Awhile back, American Greetings sent me a sample pack of their spring line of greeting cards to review. I was given a variety of Mothers Day cards, Birthday cards and just because cards.

Overall, I liked the cards, although I found a few of them to be a little too sappy for me. The graphics were modern and clean and there were also cards of varying sizes. (I always go for the odd sized cards.) My favorite card was one that says “You get me” on the front and in the inside it says, “…and it’s good to be gotten.”

I will/have used most of the cards. But my biggest complaint with these and all card companies is that during mothers/fathers days it’s difficult to find cards for parents who, say, aren’t your very best friends. There are a few people in our lives that we’d like to honor on their respective days, but don’t want to lie and say, “You’re the GREATEST parent ever!!!”. Something with a simple, “Happy Mothers/Fathers Day” would be great.

• Since the arrival of Blue Sky Alpacas at Tangle, I’ve been furiously knitting the eyelet cardigan. I’m sooo close to finishing it up, just some seaming and button bands to go! (Of course I chose chocolate brown for the color.)

• We started recycling last month. Our city’s recycling program (just $1.25/month) provides these ginormous reusable bags for sorting out the different items. After filling up one of those bags in less than a month with plastics, I started re-thinking our bottled water addiction. (Smart Water, how I’ll miss you!) Reading this article (via No Impact Man) set me over the top. But after taking one sip of our tap water, I knew I couldn’t go back. So, I tracked down the affordable delivery service that Jim uses at the office, set up a cooler rental and am now happy to announce that my plastic consumption is going to go WAY down, I’ll be saving money and I won’t be contributing to the ill effects of transporting water because it’s filtered here locally. Now I just think I need this fancy, metal water bottle to drink out of. hmmm….

• A few weeks ago, Jim competed in the local battle of the bands competition. His band won that night and also took the #1 ranking out of the 16 bands competing. Thursday night he goes onto round two, where, we’re thinking he (they) will win. I haven’t liked that all the practices have taken him away from us, but I do really love to watch him play. It reminds me of the first time my 15 year old self watched him play and vowed that I was going to marry him. (AWWWWW)

• I’ve been trying really hard to force myself to go to the gym three times a week. So far, pretty good – Fridays are the hardest times to go. But! I just bought some much needed shoes that have been helping to motivate me, literally. My very first check from my google ads arrived a few weeks ago (only took me 2 years to earn!) and I treated myself to some very cool Nike ipod shoes. I always swore that I would NEVER wear Nikes, but when they work with my ipod, keeping track of my pace, calories burned, distance and time, I couldn’t resist. Plus, these babies will ONLY be worn to workout. What can I say? I’m a sucker for anything apple, it came with the husband.

I realize I haven’t had too much of substance to say lately. Life has been really busy and even though things are slowing down for the season at the yarn store (although that doesn’t mean things aren’t happening, a big shipment of Blue Sky Alpacas just arrived!!!) I’m still really busy. I’m trying to remind myself to enjoy my time with the kids as our whole dynamic will be changing when Eden starts Kindergarden in August.

Aside from being busy, I guess I just haven’t had much to say. I seem to continue to come full circle with my thoughts on church and my place in the “Christian” world. To that end, I’ve started cautiously reading the book, “Blue Like Jazz.” I think I like it, but I’m not yet sure. It seems to be journal entries from the life of a guy who has been really jaded by Christianity, but can’t let go of his connection to God. Sound familiar? One thing that he talked about was the progression of his relationship with God. That, at first, he saw God as a slot machine – you pull the lever and hope to get out of God what you want. Again, sound familiar?

The thing that makes me so unsure about this book is that I’m not sure that it’s going to give me the Answers I’m looking for, the Answers that I so desperately need. As if finding Answers can be so simple. How do you utterly reject Christianity and still love God? How can you co-exsist? How can you make a difference with your life and not do it in the name of something that you’re ashamed to associate with? I just want to find my place.

I know that I’m not the only one out there feeling like this. And while it’s of minimal comfort to know that, it’s still so hard. I don’t have many friends that I haven’t had this conversation with. Often times I get emails from readers wondering if I’ve figured anything out in my quest to come to terms with The Way Things Are Supposed To Be. So many of my generation (and Jim’s) are looking for something real. They go to church and listen to canned messages that their local church bought from some massive box church in Texas, or better yet, just the same one over and over. We’re looking for someone to speak from the heart with passion, to show us that they’ve found something real and true in God and they give us programmed responses. Never in my life have I felt so lost, so without a place where I belong.

I keep finding myself trying to reject God and I just can’t. It’s not Him I have a problem with. In fact the more I think open mindedly about Jesus, the more convinced I become that he was freakin cool. Jim pointed out the other day that after Jesus got kicked out of church, he never went back. It’s just what bothers me are the people who act on His behalf or worse, do nothing at all in His name. Maybe that’s what makes it even harder for me, I’m stuck here in limbo, unable to wash my hands of God but unable to stomach those who bear his name.

It’s been a little over a year since my last post on the subject, and I find myself in the same place. It makes me sad that in an entire year, I have found not one shred of resolution. But one thing I know, I AM going to keep searching and I am NOT going to give up and I AM going to keep talking about it. Because of anything in my life, this is the most important thing I need to come to terms with.

I think we all go through phases in our blog reading. Sometimes I’m obsessed with knitting blogs, and other times, they’re the last I read. But my two favorite blogs of late are totally unrelated. The first, The Purl Bee, is the blog of Purl, the yarn store in NYC that brought us the book Last Minute Knitted Gifts. Sometimes when I read “competitors” websites and blogs, it gives me this uneasy feeling, like I must strive to compete. But not so with The Purl Bee. I find it to be pure inspiration. I’m always excited to see that there are new posts.

