Author Archives: metamegan

>Howdy Stranger

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Oh, hello, I didn’t see you there.

Well here I am back in business and already thinking of New Years Resolutions with 3 full days left in 2010. I am going to ease back into blogging because I already have a full plate consisting of organizing my entire life, doing something a little different at work, starting a new exercise program, training my dog to be absolutely perfect, crafting, becoming an expert baker and cook, finding a religion, making more time for my family, keeping track of my camera, phone, glasses, ipod and wallet for an entire year straight.

I’ll keep you posted!

>Little Hippie at the Liquor Store

>Friday night, Jack and I were wondering the liquor store on our way out for the evening. The boys had an offer of free tickets to a CU Basketball game, and I was going to send them on their merry way and have a glass of wine with the moms.

We were wandering up and down the aisles trying to pick out a bottle of wine, after Jack had unsuccessfully lobbied to be left in the car. I suppose I was taking too much time, muttering to myself, “Hmmm. What do I want, what do I want, what do I want?”

Jack decided to be helpful and said, “Well, what is your body telling you?”

I said, “Oh, I don’t know, what is your body telling you?” because I wasn’t sure what he was even talking about. He decided to give me an example, “My body is saying I WANT BEER.”

Oh, OK. Thanks! I decided my body was telling me I wanted red wine. It never got any more specific, so I let my wallet make the rest of the decision.

>A Little Story About A Christmas Project

>Last December, I had a thought that I should get a frame with several spots for 5×7 pictures and at Christmastime I could use the frame to display a series of my kids on Santa’s lap. Then I thought, “Hey, it’s sort of a busy time of year, this is something I could do in January when everything settles down.” Fast forward one month. I can’t remember last January, but I must have been occasionally shopping for frames. I think at some point I thought, “I could just waut and do this next year at Christmastime.” Fast forward one year. The kids had their picture taken with Santa (story for another post), and by my calculations, I should have a total of 6 pictures floating around that need to be in a frame. Frames with 3 spots for 5×7 pictures were buy one get one free. Hello! Time to cross a year old project off the to do list.

I got home from Micheal’s with a 12 pack of food coloring and two picture frames and I was very happy. I opened the filing cabinet to my folder marked “pictures” and I found… 1 picture of the kids on Santa’s lap circa 2008. That’s it. That’s how organized I am. I put something on my to do list, and it stays there for a year, and when I finally complete the 20 minute chore of purchasing a frame, the pictures are lost.

The pictures weren’t in the baby books either. Because yeah, I’m not really keeping the baby books up to date, but I thought to check there.

Finally I thought to look in my nightstand. And what did I find? My old “to do list” folder. See, last March, I randomly thought I was going to quit my job, and I cleaned almost everyone out of my desk at work and chucked it into my nightstand drawer. What was I working on last March? Apparently shopping for a frame for Santa pictures, since the pictures were in there. I was also working on a bunch of other stuff that now doesn’t seem quite so important.

BUT – the pictures are in the frame and the kids had a really good time looking at them today. So it was worth it. A year of thinking about doing something, 30 minutes doing it.

In other news: I have sugar cookie, chewy chocolate gingerbread, star wars sugar cookie, and peanut butter surprise cookie dough made. Tomorrow I hope to start baking.

>Dodgeball 2

>I was never a team sport person, so it took my completely by surprise when I had so much fun playing dodge ball last week. Luke’s team won their game, and we went 2-0. It was really, really fun. I wondered if maybe I should join a dodge ball league. Luke wished there was a NDL or MLD.

