Happy Fun Baby is hanging out on the futon watching Noggin. We collectively enjoy everything before Franklin and Little Bear, but The Upside Down Show is the highlight of my afternoon. Hot Australian brothers spazzing out on camera? It’s like Mom Candy.

Hey, did you know that you’re supposed to refrigerate Bisquick? There’s a note on the top of the box that says “To maintain freshness, refrigerate after opening.” Does anyone do that? I admit I can be somewhat storage-inept, but I thought dry goods didn’t need to be refrigerated. Weird.

The baby slept almost reasonably last night, which you probably wouldn’t guess given the all-over-the-place-ness of this post, but whatever. I was up late last night reading The No-Cry Sleep Solution (OH THE IRONY). My mama friends, hearing about my nighttime woes, showered me with sleep books when we got together on Tuesday. The baby responded by spontaneously napping when we got home. Did I mention he inherited smart-assedness from both sides of the family?

Speaking of moms, I found a couple of online mom resources I’m going to check out: MothersClick.com and ModernMom.com. Of the two, MothersClick has the prettier interface, but ModernMom wins for most entertaining illustration. I don’t know that I need another mama community (alt.life’s mama section is pretty fab) but I do kind of like the idea of a mama-specific resource.

technorati tags:bisquick, the upside down show, noggin, baby, television, shane and david, australian, sleep, the no-cry sleep solution, nap, books, playgroup, mamas, alt.life, MothersClick, ModernMom

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So there I was, sitting at the bus stop with my kid. This isn’t by any means unusual since I don’t, you know, own a car. Yes, you heard me right. I don’t own a car. We possess no vehicular transportation devices. TriMet is our only way of getting around. Want to know something else? I don’t even know how to drive. Ha!

Usually the bus stop experience is followed closely by a bus boarding experience, but would I be blogging about that? I would not. Well. I might. But such is not the case this time! This time, there was no bus. Oh, there were buses – just not the 75, which was the bus we needed to bring us to our home. I like to go home, especially when I have with me a baby who has reached the end of his out tolerance and also have not eaten anything since 9am, when I had half a bowl of cereal. And a quarter of a muffin. More like a quarter of a quarter of a muffin, since I fed most of it to the wee one. An eighth of a muffin? I am not good with fractions.

The 75 is supposed to come every 15 minutes. In the time we were sitting at the bus stop, no fewer than 3 number 75 buses went by us in the opposite direction. They went, and none came back. Creepy. Also: rar.

Finally I called Not So. “Can you check a schedule for me?” I asked.

“Sure,” he said, because my husband is nice and likes me. He looked up the Stop ID (which was mislabeled – go, TriMet!) and clicked around. “Um, I only see the 8.”

“What? What about 8?”

“The number 8 bus. That’s the only one that goes to that stop.”

You see, but the stop? Says the number 75 stops there. It’s quite clearly marked. Also: RAR.

So I put the baby back in his stroller (which did not cause him paroxysms of joy) and trudged the six blocks to MLK. I say ‘trudged’ because I was, at that point, tired and hungry (3pm, hadn’t had lunch yet, etc.) and laden with not only a backpack but a camera bag. Not a slim, light camera bag, either: this one was for the D70, which is somewhat bulky, what with its being a digital SLR-ness. It takes such lovely pictures, though. I digress.

So we got out to MLK, and the bus stop once again indicated in large, friendly type that the 75 would indeed arrive at some point. We waited. Happy Fun Baby demanded release from the stroller, demanded to be bounced, demanded some as-yet unfinished tribute to himself in iambic pentameter. Several buses passed us, none of which were the 75. Again, going the opposite direction, the 75 was as regular as Ex-Lax.

I called Not So again. “Can you check a schedule for me?” I asked.

“Um, I’m not at my desk. We just went to get some coffee. Are you on your way home?”

I did not scream, though I did consider it. “No. I’ll – call you later.”

We got on the next bus that came by, which happened to be a 6. “The 75 doesn’t actually come to this stop, does it?” I asked as we climbed aboard.

“It’s on a reroute,” the driver supplied helpfully. You know what would have been more helpful? IF THIS HAD BEEN MARKED ON THE BUS STOPS. You’d think that if a bus wasn’t going to come there would be some sort of, I don’t know, indication that we were waiting in vain. A sticker, perhaps. A flyer. A big red circle with a line through it. Something.

