Sunday, June 29, 2014

it's about that time: makeover edition

the last time i revamped this whole site, we'd just moved from alaska to texas and i spent a couple weeks calling this site "texas skies and lemon pies" or vice versa. i can't remember because obviously the name didn't stick.

for two years, it was crowded tub and for a while, the url will still be crowded tub because i'm lazy. but why the change?

for one thing, i've never really nailed down what i'm doing here. i'm a food blog. i'm a funny parenting blog. i'm a craft gawking blog. but i've never really done a lot of those things very long (or very well) and when it came right down to it, all i was every really doing was writing. with bad pictures.

from the beginning of adult megan time, i've been a writer. a reporter. a creative writing grad student. a poet. all these things.

i was looking for a website about me and the stories i tell. all of them...

here's to a new look!

...happy happy happy...



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Sunday, June 8, 2014

signs of life: virginia

did you know that we moved? it's pretty much all i've talked about on facebook and i've just about drowned my instagram friends with pictures of cows...but if you haven't heard, we totally moved, ya'll.

texas to virginia by way of louisiana, mississippi, alabama and florida. then north by way of alabama (again), georgia, south carolina, north carolina and finally, VIRGINIA!

we moved in to a pretty place called the shenandoah valley. people use the words blue ridge in describing all sorts of things (like businesses and mountain ranges) so there's that, too.

we found a cheap farmhouse, complete with a herd of cows that jumps our fence a few times a week and stomps on our sunflowers.

i found a job that was pretty awful. but then, as of last thursday, i found a much better job more aligned with what i want to do with myself. i'll finally be a reporter again and i can. not. wait.

i spent a few weeks driving around this new hometown (and a few other hometowns) and i took a few photos. mostly, though, we've been trying to make this house ours and that means being creative when you run out of bookshelf money. (hint: use cardboard boxes to hold your stuff off the ground.)


not our house. Just one of many sort of creepy, awesome, and beautiful old buildings around here that just sort of ...are. not in the process of being torn down. not being rebuild. not lived in. just...there.


love this barn. not on our property, but one i pass often. not sure why i love it. i just do.



this is my very favorite animal on the planet. his name is chippy. he moos at us all the time. the farmer told me that when the steers get to be about 400 pounds, they get moved to the family's other field north of town. from there, the trucks from the slaughterhouses come by and gradually pick them up. i tried to block that part out. i'm also putting chippy on a diet so that he'll never get near 400 pounds. when you see chippy with a sweatband on his head and ankle weights on his feet...you'll know why.


old chicken coop or pig stalls next to our house. i'm not sure which and i refuse to investigate to figure out what it is. thar's snakes in them thar buildings. no lie.


a field on a stormy, foggy day. our house is just beyond those trees a ways.



i know, this studio/writing room will never make its way to pages of  "where women create" but i am so happy, happy, happy to finally  have a room where my art supplies and projects can live and breathe. i just sort of tacked up everything that inspired me to that wall you see. it's hodgepodge but, hey, so is my brain. there's a san pascual acrylic in progress taped to the wall. i got bored before i was finished, but i'll get back to it soon.


i'm in an angel/folk art phase right now. oh, and a "94-cent wood plaque at Walmart" sort of phase, too. cheap is good...


happy happy happy....


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