Whew,

The wedding is over. The school year is almost done. Sniff, sniff, my little girl is almost in First Grade. We have plans for a party, tons of friends coming over, lots of summer plans.
Yet, I'm still dragging. Having a hard time moving forward into this new life of ours.

We're seeing if we can have a baby and I know some of the news from that front is causing anxiety (ya think?) and some depression. My heart isn't as strong as it used to be, physically or emotionally. I sometimes think I should just throw in the towel and choose to not have any more children. But, I know I won't. I know that we will have more children, however they come into our lives.

Sarah has started calling this, "Project Baby". She has dug out tons of her old baby clothes and cloth diapers. There is a fair chance that at some point she will try to dress the cats. Right now all her stuffed animals, dolls and anything that has arms and legs is dressed with a diaper and possibly a sunhat.

In other news I applied for a grant for the elementary school so that we can paint a mural on the wall over the (almost defunct) kindergarten garden. Or as we've dubbed it, "The KinderGarden". I'm taking a community mural class at Precita Eyes in SF to get ready. We've already got an artist's sketch and most of the information we need. Now to get district approval before painting. It sounds kind of bass ackwards to get the grant before approval, but with budgets so tight I knew we didn't have a chance of approval without funding, so I put in the application anyways.

Funny story:
Sarah was sick as a dog during the wedding, she was ill for 3 days before and 4 afterwards, so all in all over a week. Most of the pictures she looks sedate, somewhat serene, sometimes longsuffering. But, and there is always a but with her, in some of the pictures she was seriously loopy.
I'll post some pictures below and see if you can spot what I'm talking about.

All of Frank's family and a cross eyed Sarah. She was cross eyed in a series of about 6 photos. Thank goodness we got one where her eyes are normal or Frank's parents would have a conniption fit.

Pretending to be old, infirm and jumping around on canes from the B&B.

Happy π Day!

Yes, I'm a geek. It's not like you didn't know that.

Happy π Day to everyone. Have some pie, make a pie, buy a pie.

We had apple pie turnovers for breakfast, ham and cheese handheld pies for lunch and will be having a quiche and shephards pie for dinner. Followed by Marie Callendar's Razzleberry pie.

All in all, we should be sick by, oh about 8 pm.

My life in list form

1. Have no time for anything. Friends, email, cleaning, cooking, shopping for adequate meals, etc.

2. Have taken both of my cats to the emergency vet in the last week. One miraculously healed herself in the 4 hour wait, the other, abcess that I found while waiting for the vet.

3. Have missed Lost this week. I'll watch it tonight online, but shhhh don't spoil it for me. I'm hampered in my blog surfing today by not wanting to spoil myself.

4. Have a wedding shower on Sunday. Yes, my own. No, I'm not excited. In fact I have two cold sores and a sore jaw from grinding my teeth thinking about it. One word. Fartnasty's. That's the nickname for the restaurant from my childhood.

5. Have a friend that I'm missing desperately that I know is going through alot and I can't find the time to really reconnect on a regular basis. Spotty emails will have to suffice. I suck.

6. Have tons of business stuff going on, woohoo, oh wait, business takes TIME.

7. Almost was in an accident at 1 am this morning driving cat #2 back from emergency vet. No more late nights for me.

8. Need to find a nice outfit for said wedding shower.

:wave:

Yes, I'm a bad blogger.
Yes, I miss you.
Of course I've been up to fascinating things. Solving world hunger, bringing peace, creating some sort of 13th dimension.
Well, maybe not. But I am alive and well.
By the way, that color looks lovely on you. Have you changed your hair?

Less

As we packed for our whirlwind move, I contemplated stuff. Belongings, furniture, food, toys, clothes, stuff. The stuff of life, what things make our homes comfortable, meaningful, individual. I realized that we accumulate a lot of things that don't add to our enjoyment of life. And, since we were being charged by the pound to move, I jettisoned much of the extra. Freecycle, craigslist and the Salvation Army were the happy recipients of most of the unused stuff. But I made one dump run. After pulling out any recyclables, I took a truckload of garden waste and random bits to the local dump. I backed in and started shoveling and as I did I started noticing what else was in the huge two story pile. Furniture, toys, clothes, lawn furniture. So much that could be reclaimed, reused, possibly renewed for someone willing to do the work. It was very sad, but also motivating.
I think about my mark on the planet, how what I do and how I live impacts the lives of people who will live 200 years from now. Especially since I found out that the three people in our house own a collective 9000 pounds of STUFF.

These are the things I am trying to do now:

Buy less. It seems so easy, so simple, but it is incredibly difficult. We already recycle much of our waste, but there is always room for improvement. I want to lower our trash, increase reuse, but our stores seem to thrive on one use items.

