Which was great and all but the scene utterly lacked all my classmates and teacher and since I was supposed to be meeting them I was on the verge of a panic attack. I finally got cell reception nd left my teacher a tearful message and then ran into a few other class mates who were equally flummoxed.

Unbelievably gorgeous november day, sans the rest of my class:

I drove all over effing Pt. Reyes and then, after a mini nervous breakdown, decided to take a nap on the beach and have lunch. After that I was on my way home when I saw a crap load of cars on the side of the road and it was… my class!

Turns out they never went to the place we were supposed to meet… (WHAT>!>WHY? OMFG) . instead, the teacher and assistant decided to stand on the side of the road and try to flag everyone down to go to north beach. But they missed about half the class. So, that blows.

I joined up with them and we drove around sort of frantically and pointlessly until i was almost out of gas and had to hitch a ride with classmates. It was a beautiful, highly annoying and pointless day. I almost wish I hadn’t seen them and joined up.

I was really looking forward to getting to walk around with someone very knowledgable about plants but there was no plant list, we didn’t spend much time or talk about anything in depth, it was basically impossible to listen, take pictures and take notes all at the same time so I just gave up.

We ended up here:

Sometimes I can’t believe I am lucky enough to live here.

I saw a bunch of tule elk and that was awesome. Also, happy California cows, they are adorable.

At least there is no homework this week!

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I went to the Etsy craft Lab hosted by MOCFA and sponsored by Giant Robot and Britex Fabrics in downtown SF. This months was hosted outside in a little craft corral and there were two main activities: making a plush robot or make a fabric flower. We opted to make a robot and did manage to finish it between 3 grown-ups and one kid.

Friday night I had a small table set up at the Oakland Art Murmur with a friend who runs the East Bay Church of Craft chapter. We had a borrowed button maker and a bunch of colored circles and pens, old magazines, and church of craft logos on paper, and a one inch circle cutter.

I love doing demos and having interactive activities like this. We were more popular that I expected. It was also unexpected (but great!) that most people opted to design their own button, next time I ill have a wider arrayof pens and markers. We had a donation jar set up and made like 50 bucks!?!

A woman came up to us and told about this event happening in the East Bay in October called the Mini Maker Faire! I am unreasonably excited about this event. It’s sponsored by Maker Faire and they are encouraging people to start up mini maker faires all over the place! woot! So we might have a button making or craft demo booth. I’m not an official Church of Craft rep but I hope to work on this. You can follow them on twitter here and check out their blog here. They are currently taking apps for Makers and Crafters now.

Oh and a guy made a button and then taught us the penny trick. This works with a one inch button. Instead of using the wire pin back insert you can use a penny. just sandwich your fabric between a penny and the button and TA-DA, your button stays put.

On Saturday I went to the craft sale at Oakland’s Knit-One-One. Lots of nice vendors, I talked to people about CCE – Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs (which BTW has extended it’s Early Bird Pricing!) and Bazaar Bizarre. I bought a couple of nice things. Some cards from Blockhead Press, a wrist strap from blissful and some bacon chocolates from Socola Chocolates. Italked with the woman from Cut Throat Sewing about making swimwear and underwear and I was inspired by that and by Em to come home and make my first pair of underwear! Which came out fantastic BTW. I do not want to take them off!

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Or should I go with the possibly doomed/impossible/bad idea outdoor waldorf-esque free school that I’ve been working on organizing?

Would it be enough childcare? So far, 2 days a week has helped me get some other stuff done and it’s sure nice to have a break from my almost 3 yr old.

What’s best for Jack? Less or more being away from me? What’s best for me?

Well, I don’t know and some hideous September deadline creeping up on me isn’t making it any clearer.

I’ve been seeing some blog posts and articles in which childless women are again -

A. with the bitching about how people with kids talk about and post pictures of their kids… orly? why yes, I would like to see a bunch of fucking stupid boring pictures of you out and drunk. You look awesome! And interesting! NOT.

and B. more with the bitching about people with kids not deciding one way or another if having kids is awesome or horrible.

See the end of this article (which is referencing News Week article“>this article):

But more pressingly, I was left, as I often am by pieces on parenting, at sea. Nowadays, there is such a dichotomy at work: the hazy romanticizing of baby culture wars with the it’s-a-nightmare/I-don’t-love-my-child/I-wanted-another-sex” backlash and while one is surely designed to remedy the other, those of us who haven’t had a baby are left, ironically, with no very clear idea of the reality.

