Next stop: homeownership

Here she is, folks. She's a centenarian, but she's new to us!

The past two weeks have been a blur. Like a rollercoaster, it's been up and down, but through it all there's been the feeling of exhilaration. Just to give you a taste of our first four days: We saw the place for the first time on a Sunday, took a second look on Tuesday, placed an offer on Wednesday, and by Thursday we were in escrow! Since then it's been rapid-fire phone calls back and forth with our realtor (who is awesome btw), a slew of inspections, much faxing of paperwork, and then of course the inevitable signing away of lives and life savings. Ramen, anyone? (Actually, on top of all this, both of us were doing the cleanse! Not the best timing on our part.)

Seriously tho, this thing called homeownership has been a long time in the making. A dream realized. The BF and I have been working toward this moment for YEARS. (Ok maybe not all our 13 years together, but a good portion of it!) It's funny, sometimes the rollcoaster will come to a sudden stop, and we'll look at each other and say, "Can you believe we're actually doing this?!?" (followed by screams). We get the keys next week! GAHH!

Ketchup is not part of the cleanse

For the past 9 days I've been on the Blessed Herb cleanse. I'm going to spare you the gross details. If you want gross, go to the web site and check out the photo testimonials.

What is it? The cleanse starts with a 3-day pre-cleanse where you slowly cut down portion size all while taking the powder and pills. Then comes the 5-day liquids-only fast where you consume only the powder mixed with apple juice (gritty, bloaty), the pills, water, and some vegetable broth. This is then followed by the 1-day post-cleanse to slowly introduce normal food back into your system.

So what's it feel like? I wasn't too hungry (surprisingly), got headaches the first few days (normal), felt bloated and slightly nauseated (also normal), but for the most part could go about my day as usual minus exercise (but I didn't do much of that before the cleanse). There was a pretty constant feeling of bloat and nausea, which is probably why you don't feel hungry--you are too disgusted to eat. I've done a couple of other cleanses in the past (read: I've had lots of disgusting powder drinks) and this drink isn't so bad at first. By Day 7, it made me gag. I'm on my last day of the cleanse and have thankfully returned to the world of chewing. In retrospect, I'm sure that the cleanse was good for overall digestive health, expelling toxins, out with the old, and so forth. But I've done other cleanses and have felt better both during and after. I think it's good to do a cleanse every now and again. We eat so much crap (and by "we" I mean ME), like junk food, trans fats, processed white flour, on and on, that it is a good idea to give your body a little refresh.

So why'd I do this one in particular? Partly to see if I could. Partly to see what would happen, to see if my "results" would be as ... uhhh, "impressive?" "disturbing?"... as the photo testimonials. Partly to simply clear out the ol' GI because, honestly, no one wants a John Wayne colon (supposedly it weighed 30 lbs when he died) and no one wants to go out like Elvis (which my brother lovingly calls the Dump of Death). And Elvis's was reportedly 60 lbs!! [Insert your own King/Throne joke here.] OK, this entry is getting a little TMI. I know blogging is a somewhat anonymous, removed way of communicating, but all my readers (all 4 of you) know who I am!! Plus, describing my BMs in detail, by any means, is overshare. I just can't do it. What I can say is that I've never thought so much about poop! I'm glad it is over and I can return to normal life! Now someone please pass me the take-out menu.

Ketchup and wine

A lot has happened in the last month. I'm going to try and re-create it for you here in these next entries. Oh the joys of ketchup.

We gave ourselves a week to recover from Oliver's ragin' bday celebration. (Right.) So the BF, John, Kev, and I declared it Friday Ditch Day and went to Napa/Sonoma. Actually it was my last Summer Friday (and, sadly, those of you in the corporate world know how dearly we hold on to those--ugh, kill me). It was a good day and a good haul--way better than sitting in a lightless suckhole aka. my desk. We had the carefully planned out route of let's-stop-at-the-next-one-on-the-right. Cline, Trefethin (they had dogs roaming the grounds so of course that was my favorite), Miner, Ballentine, and... at least two more... I can't remember. And no, I wasn't looped. I was the DD. And I still managed to enjoy myself. Shocking, yes I know.

