaning time! I really, really like that you can sell supplies on there as a way of recycling/reusing. I’ve gotten some beads and wedding leftovers off of my hands that way. There is a treasury where you can, for two days, list your own favorite things or things in a category… like you see on the main page, which changes daily. Individual sellers can get on a list and wait to be given a treasury for a couple of days. When you are logged in, if you’ve got something in someone’s treasury, a little gold star will show up by the title. When I have a gold star (or several) I feel six years old again, and bask in the approval.

I cut two linoblocks last night and am going to print some stuff after we eat. Eggplant or umbrella notecards, anyone? Ialso cut a block a few nights ago that’s just three spoons in a row, and I need to print stuff with that, too. I’m running out of stuff to print ON, I think. The presses might come to a halt after tonight.

There are a few more people who are for sure coming to Danielle’s show. Some that I didn’t expect, which is nice. Got some pretty handmade notecards from an Etsian today and gobs of business cards from a handful of other people. I’m going to have a whole box of promotional stuff to pass out. Last week someone sent me a bunch of handmade lip balms that I can smell through the packaging, and I totally want to use them. But I will not. I will try to sell them. And all of the really cool earrings, necklaces and bracelets… so many nice Etsy people.

Listening: Orthodox; children screaming in the hallway
Reading: vol. 6 of fables

Things:

- There are tons of photos under this cut. Wedding and otherwise. Dialup users beware.
- Very good weekend. Very good wedding. Lots of crying and dancing and friends and pretend family.
- Mikey’s new baby cousin – Benny – is the most adorable thing ever. Samantha gave Mikey a lesson in feeding and burping. It was hysterical and I’d left my camera in the car.
- Two nights at the Campbells’ and lunch with four of the pairs on Sunday = I miss my friends ugh.
- I ate a mango earlier and contemplated what sort of tool I might be able to make from the hard piece in the center… then I remembered that I am not, in fact, living the LOST life.
- I still want a dog.
- I finally got the rest of those necklaces uploaded to Etsy, redid all of my shipping information to correspond with their new system, fixed photos that were broken after the total-server-update, and uploaded a few pairs of wintery earrings that I made today. Go see.
- At the wedding, more than once, someone on one side of the dance floor would yell “let’s gooooooo”……… and the opposite side would answer “mountaineers!!!!”………. I’ve never witnessed this at a wedding reception, and certainly not three or four times. It was so good.
- Yesterday on the drive north, we stopped at a burger king for some fries. I asked Mikey to buy me a happy feet toy. When we got to the window, a young kid came over with one each of three kinds – all hidden in their own big plastic egg – and asked which one I would like. I wanted to know what my options were. He ducked down to stare at me for a moment, then said “you know what? just take them all”, dumped them in the car window, grinned, and walked away. They are all amazing. Best fast-food toys ever.
- Last night just before I went to bed at two a.m. I checked my email, and after saying goodbye to lots of people all weekend with no crying whatsoever (okay, once), the following message from Dougie made me cry a lot. He always hunts on my parents’ land during thanksgiving week. I will not correct his grammatical errors, even though I want to:

Any thing you want me to tell the dogs, cats or horses?
I’m taking an apple for the horse. I know there is three but only one of them will come to the fence so he/she wins the apple. I’m sure the dogs will be inside, but i’ll take them some bologna at lunch time. And that cats, I’m not taking them anything cause I hate cats. Oh I need to go see the bullet hole too. See you later. Wish you guys were going to be there to fix me some coffee when i’m freezing my ass off.
Peace
Douglas P

photos………..

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