dear mr. president, thanks.

thanks for forcing me to cancel my gym membership.

hey, you're welcome.

it all started at the beginning of the year when my little family of three fell off the fiscal cliff. i know, i know, the government agreed on a plan to avoid that. yup, we all drank the kool-aid and breathed a sigh of relief that our income taxes would not increase.

and then we were blindsided by the 2% increase in social security taxes. ouch. and our health insurance costs went up. ugh. and the cost-of-living is redonkulous. boo. bottom. of. the. cliff. i popped open my trusty laptop and created a family budget, but after chopping the luxuries and dropping the necessities down to the bare bones, we were still not in the black. it was time for slash and burn tactics. thus, i cancelled my gym membership. budget success. fitness fail.

what?! yes. i cancelled my gym membership. after fourteen months of diligently dragging myself to spin class four days a week, i was suddenly going to be on my own. luckily, i had recently discovered the joy of walking to the state park near our house. i stomped along to my music and big-E watched the world go by. awesome for both of us and four miles round trip. plus, big-E got to run around and explore the park. golden. i got off to a great start. every day i came home from work, changed, packed big-E into the stroller and off we went.

and then one day, i got a bug up my bum wondering what would happen if i tried to run part of the way. i started slow, alternating between jogging and walking. each day i would jog a little further. and one day i jogged half of the way home. and the next day i jogged all the way home. and then i jogged both ways. and next thing you know, i was jogging 4 miles a day, 6 days a week. pushing a stroller.

what?! yes. this kid, a self-proclaimed NON-RUNNER, suddenly turned into a runner. okay, fine, 15-minute miles probably only qualify me to be called a jogger. same effing difference people!! and i am addicted. fo' reals, yo. i jog four days a week and walk two days a week. since the first of the year, i have jogged/walked 150 miles. mind blowing.

mama runs faaast!!

but wait, there is more. more? yes, more. recently, while en route to the park, just for fun i sped up for the second mile. and after doing this a few times, i clocked it at 10 minutes. a ten-minute mile! in the grand scheme of things, i am aware that i am not exactly burning up the pavement. i am sure i know plenty of people who can run a 10-minute mile going backwards, but seriously y'all, that is by far, the fastest my two feets have carried me since middle school.

go mama!!

so, mr. president, thanks to you (and the members of congress), i find myself fitter and faster than i have been in over twenty years. and my pants fit better. i have been tightening the belt figuratively and literally. congratulations to me.

hey, you're welcome.

wonky windows #16.

a window into our wonky world...
the mister and i love fruit. not fruits and vegetables. just fruit. we occasionally eat vegetables, but it is fruit that finds us in the grocery store four or five days a week. mostly we eat bananas, strawberries, pineapple, nectarines, and apples. but a few months ago we added watermelon. don't get me wrong....we always enjoyed watermelon, we just did not consume it that often. now i happen to be a lucky lass, because i am married to a championship watermelon picker. okay fine, he has not ever won a championship, but if there were such a contest, i would bet a lot of money that he would come out on top. he honed his skills in the fields of lesotho, so the grocery store with plenty of pickings is no match for him. we always got the lovely little watermelons, which according to this ny times article, are called "personal melons." right-o. they are about the size of a honeydew melon, seedless, taste delicious, and fit nicely into the refrigerator. oh and the mister and i can consume one in less than 24 hours.

the twenty-eight pound monster.

as of last week, those personal melons are old news. we have now regressed into the world of seeded (gasp!) and gigantic watermelons. last week the mister brought home a giant that was probably close to 20 pounds. ummm...we ate the whole thing...in 6 days. today, the mister was not feeling so bashful. he bought a 28 pound behemoth that is so gigantic it will not fit inside of the bag he was planning to use to keep it fresh. are we having a party? uhhh..nope. sharing with seven other families? uhhh..nope. this massive gem is just for the two of us (well three...pringle is a hungry little one). this leaves me wondering...is it possible to consume too much watermelon???