I think these people looking for answers are creating a false dichotomy. The horribleness and awesomeness of parenting are not mutually exclusive in the scheme of parenting as a whole. So the reality is, the experience of parenting is made up of good and bad things all of which, if counted up, might skew to the bad but still allow people to label parenting as a good thing or the other way around. Parenting is not a black and white issue, people!

Her Bad Mother writes a lovely post about 10 things I hate about motherhood. I thank the internets for sending me women who are thoughtful and articulate, thusly she says:

But that’s mothering – the work of motherhood – and it’s something of a different beast than is the condition of motherhood, or the experience of being mother to one’s own children. The former can be tortuous. The latter can be sublime.

This post by Temerity Jane is also really good. I like how in the comments someone is pissed and feels betrayed by themselves because they suddenly want a baby. I felt similarly. Weird, isn’t it? I’m feeling that way right now as I loathe myself for considering another kid. 3 more years of diapers? GAH! Horrible muling pink and white thing on my boob? BARF! Sleep deprivation that makes me and Vim totally insane and filled with rage and hate? UM?

Yet often when Vim and I see a tiny baby we are both like, AWWWW it’s so cute, remember how cute Jack was? And then one second later we are all like, WHA? Are we INSANE? Babies are the DEVIL.

Three years later I still morn the loss of my freedom to sleep in, go out and take stupid ass pictures of myself drunk (oh wait, come nap time and mai tai’s I’ll do just that, pls stand by), and don’t want to share my toys. I wish we had waited a bit longer so that we could have traveled together kid free (speaking of which we are going to Hawaii in two weeks with Jack and I couldn’t possibly be more excited).

Today happens to be a good enough parenting day for me. I just wasn’t ready to ready 45 Frog and Toad books this morning before my coffee, nor was I ready to go outside to play trucks and get squirted with the hose and for that my kid is now crying in his room, ” I want my dadddyyyyyy”, as though I’m the devil (no, YOU are). Really kid? Sheesh!

Should I have another baby?

good-bye child free days!

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Lets take the old vs the new aquarium areas. Now the tropical reef and california coast exhibits are amazing and fun to look at. I am entirely unhappy with the rest of it. It’s so effing loud down there that I simply cant enjoy it. You can’t hear a thing except a steady too loud roar of voices echoing around in a tiny enclosed dark place. The flow of the downstairs is confusing and it’s easy to miss stuff. The petting zoo part is total crap. It’s ugly and boring and the clear tanks are confusing. The volunteers sanding around with their thumbs up their butts are more of a hindrance than anything else. Oh, and if you have a small kid you are screwed. Small kids can’t reach or see anything. and the dirty lip of the tank is right at my kids mouth level so he always starts licking it. GROSS! Remember the old one!? It was light and nice and interesting to look at. I loved it.

Actually, the whole place must have been designed by people with no kids. The old aquarium area was so nice and peaceful and dark and there was a carpeted step that kids could get on to see all of the exhibits. Yeah, the exhibits were plain old tanks with fish in them, one after the other. but so what? That was totally fine and made perfect sense for museum goer flow. You know what they should have done is just PUT UP MORE INFO. in plain old text. GOD! What is it with museums and their unforgivable lack of signage explaining details of what you are looking at? If some people don’t want to read about what they are looking at they can SKIP reading the signs.

It is funny that I see kids tapping the signs thinking they are touch screens. hahaha.

Oh and remember the old penguin set up? Where there were bleachers so that more than 5 people could see what was going on? yeah, GONE. again, wtf?

The weird ugly ass silver globular styling of the middle areas of the aquarium are ugly. and weird. and boring and unhelpful to kids. Kids trying to see the fish are like all pathetically trying to climb up to see and just slide right off. There is one part of it with like, a lungfish and a tiny boring fake stream about 2 inches long that doesn’t do anything or have anything in it. whhhyyyyyy? I think it occasionally squirts water making kids think it might become interesting but then it doesn’t and then if you have a small kid who cant see anything anyway it sucks even more. bad.

I think that whoever design the place wanted to shunt the littlest kids off into the toddler play area. Fine, toddlers are annoying, parents of toddlers will be the first to tell you so, but a person is a person no matter how small! The toddler play area isn’t all bad. My kid loves the boat and play food. But it also gets super loud and too crowded, it’s too small and is often full and closed. And if you’re a parent you can’t bring your coffee in… FAIL.

