This morning we woke up late, had some breakfast, and then got all bundled up and walked over to the library. Happy Fun Baby walked the whole way, holding my hand. He really liked walking on the grass at the edge of the sidewalk (which apparently feels neat to stomp on) and walking across grates. Yay, grates! He’d stand there and look down at the leaves a few feet under him and stomp, and I kept thinking how I always walk fast across grates because, hello, they could collapse. The baby, he does not seem to have inherited my fear of spontaneously collapsing metalwork. Again, yay!

We picked up my sewing books (which means this weekend, if I am very, very lucky, I may be able to figure out how to thread the bobbin on my new machine) and headed back out. Happy Fun Baby spent a long time checking out a mural on the side of the Weir Cyclery building (which had the added bonus of being above a grate to stand on) and would only leave it after I suggested we go home and see the kitties. Then he insisted (with that whole-body lean babies do so well) that we go into the bike shop, where he led me around pretty decisively for someone so short. And oh, the bike shop: unexpected holy grail for babies. So. Many Wheels. Have I mentioned my kid’s obsession with wheels? The bike shop guy came over and showed him a bike horn, making it honk and winning a HUGE smile from Happy Fun Baby.

After a thorough inspection of all the bikes (including my coveted orange cruiser, which sits in the window all me-less) we walked the rest of the way home, stopping at every tree to touch the leaves. We were met at the corner by one of our cats (the one who’s allowed to go outside) and Ellison toddled delightedly after him all the way to the front door.

Dude, if I could bottle this afternoon? I’d totally do it.

technorati tags:baby, walk, happy, good day

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I have had just about all I can take of myself.- S. N. Behrman

The world is conspiring against me this morning. First, there was the living room, which seemed so promising. I’d asked Not So to do the floor after we went to bed. Something about a floor in the process of being cleaned is irresistible to a toddler. Piles of dirt! Brooms! Shiny shiny mopped areas! You try convincing him to stay put on the couch while all of this obviously fun activity is taking place at his feet. All in all it’s much, much easier (not to mention faster) to clean when the baby is elsewhere.

Not So had, indeed, cleared the floor, which prompted an initial bout of mama-related glee, but once I actually got into the living room it seemed that’s as far as it went. The couch and the chairs were piled with toys, but no actual sweeping or mopping had occurred. Which…sigh. Is fine. But confusing, as was the bewildering decision to leave some of the needing-to-be-washed clothing at the foot of the stairs and some of it on the couch, and the half-eaten bag of goldfish crackers not only open but perched, precariously, on its side at the edge of the desk. The whole thing had an air of arrested progress, as though Not So had suddenly been disappeared in the middle of cleaning. Only he came to bed at some point, so the disappearing must have been temporary.

So I quickly swept while the baby was distracted by the piles of toys, gathered up all the laundry and put away the goldfish crackers and then got started making coffee. By this time Happy Fun Baby had grown weary of the toys and decided to pass the time by eating my mouse. Not cool, Happy Fun Baby! I shouted at him, which I don’t feel good about at all (although he thought it was HI-LARIOUS) and went back into the kitchen to take a handful of Calm pills and a B vitamin and have a moment to get a freaking grip. Because do I want to be the sort of parent who shouts at her child? I do not.

In the desert I saw a creature, naked, bestial, who, squatting upon the ground, Held his heart in his hands, And ate of it. I said, “Is it good, friend?” “It is bitter — bitter,” he answered; “But I like it Because it is bitter, And because it is my heart.”- Stephen Crane, “III in The Black Riders and Other Tales”

The best way to get over an irrational bout of anger is to kiss a baby. Preferably my baby, since he is so imminently kissable. He also has the added bonus of being particularly nearby. We ate some cereal, and we watched some Wonder Pets, and we peeled an index card off the desk where it had apparently become stuck because of a heretofore unknown incident with a water glass, and then we decided to take a video of the aforementioned kissable baby, who was being unmentionably adorable and babbling in a way that causes my heart to burst with the cute.