going postal.

i may have mentioned this before, but just in case you do not know about it, i love the united states postal service. i mean seriously, you can send five sheets of paper across the country for a mere 44 cents. and be honest...when you get mail, and i am talking about good mail, not bills and junk, you always get a bit of a thrill. am i right? and stamps..oh the joy of stamps.  i have gads and gads of stamps, some dating back fifteen years, just waiting for the perfect envelope. they can make or break the beauty of a mailing. truly folks, ditch the liberty bells and check out some of the other philatelic offerings!!! hello, awesome love stamps.

the current love stamp.

comics...so nifty.

even the "humdrum" stamps are delectable.

these stamps are small change, but are some of my favorites.

all images of stamps are from the united states postal service website.

sometimes i suspect that my love of everything postal has led me to know more about the postal service than many of their employees. in fact, twice in my past i considered applying for a job with the postal service, but i was thwarted by the application FEE(?!?!) and the fact that many postal employees are downright pissy (mom, my apologies if that word offends you....ooops). i do not know if this is a unique qualification for the job or a not-so-glamorous result. either way, i am definitely waaaaay to cheerful to qualify for a shift in any urban post office. obviously i adore the postal service, but they do have one big BIG flaw. it is virtually impossible to make a quick run to the post office. in fact i would not be surprised if i learned that post offices hold the world record for longest average wait time. which makes it all the more amusing/frustrating to see a sign like the one below...a new addition to my local post office.

the quilting saga.

i am not exactly sure what originally caused my quilt obsession, but some time in my childhood i came up with the notion that i wanted to make a quilt and that idea never left me. i started many a quilt during the years, but at some point in the process i always stopped. it was not until i joined the peace corps that i actually managed to piece together enough little bits of fabric to get past the inevitable hump that tries to block you from finishing a quilt. i have always been fascinated by crazy quilts. "crazy" meaning that instead of a structured repeating design, every square is a mish-mash of fabric. sounds simple. no problem. i thought "crazy" was just the design. oh no. crazy is how you feel when you are putting one of these together. every single little piece of fabric is stitched onto a backing fabric and then every edge of these itty-bitty pieces is embroidered, so it will not unravel. and that is just making the squares. right.

anyhow, my stint in the peace corps exposed me to lots of gorgeous fabric. i sewed and sewed and resewed. and i saved every single scrap, no matter how small. being enamored with quilts, i of course was once again planning a quilt. i started the quilt in 2004, sewing by hand in my little hut. then in 2005 i moved to a "modern" house with electricity for a few months and used an electric sewing machine. wahoo! after relentless periods of sewing like mad, i returned from africa with one hundred pieced together squares. although these still needed a LOT of work, somehow that hurdle of creating 100 squares was enough motivation to get me through the entire quilting process. and it was a HUGE process. holy bananas.  after i moved back to the states, i settled in seattle, where i diligently embroidered edges with a hand-me-down sewing machine. the sewing machine did not fit in my little car when i moved across the country, so i bought a new machine in 2006 and continued the mammoth task of embroidering edges. 2007 was the year of cutting all the squares to size and piecing them together. finally in 2008 i put together all the layers, quilted them together, and finished off the quilt. 4 homes, 3 sewing machines, 2 continents, 1 quilt. the finished product is large enough to comfortably cover a queen-size mattress. 

 the african crazy quilt.

so, having cut my quilting teeth on such a massive project, i have since found smaller quilts to be a "simple" process. okay fine, they are not exactly simple, but they are sure a whole bunch easier than monster-sized bedspreads. plus i now know what i am doing, which helps.

wowsa, wowsa, wedding quilts.

after the peace corps quilt, i came up with the brilliant plan to create a quilt for each of my best friends' wedding gifts. three quilts. fantastic. and then they all got married within 12 months of each other. gasp. let us just say that i did a whole bunch of quilting in a short amount of time. naturally when my brother informed me that he was going to be a daddy, my brain went into instant hyper-drive planning the perfect baby quilt.