Just to put the icing on the cake, as we were struggling to our seat (remember, I was carrying the baby, a folded stroller, a camera bag and a backpack on a moving bus) a woman plowed into us so she could ask the driver the same thing I just had. “75?” she said. “Where do I catch the 75?” Note: none of these are excuse me, which I believe is the proper addendum to walking into a mother and her child. She couldn’t have waited until we were seated? There are words I could use.

We got home at 4:20. 2 1/2 hours to go 6.7 miles. And you wondered why we don’t own a car. It’s all about the ride, baby. Yeah.

technorati tags:TriMet, bus, travel, baby, public transportation, car

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Last night was a non-sleeping extravaganza. A festival of insomnia. A treasure-trove of wakefulness. Happy Fun Baby apparently has a stuffy nose. I say apparently  because he doesn’t actually seem to have a stuffy nose, but since the only way he would sleep last night was propped up to a practically seated position, I’m forced to assume. The kid’s a restless sleeper, so the relief of being comfortable only lasted as long as it took him to drift off and roll over, at which point the cycle began again. Fun for me! Also fun for Not So, since the baby, apparently declaring me a lost cause, flung himself at Not So and demanded comfort in the middle of the night. Is it wrong that I found this amusing?

I did pass out for long enough to have a strange, vivid dream that there was a war and Not So was a soldier, and he was trying to explain that he’d called for someone to come and extricate me and the baby from the battle (which was going on right outside our house). I was trying to explain to him that I wasn’t leaving and that if we went down, we were going down together. Metaphor, or too much Battlestar Galactica? You be the judge.

Either way, when morning rolled around, the kid had had enough of the bed and decided that we needed to greet the day head-on. Happy Fun Baby got to wave goodbye to daddy (first time – the kid’s usually sawing logs at 7:30am) and then settled in on the couch, where he promptly fell fast asleep. Hrmph.

I tried napping with him, but the futon? Not cosy under the best of circumstances, and even less so when it’s being taken over by a sleeping toddler. I amused myself by checking my e-mail and RSS feeds in relative peace, which was somewhat satisfying despite that fact that I could barely keep my eyes open.

A little after 9am FedEx came with my jogging stroller. Happy Fun Baby woke up while I was putting it together and promptly decided it was a present for him, which in a way it is so hey, kid, go nuts. Check him out:

We’re going for a walk in a bit. Just as soon as mama gets her nap…

technorati tags:combi, jogging stroller, baby, sleep, cold, awake, morning

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What joy – Google is becoming Mactastic. It only took them, what, ten years? Never mind. It is good news, especially since, as I believe I’ve mentioned before, Google owns my soul. I love the Google Calendar, the Google Video (now with more YouTube!), the gMail and the searchy goodness. I am deeply covetous of Google Desktop.

The Mac offerings are somewhat slim at this point, but I did get some degree of satisfaction from adding the Google Mac Blog to my RSS feeds. That’s got to be worth something.

technorati tags:google, mac

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The CW: breakfast of champions, or overhyped zombie network? Too early to say, perhaps. I watch it in hopes my beloved Veronica Mars will step back from the precipice. At least this week was mercifully lacking in Aerie Girls. Can there be a less appealing gimmick than a room full of American Eagle-sponsored teenaged girls squeeing over primetime television? Also: I am. So. Old.

I will say this about the CW: it isn’t ABC Family. That’s a good thing, in case you’re just tuning in. They’re showing a horror movie marathon, ABC Family is. I can’t imagine how, but there you go. Sandwiched in with the clips from The Initiation of Sarah, Scooby-Doo 2 and The Corpse Bride are scenes from Misery. The promo ends with a truncated (…heh) clip of Kathy Bates taking a sledgehammer to poor James Caan.

Me: I have to say, that’s got to be one of the best horror-movie moments ever.
Not So: Mmm.
Me: …You have seen it, right?
Not So: …
Me: You haven’t seen it? You’ve read the book, right?
Not So: (unintelligible)
Me: …”I’m your Number One Fan”?
Not So: Yyyyeeessss.
Me: Yes?
Not So: Ye-es.
Me: Yes?
Not So: I must have.
Me: You must have read the book?
Not So: Or seen the movie. Or. Read the book.
Me: Or…maybe you didn’t.
Not So: But I think I must have. Unless I didn’t.

