"" Lulu's Sandbar: January 2009
Welcome to my sand bar - trying to push past my boundaries and serve up humorous observations on life...

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Who do I think I AM, anyway??!!

Have you ever had someone say that to you, oh so indignantly?  WHO do you think you ARE, ANYway???  Hmmmmm???!!  Just who do you think you ARE?!

And they say it with that hint of scorn and high-falutin' self-riteousness.....as IF!

 Well. Huh.  Let me THINK about it.  I'd like to THINK that I'm a kind, generous, smart, funny, strong woman who loves to read, likes to be productive, wants to be a best-selling author or famous artist, hopes to be a decent, loving, wicked cool family member and some days, just barely clings to the edge of insanity until someone pushes me into the abyss.

But I could be wrong.  Who do YOU think I am, Miss Smuggy Workout McPants with your clothes scattered all over the bench in the locker room at the gym? How DO you sniff quite so indignantly, as you gather up your underoos, shoes, makeup and is that a pack of flavored thongs falling out of your purse? to allow me an inch of space to perch my tired butt while I tie my shoes.

Apparently, you think that my membership card is somehow less than your card, and that your card entitles you to be rude while my card entitles me to wait until you are completely done with your grooming before I can enter your space.  Even though I'm not worthy.

Seriously.

Saturday, January 24, 2009

Buttons!!


I made a button.  And it was stupid easy, and I'm sure that many sewing, crafty, quilting, creative people will pass over this post with a "So what?"

But I'm absurdly pleased!!  Last year at this time I was reading Somerset Studio and thinking...maybe I could do something like that or that or that that THAT some day.  And in less than a year, I've started and continued my blog, met some great and like-minded people online, opened my little etsy store and I create or do something crafty every day.

So, this button represents a year of challenging myself and I'm just silly stoopid pleased with myself!!  I'm a button girl!  Button Lulu!  Lulu Button!  

Oops.  That kind of sounds like a stripper name or a celebrity baby name.

But still!

P.S. Sunday UPDATE - Amber!  (please read her comment) - Great stripper name for you, and thank you for adding to mine - Lulu Easy Button.  Bwa ha ha ha ha!!!  (coffee coming out of nose).

Friday, January 23, 2009

Slumdog Millionare

I had to go tonight to figure out the buzz.  It's a good sign when everyone in the theater sits through all of the credits, there is a pause, and then a collective sighhhhh.....

REALLY liked it.  M liked it too, even though there were zero car chases.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Pick MEme!

Yoiks!  I've been tagged!  I'm now a meme or have a meme or passed a meme..(exCUSE me!) or something.  Is that a name?  Can I now be known as Lulu MeeMee?  

What is a meme? According to Wikipedia, a meme is a unit of cultural ideas.  Meme-ologists contend that memes evolve by natural selection through variation, mutation, competition and inheritance.

Yeah, I didn't get it either.  Apparently my ideas will be so varied that they will evolve into mutated funky ideas but that's ok because I will beat everyone at games and get some money!

Ok, that's not it either.  Here's the deal.  My newest blogster friend Amy Kate (over there In the Quarry, see?) tagged me.  (Stuff in parentheses is my meme mutation, not part of the rules.  I don't think.)

The rules:
1. Link to the person who tagged you.  (me: check) (me again - this is not part of the rules)
2. Post the rules on your blog. (me: check)
3. Write six random things about yourself.  (me: in a minute)
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them (me: uh oh.  what if I don't HAVE six people to link?  What if I only have two? Or one? Will the circle be unbroken??)
5. Let each person know they've been tagged and leave a comment on their blog.  (got it)
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up. (yup)

1. Maybe you've guessed my first random.  I like to 'look things up.'  In a dictionary or on wikipedia or by reading ALL of the book from front to back - including the copyright date, the dedication and the agent / editor acknowledgements.  I like to know stuff.  That doesn't mean that I remember it - I just like to know it for the moment.  

2. Food, paint, papers, whatever - I'm wearing it or dropping it because I'm a spiller. My staff is constantly ready to alert me to a drip or a blot and they carry cleaning agents to help me clean up.  Michelle O has the Secret Service with guns and curly ear devices, I have colleagues with Shout and Tide-to-Go pens.

