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

(Happy birthday Mama!)

I’ve been grappling to understand something that has been flooding my brain, and the brains of thousands of Etsians, for a little over a month. Something has happened in the land of Etsy and the land of Google, or that weird place where the two meet, and it has brought the views and sales of many, many, many people to a screeching halt. I have read all of the following explanations:

- the rollout of Google’s new Caffeine program, which shows no more than two results per page (so if you search “handmade jewelry” you’ll see Etsy’s main page, and then a “click here for more from etsy.com” link instead of results that would have formerly included many individual shops)… and other things about their new algorithms that I don’t understand

- the new search bar that Etsy implemented at that time (they have since agreed to change it back – it was dumb and confusing to new buyers)

- one of the Etsy dudes using us to test his own pet analytics program (did this make Google mad at us?)

- the lack of a sitemap

- the lack of the word “handmade” in the meta tags (Etsy says it was NEVER there, but they have always said don’t use up one of your 14 tags on the word “handmade”, because it would be redundant – I have always shown up in Google in a “handmade jewelry” search even though I’ve never tagged as such)

- the fact that if I list a pair of penguin earrings they will be indexed under the URL shown, and then if I sell them and relist a duplicate pair they are given a new URL, and Google could possibly be overlooking all of this “duplicate” content (Etsy is fixing this URL thing – they said it would take about four months from January, so we’ll see)

- I forget what else

I have spent at least an hour and a half every single day – since March 9th – doing research, fiddling with my listings, and lurking in the forums. This is only possible because I wake up before Mikey and Hazel to drink coffee and eat breakfast and be able to do this, and because I have an iphone that I can take with me and use while I lay with her to get her to sleep for about half an hour every night. I used to spend that half hour playing games, and now I spend it feverishly reading through the forums. I have tried so hard to not let this cut into my ACTUAL life and crafting time, parenting and wife-ing time, etc… but it has been really hard. I don’t know $%*t about any of this stuff. I really don’t. I’ve been losing sleep over it. It has been stressing me out. I sat in on my first virtual lab and took five pages of notes. It has been harder than anything I ever had to learn in school, and I am only at the tip of the iceberg. It’s like I’ve been at this job for almost four years and all of a sudden I have no idea how to do it.

Aren’t I on Etsy so I don’t *have* to do my own SEO work, Mikey asks? Aren’t I on Etsy so I don’t have to know what a meta tag is? A sitemap? An alt tag? A 301 redirect? …this is what I thought.

Apparently I do need to know some of these things to be a better business owner. I feel much more capable after four weeks of mass Etsy hysteria, I gotta tell ‘ya. I might just sew and make jewelry and carve linoleum blocks and not know anything about the web side of things, but there are some crafters out there who are also tech GENIUSES and they have been so willing to spend hours in the forums sharing what they know. I definitely would not have understood any of this on my own without the direction of cindylouwho2 and many others.

Since Google is always changing things up like this so as not to have their secrets bested, I don’t want to throw myself fully into SEO best practices just to have the rug pulled out from under me in another year, so this is my plan: equal parts SEO maintenance and off-site promoting.

So…

The SEO part – here are the tidbits I have gathered that seem to be the most useful:

- Do lots of experimental Google searches to see what people are looking for and determine a handful of keywords for your product. What you make, obviously, as well as “handmade”, “handcrafted”, “handcarved”, “handsewn” – whatever applies to you. The consensus seems to be that lots of utilitarian titles that all look the same are boring to buyers, but there really should be keywords peppered through out your tagline (right under your shop banner), the first few words of your titles and the first few words of your descriptions (Google looks at the first 160, I think – Etsy just added a Google preview to the listing page). You can mix it up with more creative titles as long as there is SOMETHING leading people to your shop from various types of searches. I have tried a few different combos so I might come up in one person’s “handcrafted earrings” search and another’s “handmade jewelry” search. I am still watching my analytics to see what works, and then I’ll gradually change all of my listings to the combinations that are the most effective. “Summer breeze” might be a pretty, poetic title, but no one who wants a pair of blue beaded earrings is going to be searching for that. Adding these words here and there throughout your 14 tags has also been suggested repeatedly, as well as in the beginning of your profile.

- Add a link back to the “earrings” section of your shop in each earring listing. It has also been suggested that, in the description of your brand new blue owl earrings for example, you add something like “check out these guys in red” and a link to an older listing that has already built up views, hearts, and been indexed by Google. Supposedly it’ll get Google to see this new listing faster. I don’t know about this and haven’t done it – it seems messy and like too much to keep up with when I’ve got over 150 items in my shop all the time (what if I run out of red owls?)

