untanglingknots.com: January 2010

by Karla ° Wednesday, January 27, 2010

*Tap* *Tap*

Oh, hi! Remember me? It’s me! Karla!

And I have writer's block.

Like, really bad.

I’ve been writing online for almost six years now and in all that time I can remember only once where something like this happened before. It was almost exactly three years ago to the day and my excuse back then was that I was dealing with an asshole of a puppy who would NOT STOP BITING ALREADY and had gnawed my fingers down to inoperable and fleshless bony stumps. Lucky for Samson my fingers eventually grew back and he did not have to live the rest of his life on a glue factory farm.

So um, yeah. Now that we’ve established I haven’t been writing, what exactly HAVE I been doing? Well, since January 1st I have:

- Ran almost 200km (124 miles)
- Completed level 1 and level 2 of the 30 day shred without missing a day (level three starts today)
- Not had even one drop of alcohol!?!
- Been spending more time with my son
- Registered Nate for Junior Kindergarten?!?
- Baked eleventy trillion loaves of homemade 7-grain bread
- Reduced my coffee intake to one cup a day!?!
- Increased my diet soda intake to exponential proportions

So basically I spend my days playing with my kid, working out, eating the most delish homemade bread and drinking diet coke and trying to convince myself to write.

The thing is, I can’t just sit down and will myself to write about something, anything, if it doesn’t ignite a spark under my ass to be creative. I mean, why try to force what just isn’t there, you know?

I guess what I’m trying to say is, until I get my writing juju back, I’ll probably post a lot of pictures and spend way too much time on twitter and facebook.

Labels: Thinking Out Loud

Permanent link to this entry

Comments (4)

Juice Junkie

by Karla ° Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Someone in this family, not mentioning any names or anything, REALLY likes juice, particularly of the Acaí berry variety.

Labels: Nate

Permanent link to this entry

Comments (5)

This

by Karla ° Thursday, January 7, 2010

This? This is Nate’s adorable smiling face.

And this? This is his “charm” face. It’s the face he uses when he knows he’s in trouble and he tries to charm his way out of a situation. Whenever I see it I just want to hand him over a giant bowl of candy and my credit card.

Labels: Nate

Permanent link to this entry

Comments (5)

Some things never change

by Karla ° Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Almost exactly the same time last year I wrote this post and I couldn’t help but remember it today because a year may passed, but some things never change. Nate still has a colossal meltdown if he has to wear mittens, I’m still wearing the same sartorial puffball that is my red winter jacket and when I carry Nate on my hip, his slush-covered boots still leave dirt stains next to my vagina.

Originally posted January 8th, 2009

Dear Winter,

How do I hate thee? Oh, I am so going to count the ways. And when this dissertation is done, assume I could add like, one thousand more reasons if I wasn’t on a schedule that involves a toddler who will not nap and will probably wake up in 4.3 minutes.

1: You’re cold! That really sucks because my body likes heat and sunshine and balmy summer gusts twisting through my hair while I rest my head against a salmon-pink sunset.

2: Also? For the life of me, I cannot get my son to wear mittens or a scarf. Do you not think you could heat things up, just a touch? Because to be totally candid, I find it unreasonable that you’re so unforgiving when it comes to toddlers that are like, pretty much always completely irrational with BECAUSE I SAID SO, even it means enduring the torture of mittens.

3: Every time I forget to park the van in the garage a sudden mountain of snow lands on my car. Vans are ginormous, Winter! And they take an eternity and a day to clear the snow from.

4: We do not have a driveway wide enough to park two cars beside each other and it just so happens that on the days Mark has a ride to the train station it also happens to be the days that I forgot to park the van in the garage. So then I end up having to clear a mountain of snow off of TWO cars and then scrape the ice off of 14 windows just to get Mark’s car out of the driveway so I can leave the house with an already cranky toddler who will do nothing but scream at me for milk the entire time anyway, which is usually only tolerable in one hour increments, which is also why I am a house hermit and my kid is a milkaholic.

5: Which brings up an interesting point, Mr. Winter. For all of the advances in medicine that humanity has accomplished, why is no one is researching the art of human hibernation?

6: Also? I must admit, all of this perpetual darkness is so depressing.

7: So are these perpetually gray skies.

8: And the bone chilling dampness that hovers in the air from the Great Lakes makes me feel like I am 95 years old and crippled with Arthritis.

9: Oh! Hai! Did I mention you are are effing cold? MOFO! Brrr!

10: And that I hate the need for bulky clothing and fingers perpetually encased in stiff-gloved leather?

11: Or that I miss the gilded blush of sun-kissed skin?

12: And that I hate chapped lips? Last Saturday I indulged in a bottle of Australian Shiraz with a friend and on Monday the icky dry patches on my lips were still tainted purple.

13: It’s also very unpleasant to forget what your toes feel like. I have warm boots, I do, but I’m a glutton for self punishment and wanted to wear my heels with a perfectly hemmed pair of boot cut jeans today, so sue me, Winter!

14. Just not over the fact that my puffy red winter coat makes me look like an inflatable air mattress.

15: Oh man, and your cold-induced runny noses can suck it. Both mine and my kid’s. Especially when he wipes his nose on my shirt.

16: And finally, dear Winter, it’s days like today where I’m alternating between holding hands with a snail-paced toddler wading through slush-laden parking lots and perching his body in the cove of my maternal hip that I end up with dirty snow stains right near my vagina because that just so happens to be where his boots land, and walking around with a dirty vagina is not the image I would like the world to see Old Man Winter you filthy pervert you!

Love,

Karla
xo

###

For all the gripes I have with the bone-chilling cold and back-breaking snow shoveling that Old Man Winter brings, I have to admit that really can be quite breathtaking, you know, in a hurry up and take a picture before your fingers fall off and lungs freeze in your chest kind of way.