More ketchup (and ice cream)

The following weekend, I volunteered to scoop ice cream at the Slow Food festival. Slow Food and the ideas behind slow food are pretty cool. There was an interesting article in San Francisco Magazine about how SF completely missed the boat on the purpose of slow food, making it elitist, yuppie and inaccessible. I dunno about all that. I'm not really into food. I mean, I like to eat, but I'm no foodie. That's more the BF's arena.


Ok, so back to volunteering. Here's the thing. It was fun and all, but the next time I'm anywhere where VOLUNTEERS are handing out food, I'm really going to think twice about eating it. Don't get me wrong. Volunteers are lovely people, yes, yes. And I try to volunteer at least once a month. It's awesome, can't say enough good things about volunteering (except that I don't do it often enough). Not only am I "doing good" (and contributing to something bigger), I meet tons of great people and I have fun in the process. THAT being said... at this event, some volunteers were simply lazy. Others were just plain gross. I could kinda handle the gross ones if they were earnestly trying. I get it: things can get a little hectic if there's a long line of people and ice cream is in demand. So they're slobs and have a messy workstation, so what--at least they have a good heart. Licking your fingers or the scoopers and then handing the ice cream over to a customer all while sweating profusely... now that's just straight up sick. Gross, right? Wait. It gets worse. So the booth had those typical ice cream freezers, the kind where you've gotta lean over a little ledge in order to reach the containers? One lady (a fellow scooper) was reaching into the freezer to scoop, and there were some already-scooped dishes of ice cream sitting on the ledge that she had to reach over. I swear her pits touched the top of the ice cream in those dishes. And she was wearing a tank top! Honest to god. You'd think I'd lose my appetite after that, but I still somehow scarfed down at least eight scoops (which I scooped myself thankyouverymuch!!)



1. Fort Mason, all prettied up. 2. The booth. 3. MMM pre-pit ice cream! 4. My blister from scooping.

Bon anniversaire Olivier!

This past weekend we celebrated Oliver's 3rd bday. It was quite the gourmet, 2-course affair, complete with a tropical luau theme. The pigs even broke out the fancy dress.

How do I plan such a successful pig party of my own, you ask? Well, if you must know:

First, prepare the entree.

1. Go to the local farmer's market and pick up fresh veggies and fruits.

2. Weave some ong-choy (Chinese water spinach) into a lattice work base.

3. Vertically stack carrot "confetti" on the lattice, using a cookie cutter.

4. Place yellow pear tomatoes stuffed with dandelion greens around the carrots.

5. Top with 3 bell pepper "candles."

Next, set up the dessert platter.

1. Dice up some organic yellow nectarines and strawberries into pig bite-sized pieces.

2. Arrange in a pleasing pattern.

3. Get your straight jacket ready, someone is going to have you committed soon.

My etsy shop is open for bizness!

Yes! I am finally up on etsy. Ok, so I only have two items up, but I did it. It's a funny feeling, putting yourself out there. Exhilaration. Relief. Fear. Accomplishment.

For those who don't know, etsy is a great online venue to sell/buy handmade goods. There's even some vintage on there, but most items are handcrafted by the seller. You can even shop locally and support your fellow local artists. Trolling etsy.com sucks up waaay too much of my work day, to be honest. Hopefully some jewelry-lovin' people out there will stumble upon my little shop. More items to come soon. Keep checking back!

Go to SugarCube Jewelry's etsy shop.

Droplet earrings

As promised, new jewelry pix! I have to confess tho. These aren't really "new"--I made them months ago. What I really need to do is get more pictures up on the SugarCube web site. It's been ages since that site has been updated. Who's responsible for running this outfit anyway? In true CEO fashion, I'm going to lay the blame elsewhere: my IT department (aka. the BF). It's gotta be his fault, right? Because it can't possibly be me and my non-motivated self. Oh no. The only other options are Oliver and Russ and, well, the pigs are just too cute. And they aren't very savvy in DreamWeaver...


1. Amethyst briolette droplets; 2. Different colors of faceted tourmaline; 3. Cherry, champagne, and smokey quartz; 4. Pale pink freshwater pearls on Sterling silver.