Also, when you enter the kids area there is this weird ass fifties looking waiting room behind a wall of glass. Just sitting there. It’s not clear what its for, I’ve never seen anyone in there and the doors leading to it are locked. What is it. It creeps me out, like it’s a window in time and I might see Don Draper walk in, sit down and have a cigarette. The only bad part of that would be that the doors are locked and I would be unable to get at him.

Kids under 4 are not allowed in the planetarium. In the old museum the planetarium was my favorite part and now, me and my kid, who maybe be only 3 but still would totally like it can’t go in. He has been in the one at Chabot and he didn’t like barf or destroy it somehow with his kid germs.

Let’s talk about the bathrooms of this building, this building that cost FIFTYFIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. The bathrooms are a fucking joke. I may need to draw you a diagram. Whoever designed it has obviously never used a public bathroom. Maybe they were born without an anus. I don’t know. First off this museum is always VERY crowded. The one restroom on the main floor has… 6 stalls. SIX! I will walk you through a visit to this bathroom.

First, wait in line for like 30 minutes. The line is trailing 20 feet out the door. There is only one door so there’s the line of people waiting and then there are people attempting to exit, it’s a mad scrum. Everyone has a like 4 kids with them somehow. There is one changing table and it’s in the one disabled accessible stall. Which is fine because there is no fucking way a person in any type of wheelchair could even get in there past the milling hoards of confused people. why are they confused? Probably because they have just washed their hands and turned towards the exit to look for something to dry their hands with. Nothing. Finally they might figure out that they have to turn back to the back of the bathroom to find one of the two fancy hand blow dryers. Wait 20 minutes til they can get over there and then fight their way back towards the exit. If you have a kid with you, which you do, they might need to step unto the clearly labeled “toddler step” in order to reach the sink. However, once there their tiny arms flail around like tiny pathetic pink tyrannosaurus arms trying to reach the faucet. They are doomed to fail. I’m 5’1″ and I can barely reach them.

The african hall is still good in that weird horrible way that giant hall of taxidermy can be.

The upstairs might be awesome but I’ve barely been up there so I’m not sure.

Also, I’m oddly disappointed in the gift shops. I might by a white alligator stuffy next time I go although now that I have written all this out i am not sure I will go again. Except that I jsut renewed my membership… So I will be going again.

The rainforest thing is neat if you can get there at a time when it is not crowded and so loud your eardrum might explode. So you walk up like 3 stories on this ramp looking at stuff and then you get shunted into an elevator that brings you down into the final crescendo of horrible loud confusing dark crowdedness that is the underwater swamp part. The clear tunnel is kind of neat but I’ll take a old not state of the art quiet museum over it anytime.

Fuck man. What is wrong with these people?!

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So I signed up for that fitness class with Jack in a gymnastics class at the same time. Last week it did not work out and Jack cried when I tried to go to my class. But this week! It worked!! I was so proud of him.

He didn’t even notice me leave to join my class. He dove right in and participated in all of the activities. A very silly warm up of chasing the teacher and then some stretches. I could hear him laughing and talking. I kept wanting to peer around the curtain to see what he was doing but I restrained myself.

They played ‘Stay on Top’ which I have witnessed before and it is totally hilarious. There is a giant foam block and the kid is on top of it and the teacher turns to over and over and the kid has to scramble to stay on top of it. Oh the tragedy of it all. Then they played some game where two mats were set up to be a whales mouth and they had to not let the whale close its mouth on them. That created some serious laughter and shrieking. When I came over after my class I saw Jack standing on top of a tall block jumping across like 2 feet of space to another tall block. He kept landing on his stomach with legs dangling.

He’s out there doing stuff without me! It’s so great. I love picking him up from daycare and asking him what he did that day. He’ll say, “D’s house. Cair throw ball me. Park! Where’d my Daddy go? Work. Home soon?” ahahahaha. So cute.

My class was good too. This time the routine was better suited to my fitness level. The last time some of the stations were so hard that I couldn’t even begin to have good enough form for them to work the right muscles. Today I am sore all over. However, I don’t think I will ever be much of a handstandy sort of person. My wrists hurt too much. Next time I am going to ask to try stilts!

In this picture we see Jack hopping the lily pads at the Oakland Zoo for the very first time. *sniff* He’s so brave!