At this time it was revealed that the new camera had been put…somewhere. So we tore apart the room with a mounting sense of frustration – finding, as we did, that our phone (and did you notice that we have lapsed into the plural?) was quite dead and in need of a charge, which reminded us that Not So had mentioned the batteries on the camera dying yesterday when he was taking some test shots.

Nothing, of course, begins at the time you think it did.- Lillian Hellman, “An Unfinished Woman”

The batteries were, in fact, on the charger, but the camera was still nowhere to be found. I eventually located it on a shelf in the kitchen. So, okay. Batteries inserted. Camera ready to go. Or…was it? Apparently being battery-less all night had wiped its internal memory, because before I could get it going I had to re-enter the date and time info. By this time, of course, Happy Fun Baby had grown weary of prattling adorably and was sitting on the floor chewing on the end of his broom. Which, while cute, does not a compelling video make.

It doesn’t really matter whether you grip the arms of the dentist’s chair or let your hands lie in your lap. The drill drills on.- CS Lewis, “A Grief Observed”

So, yes. That’s been my morning. Some days you just have to take a look at it all and roll your eyes, because that sound you hear is the laughter of the gods, and it’s not going away any time soon. Not that I believe in god, mind you, but I sure as hell believe in schadenfreude.

All quotes from:The Quote Cache

technorati tags:schadenfreude, housework, anger management, quotes

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Santa was good to me this year, if by “Santa” you mean Not So. He got me a sewing machine (I’m thinking of calling her ‘Esme,’ but Not So suggests that it is a boy and should be called ‘Eduardo,’ because we are big, big dorks)(points if you get the ref). He also got me a blender – this was the year of the housewares, apparently – which I’ve been wanting for, oh, ever, and a new camera to replace the one that went all wonky and decided that all colors were purple.

I hear you, by the way. You are saying something to the effect of “A new camera? But you have the D70! You do not need a new camera! Also, children are starving.” To which I reply “Yes. I am obviously part of the problem. Also, I will gladly give them my old Canon, which I hear makes a lovely stew.” I am a firm believer in the point-and-shoot for spontaneous picture-taking moments. Do you honestly believe I am going to lug the D70 every time we leave the house? Because, no. The baby, he is heavy enough. Also, I am lazy.

And the D70, while rocking like a rocking thing in all other respects, does not do video. The little cameras take surprisingly good video clips and are much easier to wrangle than the camcorder. The upload is simple as well – there is no searching for the adapter cable, hooking it up, plugging it in, converting the video. There is just plug. I like things that have only one step.

(All of these, including the self-portrait at left, were taken with the new camera. I am, as always, blisteringly photogenic.)

The new point-and-shoot is a Nikon Coolpix L3. It is very, very wee. Hey! That made a rhyme, and I could follow it with a ditty about how I do not know I am a poet, but I will not. Merry Christmas!

The camera’s great, but it has what I have learned to think of as “Ugly Screen.” That is, everything on the preview screen on the back of the camera is rendered in uglyvision, and it isn’t until the shots are uploaded that it’s possible to tell which ones are good. Also, it handles color in a way that can only be described as “interesting.” I look like a thug in most of the pictures, but my eyes? Very blue. It’s a trade-off. All hail Adobe Lightroom, that’s all I have to say.

It does excellent video, though. I am all about the love for the L3 video. I could compose odes to it, but I won’t, because…lazy. Instead I will let you be the judge: check out the little test video we shot (before we set it to max resolution, even). Also, my kid? Cute.

technorati tags:nikon coolpix l3, coolpix, christmas, gifts, camera, snapshot, video

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Christmastime just isn’t the same as it was when I was little. Sure, it was always kind of disappointing, seeing as we were dirt poor and often received gifts that still bore dirty price stickers from the Salvation Army. Sure, gifts from our dad were usually things he wanted and would commandeer the minute they were unwrapped, under the guise of “showing us how it works.” Sure, I was usually in trouble for some reason and had only been taken off restriction as a special treat for the holiday. But man, did we have Christmas spirit.

