cleaning up

yes, yes- it's that time of year, friends.

time to clean up our messy lives, to see what all we find whence the piles be gone.

i'm letting the mounds and heaps and stacks of books and papers and dishes and toys sit for awhile longer, however.

right now i'm doing a little internal tidying.

my first juice cleanse.

i had a moment yesterday, at whole foods, purchasing organic parsley, beets and cabbage that i was intending to JUICEFORMYJUICECLEANSE, that if you take that lovely little scenario, and slip it right up next to the fact that i was at said whole foods in my SPANDEXCAPRIS and TECHTEE that loudly proclaimed my ability to fork over $125 to run 26.2 miles on public pavement, and throw that all up in the sad truth that i drove to said whole foods wearing said SPANDEXCAPRIS and "LOOKATMEIRANAMARATHON" shirt IN A...wait for it.... MINIVAN...

so, yeah.

hello middle age, right? entitled, american middle age? hello, i'm kathie. let's make friends.

truth is, though, that it's not half bad from over here. it's embarrassing as hell, and it makes me want to dye my hair green and get another tattoo, but truth is, i won't.

cause this whole middle age thing is also bringing a funny new phenomenon along with it.

i believe the term for it is peace.

so the juice fast actually is partially because i do have this annoying persistent muffin top issue i'd like to address.

but the muffin top and i, we're making friends, too. (with the muffin top comes the muffins, right? and the ice cream, sierra nevada, whole milk, and cupcakes? right? and we all how how tight i am with those guys...)

and it's also another way to dig around and clean up inside. and i don't just mean colonicly speaking.

but don't get me wrong- next week i'll be shoveling whatever solid foodstuffs enters my line of sight. beware ye bread product!

hey, i'll need the strength to clean externally.

peace out.

p.s. if you see me dragging my self around town crawling on my hands and knees with a cardboard sign that says "for the love of christ would somebody just force feed me a cookie already?" ...

WALK ON BY.

we have a winner!

well, all i can say is it was random! and painful, as there were several of you who posted comments who i totally owe stuff to. you know who you are.

but the winning comment was from robin:


Once a man said that we would have a black president when pigs fly. And then. . . swine flu.

I want that tunic. The end.


and i've gotta admit, it was the one and only joke i actually repeated to my husband.

what? it's funny!

THAT BEING SAID, all the jokes and haikus and general hilarity was all so dang entertaining i've decided imma gunna try that trick again, to see if i can cajole more out of you normally silent lurkers.....

i'll dangle free stuff if you'll just remind me every once in awhile that you're actually out there.

i see you on my stats page- (that's right i check my stats, just like i check out what my ass looks like in tight jeans, i'm like that.) but why you never call me, baby? huh?

so there it is. it's less like me yelling "DANCE MONKEY" and more like me pleading "TELL ME YOU LOVE ME".

but stay tuned cause i'm hanging the next bait chunk on the hook.

i did this fun pattern review over at sew mama sew... i had a great time putting the whole thing together, however i was left with the knowledge that the girl in our household that could actually fit into this dandy little garment would never actually wear it.

so here we have a size 7/8 girls tunic, made from the modkid "frida" pattern, that desperatly needs a good home.

here's the scoop: leave me a comment with a either a joke or a haiku or a heart wrenching story about how bad you need this tunic.

on monday immagonna randomly pick a winner. and i'll send said winner this little number. and if the joke, haiku or story in your randomly picked comment is especially good, who knows? maybe i'll throw in a little sumthin' extra. just cause. cause i'm like that. kind, that is, and spontaious.

and tidy, and great with money. and tall. you don't know. why are you smiling like that? YOU DON'T KNOW.

most. fun. ever.

my brother in law michael told me we ought to sign up for this race called 'muddy buddy', like, two years ago. he told me it would be just some goofy fun and then a bunch of beer at the finish line.

we couldn't do it last year cause i was still nursing a stress fracture.

this year, it was a go. we signed up months ago and joked about it on and off when we would see each other, but for the most part i think we both just thought of it as a great excuse to get our families together for a weekend.

then, muddy buddy weekend was upon us.

we knew there was a bike involved, so saturday, the day before the race, we thought it might be wise to bust the long neglected bike out of a spider-webbed imprisonment in the storage shed.

did we take it for a ride? no.

did we check the tires for air. not really.

chuck it in the car, set the alarm, see what happens.

long story short ( i'll spare you guys another marathon post) the next day, we woke up, drove an hour, and found ourselves smack in the middle of the funnest race EVER.

yes, there was mud.

there was also gorgeous crazy trails. straight uphill running, straight downhill on the bike, and vice versa.

scary anke-twisting rocks and boot camp style obstacles.

and in the end a giant mud pit to the finish, that had to be forged on ones stomach, to the roar of a giggling family filled crowd.

the best. sunday. ever.

props to my sister for loaning me her husband, and for managing to wrangle her kids, my kids, and my husband out to the mid pit for one ding dang of a cheering section.

same time, next year. see you in the mud pit.

