Karate, Teeth and Freecycle

A strange title I know but that is what my past few days have been composed of. I am a member of a yahoo group called freecycle, it is a national movement when people who have stuff to give away post to their local group and give it to others. Go to http://www.freecycle.org/ for a better explanation, but on Tuesday a woman posted that she had seven bags of fabric to give away and a small cabinet. I responded that I was interested and she chose me so after the kids got up from their naps on Tuesday afternoon I loaded them up and went and collected the fabric and cabinet. When I got home I gleefully went through the bags and kept and overflowing laundry basket full of fabric, most of which is older quality quilting fabric (a lot of Hoffman prints). The rest I took to my quilt guild meeting that night to offer to the ladies and what they didn't want my friend offered back to other people on freecycle today. It's a great concept of passing things along to people who can use them as well as keeping things out of landfills. This is actually the second time that I have been blessed with someone else's stash. Several years ago I was in Costco when a lady noticed my bag said something about quilting and struck up a conversation and offered me many large tubs full of fabric. I gratefully accepted and went to pick the stuff up (which barely fit into the 2 door neon that I was driving at the time). I kept two large rubber maid tubs full of fabric and passed the rest on. I have made so many useful things from that fabric and am actually now getting down to just the last bits so it will be nice to go through this fabric and start using it, although my room is such a mess at this point that I am going to have to do some serious Flylady flinging in order to make room. I did get a start on flinging tonight when I boxed up some craft supplies that I am not using to donate to the childcare at the Y.

Tuesday night I went to my first Karate class at the Y. I have done martial arts before and greatly enjoyed it, but had to stop when I was 6 months pregnant with my son and then couldn't afford to go back afterwards. One of the benefits of joining the Y has been that they offer Karate classes for a VERY reasonable price. The classes are two nights a week for an hour which works out well since I really can't commit much more time than that anyway. In the three years since I stopped doing Tae Kwon Do I had forgotten how much fun I had and how empowered martial arts made me feel. I am glad to be able to go back and am grateful to my husband for being willing watch the kids two nights a week so I can do this.

On the teeth front Abbie got another tooth today. This brings the total up to 5! She was much less cranky with this tooth, I didn't even notice it until this afternoon but it looked like it had been in for many hours.