Baby pictures!

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Living with boys

Today I made the mistake of not looking before sitting in the bathroom. My house is full of men: Matt the BabyDaddy, young Jonas, Brien the housemate, and Chester the un-castrated dog. Do I not have enough testosterone in my life? You'd think after all this time, I might learn to look before I plant my derriere, but as I sat on the toilet this afternoon, I felt my rear contact some rather *cold* and probably filthy porcelain, and almost fell through the toilet bowl. Ew! Maybe if there were another set of ovaries in the house, I might get the seat down some time, some day? I don't understand men: why do they make lids for toilets if you're supposed to leave the seat up? The world may never know...

Featured Shop

My latest Etsy shop find is Darlincrafts, a quilter's dream. Darlene learned to crochet from her mother when she was just 10 years old and picked up sewing from home ec (not her favorite, but she does it alot). She's an at-home mother of two grown sons in West Michigan, Sand Lake. An avid supporter of animal rescue for many years, she is devoted to her dog. When family needs stepped in the way, she had to take a break from working with animal rescue, but remains a constant help tothose around her. When her brother was diagnosed with follicullar lymphoma, she was there to help with a subling stem cell transplant, which has helped him to make a full recovery. Darlene's sister suffered an aneurism at age 42, and she was also there to help. She remains a lifelong supporter of cancer research and animal rescue. Her favorite saying is "don't breed if you can't rescue."

Darlene started Darlincrafts in March out of financial need, so she hasn't decided just where she would like to take her business in the future. Be sure to check out this shop, guys! She's a super-devoted. super-active lady and her stuff rocks!

Poop!

Yesterday I took young Jonas to my mother's house and was hanging out for the day while my good friend Charlie worked hard to replace the blown head in my car. Iwas going out front with the baby and leaned forward to strap him into the stroller while my mother talked to the neighbors in the next yard. I felt something large smack into my ponytail, and suffering a large phobia of bees, I instinctively (and stupidly) slapped it out of my hair. What fell on the stroller tray, rather than flying off to land in more hair, was a large, white, gelatinous glob of bird mess. Awesome.

RME

Revolution Money Exchange scares the pants off me. I did sign up, and had some trouble verifying my account because I've lived at my house for less than a year. I called customer service and they answered me very quickly the first time. The guy I spoke with was friendly and sharp. He told me to expecy an email from them by Monday (it was Friday evening), and that I could fax in some utility bills to confirm my address. The email never arrived, so I called back on Thursday, and waited for a long time. Someone finally answered. He was friendly, but not as sharp, and I stayed on hol while he brought up my account for an interminable hell of twelve minutes with the worst hold-music I have ever heard. Ever. He finally came back and told me to go ahead and fax everything even though I had not received the email, so I guess that is all straightened out. Overall, I'm going to give them a B+ for customer service, but a C for organization.

Some guy named Tripp has introduced himself on the Etsy forums as an ambassador of RME. He's getting bashed for opening a so-called "sock puppet" account in the name of promotion, but he is offering himself for questions in a thread on RME. I think it's noble that he's there, but I have no doubt that he was ultimately sent there by RME and that no matter what he does on the forums, he is definitely promoting good will for RME. Ah, well. His answers are vague or very pre-fabbed and seem drafted by a stadium full of lawyers, but I expected as much. My biggest beef is that he skirts the issue on the topic of information sharing.

When we sign up for an online service, we expect that online service to allow us to communicate with them via the internet. As a financial institution, they gather sensitive information such as your name, address, and social security number. What stinks is that they require to you to opt out of the haring of that information with third party affiliates (read: "marketers") by sending in a written statement with your name and social security number. Just long enough for them to sell that information for a buck. I don't mind all this deceptive information sales, but can't their guy be upfront about it? They don't harge any fees like Paypal, but they have to make their money somehow. I just wish they would find a better way to do it and give us an online opt-out.

I'm finally starting to arrange my free time around Etsy life and taking the business thing more seriously...but it's hard. Full-time mommy-ing and full-time student-ing and soon re-entering the workforce doesn't really help a budding entrepreneur. I don't want my shop to take away from my home life, which I barely have time for it seems, but I don't want to do a shoddy job with Itsy Bitsy. Humph....dunno what my point was exactly. Has anybody tried out Project Wonderful?

I'm thinking about jumping into the mob and bidding on ad space, as well as offering ad space on this blog, but I'm not sure. Does anybody have anything to say about them? I'm a busy lady. Should I be devoting my energy elsewhere?

Sweet!

Timothy Adams is always cooking up something for the Etsy community. The latest is Buried Treasury, and site which allows users to locate shops by pinointing with certain tags. It has had over 28,000 visitors since May 2 and is the newest hit among the handmade world. Shop owners can list their minis within five tags, and it's all free! Check it out.

Hey, look what I found!

5 oh!

So as I type, there are four squad cars, two sheriffs, a paddy wagon, and a few unmarked cruisers out front of my house. I was upstairs with Baby Daddy hanging a shelf in the nursery when we heard an enormous bang, and felt a huge thump throughout the house. Young Jonas was on the second floor, asleep in his swing, and we had snuck upstairs during this precious naptime to get some house maintenance done.
I looked out the window and saw a man in the alley crouched and holding a rifle, and immeditaely hit the deck. I told Matt to get down and said GET THE BABY and flew down the stairs as fast as I could, calling Brien,our new housemate, as I ran. Matt and I met Brien in the stairwell, and I snatched the baby from his swing, running downstairs to the kitchen andcrouching by the refrigerator with kiddo in my arms. Brien had heard it too, and had a chance to see the SWAT team outside. We all ran for the kitchen/basement, and then Brien says "take the baby and lie down in the tub." So, Matt and Jonas and I crowd into our tub (luckily, a huge jacuzzi-style) and lay low. Eventually Brien gives us the all-clear and we come out of hiding in the bathroom. Funny, because this whole thing goes down while I'm wearing this skirt that I made and a bra and flip-flops....our house is hot with no AC, so, you know, I like to hang shelves with my shirt off. Anyway, it had taken me a second the realize that the man in the alley was part of the SWAT team, not a psycho killer guy with a gun, and I had thought bullets were going to rip through our house any second.
It turns out that the renters two houses up who moved in last week were in hot water with the law. I don't exactly know what the story is, but good riddance. They were loud and obnoxious, and I don't want addicts hanging outside of the house while my kid sleeps.
We moved to Curtis Bay about seven months ago when Matt bought his first house in preperation for baby. I've lived in this area for most of my life, so it's not new to me, but this immeiate block has its...problems. Most of the people rent, and some of them are traffickers or addicts. It's only a mile or two from suburbia, but just inside the Baltimore city limits, enough to bring the bad ju-ju onto our front stoop. Rowhome life is crazy sometimes, but I think we did alright with our first real fire drill.

April Featured EtsyBlogger

It's a little late in coming, but I wanted to give dues to StormyDesigns, the featured EtsyBlogger extraordinaire! A proud member of the Polymer Clay Artists' Guild, StormyDesigns is also a very active member of the EtsyBlogger Team. She is a co-founder of the Blog Carnival and runs a wicked shop! Best of all, and this is awesome: FREE SHIPPING to the US and Canada. Be sure to check her out!