About Me

Not Even Recycled

April 27, 2008 by Kathryn

I have sad news friends. After less than 7 years of marriage I have parted ways with my wedding bands.

I came home from my trip and found that my purse was absolutely crammed with dirt, crumbs and mysterious chunks of mystery. I removed all the non-trash items and shook the bag vigorously over the trash can to remove the rest of the grime.

Then this Friday I realized my fingers had un-swole after returning to the Pacific North West. For some reason the always swell up like melons when we go visit family in Utah. So I went to get my wedding bands out of the zipper compartment of my purse and found it unzipped and empty.

Suddenly I remembered that over a week ago I had dumped all the “trash” out into the garbage can. I’m 99% sure the rings went with it. So off they go to a landfill somewhere. Two more pieces of metal that will never be recycled.

I’m sick about the loss but Dan says, “Everyone makes mistakes.” Marrying him was not one of them.

A Consuming Problem

April 20, 2008 by Kathryn

I love to buy stuff. I know you can’t buy happiness but I truly am very happy most of the time when I’m shopping. It feels good to find a “treasure,” snag it for my very own and then have the power to purchase it. Now if I can get that treasure for close to no money, even better.

The more I read about health, environmental friendliness and green living, the more I realize that nearly everything I own is either toxic, wasteful, irresponsible or unfair to humans or other animals. It makes me want to get rid of everything I currently have and then buy all new organic, non-toxic, fair trade versions of my possessions. Oooo, it’s fun being green if it means you can shop shop shop. I don’t think this is the answer either however.

If the tree has already been killed, the slave has already labored, the item already purchased and used, then unless it’s filled with lead or some other posisonous substance, it’s probably more responsible for me to use up the item I have than to chuck it in a landfill or even recycle it and keep buying more.

I have to refrain from buying more reusable grocery bags every time another store comes out with a cuter, more environmentally friendly version. Even things that are produced using resources responsibly are still using resources and anything you buy will have some impact on our world. One of the best things we can do to help the environment is to stop buying so much junk and that’s something that should fit into anyone’s budget. The next time you pick up that ill-fitting t-shirt on clearance for 3 dollars and consider buying it because it’s ONLY 3 DOLLARS, think about whether you really need it or whether you can make do with what you have at home and save that 3 dollars for something else, like a present for me.

In this spirit, I’m not going to go out and buy new organic cotton sheets until those I already have wear themselves out. When I’m buying new because I need them, then I’ll get the good stuff. I need to think about my decisions carefully instead of setting fire to all my earthly possessions so I can save the world.

Greener Than Yesterday

April 15, 2008 by Kathryn

If you’ve read this blog for long, you know I’m not the stereotypical Seattle Eco-Mom, rallied round my family with a pocket full of granola. I’m acutally not sure anyone is that mom. I am trying to do better though. I’m making baby steps to a minty green type of life.

It’s exciting and I want to talk about it without driving everybody crazy or giving the impression that I’m an all-or-nothing Al Gore disciple. I just want to be healthy. I just want to feel like every aspect of my life is reaching towards harmony with my moral code.

If I truly believe that people should treat each other well and that the earth we live in is a gift, then I should be trying to buy more products that are produced fairly and with less pollution and less toll on the earth’s resources. It’s hard to do because I’m not rolling in money but I do lots of hard things. I think it’s possible to be healthy and have a positive impact on the planet without my brains exploding because I’m thinking too hard or draining my life savings.

I need help though. That’s where you come in. Starting today on SeattleMomBlogs.com, we’re counting down to Earth Day next Tuesday by encouraging women across the blogosphere to write about ways they’re being more mindful of the environment in their homes and in the world. Are you saving the planet, even just a little bit more than you were yesterday? Click over and find out what you can do to help. Throughout the week we’ll be giving away gDiapers, Method products, Gorgeously Green and more.

The Big Trip Report

April 5, 2008 by Kathryn

I have so much to tell you but honestly I’d rather just ask you for a band-aid. My feet are SHREDDED from all the cute shoes I’ve been wearing around the city. It seems that everything less than 5 miles away in New York is considered “close” and people just hoof it all over the city to save on cab fare. This would have been fine if I’d stuck with the white tennis shoes but I swapped them out for heels, heels, heels and I’m paying the price for my fabulousness. Mir hooked me up with several band-aids this morning but they’re failing miserably at this point. I’m not sure what kind of adhesive they use in Georgia but it doesn’t adhese as well as I’d like.