We’d spend the weeks leading up to the holiday wearing bells on our shoes and practicing some sort of Christmas pageant. (Hello, poor folk have to make their own fun!) I’d invariably “direct,” which meant telling my brother and sister exactly what to say and getting horribly frustrated when they didn’t follow my vision. Heh. I was a party as a kid. We’d sing (constantly, and badly) and watch endless Christmas specials on TV and put tinsel on everything.

These days I’m just not feeling it. Here it is, Christmas Eve, and I can barely muster up a “Bah, humbug.” Not So made his traditional Italian Christmas Eve dinner, which was delicious but so unlike the lovely White Trash holiday feasts of my youth. I don’t even remember the specifics of my holiday meals, but I know they involved potatoes. How can we have a holiday without potatoes?

It’s not the food, I know, but how do I generate excitement for the holiday when it just feels like another day? I don’t get a vacation from work. There’s no snow or visiting family. It’s just us, hanging around the house, trying to keep the baby from throwing a fit because his molars are coming in and apparently this engenders a great deal of wailing. Oh, the wailing. Maybe the wailing is trampling my holiday spirit, but I have a feeling it wasn’t hanging around in the first place.

We’re in this weird in-between state as far as holidays are concerned. Usually we spend Christmas with Not So’s family, simply because Not So has a family who gets together for holidays and I really, really don’t. They do this elaborate dinner/breakfast/gifts/more dinner ritual that I always found both comforting and foreign. But it was a thing, you know?

Last year we had Christmas here, but since we’d just had a baby on December 13th, Christmas was sort of anticlimactic. Gifts? Whatever. I just gave birth. And then we snuggled the baby some more.

So this is really the first time we’ve been genuinely on our own for the holiday, and we’re not really sure what to do with ourselves. Do we go all out and decorate, even though it’s only us? (The answer to that is, obviously, no.) Do we sing Christmas carols and watch Christmas specials and gaze beatifically at each other in the glow of the Christmas lights? (Again. Really not.) Or do we sit around like good little atheists, one of us on the computer, the other playing on the PS2?

I hope that by this time next year I’m busy baking Christmas cookies and teaching my kid to sing the in-between verses of Rudolph. We’ll have Not So’s Italian Christmas dinner and then we’ll have some suitably White Trash dessert (like a marshmallow pie or something) and then we’ll snuggle together on the couch to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas. And everyone will live happily ever after.

technorati tags:holiday, christmas spirit, white trash

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I just put seven (yes, seven) crafting books on hold at the library. I love the fact that I can shop for library books from the relative comfort of my own home and then meander over to the library to pick them up at my leisure. It’s so civilized. Whenever I look for a book at the actual library I get so distracted by the elegance of the dewey decimal system that I end up with a huge stack of books which have nothing to do with the one I came in to find. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, except that my reading time is woefully limited these days, so I really have to stay on task.

Speaking of staying on task, I did manage to finish all my toycrafts in time for the Christmas cut-off at the post office. Yay me, singlehandedly saving Christmas, etc. My favorite is the PVC girl doll. PVC! Who doesn’t love it? (Although sewing PVC? Pain in my ass. Er, hand, actually, since I managed to slice right through the tip of my left index finger while trying to “hurry.” Remind me not to do that anymore, because ow.)

I also re-did (again!) the Cranky Pals site, and I have big plans for the content, which will be much, much more exciting than it is currently.