- Make sure your Facebook fan page has been indexed by Google.

- Create as many inbound links as you can. The way Google finds new things to index (i.e. your new listings, or an updated shop announcement – any fresh content in your shop) is by “crawling” from one page to the next. My Etsy shop only gets crawled about twice a week these days, but this blog gets crawled every day. If I link to a new listing from here, or you do, or someone clicks through from my Facebook fan page or shares one of my listings on their own Facebook page, or if I post it on Twitter and someone retweets, this gives Google the heads up that there is something new to index, and you’ll show up in their search results more quickly. If you are constantly “spamming” with only your own content and no one else is, you’ll get frowned upon – there needs to be a balance. This is also really helpful if you are tweaking things in your shop and you are waiting around to be crawled again before you can see how the results are affecting your traffic. The more often you are crawled, the more quickly you’ll be able to see how things are taking effect. The more often you have fresh listing / announcement content or are generating inbound links, the more often you’ll get crawled, and the faster your new stuff will show up in someone’s Google search. To know how often you’re crawled, Google your URL and then click “cached” just beneath. It will look like this, with the info up at the top.

- In the virtual labs I asked if, because my blog is crawled every day, my updated Etsy mini (over there on the left, which updates every time I post a new listing) counts as an inbound link. They said it does not, because Google reads only HTML and not Java.

- They tell us that capitalization and punctuation do not matter to Google.

- You can get a good idea of how all of this is working through your Google analytics and by signing up for Google alerts. One of the reasons I knew something was up, in fact, was that I stopped getting an immedate Google alert every time I made a new listing. Even though I list multiple things across four or five categories every day, I might only get one Google alert per week right now… and they are starting to pick up again. Etsy admin have said this doesn’t matter & is not indicative of anything, but I don’t believe them :) You can use your analytics to track pretty much everything: what keywords people are using to get to your shop, how they are getting to you (blog links, search engines, your email signature, etc.) – it’s not totally accurate, because if you went to MY Etsy shop and eventually clickety-clicked your way to Emmalee ten shops away, *I* would show up in her analytics as a referral because you started with me, even though I do not directly link to them. You can generally tell from your view numbers what’s a direct link, though, and it gives you lots of useful info like your bounce rate (percentage of people who are clicking into your shop and then immediately leaving – you want this to be as low as possible because this means they’re staying!), how long visitors are staying, how many pages they’re browsing, if they’re new or have been to your shop before, and on and on.

- This could go on forever.

The off-Etsy stuff – these are the things I have always done that bring traffic, new things I am trying, or things that I plan to add into the mix. Most of these don’t take any time daily, or only take a few minutes, so I plan to pepper them throughout my morning and evening Etsy work.

- Put your shop URL everywhere you can legally do so! In your email signature, in every possible profile / about me page / everything, every networking tool you use.

- Flickr is very valuable, but do NOT be spammy there. You are allowed to link to your shop in your profile, but you cannot in your photo titles or descriptions, folder descriptions, you can’t tag things “Etsy” – nada. It’s against their TOU and they have shut people down without warning. If you have things tagged “Etsy” don’t freak out :) I realized I had some old ones from way back in the day when it either wasn’t in their TOU or they didn’t enforce it – just go to flickr.com/photos/YOURNAMEHERE/alltags and you can see what you’ve got, doing a mass delete if necessary. I have all of my product photos on Flickr, and every day when I list a few new things on Etsy I take five extra minutes to drop each of the product photos into five or so pools of group photos. There are a bajillion groups on Flickr – join lots and lots so you are getting your photos spread throughout a lot of different pools each week – people will find their way to your shop through your profile. I have also started linking here on photos that are used here – traffic here is up as a result, and so traffic to my shop is up.

EDIT: I emailed Flickr with some questions about the TOU and apparently linking a photo to ANYTHING is not allowed – not even a personal blog. Little known fact. Everyone in the world does this. They also specified no banners, etc., which made me remember that I have my banner and avatar stored there, and now I’m assuming the screenshots of treasuries should go, too. I’d be heartbroken if my flickr got shut down without warning!

