blah blah blah

today it's 35 degrees. just another january day in boston. it's hard to try to push aside my longing for spring b/c i know we still have at least 3 more FULL months of this. warm weather has a such a lusty appeal for me that it kind of feels dirty at times. in the 29 years of living in warm climate, i am as my brother would say, "ruint" for any other climate. at this moment, there are snow piles on the side of the roads taller than i am...we have had 60" of snow in january and that's only #3 of the list of snowiest months in boston for all time. true story. and this shit isn't melting until may, people. shopping centers are hidden by walls of snow piles so much so that you cannot even see the businesses located behind them. this is the winter of my discontent, quite literally.

one of my remedies for such blah is loooooong hot showers, which i now have to share with a toddler playing beneath me in the tub. you're getting a visual and feeling bad for EV, aren't you? she loves it as much as i do and it gives us something to do inside other than stare at each other, or me having to wrestle more playdoh out of her mouth...or another marker she has just pretended was lipstick, lipstick that should be eaten, mind you. i am continually amazed that she will only put into her mouth that which is NOT food.

i have also started baking more. i kind of started this trend our first winter here when i was sick and pregnant. mmm, bread, pastry, muffins, scones, more bread was the only cure for my addiction to carbs. currently, our gym membership is lending itself to the battle against muffin tops. i'm not sure who's winning that one right now. finding a gym with babysitting was probably one of the most genius things we have ever done as a family. in addition to giving us a much needed time out from each other every afternoon, i have more motivation than i ever have to work out consistently. so anyway, baking: today i made banana nut muffins from scratch, a birthday cake for a friend, and am roasting eggplant to make some babaghanoush. YUM. i will say that most of my baking of late has become increasingly more "how can i fit more fiber into that?" kind of baking. which either makes me a weight watchers star or really old. i'll leave that one out there for discussion.

and i'm blogging! you'd think i'd be spending my weekend time with the hubs, right? well, i would LOVE to, but lost out to the first round of a super-secret-very-cool-i-am-so-proud-of-him-for-trying-something-like-this project. more on that another time. i'm actually content to not complain about this right now, being that i would also stand to benefit hugely from the possible outcome of this project. again with the selfishness...

i hope your weekends are going well. i hope today is restful for you before your week begins. and i hope there is no snow if your forecast.

So. Much. CRAP.

Ah. HOME. i love being here. it has nothing to do with the place we live, b/c as you know, i kind of hate it. it's dumpy, but settled, and priced fairly for boston, so i'll take it for now. i do love being in MY place, MY bed, with just MY family, on MY schedule (or rather, EV's, as it goes). i'm just going to own how selfish that sounds b/c, after 10 days of it, i am done with traveling for awhile...especially for work. especially solo with a toddler.

ESPECIALLY with a toddler...

As busy as i've been the last couple of weeks with work, it's almost been the last thing on my mind most of the time (plenty of blog entries to come). i'm kind of over what i do. it's just work to me. it's not creative anymore. it's not very profitable anymore. i did FINE at the show itself, but by the third day, i was walking around with my nose in the air, looking down on all the poor little buyers and sellers as if they were stuck in some sort of perpetual sorority rush party, making small talk and using their fake laugh. gag me. there was just SO. MUCH. CRAP at that show, and why do i even want to compete? to be frank, i can't. the "handmade movement" (EYE ROLL) has, in many ways, KILLED handmade. buyers still want it cheap (or they think they can make it), so many handmade artists still design it, but ship it off to be made in china and africa for a fraction of the price, sell themselves as "charitable" and call it a day. no quality, no joy in the process or being able to communicate that to buyers, just production. where is the craftsman instead of the businessman? i've seen it over and over again and forgive me for being judgemental, but there are stark few of us who still care how it's made and are interested in the process. as for the business side of it, i am certain it will lose momentum. i know it gives more room for similar products to surge ahead, but i really don't care. HAVE AT IT. i'm tired of living the carnie life and worrying about stupid little things that go along with wholesale/retail shows. i'm tired of leaving for days on end, toting the child every which way. i'm TIIIIIIRD of the benefits not outweighing the costs for me in this season of life. I have been successful at this and it's time to move on. well, after i fill all the current orders, that is. and taper down the current inventory though the last few retail shows this year.

