one whole mango, please

kerriecarbary — Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:58:38 +0000

I’m going to try to work through the June photo challenge from projectsforyournest.blogspot.com, but I also know that I’m not great at keeping to specific rules, so I’ll be gentle with myself too. My first photo blue roses, a self portrait.

self portrait

Yes, it’s a self portrait! I do feel like a blue rose lately.

I’m trying to be other than I naturally am.

I’m quirky.

I’m learning that it’s OK to be what I am.

The question is, am I naturally a blue rose, or am I just pretending?

That’s something I’m still working on.

In other news, I’m actually thinking about going to grad school. Crazy.

crows

kerriecarbary — Sun, 29 May 2011 20:23:38 +0000

I can’t get enough of cool crow stories like this one. Add a kitten, and seriously…how can it get any better?

breasts

kerriecarbary — Sat, 19 Mar 2011 02:16:22 +0000

Warning: boys might be icked out by this post. If you are a boy, please just don’t read.

This is to my sisters, who are younger than me and may need the knowledge that I gained today.

Dear little sisters,

Nobody ever really prepared me for having a mammogram. I knew it was about getting your breasts squished in a cold clamp, but that’s about it.

Hopefully when you have to have one (like in ten years!) it’ll just be a laser photo booth thing that isn’t bad at all. Or maybe there will be some kind of a home test app for that.

Anyway, here are things I wanted to tell you before I forget, because surely I’ll have forgotten in ten years what it was like to have my first mammogram.

Don’t forget to shave your armpits. In the stress of getting ready and getting there in time, I forgot, which made me more embarrassed.
Don’t wear deodorant. This other woman there did wear deodorant, and they made her wipe it off with baby wipes! I could hear here bitching from my dressing room.
Yes, they put you in a tiny dressing room, which is a sad alternate-universe dressing room, with a curtain that doesn’t close, a small mirror, and a chair. I figure the curtain is meant to get you used to the idea that the gown they give you won’t close either. But after years of medical-related humiliation, we’re used to the scratchy gowns and their angry butterfly prints and ties that never quite reach.
Once your fancy evening gown is on, you’ll venture out of the dressing room, but where is everyone? You’ll have to wander the halls for a few minutes, trying to figure out where you’re supposed to go. While trying to hold the gown shut and balance your bag and other clothes.
Finally, it’s time for the fun. If your breasts are “large” (for which we can say, thank you Mitchell genes) they will put these horrible little pasties on your nipples. They have a metal bead in the middle, and attach themselves quite firmly with the same adhesive that’s in duct tape.
Your technician will push and prod your breasts until they are just in the perfect position. It’s breast yoga. Then she says, “THERE! Don’t move!”
You may want to look down at your poor breast as it is getting squished, but beware! That counts as “moving.”
After each of your many breasts have been vice-gripped, and you think you’re done, beware again! You are not. That was beginning breast yoga. You must now try some advanced breast yoga, which involves manipulating your breast “muscles” to get ready for the most uncomfortable squishing yet.
The technician will not let you look at the photos of your breasts, or let you have a copy to post on facebook.
If the technician offers to help you take of the pasties, refuse. Naturally.
Just like that, quicker than a one night stand, the technician is done with you. You’ll be left to wander the halls to find the dressing room again on your own.
It’s OK if you never find the dressing room. A bathroom will eventually appear and you can get redressed and hide the gown in there.
Buy yourself a treat at the Starbucks in the lobby. You deserve it.
Don’t let all of this freak you out too much. It is important to get mammograms.

love,

your big sister

what AmeriCorps meant to me

kerriecarbary — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 01:23:59 +0000

The Corporation for Community Service, which includes AmeriCorps, is a program dear to my heart. In 2008, I completed my second AmeriCorps term, not as the cliché recent college graduate, but as a 30-something who had already opened and closed a “main street America” small store.