It was a lot of running, and dodging, and sweating and laughing, and I felt like I got a work out in 20 minutes. I finally understood why people like to play sports. It’s been very interesting. On the other hand, it is sort of detrimental to my workout routine. How I can I go back to the treadmill after the excitement of dodge ball? I recently finished a 6 week challenge on the wii (EA Sports Active: More Workouts) and it was pretty good. I felt like my abs and my legs were getting in pretty good shape. For the arms part, it uses a resistance band, and I couldn’t get quite enough resistance to feel like it was working. I do have a resistance band that is tighter, but I can’t hold it and the wiimotes at the same time so the trainer just keeps telling me I am doing it wrong. But after the 6 week challenge I thought, “Hmmm. I could probably do all these moves with weights instead of the band, and without the pretty wii scenery in a shorter amount of time…” So once I got up and sort of worked out without the wii. That was about 3 weeks ago. For some annoying reason, the wii seems to be the best motivator for me. I can do it at home, I don’t like the program to remind me that I have missed a workout, so I don’t miss workouts, and I seem to get sort of in shape. The problem is that once I finish a program on one of the wii games, I don’t want to do it again. And now we have the added challenge of finding something as fun as dodge ball. I’ve been researching yoga studios, dance studios, cross fit gyms, the Y, regular gyms, and workout videos. And when I am not doing that, I am resting on the couch from the exertion of dodge ball until I can get up and gather the strength to start preparing for COOKIE EXTRAVAGANZA 2010.

So far I have the sugar cookie dough rolled out and in the freezer, along with the dough for chewy chocolate gingerbread. The problem is deciding what to do next:
1.) The dough that comes with the star wars cookie cutters?
2.) Chocolate peanut butter surprise?
3.) Pecan Cookies?
4.) Spritz?
5.) Ice box cookies?

And so on. 1 and 4 are definitely going to happen, just need to find the time. Then I am torn about the rest. I plan to get the dough all done this week if I can. Then I can bake on Saturday and maybe just relax and decorate Sunday.

As for dodge ball, it turns out that it’s more fun when you win. I had hoped I would never know the loss of a dodge ball game, but last night did us in.

We have one more game Wednesday, and then may or may not go on to the finals. So it’s still all dodge ball and cookie dough all the time at Casa de MetaMegan.

>Dodgeball

>Well, I made it through 30 days of daily posts. I’d love to post an awesome and insightful summary of my month and everything I learned, but I am late for my dodgeball game, and I am worried that if I wait till after the game to post, I may not be coherent.

*Edited to add that we WON! And to fix some “typos”.

>Spring Creek!

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From Summer 2008

Dave and I had a rare night out this weekend, with Grandmom and Grandad in town and happy to babysit. It was 35 degrees outside so we thought, “Let’s ride our bikes to The Fox to see Spring Creek!” We have fond and hazy memories of Spring Creek from the Keystone Beer and Bluegrass Festival, and every time they play around town we are very sad to learn that we missed it, or that I was too lazy to go. Like I said, I don’t get out much. This may have been what prompted a certain Purse Girl to say, after I stopped by her house for a drink along my bike ride to The Fox, “Wow, this is going to be a big night for you, MetaMegan. You know, going out, staying out late.” I’ll have you know, I used to do that 5 nights a week. I had skillz. Skillz that I was looking to test at The Fox. Oh, also Spring Creek was opening for the Emmitt-Nershi Band, which is a side project for some members of The String Cheese Incident. I don’t know why I am explaining that because I think people are like, “Who?” or “OMG!!!!! STRIIIIING CHEEEEEESE.” I am actually sort of in the former column, which is weird because I have heard of them, probably been to a show or two, and I was still like, “Who did you say is on after SPRING CREEEEEEEK?”

So, we stopped for drinks, biked to The Fox in 35 degree weather, locked our beautiful, beautiful bikes up out front and went in for more drinks and to find a spot to watch the show. Beers in hand, we found a great spot with a ledge for your drink on the side, etc, etc, that Dave claims in the best location. We were chatting and enjoying our date, but whenever there was a lull in the conversation, I was unable to block the conversation of the people in the area just above us which was, “One Thousand and One Pet Deaths.” After a while I said, “I can’t take another one. Are you listening to 1001 pet deaths?” So we moved, inexplicably, to an area that was very roomy, the very back of the room, below the sound board. The band came on, they were awesome, and immediately a very tall and wide man stood right in front of me. Dave said that we were in the tall person section and it was too bad we gave up our prime location. Reminder: Pet Death One-Upsmanship is nothing I want to be near. But the tall guy moved and we were happy. Then an even taller guy appeared, and I couldn’t help but laugh. Laugh and laugh and laugh. Dave said, “Gigantism must be in the water.” I said, “I thought at first he had a wooden leg, but I think that’s how he dances. OMG, he is dancing a jig! It must be hard to dance when your limbs end so darn far away from your brain.” Just then, he turned around, spread his arms (wingspan 10 feet at least) and said, “WHERE ARE ALL MY FRIENDS?”