Still, I’d rather wear a non-sticky band-aid from Mir than a proper Northern band-aid any day. She is that rad. The first time I met her 2 years ago, I was providing her with a band-aid to help with what I believe was an unfortunate shaving incident.

Speaking of shaving, when I asked the lady at the deli next to our hotel if she had a razor for sale, she said, “Like for shaving?” and pantomimed running a razor across her chin and cheek. “Yes,” I replied. “Perhaps I didn’t pluck well enough,” I mused.

My blisteringly fabulous shoes were a topic of discussion at the closing keynote session today. Earlier in the day Elisa Camhort Page (who needs to stop adding names) commented on their cuteness and like any savvy shopping woman I smiled proudly and told her, “SIX BUCKS!” These little babies were on clearance at Fred Meyer and I liked them so much that I picked up an extra pair in a random size to give away to the first lucky size 10 Cinderella I came across.

So during Elisa’s closing session interview of The Budget Fashionista, she shared my story and I got to stand up and show off my bargain to a room full of bloggers and business people. Sweet. You’ve got to love a women’s conference. And I did. I loved the conference.

I was speaking on a panel with Method and A Squared Group about their Detox Seattle program, coming soon to a city near you, and I didn’t know quite what to expect from a blogging business conference. I blog but I’m not a business, although I do work with them from time to time in my blogging endeavors.

The conference was much more intimate than BlogHer’s main event and I felt like I really got to spend time building relationships that I had started with waves in passing at other conferences. The pace was good and there was a ton of information to absorb about good blogging practices, building buzz, working with marketing firms and businesses and what kind of wipes to use for your potty-training toddler.

My panel went really well, a case study on using social media as part of a successful marketing campaign. (Click here for the live blog. I’m case study #4) Method really did everything right in Seattle, a personal, sincere, respectful pitch, a great product, something valuable in exchange for my time, and excellent relationship building and follow up. Besides all that, every person we’ve met from Method and their marketing firm have been amazing people, people you want to hang out with, people you want to stay up all night giggling with and braiding each other’s hair while dancing to Milli Vanilli cassette tapes. (If they ever ask you to engage in those activities, accept their offer without delay.)

I had fun up there because I had a positive topic to speak on, my fellow panelists were rad, and the attendees were intelligent, positive, encouraging and engaging. (If they ever ask you to speak at BlogHer Business, accept their offer without delay.)

I got a brief chance to experience the city, crazy cab drivers, touring Times Square with Gabby’s too nice relatives, visiting the Empire State building with my cousin who lives in New York and didn’t act at all annoyed to be briefly tour around with me. She even humored me by taking one of those little bike trailers back to my hotel when we had a tough time hailing a cab. For 10 dollars, a very friendly and superhumanly strong man shuttled us for 10 blocks, being careful to swerve too close to moving vehicles and laugh at our reactions. I suppose near-death is part of the fun of the experience and he expects a bigger tip for taking you to the edge of safety without dropping you off the cliff.

In an attempt to increase the frequency with which I invite strange foreigners to my hotel room, I had a nice chat with Sarah, whom I see becoming a great friend and collaborator. She is really someone worth knowing and not just because of the accent or the fact that I’m hoping she’ll show me around next time I’m in London.

The main message I’d leave with marketers is that bloggers write about experiences. If you can give them a great experience with your product or service, chances are they will write about it because it’s part of their life and they want to talk about their life. By in large they do not want to talk about your potato chips or premium shoe laces. They want to talk about their life. If you can find a creative way to make your brand a part of their life in a mutually beneficial way with an experience attached, chances of getting your message out are greater. If a blog is a representation of me, then I’m not going to write about something unless it reflects who I am and what I want to be associated with. So choose carefully who you market to and find a way to partner with them, rather than expecting complimentary advertising.

Now I have one last thing. As I was walking through the airport this afternoon, I caught my reflection in a mirror and noticed that the back of my skirt was caught in my laptop bag and my back-ish half was hanging all kinds of out. I don’t know how long I’d been like that, but I’d been walking around for at least 10 minutes with my bags before I noticed it. For the love of human dignity, if you see someone walking around like that, let them know, I BESEECH YOU!