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Now I need a house so that I can wallpaper it and then like 2 years later wonder what the fuck I was thinking.

When my mom was here recently she gave me endless shit (hi mom!) about how I do not look my age, i.e. all I wear are ratty old jeans and threadless t-shirts and it makes me, along with the acne and pink hair, look 20. THEN, earlier this week I went to see my dermatologist who I have only seen once before and at one point she causally says “so I imagine kids aren’t in your immediate future” and I say ” yeah well, one is enough”. and she does a double take and asks me how old I am and I say 35 and she says “you are SHITTING me, I thought you were 19.?!” and then I was all embarrassed.

I feel like I have been all through this before. I ask you, what else does one wear when all one does is grub around all day with a 2 year old? It’s not like I am meeting the girls for tennis and cocktails at the country club ffs. When I had a desk job I dressed slightly more nicely… although actually it went in phases.

All of this makes me have hives. On the one hand I do not give a rats ass what people think I look like. On the other hand, I like to be cute to the best of my ability. However, I am NOT going to put in a huge amount of effort see point A, not caring what you think. I think shows like ‘What not to wear” are horrendous. They take a perfectly normal looking person, tell them they are dumb, ugly and horrible and then buy them some generic outfits from the GAP or -insert other mall store here- and then tell them they are okay only if they spend a lot of money on clothes and waste tons of time, effort and mental energy making sure they look like other assholes on TV.

On the other hand, I love to go shopping and certainly don’t turn my nose up at mall stores. I like GAP jeans AND I like generic looking sweater sets from the Limited. So there you have it. I’m humped.

Also, I want these hilarious black and white boots. I would totally buy them if they didn;t have those crappy too high wedge heels. I’ll have to make myself some spats instead.

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You Bazaar is just around the corner! Next weekend, November 2nd at the San Francisco County Fair Building (Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park) local crafters, toy and plush designers and other indie artists will be showcasing and selling their work. Oh, and there will also be some craft workshops at You Bazaar! They all look really good! I’m looking forward to checking out the fortune cookie one since I am secretly obsessed by plush food.

Please tell your friends and family! Blog about it if you have a blog!
Here are all the details and you are welcome to cut and paste the following text and badge to add to your blog.

Sunday November 2nd 2008
10:00am – 5:00pm
San Francisco County Fair Building
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

FREE ADMISSION

You Bazaar! will be on November 2nd 2008 from 10am to 5pm at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park. You Bazaar! will feature 30 select craft vendors selling quality handmade wares and a series of rotating workshops throughout the day with some of your favorite plush designers. While we would like to use this event to promote plush art we welcome all crafters to apply for a vendor space. This will be a fun family friendly event to kick off the Plush You SF Show, opening Friday, November 7th 2008 and excite customers for the holiday shopping extravaganza Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco on Sunday, November 30th 2008

Check out the Vendor List!
Get directions!
Peruse You Bazaar Crafty Workshops!

Oh and don’t forget to check out the SF Bazaar Bizarre blog for updates on other local bay area craft fairs, crafty business tips and interviews of crafters (by me!).

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Jen of Volatile Gas World and

Maggie of  ‘Stop! Take some time to think…’.

I’ll email to get your addresses. Now, Jen I certainly have some good ideas of what to send but Maggie I don’t know at all. So I will have to go read her archives to get an idea. I think that’s a lot of fun. I like to try to guess things that people will like althoug how spot on I ever am is debatable… but the fun is in thinking about it.

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The fair is November 2nd at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park and is focusing on hand made Plush Art. Here is the description from the web site:

You Bazaar! will be on November 2nd 2008 from 10am to 5pm at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park.  You Bazaar! will feature 30 select craft vendors selling quality handmade wares and a series of rotating workshops throughout the day with some of your favorite plush designers. While we would like to use this event to promote plush art we welcome all crafters to apply for a vendor space. This will be a fun family friendly event to kick off the Plush You SF Show, opening Friday, November 7th 2008 and excite customers for the holiday shopping extravaganza Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco on Sunday, November 30th 2008.

Go on over to the SF Bazaar Bizarre blog to see my first interview. I can guarantee that you will fall in love with Planet Tokki and it’s creator, not only is her plush art divine but the complex and detailed background of Planet Tokki will make you giggle and swoon.

Be sure to come visit the You Bazaar! Fair on November 2nd!