We headed back to the bar and decided the following:

Mad Blue Grass Dancing Skillz: Rusty
Ability to Stay Up Later than 11:00 pm doing something other than spooning Lucy and watching Weeds (and/or working): Untested
Ability to Snidely Critique Random Strangers: Never Sharper

We got our drinks, gave up on the tall section and headed to the dance floor down in front. There, we were surrounded by a guy wearing a panda hat, Father Time, and a guy in a tuque dancing the robot. And a guy with a pretty good voice who seemed to really wish he had his own bluegrass band. Snidegasm.

When Emmit-Nershi came on, a few other members of String Cheese joined him for a few songs, and people were dying from the excitement. Panda was asked if he thought they’d play some song and he said, “THAT WOULD BE MY DREAM.” I asked Dave, “What’s your dream song? Something with words? Can I yell SPRING CREEEEK?” He pretended he couldn’t hear me. Later I thought maybe I was being annoying, but he said I wasn’t and that maybe it’s good for me to get out of the house and make fun of strangers for a change.

Emmit-Nershi et all, was v. awesome though. They played a Blue Grass cover of Just Like Heaven which was amazing. Oddly, he dedicated it to those born in the 80’s instead of those in high school in the 80’s who were sitting at home instead of going to homecoming. Also odd? I think they had played one note when Dave had identified it as a Cure song.

It was a great night.

>Craft-tastic

>Last year I wanted to blog about some of the things I was making for Christmas, but then that would have spoiled the surprise. By January, I had forgotten everything. But I am now in the process of planning holiday gifts and crafts and so I am revisiting last year.

For Anthony, my nephew, and budding chef, I made an apron, and I had Dave model it:

From December2009 1

I also had the boys help me make wrapping paper:

From December2009 1

Jack and I actually already gotten a head start on that project this year.

I also made some photo books, and after Christmas I made a smock for my niece, Rose, and a sort of jacket for Hope. This year I don’t have any solid plans yet, so feel free to comment with suggestions. Of course, cookies are ALWAYS on the agenda, and Laura wants to make soap. But Dave and I both had the same reaction to that: …shudder…ew…fight club

Maybe in all my free time away from the computer I am going crazy crafting!

>Black Friday

>I usually do a lot of Christmas shopping before Thanksgiving, and then devote December to making thousands of cookies. But so far I have purchased this many presents:0. I just made a frownie face as I typed that. I haven’t even updated my excel spreadsheet with columns for each person, gift ideas, final selection, wrapped (Y/N) and shipped (Y/N). I haven’t even started sewing plaid shorts for Eric in the mellow make-a-gift exchange. I decided this would be the year that I don’t stress about gifts and instead of thinking really hard about what individual gift card to get for what teacher, I would just get everyone the same thing! One stop! That is as far as I have gotten. So I guess my carefree attitude has backfired because last night I dreamed it was Christmas day, and I hadn’t purchased gifts for anyone. And I had to go online and order a Crabtree and Evenlyn gift basket for all 100 people on my list. Then I made up some excuses about why the gifts were late, and why lotions are really not lame and impersonal AT ALL. (This is the dream talking, not me.) I woke up groggy and upset, but that’s because it was midnight and someone from work was calling me.

So I got down to business and IM’d my sister and brother and asked for gift ideas. Oddly, they suggested lotion. I guess my nightmares are telling me something.

Are you on my list, and not interested in lotion? Better comment with some ideas!