Mercenary Me

March 13, 2008 by Kathryn

It’s time again for the most fun ever. Please take a few minutes to fill out this reader survey. It helps my advertising network sell ad space on the site if they can tell Tillamook that all my readers eat cheese 3 times a day and other such nonsense. When results come in, I’ll type them up so you can see who else is reading along with you.

Insomnia

March 10, 2008 by Kathryn

I’m up in the middle of the night rearranging furniture so I figure I might as well pause and write a post about it. The interweb needs to know these things.

I was laying in bed listening to Dan breath and wondering how he can sleep so peacefully when my cookbooks have no home to speak of. I shift them from cupboard to cupboard forever dreaming that they will someday have a place to call home, a place in the sun, far from the madding cupboards.

Recently, I’ve come to the conclusion that I can live in this house forever and would kind of like to live in this house forever though it’s not as big as I always thought I needed. It’s big enough and I’d like to live a simple enough life that I could find a way to keep all my junk in the space I have or get rid of it. Oh, do I have a lot of junk. And I feel like I’m always getting rid of stuff.

So I shift things from room to room.

Tonight I borrowed a bookshelf from the office and carried it downstairs to the dining room without waking anyone. I filled it with my cookbook friends who breathed a sigh of relief and then I moved the table and chairs every which way to see how they looked best and if it was possible to fit them in now and still walk between them and the wall without first undergoing gastric bypass or chopping off my butt. I think I’ve found a way.

But one of my dining room chairs is antique white and all the rest are stained oak and I feel they must match but I want to make do with what I have so maybe I’ll paint all the rest of them and the table antique white to match the one lone wolf chair. Maybe Antique Mommy can help me out.

And I want to weave baskets out of the tall weeds in my yard… and maybe a muumuu. But it’s too dark to harvest. And I want to dig up the garden plot to plant the Aspens and Birch trees I bought last week. But I’m afraid of finding more moles. And I want to fill every unused container in my house with dirt and plant things in them. But I don’t have any dirt. And my little slave laborers are sleeping. And I want to use the wood from the fallen-down section of fences to make extra planters. After I pressure wash them. And let them dry for a few months. And I’d like to fold some laundry. But that is not fun.

You know what is fun? Blogging. And swimming in chocolate. With your mouth open.

Come Friends, Let us Gather Around my Fridge

March 6, 2008 by Kathryn

My fridge is very clean right now. I hosted a rave/baby shower with some friends last night and I had a ton of stuff to get done to be ready. Bathroom to clean. Games to plan. Carpet to vacuum. Food to bake. Gifts to wrap. Disco ball to hang. Glow-sticks to ignite. Plastic babies to freeze in ice cubes.

I went to get some ingredients out of the fridge and noticed what I’ve been noticing for the past few weeks but haven’t cared much about until I had a million other things to do. My fridge was absolutely disgusting. Some unknown substance had spilled and it’s sticky brownness had been spreading throughout the various shelves and racks. As I’d move a bottle from one place to another, the sticky brownness would follow it, make friends and multiply.

What if one of my guests asked to put something in the fridge and saw the mess? This would not do. So instead of cleaning my bathroom, vacuuming or making food, I spent over an hour cleaning every square inch of my fridge. Then I ran around like a decapitated chicken for the last hour before the party, neglecting to feed the kids and begging Dan to take them somewhere offsite and feed them.

Oh the lengths to which I will go to procrastinate. It’s like the time I redid my filing system before the Today Show crew came out to film at my house. What if I needed to put a piece of paper away and they caught it on video? Never mind that the windows had greasy fingerprints at Magoo level and I had absolutely nothing to wear. The files needed to be reworked!

And the kids were twerked off about the party too. The house was covered with balloons, streamers, lava lamps, glow sticks and chocolate and they could have none of it. They should know by now that fun things are only for mommies.

Whoa NETI!

March 2, 2008 by Kathryn

As someone who has been known to vomit when faced with the sound of my husband blowing his nose and who swears they know what phlegm smells like and is sickened by the scent of it especially when it’s coming from my own body, I don’t know what possessed me to take my naturopath’s advice and buy a Neti pot with which to flush my nasal cavities.

Nasal cavities contain phlegm. Sometimes I gag just saying the word phlegm. I’ve certainly never been capable of coughing it up because then it would have to enter my mouth and my mouth is a dwelling place for taste buds and nerve endings, making it a completely unsuitable home for noxious goo. Granted, phlegm is 100% natural and possibly organic, depending on what I had to eat that day, but so is bird poop and I don’t want either of them splattered in my mouth.