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Read my previous post about our planned labyrinth here. We chose a spot a little closer to the Container house as the labyrinth ended up being a bit bigger than I thought. I _think_it ended up being about 16 feet across each spiral.

We spent two days hauling rocks and gently arguing about how to lay them out. At the end of two days we had a perfectly laid out 5 Auspicious clouds labyrinth with one layer of rocks denoting the walls. All we have to do is fill out the walls with more rocks and get gravel and sand for the pathways.

How to build a meditation labyrinth using only some beer, a golf cart and a few river rocks:

Step One: get beer and a big flat space:

Okay seriously… I read around on the internets to see how other people did it but didn’t find a whole lot. So, just now, in searching for the site that was helpful I found a couple more that look good, here they are:

Labyrinth Enterprises FAQ

Labyrinthos

Labyrinth Society

KT weed wacked and we raked and moved large obstacles form the area.

We started out with a rope with tape marked every 18 inches. Rebar staked in the center help the rope in place as we used inverted tip marking spray paint to mark the perimeter.

Of course, I picked a complicated none standard design for the labyrinth. The design has 5 spiral arms and so we  marked 5 lines at 72 degrees (aprox) and along each of these lines we marked each 18 inch segment with the spray paint.

I had decided hat we would draw each spiral arm from the center out and that seemed to work fairly well although I believe the engineers in the group did not agree. One of the best parts of this was seeing how my friends all differently went about working on this large group project. I think we all did pretty well for a group of horrible OCD control freaks.

The best part was that Acrobat snuck back after we all left an RE-DID much of it. Hahaa.

We hauled rocks from the river bed to outline the walls and we will fill in with the more eventually. If you can get free materials like that I highly recommend it. Have you ever priced rocks? They are expensive! Sand and gravel will mark the path and a friend has just offered some pretty sounding paving stones as well. Which is great because I was originally envisioning paving stones but then did the aforementioned pricing…

September is flitting by so I need to get back up there before it gets to cold and the rains start

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surprise gift in the mail!!

Originally uploaded by not halfway there
I got the best package in the mail form bebellyboo last week.

Check it out:
Chocolate cookies, book for Jack, toy for jack (i’ve been wanting one of these but never managed to buy one), 2 awesome fun fabrics (mermaids! fashion girls!), and some fabric pastels and fabric pen.

All very cool and totally stuff I get myself. I think Bebellyboo and I have been reading each other since right before our babies were born. There was some point when I was pregnant when I was terrified and desperately looking for other people in my same situation and people just ahead of me. So Bebellyboo was right where I was and also crafty and fun and although she does occasionally claim she is taking a blogging break I always know she will come back.

*Updated*
I received my PiF gift from 3Giraffes this week! It’s pretty cool. One is the mood magnets. My bathroom door is metal so this will be perfect for that. Except why is there no “Frumpy” option?!!? I’m screwed!

Okay, the other thing is this book “embellishing techniques and projects”. I would never buy this book for myself, although I do not know why because I LOVE IT and have had a great time looking through it. the projects are cute, the style is fun and it has real actual useful information about sewing and craft tools and materials. And I’m not sure if the model shown through out the book is the author, but either way she is totally cute and the blue shoes she is wearing on page 66 make me die with envy. I have been looking for blue shoes in just such a style for EVA. not that I have anywhere to wear them…
WEll that was off topic… moving right along… here is a picture of the gift!

Thank you 3giraffes!

*updated*
SO!
I will now hold a DOUBLE PiF contest because I’m a sucker for going to the post office.

To enter leave a comment. Er… on Monday I will pick TWO WINNERS (!) with a random number generator and that person will have to tell me their snail mail address (muahahaha) so that I can send them a little gift.
then, unless they are super grumpy, they should hold their own contest.

so leave a random comment please!

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But I’m not working anymore and don’t have my own insurance and I have  baby attached to me so I figured I should get  closer dentist. I went on yelp and looked at a few and then just picked one that had lots of good reviews.

I called to make an appointment and said ‘for a check up’ but what I meant was a cleaning not knowing that there was even such a thing as a check up. wtf is a dentist check up?! Stupidly I take Jack with me. The office was weird. They offered apples and coffee in the waiting room. The receptionist smiled too hugely and was WAY TOO PERKY. She offered to ‘take me on a tour’ (wha?). Each exam room had a TV. all their stuff is digital GUSH GUSH we’ve all worked here forever. we love kids, the dentist has kids, blah blah blah.

