November 2, 2011 7:57 pm

Halloween 2011

This year, Wesley was Calvin (& Hobbes) for Halloween! We dressed him in a red and navy blue striped shirt and dark pants, and spiked his hair. (This was actually much less successful than I had envisioned it, because his hair is so curly! If you gel it, it turns into ringlets that want to lay flat against his head instead of straight spikes.) Oh well, it worked well enough!

Calvin & Hobbes Costume

I sewed his treat bag out of flannel at 9pm the night before. Originally, I wanted to make him an actual Hobbes, like this, but then I got freaked out because I am okay at sewing 2D objects, not so much with the 3D, and I have no idea how to translate a sketch on paper into a 3-dimensional animal. I wanted to do it right or not at all. And I couldn’t figure it out in time and then I remembered he needed a treat bag, and voila! I made a Hobbes tote bag!

Hobbes Treat Bag

I used the Simple Tote instructions from Bend the Rules Sewing by Amy Karol, but I made both the straps the same length. I freehanded all the appliqued shapes on the front and then drew on the mouth with a Sharpie. I wanted to embroider it, but Wesley was already sleeping and all my embroidery stuff was in his room, and it would have taken longer and I didn’t have the time to spare. Plus, 1.5-year-olds don’t care anyway.

Calvin & Hobbes Costume

He did pretty well with trick-or-treating, except he wouldn’t say anything (“trick-or-treat” was “deet-deet” but he only said it for us) and didn’t seem to have any idea what we were doing. We pulled him in a red wagon though, and he loved the wagon ride, so there’s that.

(Here’s last year’s costume, for OMG-my-baby-is-huge-now reference.)

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October 23, 2011 7:46 pm

Meeting Crazy Aunt Purl

Last Thursday, Daniel and I took a bus out to Beaverton to see Laurie Perry (Crazy Aunt Purl) at Powell’s. She read the introduction and first chapter of her new book, “Drunk, Divorced, and Covered in Cat Hair” where she discussed all about her divorce process, how hard it was, and had a Q&A session afterward.

She was just wonderful! I was a bit surprised at her accent (she’s from the south, but currently lives outside of L.A.) and laughed when she said, “Y’all can understand how I talk, right?”

The Q&A session was my favorite, because it was so much more casual and you got to hear her talk about her life and her experiences. I really admire her on so many levels – her basic story is that she was a traditional Southern girl, married, contemplating children, when one day her husband informs her he is leaving her to “get back his creativity.” She struggles with him leaving, the loneliness, the drinking of many bottles of wine, and the owning of four (now down to three, sadly) cats. She takes up knitting at the request of a friend, and finds it helpful because it gives her something to do with her hands that does not involve drunk-dialing her ex-husband.

The book is prone to hyperbole and often sounds just as she does on her website, which I found comforting. Crazy Aunt Purl never fails to crack me up, and Daniel even said he really enjoyed seeing her talk.

I stood in line to get my book signed, and I even got the courage to ask her for a photo:

Laurie Perry and Meggan

(Doesn’t she look like she could be some long-lost relative of mine? Strange.)

When she got up to stand next to me, she remarked, “Oh, I like you!” and commented about how most people are just so tall and it makes it hard to stand with them. (She herself is not terribly tall – 5′ 3″, I think, but she had tall boots on when I met her.)

Anyway, even if you are not drunk, divorced, or covered in cat hair, I would still recommend this book. It is not solely a knitting book (though it does have some cute, easy patterns!) and it is not just a memoir – it is filled with heartfelt emotions, charming anecdotes (like having to staple the back of her skirt together to make it through the workday after it split open) and encouragement that even if bad things happen to you, you can still come out okay on the other side.

P.S. Huge thanks to Daniel’s mom Sharon for giving me the book as a belated birthday present! I loved it.

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October 19, 2011 11:24 am

Twenty Pounds

As I mentioned in my last post, since February of this year, I have been working to drop the baby weight through various treatments such as fat reduction in Burlington, Ontario and body sculpting in Las Vegas, NV or Emsculpt Neo in Franklin, TN, while closely working with experts like weight loss services in Hattiesburg, MS. I have purposely chosen not to write about my attempted weight loss on my site, for fear that I would be embarrassed when it did not work out. I gained a LOT of weight while pregnant – roughly 60lbs, while my recommended weight gain was 10-15lbs since I was already overweight. Basically, I had a long way to go and didn’t want public knowledge of my complete and utter failure.

I started Weight Watchers in February and have slowly but surely lost about twenty pounds. (!!!) I am still a few pounds over my pre-pregnancy weight, but I am just so shocked that this appears to have worked that I almost don’t care.

Weight Watchers seems to work for me because calories themselves are somewhat meaningless to me, and the numbers are too big and I never know what number I’m supposed to be hitting anyway. WW is different in that it comes up with an arbitrary number of points for you (mine is 29) and you just track what you eat, making note of the point values, and hit that number. In theory, you can also eat all of your weekly points (I have 49 available) and still lose weight, but I find that if I dip too far into my weekly points, my weight goes up instead of down.

I started out with a much higher point goal (36), because WW helpfully offers an “Are you breastfeeding?” option and I checked it when I signed up. However, even though I was (and still am!) breastfeeding, I don’t think my body needed the extra calories WW was allotting me. I joke about “lying” to WW about breastfeeding, but it’s true! I had to lie to get an accurate point goal. You can see exactly when I changed my settings, too:


(Click to enlarge)

Pre-May is when I had it set at the higher limit, and once I changed the settings I started losing about a pound per week.

I’ve slacked off a bit the past month but have managed to maintain my weight, which is a good sign. Now that I’ve started Operation: VBAC, I’m excited to kick it into gear again and really watch what I put in my mouth.

My next goal is my pre-pregnancy weight, and the goal after that will be the 10lb marker that will mean my BMI merely classifies me as “overweight” and not “obese.” My breasts are also sagging, so after breastfeeding, I might look into treatments such as breast augmentation in Hollywood, FL or breast augmentation in Tampa, FL through services that do breast augmentation surgery in Edinburg, TX and other areas.

Just so no one is confused, WW has not paid me to talk about them or anything. I have just had the good fortune to have some success on their program.

Before/after photos after the jump.

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