But the doctor told me to get flushing with Neti so I got to the store and picked one up. When I got to the cash register, the Whole Foods clerk smiled and asked, “Is Oprah running her show about Neti pots again?”

“No.” I gave her a 3-snaps-GIRRRL!-I-belong-here smile. “My naturopath suggested it to me. Does Oprah do a show about Neti pots? I haven’t watched her in a while.”

“Oh. Yeah. This is the third one I’ve sold today and we usually sell a bunch right after they run that episode.”

I smugly tucked the pot into my fabric shopping bag and headed home to cleanse myself. I looked at the box. That girl flushing her sinuses looks so HAPPY, I thought, “This can’t be that bad.”

It can. Trust me, it can. You fill the pot with saline solution which you then pour into one nostril on your tilted head. The water then runs through all of your sinuses and, if the angle of your head isn’t precisely correct, into your mouth.

Have you ever tasted saline solution? It sort of tastes the way I imagine phlegm would taste, warm, salty, disgusting. And I know where it’s been. And I know what it’s supposed to be flushing out… or in to my mouth. And I cough and gag, compose myself, re-tilt my head and repeat.

Honk if you're reading this text. Seriously please mention it in comments if you read this.

The drips in this image were NOT photoshopped (at least by me) Brownie’s honor.

I certainly wasn’t grinning as the goobers ran down MY face and the only reason I kept my mouth open was to let the solution run out.

Maybe I’ll try again in a few weeks… or years… or at some point when all of my taste buds and nerve endings have been fried in a terrible taste-bud-and-nerve-ending-frying accident.

Consumer Motivation

February 26, 2008 by Kathryn

I bought these because they are unsulphured and unsweetened.

I bought these because they are made from BLUE CORN, which is corn that is BLUE. The chips may not be a whole food, but they only have 3 ingredients and I can count that high.

I bought this because a little good sharp cheddar goes a long way which is good for my waistline.

I bought these because while I was pausing to see why they were selling “minions” from the refrigerator case at Trader Joes, Magoo leaned over the edge and spit all over them.

They say that “if you break it you buy it.” I think that if you hock a loogey all over a piece of meat, the same rule applies.

Smirk Rehab

February 25, 2008 by Kathryn

Someone recently told me that my face at rest looks a little angry, mean or possibly snarkish. Since I rarely see my face when it’s truly at rest, I had no idea that I was possibly sending people a rageful vibe.

This has troubled me and I’ve begun practicing my neutral face. I want to look happy but I don’t want to sit around with a goofy grin on my face, my eyes popping open with inexplicable joy at the thought of the traffic I’m sitting in or the produce I’m squeezing.

I also don’t want to be one of those people who walks around with a secret smirk on their face, a look says, “Sh-yeah. I am so much cooler than you. You don’t even know that your fly is undone.” Do you know those people, people who make you self-conscious by the simple fact that they always seem to by laughing on the inside, not in a nice way?*

So, I’m trying to cultivate a look of friendly, happy, effortless contentment. It sounds easy, but oh no it is not.

I want to keep my mouth closed to avoid what my dad refers to as “looking like an idiot” and I want the corners of my lips to turn up ever so slightly but not enough to make me look demented or promote wrinkles or other facial decay.

I spent 45 minutes on the elliptical trainer at the gym today sweating away my troubles and trying out various relaxed facial expressions in the equipment video screen which is quite reflective and conveniently placed.

I’ll tell you, I’m not making a lot of progress in this mission. I end up looking like someone who’s trying to look relaxed, friendly and effortlessly at peace while bouncing up and down with a heart rate of 160. It’s very strange and when I’m practicing facial expressions, I always end up doing the fake laugh like I’ve just thought of something mildly hilarious from earlier in the day. One corner of my mouth twitches to the side, I wrinkle my nose and make a mild “hmph” sound while nodding my head ever-so-slightly. Trust me — I look really cool and nonchalant while I do that.

In the end I decided that perhaps I should work on learning to make a face that does not inform everyone that on my MP3 player I’m listening to Vanilla Ice, Paula Abdul and Shakira in Spanish (which I don’t understand) and I’m grooving so hard on the inside that it would be embarrassing to the other gym patrons if they knew what was happening inside my head.

Hola Isabel! I feel you dawg. Move to my town. Iron something on for me!

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