Friday, July 22, 2011

My Juice Glass is Getting a Workout this Week

Life is what happens while you are trying to pay the bills. You get very focused on hunting for nickels and dimes in the couch cushions, your brain gets all muddled with complicated math (custom cedar doors + eBay + Etsy = electric + car insurance + groceries, but is < mortgage), and before you know it, big things get by you.


For example, my four year-old is out there learning things that I didn’t teach her. Singing songs from story hour that I don’t know, wanting to look up the michelinoceras on the internet, and explaining that jarred baby food does not have as many “helpful antioxidants” as baby food made at home using the Baby Bullet!


She hasn’t gone anywhere….



…but it seems as though suddenly, she is worldlier.




She goes around making her own decisions. Decisions about making her own bed without being asked, and picking out books with chapters and books about Pluto. Decisions about getting a haircut. (A haircut?? REALLY? Let's think this over for a couple of days. Maybe a couple of days more. I don't know why. Because. Because...Yes I know hair grows back Wendy. I know. You are right. I do have butterflies about it. Thank you for holding my hand through your haircut.)

It is like she turned a corner, and there is now...this kid living in my house. Not a baby. Good thing I have a spare one of those. Behold! MY KID! Who, despite her suspicions regarding the dubious and anti-oxidant devoid nature of jarred baby food, decided that helping to feed the baby would be a good way to help me out. On her own. Today, she is calling him her "Little Mini-Wheat." ("much better than those disgusting pink ones. What a disappointment.")



I don't want to get to maudlin about it. Time flies. Life changes. It's a good thing.

(Read: I have already had a good cry into my juice glass of Paisano, and I'm fine now, thank you.)

Friday, July 15, 2011

How Harry Potter Stole my June...but at Least He Brought Beef Jerky

I blame this all on J.K. Rowling and my baby*.


I decided in May sometime to post a couple of Harry Potter robes in my Etsy shop. I figured I would sell them sometime near the premier of the final movie, make a few bucks, and that would be that. And I did sell those two. But apparently, everyone wants to dress up like wizard students at a fictional school of magic (as opposed to the real schools of magic) and go see a movie. So I sold a few more. Then a few more and a few more...until I somehow spent all of June and the first half of July staying up until 11 or 12 every night, making wizard robes in all of the house colors.



For those of you who have never been poor, this is what happens when someone is broke for a very long time, and then suddenly gets beaten with a small money stick:
1. Mo makes stuff.



2. Mo makes money.



3. Mo bids on a bunch of things on ebay. Like a better baby carrier. And pirate fabric. And food dehydrators. You know-stuff that I NEED.



4. Mo neglects many things like her blog, the cat boxes, and the growing laundry piles. Mo even feeds her kid a Kid Cuisine (Hippie Foul!)



5. Mo ends up with two food dehydrators arriving in the mail in the same day because she got all excited about the thought of making her own dried fruit and beef jerkey, so she bid on two at the same time. Mo did not expect to win both. But then again, I think Mo was having a celebratory glass of wine while eBaying. Let this be a lesson.



It's all good, because our garden? It totally went ape-shit, and I hear that when you grow your own herbs and stuff, you can also preserve it. Plus, we planted four tomato plants, and all of them are doing well. (by doing well, I mean that they are busting down our door at night and demanding to be fed raw flesh so that they might soon take over our planet.) We already have a ton of basil and zucchinis.

I'm thinking...herbed "sun" dried tomatoes? Does anyone know how to effectively preserve cilantro aside from drying it? Is that Wendy riding her bike in her PJs? Did she get a haircut? When will I stop yammering and post another picture of a cute baby?!? (now)

So, um...hey Mollie! Do you want a food dehydrator? I'm pretty sure that I only need one.


*I would like to take a moment to give a shout-out to my homeboy, Liam. None of this could have happened without your willingness to sleep. Though you have finally sprouted a fang (yay!) and dislike sleep this week, I (and our now-paid Comcast bill) remain thankful. Also, to J.K.: thank you for writing books that made good movies that made geeks want to dress up.




Liam and J.K., I love you both.