3. I love the smell of new books.  I know, who doesn't - but I'll actually pick up books at the bookstore and take a good sniff of the pages to make sure that it will smell readerish and booky and new.  Plus the edges have to be smooth.  And the spine can't be cracked.  Serious booking.

4. I have a freakish ability to find missing items, even if they don't belong to me.  I once told my husband where to find his new daily planner by phone.  From Europe.  It's because I have an internal lost item GPS - also known as 'a uterus.' 

5. Wasps and bees don't frighten me - I'll slap that wasp silly with my bare hand and crush it beneath my stiletto.  Bees - have to leave them alone, especially honey bees.  They're going through a weird cultural transformation or something - colonies of honey bees keep disappearing and it will really affect our food chain.  Really!  You can look it up.

6. At home, I will only eat using our yellow plates.  We have nice Fiesta ware-type dishes, with bright colors.  ONLY the yellow.  Not the blue or the green or the red.  I'll wash it every night before dinner.

So - enough about MEme.   

How about you?

W and Amber and Ang and the sublime Miss Y?  

Wendi, because we luuuuuv bacon, Amber and Angie because I found you both in such a random fashion - and because you've probably been tagged before and can just copy/paste - and Yo Mama?  Because you rock, baby - we need to know more about you!

Peace out.
Lu


Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Hokey Pokey Pickles


This guy makes me laugh every time I look at him!!  I just posted him up in my Etsy.  Still working on the collections, but I had to get some new collages out.... 

Monday, January 19, 2009

My Apologies...

What the....???  What was I thinking?

Seriously - how did corporate speak slip into that last blog?  Who am I, the CEO of Craftyworld??  "The first organizational item is to approach my ideas as separate but integrated blah blah blah...."  Approach my ideas?  What will I do - sneak up on my thoughts and notes and bits of paper?

I swear I heard faint shouts of 'Bingo!' as cube dwellers across the land filled their corporate-speak Bingo cards with that paragraph.

Sorry.  It won't happen again.  Emergency salt and bacon snacks should cure me.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

Life is Just So Daily

One of my favorite lines.

And it fits because yikes!  I've been online all weekend and I've checked out all of my hip blogsters, but haven't written much myself.   Ok, anything.  All week.  I traveled for three days, and that usually blocks out a chunk of time, but I should still try to note up every day.  It's just that I'm trying to craft and reintroduce my Etsy store - more to follow - and work at the daily job and spruce up the house and and...ok, this is turning into a whineogram without any wine so I'll stop.

So - a few things for a rainy cold Sunday.

First - a new blog for the Run Scamper list - it's Little House on the Quarry and I've been following her for a while - it just occurred to me that she should be on the RS list so that you can follow her too.  

Next - I'm finally doing the healthy thing.  I've been talking a good game for a while, but the game's not as good as it could be so this is it - an actual resolution.  But it's a life resolution, not a New Year resolution.  I'm cutting out caffeine, diet soda, working on portion control and trying to work out five days a week.  I figure that talking about it here will help...so pile on with any thoughts or suggestions.  I'm tired of looking like the snowman twin in the Special K ad - without the puffy jacket.

I mean - I might never make the Single Girls Dance team, but I'd like to make it to the auditions.

Now - the Etsy store.  I'll have more to talk about in later posts, but I want to be better organized in my approach to my little Sandbar!  Most of the time I have 13 gozillion separate creative ideas or processes going on, and as I'm not in a place to creative full time, I want to find a way to channel the time that I do have available.  

The first organizational item is to approach my ideas as separate but integrated collections, with the inspiration for each collection to be apparent through the execution of my ideas.  My first inspiration is color - I LOVE color.  Color color color.  Bright pops of color, muted vintage color, colors of the sunset and sunrise, all shades of blues.   

I've added a new section to my side roll to show off my latest inspiration.

Have an OTT day! Oh, and check out how OTT is helping out with my crafting.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

It's Not Me, It's You

Dear Real Housewives:
How are you?  Would you like a drink? Yes - probably some really pricey Chardonnay.  Are you ok?

Because - you know, like, this is really tough.  These things are so awkward, you know?  And we just met, really - I've only had access to Bravo through local cable since the beginning of the year, and I was like, so actually excited to get to you know you all - I'd heard so many things about you.