In (related) news, Not So got me a sewing machine for Christmas! I got to open it early because I was a very, very good girl this year. It’s beautiful and baffling and all mine. I would post pictures, but I haven’t taken any yet, mostly because it is currently sitting, half-assembled, on my kitchen table while I figure out how to thread a bobbin. You wouldn’t think that would be so hard, but you probably also wouldn’t think the last time I used a sewing machine was roughly 1986. I remember it being very, very hard, but since I was twelve at the time I assume this time will probably be easier. At least my hands are bigger, right?

technorati tags:sewing, crafts, cranky pals

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In the past month I have made:

• 11 tee-shirt designs
• 7 stuffed toys
• 5 designs for future toys
• 1 set of custom holiday icons (which went poof when Illustrator crashed, but whatever, it counts)
• 3 illustrated card designs
• 2 custom holiday headers for my personal blogs

I never considered myself a “crafty” person. Scrapbooking leaves me cold. Embroidery strikes me as a lot of effort with a relatively “eh” result. I do not embellish things around my house with bits of lace or frill. In fact, I have an aversion to frills. Yet last night I found myself telling Not So “If I learned to knit, I could make you sweaters to replace the ones I shrink in the wash!”

I don’t know what’s wrong with me, either.

So far on the crafting horizon: 3 custom Cranky Pals for my nieces and nephew, co-designed with Not So (whose concept drawings leave mine in the dust); prototypes of the 5 new designs I came up with; a re-vamp of the Cranky Pals website (I don’t like the header and I think the colors need some tweaking); some new tee-shirt designs, which then must be purchased from Zazzle or outsourced to a local printer so I can, you know, sell them; and some testing out of the freezer-paper stencil technique I read about on Alt Dot Life. And I need to decide whether or not I will reserve a table for the craft fair at Milagros in January. I’m leaning toward “no,” since I can’t imagine where I’d find the time to make enough toys to fill up a whole table, but I really want to.

It would also be nice if I could make my printer behave so that I could print my own greeting cards and stationary. Because I have ideas. Oh yes.

technorati tags:crafts, cranky pals, stuffed animal, zazzle

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Auntie Pep and Uncle Speedracer (see? I told you I’d think of a good name for him) left yesterday, after a quickie weekend visit in which we traipsed around in the cold and had ourselves a lovely time. Happy Fun Baby was sung to, danced with, played with and carried around so much he barely had a chance to be cranky. (Cleverly he saved all his cranky for bedtime, when there were fewer distractions. Since he sleeps with us, there has been a lot of tired in our world.)

I like my sister a lot, but she has a lot of energy. A lot of energy. Energy which I, as a person who has spent the last three nights “sleeping” next to a baby who wants to nurse every thirty minutes, do not possess. Well…to be totally fair, my energy even on a good day doesn’t even come close to my sister’s boundless reserves, but let’s just let that one go. As I may have mentioned, though, I am somewhat stubborn, so we spent the weekend flitting, butterfly-like, from place to place while I propped my eyelids open with toothpicks and chatted with hallucinatory penguins. Maybe they weren’t penguins. It’s hard to say, what with all the dancing.

Also like a butterfly: my intolerance for cold weather. This might have something to do with the fact that I don’t have a winter coat anymore (…why do I feel like a cat, suddenly?) and was braving the cold in my Old Navy windbreaker. Which is lined with polarfleece, but still. We went out on Saturday night to see the lights on Peacock Lane, and I had to concede that wishing fiercely for a mug of life-giving hot chocolate will not cause it to appear. All of you ‘visualize world peace’ people might want to take that under consideration.

But! My lovely husband, who (inexplicably) doesn’t like to see me shivering and miserable every time I leave the house, bought me not only a warm, lightweight winter coat (in which I look nothing like the Michelin Man) but also a warm, down-filled vest. Together they activate their Wonder-Twin Powers and become Super!Coat, defending mamas against winter and spreading justice through the universe. How happy am I? Also, my husband rocks.

Now that our houseguests are gone, it seems eerily quiet in the Cranky abode. Even the cartoons seem more subdued. Happy Fun Baby is playing on the floor, the heater’s humming pleansantly…it’s almost enough to make a girl think she could get a nap today. Almost.

technorati tags:winter, peacock lane, visit, family

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