All this has made me super nervous. why is she smiling at me like that? The dentist comes in and has DEAD EYES and a huge smile and fake eyelashes. I’m even more creeped out and Jack starts screaming whenever the dentist touches my mouth.

they have some horrible device like a pen that is a camera connected to the TV. so I have to WATCH while they poke around in my gross GLISTENING mouth. EW.

Then they had these cheek spreaders (hahahah). I had to hold my lips and cheeks out of the way while they TOOK PHOTOS of my teeth. omg. if this is dentistry of hte future I want to go backward in time.

It was awful and they told me that I need to have EVERY SINGLE one of my fillings replaced and that I need a night guard.

ORLY

and they make me sign a piece of paper stating that all the work they ‘recommend’ will cost over 3,000$.

Blink Blink

And I had to pay them 150$ for this stupid ass check up. I’ve NEVER had so much as one penny trade hands at any other dentist. HELLO  I have delta dental.

So, wtf? I feel pissed, all I wanted was my teeth cleaned and I was forced to go on some little space cadet odyssey with these assholes. Check up… ugh! So, Should I just go have them clean my teeth?OH!That’s the other thing… the dentist doesn’t even DO the teeth cleaning?! an assistant does. again, WTF?!

I think I will just go back to my old 40 miles a way dentist. and I’ll write a shitty review on Yelp for these weirdos.

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You want a WHAT projector? you mean like those things in movies where the round disks of film whirl around and there’s a lightbulb?

Maybe we’ll all have given up on this internet insanity by then and we’ll be back to bicycling to the local green grocer to pick up our preserves. or whatever.

I mentioned in a recent post that I have my grandmothers button tin. I loved the button tin when I was a kid. Do all kids love a button tin? Do they all love to pick through the colorful buttons just admiring the colors adn the feel of them?Maybe imagining where they came from or things we could use them for?

The thing is, some jerkwad took all the good buttons leaving the all the very boring ones behind. It’s okay, whoever did it will get their comeuppance in HELL. So what did I do? DUH! I went online and bought someone else’s grandmothers button tin. it satisfies my hearts desires. I have started sorting by color. but I COULD sort by size or usefulness or type (shank, 2 holes, 4 holes, extra fancy) or by project. I can reorganize these suckers every damn day if i want.  so maybe I will.

But I am conflicted. PArt of me wants to cram them all willy nilly into the button tin (although, at this point, with all my own buttons, my grandmother AND some else’s grandmother I don’t think they will all fit in one tin) . If they are all willy nilly then i have the kids pleasure of sort thing through it and seeing it as a tin of TREASURE. But as a grown up that isn’t super useful. I need them sorted and organized in some way, possibly even in separate containers. Right now all the blues and greens are in an old jam jar. and the sparkly ones with rhinestones are in an old burt’s bees green goddess mask jar.

I’m a magpie and love shiny things and seriously these buttons give my soul a deep down delicious rich feeling. Is it just me? Or does everyone love a button tin?

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Five Auspicious Clouds

Originally uploaded by not halfway there
A while back I told KT that I would try to plan out a labyrinth for the ranch property. KT, MamaPajama and I scouted out a decent location near Kt’s house in progress.

I’m not exactly sure what prompted me to want to do this. Labyrinths are cool but this is actually a pretty big project and I’m not quite able to get my mind around how much work it will be. Supposedly there will be a bunch of other people there to help? I hope? If there are other people then I think it will be fun and rewarding.

There are a few web sites out there detailing how to create a labyrinth and most of them use the 7-ring classical pattern. I want to use the pattern pictured here even though I have never seen another labyrinth using it. In the picture the black line will end up being the path you walk. I like how it will make you visit the center of the whole thing 5 times and that five other times you will visit the center of the particular spiral you are in. Okay that sentence was sort of grammatically confusing but I am too lazy to rewrite it.

So my problem now is to figure out how to lay it out and build it. Here’s what I’m thinking so far.

How to Build the Five Auspicious Clouds Labyrinth
Materials:
string, rebar, gravel, spray paint, shovels

Offsite:
knot a string (lenght being the radius of the labyrinth) marking the points of the path

Onsite:
Measure whole area of labyrinth
plant rebar, one in center, one at each of five points on outer edge
dig out an inch or so of earth ( ?)
use string and spray paint to start marking out the path, have 5 cans of paint so that five people can be doing this part at once. after marking the initial points the rest can be freehand i think.
use dug out earth to pile on ‘walls’
use gravel and river stones to mark the path

After:
shrine-y thing in the very center. maybe a really nice pinkish rock from the river as a large flat table-y surface
benches around area
sign with suggested usage/rules?

