Tales from the Shoebox.

Today is Ash Wednesday and so begins Lent. I’m not a religious person, I’m not anywhere near Catholic (dated one once. That was an unmitigated disaster at best), but we were talking about sacrifice last night at stitch & bitch and the subject came up of what we give up during Lent in order to become closer to god or something else. And while a lot of us make sacrifices every day (one gal in my S&B group is a mom of three with a sensitive system. The foods, things, sleep, showering she gives up every day makes Lent seem pretty pale), I like the idea of using that sacrifice to become closer to something that you hold dear, be it god or something else. So I got to thinking about Seattle and how Llamaface & I have decided to move there when grad school is done (sorry to spring that on some of you, but there it is), and how much stuff we have and how much of it I really don’t want to move and how little we really need and how much money we could save/not spend if for 40 days we only bought essential consumables (food, toiletries) and also got rid of excess stuff during those 40 days. I mentioned the George Foreman grill that I can’t stand and one of the S&B gals was interested, and in thinking about that this morning, I thought “why not have a “get it out of my house” Lent party?” So here’s the deets:

THE LLAMAFACE/SHOEBOXMAMA/BOOGERMONKEY LENT PARTY
MAMA’S DONE WITH GRAD SCHOOL AND WE DON’T WANT TO LOAD THIS STUFF IN A U-HAUL

• Saturday March 17 (I know that’s St. Patty’s Day, but it’s early in the day) Noon-whenever
• Our place (e-mail for directions, jen[at]gonzopants[dot]com
• BYOB, prepare to share
• We will provide food (my party food is legendary, in a good way of course) – please inform me of any allergies/dietary preferences when you RSVP, but it will all be dairy-free because of Boogermonkey’s sensitivity. We will also provide non-alcoholic drinks and non-chocolate sweets for people giving up those things for Lent
• I will have stuff that we want to get rid of in paper bags. There will be books, yarn, fabric, clothes, small kitchen appliances, CDs, and more. If it’s sunny I’ll organize it on the back porch. If it’s not, I’ll figure something else out.

Yeah, I could freecycle all of it, but that isn’t as much fun as throwing a party. Whatever doesn’t get taken will be freecycled, but I figure y’all are more fun anyway.

And for your patience through that, here’s a picture

Llamaface had Boogermonkey hold his lunch banana on the drive to work. Booger figured out how to open it, smart monkey that he is.