Buy used when we do buy. We made a trip to Urban Ore in Berkeley yesterday with our wishlist for the new house. The only thing we found was a set of french cotton placemats and napkins, but hey, for three dollars I was happy. I also found a kitchen set that is small enough to fit in our dining nook (warmer and brighter than the dungeonlike dining area) for only $60 on craigslist. So not only did I buy used, but I also bought from a local person, keeping the money in my community.

I am trying to buy gifts for my family this holiday season that reflect my values. I want the gift to create a memory, not just be a fun piece of plastic that will soon end up in the landfill. I am looking for antique china, interesting kitchen gadgets, old woodworking gadgets, old linens and books. I am also going to give from the Heifer Project this year to those who I think will "get it".

Use the library. Instead of buying books new and adding and adding and adding books I that I might not read again, I'm reserving them from the library. If I check them out often, then I look into buying them.

Walk. We now live in an incredibly walkable town. I gained almost 30 pounds from living where I couldn't walk due to the heat, poor design of the town and my aversion to returning smelling like dairy. Last week I put 5 miles on the truck. Compare that to almost 60 miles a day previously.

Reuse everything. Recycling is great, but it still requires a lot of energy to reclaim whatever material is there. Use something till it is used up, then recycle.

Compost. I'm getting permission from the landlord for my new compost pile. I can't wait to start building the soil here.

Buy from local stores and buy items that are produced locally. This can drastically lower your impact on the earth. Think how meaningful it can be to buy produce from the person who grew it.

I love doing consumer shows simply because it's awesome to see so many people enjoying my products, things that I have made. Even if I don't sew all the stitches anymore, my hands have been on every one of our carriers. That is something meaningful.


OK, so I'm almost unpacked. Wireless internet will be set up on Dec. 1. Fax line back up around Dec. 1. Dare I say it? Almost back to normal. Well, whatever normal is around here.

Sinking

I feel like I'm sinking. There are so many things happening, so many good, interesting changes in our lives and the business. But I'm also crazy busy.

I miss having time to check in with friends, see what they are up to. I miss my old life.

But the new life is pretty great. It just needs a little calming down.

F was laid off last week. Which will probably mean a big move in the near future for us all. One company already wants him to start next week. But it's 100 miles away.

The changes are good, but they are still hard.

ABC Kids Expo

We had a great time in Las Vegas, although I did find out it's not my kind of town. For a cheapskate (ehem, thrifty) person like me, everything seemed to be overpriced.

We drove into town from Central California on Wednesday, 9/5. We left early AM and drove till breakfast and had a great pancake stop at Apple Annies. Then we drove, and drove, and surprise, drove some more. We ended up stopping near lunchtime in Calico, CA. We explored, ate and even went goldpanning. It was a wonderful break to the drive.


Then we loaded back up and drove all the way to Las Vegas. I had never been to Las Vegas before, didn't really know what hotels would be appropriate for my daughter, so I guessed at Circus Circus. Oh my was that an experience. I wouldn't recommend Circus Circus to other people, although the adult type ads were definately minimal.

We headed over to the Convention Center for set up on Thursday. The set up went fairly quickly and we had some great booth neighbors. School Zone publishing is now one of my fave companies ever. Here's a quick pic of the booth all set up, not very nice or neat, but it's the ONLY picture I have of it.



You can see our fabric decorations on the backdrop. We were worried the fire marshall might disallow them, so we bought fireproofing spray and treated them. The butterfly and flower were okay (they curled a bit) but the grass almost melted with the treatment. It still looked fine, but it was supposed to be MUCH fluffier than it was. I guess the docrations looked good because someone who sold wall decorations came by and wanted to know my supplier.

Next time I'm going to go ahead and bring astroturf for the flooring or at least a small rug of it. I was told it wouldn't be allowed when I called before the show, so I left it out, but I really feel no one would have paid any attention to it. And it would have pulled together the garden look much better than burgundy carpet.

Friday the show opened with a whimper. There wasn't a ton of traffic till about 1-2 hours after the doors opened, although all the exhibitors were there with bells on at 9AM sharp. It was very interesting, you could actually hear the attendees moving into the hall, the sound was moving from the front of the hall to the back.

We had good traffic throughout the show, it was slower for walkbys that I expected, but I don't think I really had a good grasp of just how large the convention halls are. With our preshow work and postshow follow we definitely met our show goals though. It was wonderful to meet all the exhibitors around us, to hear such unique stories about their companies and products. It was also interesting to watch those booths with professional sales people versus those with company owners.

I loved getting out to walk around the show, but I found I didn't have a huge amount of time for that. I did get to see booths for Peekaru, Catbird Baby, Ellaroo, Zolowear, Beco, Hotslings and more. As a group, baby carrier vendors have such great taste. I saw such wonderful fabrics, designs and booths that really reflected the personalities of the companies.