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This is primarily a social conference, eh? We all want to see everyone in their cute outfits and shoes and we want to be admired too. Although I do need to look at the schedule again to see if there are even any vaguely technical sessions beside the ‘make over tent’.

I’ll be wearing cute dresses and skirts so I better shave my legs, get my eyebrows waxed and a mani/pedi or and redye my hair probably. I’m sure I have roots from hell.

My mom has posted  a picture of her own shoe dilemma.

Also, I need to finish sewing some stuff for the swap meet, clean my house since my mom will be here TOMORROW and entertain a baby with the attention span of a doodle bug. Good luck me! HAhaha. I predict that 1 or none of these things will get done today.

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Yesterday on my way home from the girls weekend at the ranch I stopped to get something to drink and when I got back in my car I realized that I had not looked in a mirror for a good three days. So I had to quickly check to make sure I didn’t have a beer can stuck in my hair or whatever.

I got to sleep in for TWO DAYS! Woo! It was great except for the fact that I didn’t sleep in. The first day the sun hit me smack in the eyeball at dawn and the second day there was clearly a bear or 5 outside my window right at dawn and I never got back to sleep really.

NO MATTER. Our schedule included some heavy duty beer drinking, card playing and reading. With some napping thrown in for good measure. It was my perfect dream weekend of loafing with no one around to be all ‘Let’s do a PROJECT!!’. instead, blissful slacking with no guilt.

I’m impressed with all they have done up there on the ranch! Everyone has their space and is developing it nicely. I LOVE the yurt and I long for it. And I LOVE KT’s container house and covet it!

I signed up to do a project for ‘spurningman’, which is were everyone (okay, not everyone) is going this year instead of the dusty too crowded lame-ass themed burningman. I’ll be making a labyrinth in the 5 auspicious clouds pattern. So I have to figure out how to do that! Vim will help me.

The only thing that make me nervous is that it means I will have to be up there with Vim and Jack of  ‘he who will not sleep in anything other than a full sized crib’ fame. I’m thinking I will buy a cheap ass full sized crib and leave it up there. That way other people with babies will get to use it whenever they go up.

These fucking thistles are teh suck:

I did some drawings the second day even though it meant getting way to close to about 50 million bees.

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Great! I’ve just snooped on her blog and she seems funa nd creative, lives near me somewhere and has a son just a month younger than mine.

Woo! I can’t wait to make her a package. Back in the day I used to be a great penpal/sender of things through the mail so this will be fun for me.

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I’ve noticed that many people in my comments for th PIF contest ARE not going and maybe think that it is a conf for ‘professional’ bloggers. It ain’t! Also, they are having kickass childcare on site this year!  I will not be taking advantage of it tho as for friday we will just get a subsidized sitter from Vim’s work to come take care of him at home.

I’m not a newbie so after I drop my mom off at that party I will head downstairs to the this party!

I’m so glad my mom is coming I can’t even tell you. I think she’ll have a good time AND I can stash all my costume changes in her room. I’m still on the fence about which sessions to attend and I suspect I will spend a fair amount of time hanging out in whatever common areas just screwing around.

I’m so excited to meet new people tho!  New craft bloggers?! New snarky moms??! Other awesome women?! Heelllooo! I feel almost perky about it.

I’ll be the one with the fake blue and blonde dreads ponytail handing out stickers. You can have a ‘fuckity fuck’ one or an ‘I love my screamything’ one! Come say HI.

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Swistle organized this and like 460 people are doing the contest. I may go enter all of them tonight while I am watching The Wire season 3.

WHAT IS IT?

You enter by leaving a comment and I pick a random winner. Then I send you some stuff. Mostly likely random stuff (but cute!) from my house. Then you blog about what I sent you and start your own contest, people enter it and you pick a winner and you send them stuff and so on.

RULES

Contest ends at the end of day tomorrow. I will post the winner on Saturday! I’ll decide what to send depending on the winner and will send it off sometime next week.

TO ENTER:

Leave a comment on this post answering this question:

Will you be attending BlogHer ’08 ?

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