What I Learned in February

I (re)learned that I love using a machete.  Love it.  Like, if someone says "Hey Mariah, do you want to get a pedicure while munching on Thin Mints and watching Air Force 1, or hack down saplings in your backyard with a machete" then I'm all like "Do I really have to choose?  Can't I mach-et-tay first, and pedicure later?"  Love it so much.  The blisters you get on your hands, makes me feel alive.  Foolish, but alive.  (Gloves?  What are these gloves you speak of???)

There is no such thing as being excessive when it comes to baby pictures.  Remember this book I was working on?  Well, we finished at (81) 12"x12" pages, plus the cover.  And there's still so many pictures I didn't include.  Of course, I don't really remember those pictures now, and I won't remember the pictures that I didn't include when I'm showing this mammoth book to RG's homecoming date, but I will definitely remember all of the pictures I did include, and so I'm glad I went big instead of staying home.

To double-check personalization.  Remember this picture?

Well, I used my awesome giveaway winnings from Pear Tree Greetings to print 50 of these postcards, and I mailed them to friends and family, with the default return address of somewhere in Boston.  I'm half hoping that at least one of the postcards was addressed wrong and that it got returned to sendered to Miss Kaitlyn Broody, whoever she is.  Whoops!

Schmetz Needles are the shmetz if you're sewing leather.  Size 18.  LL.  Like a hot knife through buttah.  Or at least not super frustrating and hair-pulling-out and have-to-re-sew-and-now-I-hate-everything.  For me, those were the Organ needles.  Shmetz is the shmetz, that's all you have to know.  There are no competitors.

I am a hippie.  Apparently Handsome's shift buddies are taking bets as to when I'll stop shaving, since I've so clearly gone off of the deep end.  I would like to say that I've gotten verbal agreement from more than one friend that if I stop wearing a bra, they will stage an intervention for me, because for me to do that, well, I've done lost my everloving mind.

Girlscout cookie names are regional.  Who knew!?!  For example (i.e.- the only example that I know of), please look at the following cookie and tell me what you would identify it as:

Your answer?  Its a Samoa if you grew up in the north, and a Caramel Delite if you ate these suckers in the south. BECAUSE (wait for your mind to be blown) there are two bakeries that are licensed to make GS cookies, and they each call the cookies by a different name. Turns out, there's a whole bunch of information available about them, which you can read here and then write about in 30 days for "What I learned in March" if you so desire.

Babies are easy to pack for if you forget all of their things.  Followed quickly by learning that babies don't need all of their things, but little-but-not-dresser-drawer-little babies do sorta kinda need a place to sleep that they can't crawl out of and hypothetically hit their heads on the underside of the bed at 5:30 in the ayem because they've sleep-crawled halfway under a Queen.  Hypothetically.

I'm sure I learned other things.  I hope.  I think I might actually keep a running list, so that I can have better information to share with you.  Because I know you're concerned that my mind is full of leather and ruffles and pictures of RG and not much else.  And that's valid.  So to prove to myself and you, I'm going to keep better records.  Unless, of course, at the end of the month, I find my list contains nothing but those topics, in which case I'm going to fudge it.  Because I do what I want.

<3 M.