On September 11, 2001, I owned a small store in a neighborhood in Seattle. It was a store that I hope helped shape the community and was part of the “main street America” that is so often referred to by politicians and change-makers. We are told again and again that small businesses such as mine are essential to the economy of the USA, and I feel that we did as much as we could to not only support other small businesses, but work toward helping the neighborhood.

After September 11th, though, the economy began to fail, and I ended up closing our store in 2005. I decided to change my focus to helping others and the world of nonprofit, so I signed up for AmeriCorps.

I served two AmeriCorps terms, not as a recent college graduate, but as a 30-something who was trying to find a new way to help her country. As a direct result of working with AmeriCorps in the Master Home Environmentalist Program (a program that helps others live healthy in their own homes) and CLEARCorps (which focus on environmental health, specifically preventing lead poisoning in children), I developed a new passion of helping low income families and seniors. After my two terms were complete, I was hired as a volunteer coordinator for a nonprofit that works to help seniors remain independent in their own homes.

If not for AmeriCorps, I never would have followed this path that lead me to a life of service. I wouldn’t have known how to find a chance to serve or to begin work in a nonprofit.

Not only does AmeriCorps groom individuals to continue to give back throughout their entire life, but as a learning experience, it can’t be beat. Without AmeriCorps, nonprofits would not be able to continue their good work. Children would remain untutored and at risk. Homes would remain unhealthy because parents never learned the danger of lead paint. Shelters would go unstaffed and be shut down. And perhaps the most crucial of all, disaster recovery would be severely hampered, as teams of AmeriCorps members would not be available to help through organizations like The Red Cross, Habitat for Humanity, or or course The AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.

Communities are counting on national service participants and community volunteers to meet the increased demand for services. Most especially this is important work as more and more programs are being defunded by the government.

There are things about my AmeriCorps time that I wish were different. It does include living on around $1000 a month, which might sound like a great learning experience in poverty, but actually is a learning experience in getting your friends to pick up the check, in filling out forms for food stamps and braving the waiting room at the local DSHS, and in trying to look semi-professional when you have a couple of dollars to buy a new work outfit. I managed it, but I also did some moonlighting graphic design, and I did have my husband helping us out with his paycheck. I also wish that my site had allowed me more opportunities for mentorship, as I feel a sting of jealousy whenever I talk to another AmeriCorps alum who has been guided into their new career in nonprofit by their AmeriCorps supervisor. But overall, I’m glad that I gave two years of my life to serve through AmeriCorps. I know I helped a number of families with their environmental health, and that makes me feel good. I know that I put a legacy in place at my site, in the form of the beginnings of a landlord-tenant outreach program (which is still what I’d really like to do when I grow up). Maybe most importantly of all, my heart knows a few answers to this question: What do you want to do?

(Answer: Volunteer coordinating. Helping others. Something in low-income housing or community building. Or art. Or sustainable business. Or… OK, maybe I still have too many answers to this question, but a few years ago, before AmeriCorps, I wouldn’t have even been willing to think that this question could have these kinds of answers. So, yay for AmeriCorps.)

the little green man

kerriecarbary — Thu, 10 Feb 2011 06:51:27 +0000

When my grandma was ill due to medication interactions, she said some really crazy things. It was scary to us kids—all of a sudden grandma was a stranger. Was it dementia? Some folks thought that she’d finally lost her last marble.

Although she did say some bizarre things, one thing she kept yelling about was the little green man in the corner. She was very concerned that something bad would happen to the little green man. He was hiding behind the refrigerator, someone needed to get him out of there!

I’ll admit, I was pretty sure that we’d lost my grandma. Maybe she’d had a stroke, or even worse. After the medics came and took her to the hospital, I happened to go to get something out of the refrigerator, and guess what I saw? Sure enough, on the floor, just behind the right corner of the refrigerator, was the little green man. Not an alien or a vision at all, but just a magnet.

