So tomorrow will be Bunny's birthday. Her 9th birthday. I am having a hard time with this one. Let's do the math. She is 9 and it totally just seems like yesterday (heavy on the cheese) that they pulled her red-headed little (and yes I mean little-she tipped the scales at a whopping 5 pounds!) jaundiced pre-mature body outta you know where. That's nine years. Gone. Now there are only nine years left. Only nine years of childhood. Only nine years to be able to teach her everything she needs to know. Only nine years for her to save up a security deposit and first months rent.

Going to be starting a new thing on my blog called Peep of the Week featuring all the adorably un-PC or slightly odd figurines that have taken over my kitchen and cause my Hubby to sleep with one eye open.

Look for it!!

I'm a Karmic Recycler

I recently found this article in the local college paper written by a friend of ours who recently passed away. I laughed the whole way thru, it is exactly the same thing that I have been telling Hubby for the last 3 odd (and yes I mean odd) years. I am not filling our house with useless clutter, I am saving the souls of all of the scary, un-PC, colorfully racist figurines and salt and pepper shakers that I can get my stubby little fingers on. I would cut it out and mount it on the fridge, but our kitchen is a little cluttered right now.

Enjoy!

Knickknack: Soulfly? Soulless? The zen of garage sales

Originally ran Tuesday, May 12, 1992

by Jordan Kagermeier

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I have to admit it. I have more junk than any other person I know give or take a few people.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't collecting something and even until this day I've accumulated so much stuff that most of it is in storage (like my sizable medical quackery collection). There's just not enough room to keep it all.

Why? What would drive a person to purchase so much and then keep it all on top of it? If I knew the answers to this I wouldn't have to have so much space around me - my God!

I just remembered that I had to rent a two-bedroom apartment in St. Paul a year and a half ago because I needed that much room to keep all my junk.

No, I think I have an answer. Garage sales - yes, God Almighty I've seen the light.

There's nothing like a garage sale for the avid collector of junk - it's a fix, a necessity to buy a tapestry of Jesus for 25 cents or the once in a lifetime shot at owning a concrete lawn ornament of the Buddha.

Despite offhand comments about religion, there is something extremely spiritual about the experience of garage sales. I have developed a theory I'd like to share with you now - this is my theory about the reincarnation of the knickknack.

When someone buys a knickknack, let's for convenience sake say it's a thermometer someone bought at Mt. Rushmore, they attached a certain feeling toward it. This feeling is one of journey remembrance fulfilled through the purchase of a memento.

After a certain amount of time the preciousness of the knickknack decreases. Eventually it dies out altogether.

In a fleeting attempt to recoup losses over a thermometer bought at the Mt. Rushmore gift store, the owner tries to entice someone else with the prospect of owning that particular thermometer. They attempt to entice through the method of the garage sale.

You see, for the original owner of the thermometer, the soul of the knickknack has died. What is needed for the knickknack at this point is a re-birth, a spiritual recycling so to speak. This is what the garage sale facilitates so successfully. Now, let's say that someone like me comes along and I saw to myself, "This is just what I needed, a thermometer to tell me how cold it is."

What I've just done is provided a channel for the soul of the knickknack to be brought back into the world of the useful and ornamental. The soul of the knickknack has been reborn, and as with most reincarnation, the soul is constantly evolving in the realm of experience.

I think that's the reason I ended up with so much stuff, I just wanted to be the person who helped a lost knickknack soul along its life's journey. I also believe that people have a necessity to own knickknacks, much like the need for food and water.

The things we buy in the knickknack world attach a legacy to our own short tripe on this globe. Someday when I drop dead from this or that someone is going to have my growing collection of Eero Saarinen chairs thrust upon them.

At that point my soul as well as those of my chairs is going to be thrust into the karmic recycler.

Granted, I have lots of stuff, but it's because of garage sales and my need to possess more things than I could ever possibly use.

If you get a chance to go our to a sale in this season of fishing and rummage sale, buy something seemingly worthless and sink your mind into the experience of that object as it has traveled about.

And if you see my buying a big taxidermic marlin, don't stop me and ask me, "Do you really need that?", because I may not need that object, but that object needs me.

so i am wanting to start a mankato magazine.  i need help.  anyone?

so hubby joined a new band.  let me rephrase that, hubby joined ANOTHER band.  i have informed him that i do approve and he will receive all of my wiferly support but if i ever-i mean EVER!!! have to ask for a back-rub again he shall find his bass securely positioned up his rear.  yeah for hubby though, the guys in the band are awesome, their music is amazing and hubby is happy.  viva captain eleven!!!

this amanda girl that writes, and i do use that term loosely, for the free press is utterly ridiculous.  didn't like her then, don't like her now.  one day soon my friend our paths will cross and it will not be pretty. well, i will be pretty and you shall be demolished.

Happy Holidays from The Hubbards!

We hope all is well with you and that another year has passed without any major catastrophes or incarcerations! Life in The Big Yellow House is flying by and everyday brings with it yet another reason to drink.

Mykel has not run off to join the circus yet. He is made of rubber and is able to subsist for months solely on cheese and bread but these aren’t apparently “circus-able” skills. He has taken up sword swallowing in the mean time. If that doesn’t work out he is praying every night that he will be kidnapped by a rogue band of Dungeons and Dragons players who travel the country-side rolling dice, wearing trench coats, mumbling incoherent made-up words and eating cheese.

Lily, much to her own dismay, has not been name Princess of the World and is therefore unable to rule the globe with a pink plastic Hanna Montana fist. She is still 8 years old instead of 16, which is surprising considering a) the amount of times she uses the word “like” in a sentence and b) the fact that she has a closet full of clothes and yet she HAS NOTHING TO WEAR!! We were all disappointed to find out that she did not make it into The Guinness Book of World Records for having lost the most baby teeth at once, that darn Khe Sahn from Vietnam beat her by one molar! At least we had a great model when it came to carving pumpkins this year!

Zander has not been recruited by the New York Ballet or the Solid Gold Dancers yet and we have to change his tear-soaked pillows each morning because of it. He is excelling in school when it comes to speaking out of turn and tackling friends in the hallway. We were saddened by the loss of Reddy the pet fish this fall but it was a great time to learn about The Circle Of Life and what happens to decomposing bodies left to fester in a bowl of water for a week. Zander may have found his calling after officiating over our first Toilet Funeral. He is also perfecting his Lego bombing skills, carefully camouflaging the razor sharp pieces of plastic buried in the carpet so as to keep Aaron and I on our feet, or at least hopping on one while the other bleeds.

Our cat Rex has learned to open doors but our lessons on starting the cars in the morning or picking up a gallon of milk at the store have fallen on deaf furry ears I’m afraid. He has also been unable to relocate the family of amorous squirrels that have moved into our attic and feel the need to “do that thing that married squirrels do” at 3 in the morning. Fortunately, I think Santa will be bringing Aaron a Red Rider BB gun for Christmas this year and if he doesn’t shoot his eye out first we will have an empty attic and full bellies soon!


Hoping that your Holiday Season is more fun than a clown on fire,
Aaron, Jordan, Mykel, Lily, Zander and Rex