the baby quilt bonanza.

and then i opened an etsy shop and realized that maybe, just maybe, i could convince people to BUY my quilts. this added a whole new dimension to my quilting, because i discovered that perhaps i could feed my quilting habit without sending the mister and i into financial ruin. fancy. i have not actually yet sold one to someone outside of my family, but i am hopeful. the only thing i did not calculate was how much this quilting obsession would take over my life. let us just say that i am putting together fabric combinations in my sleep. two years ago i had never before finished a quilt and now i have completed seven and have more in production. egads!!!

cook-a-rama.

i cant seem to stop cooking. last week i got myself all riled up wanting to make rice. so i dug through four cookbooks until i finally settled on a recipe for rice pilaf in a vegetarian cookbook that the mister and i got as a wedding present. the hubby, who is typically blase about the process of choosing what's for dinner, saw the picture and requested that i double the recipe. the ingredient list should have been fair warning that i was in over my head, but the mister's enthusiasm was contagious. so we went to the grocery store and circled the aisles like hawks, on the look-out for cumin seeds and green cardamon pods. no luck. so we stopped by a wee produce store that often has some of the more exotic spices available in the unground format. we found a little baggy only about 1/4 full of cumin seeds and suitably inexpensive. perfecto. and then we found the cardamon pods. a bursting full bag of cardamon seeds. did i mention that the recipe only called for eight pods? this baggy had somewhere upwards of five hundred! and it cost a small fortune. the mister and i looked at each other thinking the same thought...is it really stealing if we just take eight little pods? umm...YES! we are NOT going to jail for eight cardamon pods. just when i was gathering up my gumption to ask the clerk if we could buy eight pods, the mister dropped the baggy. cardamon pods scattered in every direction. the desire to scoop up eight and disappear was overwhelming, but once again my conscience inserted itself into the chaos and said "no, no, and NO." okay fine. so now instead of merely asking the clerk if we can buy eight pods, i have to inform her that my darling husband dumped a bag of the blasted beasties on the floor. interestingly, by this point my shame had flown the coop, and i gamely asked her if we could buy the pods singly. she looked at me as if i had just asked her to lick the floor and replied simply, "no." do i need to tell you that our rice pilaf was free of cardamon pods? we finally headed home, cooked up the rice with only a few major hiccups, and enjoyed the lovely delicacy. and let me tell you, it was lovely.

of course, hunting through my cookbooks embedded the cooking bug in my brain and exposed me to a whole host of recipes i wanted to try. so last sunday i continued my rice obsession and cooked up some stir fry. found an absolutely scrumptious stir fry sauce recipe. the food turned out delectable...this mister is not a huge fan. so sad. but not to worry...i also made noodle kugel. absolutely no relation between the two dishes. in fact the thought of eating both in the same sitting makes me want to vomit. sadly, the noodle kugel did not turn out as well as i had hoped and not surprisingly, the hubster requested that i not make this again. so essentially, we have a refrigerator full of not-so-yummy delicacies. great.

despite last weekend's kitchen failures, i was not daunted. yesterday i came to the conclusion that i absolutely HAD to make cinnamon rolls. so i did. we now have about five pounds of sugary, buttery, gooey wonderfulness hanging out in our fridge. as if that wasnt enough for one evening, i also decided that i wanted to make bread. sure sure. no problem. so i searched for "easy bread recipe" and found this recipe. turns out it is the brainchild of a new york baker, who's "minimalist bread" was featured in this ny times article. took 24 hours, but i officially made the most amazing loaf of bread i have ever produced (see the picture...yes, yes, that is the one that i made!!!). clearly, i have joined the masses who think that this recipe is miraculous. and as if creating cinnamon rolls and a beautiful boule were not enough, i also made red pepper risotto and fried chicken. somebody stop me. i need a twelve step program, because i am addicted to cooking.