11 step program for crafty moms

ELEVEN STEPS TO EMPOWERED *and still crafty* MOTHERHOOD

step one: pee on stick. holy crap! you're preggo!

step two: immerse yourself in over saturated world of adorableness. fantasy shop online until your eyes bleed.

step three: hot diggity! save some pennies, flex your creative muscles, make your OWN batch of adorable. be sure and invest all your heart, soul and smashing sense of style into everything your baby may come into contact with; clothes, toys, drapes and all-organic-hand-embroidered-blessed-by-Tibetan-Buddhist-monks-butt-wipes.

step four: feel smug about how your version of adorable is not only adorable-er than anyone elses, but your baby is also smarter and intrinsically more creative and loving because you worked your ass off to make all this stuff for him/her, and because, well, let's face it- you're just a better parent than anyone else.

step five: feel a disconcerting sense of self begin to posses your little dumpling.

step six: feel your heart break as, one by one, each preciously hand crafted item you've slaved over is not only rejected by your ungrateful spawn, but spat upon, shat upon (both literally and figuratively), and utterly DESPISED. practice enlightened parenting by not throwing a full body tantrum when you take them to target for toilet paper and you actually see the light of LOVE fill their eyes when they see a baby-ho-bag-zac-efron-plastered-tacky-as-all-get-out garment*.

step seven: grow accustomed to allowing that person that once was yours to develop their own (hideous and often offensive) sense of "style".

step eight: start to kind of dig their look.

step nine: make things for other peoples babies who have yet to offend their parents by evolving.

step ten: REMAIN COOL when self possessed spawn actually ASKS you to PLEASE MAKE HER SOMETHING. she'd like the world to know how much she loves harry potter. she does NOT ask to go to target or other offending palace of themeish-kiddie-garment-porn. she asks you, her wickedly cool mom with mad crafty skillz, to make a shirt she already has, into a shirt that says "i heart harry potter". comply. immediately. but seriously, DO NOT lose your cool or you'll totally scare her off.

step eleven: see step four.

*full disclosure: i think i actually find zac efron more adorable-er than my daughter, and i've contemplated figuring out my own way of putting his face "on my body", if you gets my drifts.

national poetry month, post mortum

today is the last day of national poetry month.

and it's the day after we got this amazing bounty from tecolote farm, which has really nothing to do with the rest of this post except DAMN thatz some purty food.

i know the query looms large in your gigantic collective mind... did she, or didn't she learn to love, appreciate and embrace poetry?

well, my friends, it was a winding road; fraught with the euphoric highs of witnessing the wild chaos of learning distilled into a tincture of words, and with the despairing lows of intellect and language snuffing out the simple, spacious thrill of wisdom and soul.

oh! yes! two can play at that game, oh muse of narcissistic wordplay. aha!

a high and mighty 'booyah', to you, m'lady.

but the answer is, of course, that yes, i did. learn to love. and embrace.

but the win was only by a thin hair, when the chips were down and poetry decided to play dirty. yes, that wiley muse decided to enlist the help of liz, who actually started this whole quest to begin with, damn her, DAMN HER!!

in the end it was a late night haiku-off email exchange that tipped the win. (what, you've never participated in a haiku-off? done via email? what. ev. er.) a haiku-off spawned by debate over the age old question, the one that has been both inspiring and plaguing the human race for, well, millinea...

who is hotter; edward cullen, or tim riggins?

i won't bore you with the minutia; the frighteningly profound insights gleaned, the astounding proliferation of cougar related metaphor that were inspired, but i will tell you this, dammit...

poetry, i-eeee-yaiiiiiii, will always love youuuuuuuuuuu..... you had me at

i may never; nay-
MAY i never be forced to
kick either one out

dun-dun-DUNNNNN!!! thank you. thank you very much. i'm so proud.

oh, and, well played, poetry. well played....

SAH-WEET!

hey looky looky! the fine folks at junior socitey just posted a nice little how-do-you-do about little old ussuns!

we loves us some junior society. it's the blog of robert mahar, the operator of mahar drygoods, which is an unbelievebaly adorable kids-stuff site that causes us to have pangs of want and consumptive longing.

thanks, junior society! and props right back atcha. *fist bump*