- I try to update my Facebook fan page a handful of times per week with a new listing (no more than once a day, and usually not every day). I made a fan page a year ago and then didn’t do anything with it, but after the “crash” at the beginning of March I got on the bandwagon. I was skeptical that I could make many sales to just my friends and family, but as soon as they became a fan of my page it snowballed and I have lots that I don’t know, and have made many sales over the past few weeks to friends or family of my friends or family :) I also added a link to my FB fan page in my sidebar a week or two ago – there is a button builder on your main “pages” page of your FB. I added it to my Etsy profile and dropped it in a few “what are your FB fan page URLs?” in the forums. As of this moment you don’t get notifications from your fan page, but someone pointed out in the forums that if you “like” all of your own stuff, you’ll get notifications in response to that (the same annoying way that if I “like” Claire’s status, and then 37 other people do too, I get 37 notifications). This made me cringe, but I’ve had lots of sales there so I don’t want to miss any comments.

- Blogging is GOOD – for me. I have no idea how you’d start a blog JUST for promotion. People seem constantly overwhelmed by the undertaking in the forums, and I never read promotion-only blogs so I really have no idea. I can’t help you there, but if you already blog or want to take the plunge, it can be majorly to your advantage :)

- Twitter. I hate Twitter. Hate it. But I do it. Sellout, I know. I made one before Hazel was born and didn’t do anything with it until March, either. I never tweet new listings (because I never look at other people’s, so I don’t suppose many would be looking at mine) – I mostly tweet blog entries if they have something that would be interesting to strangers, like projects or thrifting finds. People love PROJECTS – finished or in progress. People love TUTORIALS. People love to LOOK AT YOUR STUFF. I don’t think people care so much about Etsy listings because they are seeing so many. I will tweet this blog entry – people will come here and read it and then go to my Etsy shop and hang around for awhile. I know because Google analytics tells me so :) Etsy is on twitter, so you can find lots of people to follow there.

- I made a button for this blog since Tia asked if I had one (hi Tia!), and in 24 hours I have traffic from her blog. Take my button! Share the love! Make your own! It’s not hard.

- I registered with Technorati but haven’t been keeping track of that one yet.

- I include extra business cards in orders that I know are being given as gifts. I write thank you notes on postcards for all of my outgoing Ebay and Swaptree mailings. I hand them out in bars… not that I often get to go to bars anymore. I wear my jewelry and people just ask about it. Don’t leave home without your business cards. Put some in your husband’s wallet so he can forget to ever give them out. Pimp your goods and get your friends to do the same.

OK. Enough out of me. Here are some links that I’ve found really useful over the past few weeks – very random. I hope you find something you can use.

Etsy admin Eric on what creates an inbound link
Storque article : Web Analytics Enhancements
some useful links provided by a fellow seller
Storque article : cheap marketing
An article about titles
An article about search engine ranking factors
How to make a DIY lightbox for better photos
Google webmaster central
Google pagerank checker
preview of next week’s episode of Lost
Storque article : 5 tips for better descriptions

And with all the talk of the importance of inbound links, I give you……………… some of my friends :)

Rita!
Erin!
Emily!
Maggie!
Melissa!
Claire!
Jamie!

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.)

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 :)

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

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.

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

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:

Beginning of snow on I-90.

Cute braid-head.

Virginia, Chelsea, & Josh.

Amber, Josh, & Rachel.

Since BIRTH, son!

One friend’s little brother pierced another with one of my deer crossing earrings, an ice cube, and a beer can between his teeth.

And then he pierced Josh with a little penguin stud. No ice to prove that he does not feel pain. Some things never change.

Panera BREAD!

Okay, I forgot to take photos of a whole lot of people. Send me your pictures, folks.

Angie sang with Mikey. Emily cried.

My pretty little girl.

My mom gave her her kennel cough vaccine yesterday, so now we can go check out some dog parks & she can play with other dogs, which she LOVES.

Listening: Bright Eyes
Just remembered: that I was supposed to call & fight with the DMV today. oops.

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

- 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………..

I taught Wheeling how to farkle. It was mostly hysterical with a few heated moments.

An acquaintance of Dallas’s mom ran into a guy at the Chicago airport recently who approached her to make smalltalk for half an hourish and said he was Dallas. She hadn’t seen the real Dallas in years, so when the guy told her he was from Cameron and Linda Campbell’s son, she didn’t think twice. Like Dallas would ever talk to another human for half an hour. This event is now pretty high on my list of Creepiest Things Ever.

Daren’s tree of Gondor.

Jeremy & Rita, somewhat chronologically.

He won’t stop believin’.

If I could raise children within a three hour radius of all of these women, that would be perfect.

Discarded in a windowsill.

Somehow, three or four generations knew all the words… I hope you had the time of your life…

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