Well now that that’s cleared up.

technorati tags:misery, cw, abc family, aerie girls, movies

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After deleting the third or fourth Reunion.com spam (“See who’s been searching for you!”) from my Yahoo account, I finally caved. Who has been searching for me? Is my profile up to date? Are there messages on my high school’s message board?

The answer to all of these questions, of course, is who cares? I hated high school. Loathed it. As a shy, geeky girl with (how to put this delicately) issues, I did not mesh with my fellow students. I had glasses and braces and bad hair. I weighed about 100 pounds, wore clothes that were unflattering even by 1987 standards, and the less said about my experiences with acne, the better. I rarely spoke above a whisper, and when I did, I said the wrong thing. And possibly I snorted. I don’t remember snorting, but the term “snorting dork” was invented for a reason.

Compared to a lot of people, I was lucky: by the time my junior year rolled around, my friends were several dozen strong and had an undeniable presence. Somehow, all the misfits at my school had banded together and taken over. I had a boyfriend, in the on-again, off-agan high school tradition, and I never had to eat lunch alone. Take that, every high-school movie ever made! ::thumbs nose::

Still, I felt insignificant and gawky for the full four years. I wanted to be friends with the popular girls. In typical me fashion, I decided to circumvent social ettiquette (which baffled me), passing a note to a girl named Annika during History class. “My friends aren’t really my friends,” I said (this was before we took over the Quad; the people I hung out with then were dismissive of me at best). “You seem smart and fun. Do you want to do something sometime?” Annika invited me to her house after school; we had a great time, or so I thought, and I was ecstatic. A few days later she gently suggested I try and find friends who shared more of my interests. I’m forced to assume that by “interests” she meant “status,” since I liked the same things every other girl my age did: talking on the phone, watching MTV, giggling about boys. To be fair: trying to upgrade friendships via the written word? Not the best idea I’ve ever had.

I was weaned on a diet of John Hughes movies, and part of me was convinced that there was a Molly Ringwald lurking beneath my button-festooned jean jacket (::shudder::). Maybe there was. Who knows? My inner Molly certainly didn’t make any appearances before my 1991 graduation.

I was slightly surprised when I scrolled through the list my classmates on the reunion site; I only recognized two or three. Same thing when I look at my yearbooks. Aside from a few faces (mostly those of the people with whom I’ve stayed in touch) they all look completely unfamiliar. Then again, my picture doesn’t speak to me, either. I look just as strange as the rest of them. Just another girl with seriously questionable hair.

technorati tags:reunion, high school, geek, misfit, friends, etiquette, social

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Not So and I rearranged the living room this weekend. That statement isn’t in itself unusual (I am somewhat rearrange-addicted) but the results of this particular furniture-fest surprised us both. Couch in the alcove, bookcase against the other wall? All of a sudden, our house is home.

It only took us, what – five months? No one ever said we were prompt.

Since it finally feels like we live here, I was inspired to spend the morning putting things away and hanging pictures. Happy Fun Baby sat on the couch, watching me and chewing on a wooden pop-gun. Yes, I said gun, but no, it’s not actually a gun. It’s sort of a tube with a cork on a string, and a little thing you can push on the other end. If you do it fast enough, it makes a popping noise. And it’s made of wood, with brightly-colored painted bits, which is apparently irresistible to babies. Or at least my baby.

Speaking of my baby, he’s asleep on the futon right now. Are there words to describe how pleased this makes me? There are not. Play yard? No. Crib? NO. Even the yoga mat on the floor was met with only limited success. But let him stretch out on the couch like a grownup and he’s cosy as can be. He even – gasp! – puts himself to sleep! When he wakes up a little, he just looks around and then lets himself go out again. There is no screaming. There is no piteous “mamamamamamamaaaaaaa.” I have discovered the holy grail of naps, and all it took was ten months, give or take a few days.

Next I need to sort out the sleeping-through-the-night thing, because the waking up every hour thing is SO NOT DOING IT FOR ME. Maybe if we rearrange his nursery…

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