sincerely though, i don't want the story i live to continue to magnify things that don't really matter to me...to crowd my brain in such a way that the rest of my life seems to be waiting on me to jump in. it's like i'm slowly waking up. something that had once been so life-giving has been strangling me for awhile now and i am seeing an opportunity to let go of it. i'm actually not afraid to let go of it b/c i'm really understanding more now how little my work defines me.

i hope it helps me be a better woman/wife/mama. i know it's been easy for me to view EV as distraction from my work, when often i know, in the deepest part of me, what the distraction has really been. i hope i don't become that SaHM that i have feared becoming (which is controversial to even say anyway). what i mean is that i hope that my capacity for motherhood is expanded in this next season b/c it feels tiny right now.  i have to stop rethinking my status as a mom and accept it with gusto. no one told me these thoughts happen. i really want to enjoy it more than i have. to relish the long days with short naps as best i can. and to love my husband better. and i realize that i kind of have the luxury of being able to choose this next step from a financial standpoint that many people do not have. i know we will be facing a micro-recession up in this house. maybe not. we'll see.

and how long it is until summer? it is an effing 7 degrees today, people. wtf?!

Snow and other infirmities

happy snow day.

being that i have less that 24 hours before i'm supposed to leave Boston for the ATL gift market (with wee mcclure in tow), and i have about 18" of snow outside and i'm done packing (for the most part), i thought i would take the time to update our little, neglected blog. and b/c i'm working on my second pot of coffee today and it's this or more snow shoveling b/c whoa have i got energy. oh, and Ash is working from home, with, i might add, just his long johns on. oww oww!

i've been so busy getting everything ready for this show that i haven't really had the time i want to think thoughts on any particular subject beyond reacting like a caveman-uh huh, ugga, wha...? though i started taking time to "think" over the holidays a little more. i've been reading donald miller's "a million miles in a thousand years" and it's been good for me to reflect on the story i'm currently living. what's more, it's good for me to think bigger than my life for a change. especially around this time of year, when i find myself hating life in new england and all this stupid cold (did i mention we are have snow of epic proportions today?), and needing, no, LONGING for change. where do i want to be at the end of the year, personally...even literally? much more than that, where in the bigger story does my story make sense? i'm just asking right now, hoping to see answers flesh themselves out in the days and weeks to come. there are specifics i hope that will happen...very literal and exacting, but the key on that, i guess, is hope. more on that later.

for now, here is a paraphrased selection from a chapter in the aforementioned book: "We get robbed of the glory of life b/c we aren't capable of remembering how we got here....we wake slowly to the world around us...we could easily believe life isn't staggering....at that moment, I felt the way I hope God feels when he writes the world, sitting over planets and placing tiny people in tiny wombs. If I have a hope, it's that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in it with the sunset and snowrainstorm as though to say, Enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as i have created you..."

for now, i'm excited at the prospect of leaving my teething child with her grandmother for a few days, selling some goods, and having an adventure with the amazing Steph (and hopefully forcing helping her deal with some of her learned food aversions - fourth paragraph down).

i thought you might enjoy a few pictures from our snowy morning. these pics are deceivingly "fun" and "beautiful" if you really know what the 6+ month winter is like in Boston, but alas, we have no actual pictures of hell, now do we...?

and as EV would say: "Haddle do!"

new year.

So I have been mustering up a post in my head the last few weeks/days and while I work it out, I thought I would post a link to my bestie's blog b/c she has a way with words...particularly since this post hit pretty close to home for me today. I hope you enjoy.

Happy New Year, friends.