And at first, you know - it was like, kind of exciting, especially for someone as hooked on reality TV as me!   Being able to see your homes and hair and plastic surgery and nails and clothes and kids and husbands and boyfriends and lunches - Omigod, I was like, I can't believe I'm actually seeing constant reruns of your lunches and dinners and the SHOPPING - I'm all like, look at them!  They really don't do much except spend money and catfight!  All of the online rumors and comment were sooo totally true, and I was like 'Dude!'  

And yes, I know that some of you have family issues with addiction and arrests and deaths and broken nails and second/third/fourth marriages, I so totally do for real know that.  Maybe we don't get to see those things, and yeah - who am I to judge your lives?  I'm trying to have the appropriate addytude for this.  I have no idea how tough it is to keep up in your world.  

The world that you choose to show, to put out there in TV land, so see, it's like......us viewers?  Well, like - we do get to judge you now kind of, you know what I mean?  And honestly, I've already lived through junior high with girls like you.

So... ummmm.  I'm so sorry to have to say this, but - I need to go in another direction with my TV viewing.  I guess I'm just not ready for your petty girl fights and your backstabbing and scheming and shopping and preening for the camera and for the love of God, your constant sense of entitlement.   And like really, please don't feel bad - as they say, it's not me, it's you.  

Stop, really.  Don't screech.  You didn't have me at hello.  You....you....COMPLETEly bore me.  I just need something else in my reality TV, someone losing weight, or cooking cool foods, or scrambling across the world looking for clues, or eating ticks, or sewing runway designs or dancing or something....anything ANYTHING.

Maybe next season, you could like actually really be...weeeelllll....REAL.  As in, real to what's going on with the rest of the housewives in the country.  Like, lose your home through foreclosure, and then lose your job or your household income.  And then, try to pay your kid's college tuition or pay for school lunch.  Or try to shop when your credit cards are gone.  And buy groceries and pay for healthcare and still give your kids a sense of security when they see mom crying and dad totally stressed out.

If that happens, if something changes, maybe we could still work it out.  And I'll check in on you now and again, of course, especially if like there's nothing else to watch.   Sure, I'll call.

But until then, I think it's best if I just don't see you for a while.  Because you know, I'm just not that into you.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

in the HOUSE!!!!

MyfriendTeri was here!  In my house!  From alllllll the way across the country, come to visit!  She had to work in my area, so we played hotel and she stayed here!  We didn't do a lot except talk and drink champagne but she did get me this very cool collage!  

Umm.  Yeah.  the exclamation points pretty much sum up what we're like when we're together - just like junior high.  

So I didn't have much time to post or craft this week but that's ok - my soul is satisfied from her visit.

My really great best girlfriend is like the butter to my peanut.  The tonic to my vodka.  The yin to my yang, the gabbana to my dolce, the body bag to my 'accident,' the bail to my arrest.  

You know - the total OTT!

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Appeasing the Job Fates

I LOVE MY JOB!  I CAN'T WAIT TO GO BACK TO WORK TOMORROW!!

(I hope that was good enough...it's about all that I can muster on this rainy Sunday).

Why is it that no matter how old I get, the final day of Christmas vacation still makes me feel that I have yet to start that 15 page, single-spaced Honors English paper with footnotes (at the bottom of each page, not at the end in a cop-out footnote page) with at least 10 unique reference bibliographic sources, on Great Expectations: Miss Havisham - Bitter Old Maid or Early Reality TV Show Host?  And it's due at 9:05 am Monday morning.  And I've been putting it off since the end of October.

Vacation can't be over.
I still haven't listed any New Year's resolutions.  I haven't made any resolutions.  I haven't lost 10 pounds since Christmas Eve.  I haven't created 30 new items for my Etsy store - although I have started at least 15, gotta count for something.  I haven't created a personal budget for 2009, updated my resume, checked in on blackberry, caught up on 20 years of photo albums, organization and journals.  I haven't cleaned out the attic, taken a Pilates class or a spinning class.

Big.Heavy.Sighhhhh.

(New OTT photo.  Please view.  Blurriness due to photographer, not because of many Pink Fuzzy Navels consumed by the little guy.)