The second is No Impact Man. Reading about the No Impact experiment in the NY Times a few months ago was really inspirational. It got me to start thinking about whan sort of impact I’M having on the world. And it really pushed me along in my quest to put better stuff into our bodies too. Every day that I read, I’m inspired further to take small steps toward being more green. And I find myself surprised at how easy they are becoming, which is very good!

So check them out:
The Purl Bee

No Impact Man

Generally in my house, I do the laundry. But every once in awhile Jim will “help” and my favorite new shirt will come out of the dryer small enough to fit Eden. After the most recent laundry tragedy, I decided to start writing explicit instructions on the washer like “don’t dry my grey shirt dress” or “this load needs to be run again on hot, with bleach”. (BTW, if you rinse your whites first in cold and then wash in hot with soap and bleach, they stay really white!)

All you need is a dry erase marker and the smooth top of your washer and you have an instant message board. Just make sure to test it first in an inconspicuous spot.

Thursday, I loaded up the kids and a mullet-free Jim into my FIL’s minivan and headed over the mountains to Denver. 2 Apple stores, 3 yarn stores, 1 Guitar Center, 4 Starbucks, 1 Urban Outfitters and a trip to Casa Bonita later, we headed home. It was a quick trip, but Jim was able to spend his birthday money on a couple new guitar pedals and I got to fondle the new yarn I’m thinking of ordering for Tangle.

Saturday, Eden had two soccer games in the 85 degree heat (I tell you, this side of Colorado just skips over spring) and I managed to pull off a surprise party for Jim. He is now 32 years old. The fact that he’s into his 30’s makes ME feel old! Aside from the fact that he was actually surprised, we now have enough Jack Daniels in our house to inebriate a small country. Hey – I guess it really isn’t too hard to buy Jim a present!

Sunday, I sewed curtains from the extremely cool fabric (aka bedspread) I bought at UO and talked Jim into buying shelving material for our work-in-progress dining room. (Pics will follow when it’s all done – in 2009.) I’m really excited to finish up the dining room, and just thinking of all the free space I will have with floor to ceiling shelves makes me giddy. Plus, it’s just really nice to start implementing the plans I have for this house. It only took me 6 years to decide how I really want it – I’m just ready to have it that way!

I’ll leave you with some photos from the new, fancy macbooks at the Apple Store. (PS, this was the first time I saw the new ipod shuffle, and I think I might really need one. Really. Either that or some nike ipod shoes. I fully embrace my nerd-ness, you’re welcome to laugh.)

I wanted to thank you all for your comments on my last post. I’ve been trying to write that post for the last month without sounding like a whiney baby. It looks like I still didn’t succeed. But I guess sometimes you just gotta whine!

In other news, I tracked down a local CSA that would actually return my call and my application is on it’s way to me. The list of veggies we’ll get at the peak season is WAY impressive. I’m excited about all the healthy veggi-ness we’ll be eating. (Jim is freeze drying McDonald’s for emergencies most likely related to tofu.)

Something momentous happened to me yesterday – a real milestone in my life.

I woke up with my first ever hangover.

See, Jim was having his monthly “smoke night” with the guys at our house and arranged to get me out of the house. So “his girls” (ha, he always said he’d never work with a bunch of women!) and I went out on the town. I’ve really been in need of some girl time with people my age, so my elation of being out of the house without two yap-o-matics to keep track of caused me to loose all forms of judgement.

While I didn’t think I drank that much, oh. my. God. I have never been so sick in my life. I couldn’t even keep one tiny swallow of water in my stomach. I felt so bad last night that I just sat there and cried. I was very certain that I was on the brink of death.

Luckily, sleeping all day and all night helped tremendously and today I’m functioning. It was definitely a lesson learned (a lesson in humility too!). One that I don’t plan on repeating. Ever.

I’ve really been thinking lately about how much impact I’m having on the world and how much impact it’s having on me. It’s becoming a bigger and bigger priority of mine to be more “socially conscious”. I’m really trying to implement better practices, like eating organic food whenever I can – I think about all the chemicals we’re consuming and it’s scary! I read a really great article a couple weeks ago about what we consume. How much of our nutrition is processed and altered? How much of it is actually real, whole food? I’m trying to avoid food that has ingredients that I can’t pronounce. (Whenever I’m struggling with the progression of something, be it family relationships or consumerism, I always try to think back to the way things are “supposed” to be. The way things originated. It used to be that the farmer grew the food and the people ate the food. The money people spent on food was kept in their community. And in the winter they had no fresh produce – not everything is bad about social advancements. It’s sometimes hard for me to balance what is a good advancement and where we’ve gone too far in the name of convenience or to save money.)

I’m also thinking about how much waste we generate. I come home from a grocery trip and have 10-15 plastic sacks to contend with, not to mention that everything I purchase comes in some sort of packaging. The least I could do is start bringing home my purchases in reusable sacks.

I’ve got all these thoughts about how to live a better life floating around in my head and it’s getting a little overwhelming. I think I just need to start where I can, like eating as much whole food as I can. (And accomplishing this on a budget!) And using reusable shopping bags. I’ve knit one already, so, what? I’ve got like 9 more to go! Luckily, the pattern in the Spring Issue of Knitscene is really cool. And, I may also crochet this one – of course out of different yarn!

And maybe that’s what I should go start on right now…

Oh, I love Amy Butler. I wish that there was someone in town who would carry her stuff. Wow.

Look at this bag – I don’t think she’s selling the pattern, just the bag, but if I can get my grubby hands on a pattern, you bet I’ll get my sewing machine out!

I think this is a great idea – something that I’ll need to knit for fall. via craftzine.com
Belly Warmers

I’m still thinking I really need to knit these mittens from the brand new editor of Interweave Knits.

And I’m pretty sure that I managed to score myself one of these. yay!