Contrary to popular belief, my grandma’s marbles were not as lost as thought. Her heath was stabilized and she got to go back home for several years. After she passed away, when my mom asked me if I’d like anything of hers to keep, one of the things I asked for was the little green man magnet. Of course.

So here he his, from my grandma’s fridge to mine. He reminds me that not everyone sees the world in the same way and that even if everyone thinks you’re crazy, you may actually be at least a little bit sane.

from my 365 project.

some family history

kerriecarbary — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 10:55:55 +0000

This is some of my grandfather’s collection of buttons. He was a postal worker, union man, and had an odd sense of humor, like all of his heirs. I gathered a bunch of his buttons, saving them from being thrown out when my parents moved out of their house a couple of years ago. Yesterday, spending time with my niece, I thought about how she’ll never know her great-grandfather, as my sisters and I never knew our own great-grandfather, except for some whispered family secrets and tall tales about jumping ship off the US coast to avoid the British—but that’s another story.

These buttons tell just a tiny little bit of my grandfather’s (and my niece’s great-grandfather’s) story—part of the playful side of him, that I’d like us to pass along to Lillie. Hopefully she’ll feel a little like she knows him as she grows up, even though they’ve never met. I took this photo to remind me of my rambling musings today.

from my 365 project.

faith

kerriecarbary — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 07:00:34 +0000

I finally ordered bags for Scott and I from Timbuk2, and they arrived yesterday. Supposedly they arrived yesterday. UPS said they arrived, but they weren’t in the customary place for packages to wait for us. I was very sad, asked the apartment manager, cried via email to Timbuk2, and finally wrote a note that I posed in the elevator begging our bags to come home to us. I didn’t have any faith that they would appear, but tonight when we got home, there the package was, in front of our door, with my own note attached. Thank you honest neighbors, you have restored our faith in the universe. This was especially a good birthday gift for Scott.

calendar obsessed. still.

kerriecarbary — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 02:05:45 +0000

You all know how obsessed I am with calendars, right?

Well, look at the lovelies I just came across, courtesy of Smashing Magazine.

These are intended to be desktop images, but why not print one out to hang on your wall, carry around with you, and use for all of your calendar needs? I’m going to see if I can get one to look decent on my iPod Touch.

This one might be my favorite, by designer Alec Leigh.

Go see the whole set at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/08/31/desktop-wallpaper-calendar-september-2010/. I wish I’d known earlier in the year. Maybe they’ll do 2011 too…

Bus Stops I have Known (Revisited) Stop #10

kerriecarbary — Sun, 23 May 2010 22:47:58 +0000

It’s been a while since I blogged a Bus Stop I Have Known, but I’m feeling the urge to get going on these again and so, here you go.

Southcenter

Overall Bus Stop Ratings (out of 5 stars)

** User Friendliness. This was a really sad bus stop. But it gets two stars because of the fun interactive sign! You press the button and a light blinks to let the bus driver know that yes, that person standing in the middle of nowhere under a bus sigh IS IN FACT waiting for the bus.

* Interest of Surroundings. Very boring. Again, the pretty red button gets this bus stop a star.

* Architecture of Surroundings. Actually, pretty boring, although you can see the mall across the street. And if you wanted to stroll the half mile down the entrance road, you could stop at Pennys or wander around the food court. But then you’d half to walk the half mile back to this bus stop, and face it–it’s just as boring after shopping as it was before.

*** Personal Safety. It seems pretty safe…

***Creepy Factor. I’m giving it three stars for creepiness, because although I’ve waited at this bus stop several times I have yet to see anyone else ever waiting here. There are a lot of cars going by though, so I’d hope that if something was going on that might be dangerous, you could press that red button and maybe a driver would stop. But probably not.

Hey, that’s my ‘hood!

kerriecarbary — Sun, 16 May 2010 22:35:35 +0000

The Other Side of the Story by Dominic Holden – News – The Stranger, Seattle’s Only Newspaper.