cranky pixels

I’m feeling somewhat disconnected tonight, so your update will be brought to you in easy to digest, bite-sized morsels, not unlike Fancy Feast. Only shorter on the Fancy. And smelling somewhat less of fish.

TV: My constant diet of Scrubs is slowly being replaced by a hearty helping of The Tube and a smattering of the Dresden Files. No BSG, since we missed the one before the last one and can’t watch the last one until we watch it. Clear? And Veronica Mars is still being recorded, but has faded from my affections. I prefer to remember Season I VM as-is, without the taint of Season II or the untamed mediocrity of Season III. Anyway we also have a stack of Lost episodes from Netflix, and we’re not watching those either. At what point does the Netflix membership become a financial drain? Note to self: watch Lost.

Music: I’m on a big Steve Burns kick lately. Who knows why. Too much Noggin? I keep listening the the unreleased version of Mighty Little Man (which is just…I don’t know why he changed it for the album version, because it is so deliciously confessional and good, and yes, I am a sucker for a confessional, why do you ask?), and there’s a part in which he says “I have my mother’s eyes” that makes me sad every time I hear it, because Happy Fun Baby? So does not have my eyes. The most he can say is “I have my mother’s poor anger management skills,” and is that really something you’d want to put in a song?

Books: I’ve been reading a truly obscene amount of material. Three entire books in the last week. That’s almost up to pre-baby consumption! And they’ve all been really good books, so yay for that. The Keep by Jennifer Egan is absolutely stunning, Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner is surprisingly un-fluffy for a chick book, and Lauren Slater’s Blue Beyond Blue: Extraordinary Tales for Ordinary Dilemmas is, like everything else Lauren Slater writes, filled with a brilliance that borders on insanity. Yay, psychologist writers! At least her name isn’t Jennifer. I also have roughly a dozen crochet books on loan from the library, all of which suggest that I should really learn how to read a pattern. I don’t want to learn how to read patterns, though. Patterns involve counting, and that’s practically math. How am I supposed to relax when there’s math involved?

There might be more, but I am tired now, and do not wish to delve. G’night, internet.

technorati tags:scrubs, veronica mars, steve burns, lauren slater, crochet

You know what I’m supposed to do during the day? I’m supposed to be an entrepreneur. I’m supposed to track down leads and follow them. I’m supposed to find ways to increase visibility for our new business while reinforcing the integrity of our vision. I’m supposed to be staying on top of design and technology trends and writing weekly articles on our blog.

You know what else I’m supposed to be doing during the day? Going to school. I’m in my third year at AiO and I have a 3.9 GPA, which I’m determined to hang on to until graduation, which is sometime next year. Since it’s an online school, I can set my own hours, provided I log in and post substantively at least 4 days a week. The number of assignments varies from class to class, but it’s typically between 3 and 5 per week. These are all accelerated, 5.5 week classes, so a lot of ground is covered.

Another thing I’m supposed to be doing during the day? Caring for and entertaning my toddler. I want to say this involves a lot of structured play, reading, and outdoor adventures. I want to say that, but it would be a lie. We do a fair amount of unstructured, interactive play and a lot of cuddling, but there’s also a fair amount of “educational” TV and me on my computer while the baby entertains himself. We don’t even have a structured lunchtime – I feed him when he seems hungry, and only bother with the high chair about half the time. If I were a nanny, I’d totally sit myself down and give me a serious talking-to about whether or not I’m in the right line of work.

Also on my list of must-do things every day? Housekeeper. I’ve got to do laundry, dishes, and daily maintenance for a household of three, plus stuff like mopping, dusting, trash taking-out, Diaper Champ changing, vacuuming and litterbox maintenance. Back in the day, I didn’t care so much if, say, the floor was dirty or the dishes were piled up. Now I need the floors to be clean because there’s a little person crawling around on them all day, and I can’t procrastinate on the dishes because there isn’t a later I can leave things for.

Then I have days like today, when I walk into the kitchen, see all the mess everywhere, and think “I QUIT.”  Even thinking that gives me a moment of relief. I don’t have to reprioritize, I don’t have to spend the next few hours running from the baby to the kitchen and back…I just quit. No more housework for me!

Except it doesn’t work that way, does it? It’s not like I can transfer to a cleaner house.

If I could, though? I’d be all OVER that.

technorati tags:housework, parenting, business, juggling, multitasking, I quit

What’s in store for today? I’m heading over to the office to do some paintings for my sister. I promised them to her, what, eight months ago? The latest iteration had me giving them to her for Christmas, which is still possible if she had been, say, comatose for the past month. But still, better late than never, right?

Speaking of late, I’d planned on being at the office by now, but decided, inexplicably, to run my disk backups before I leave. This means that I have at least 20 more minutes of watching the little status bar on my backup program increase incrementally while my kid runs around being incredibly cute and making me not want to leave at all. He is seriously cute, though. You wouldn’t want to leave either.

It’s surprisingly hard to switch gears and go from Mama to Artist Person. Web design I can manage, but web design is less…I don’t know, visceral than painting. It requires less of me. Before Happy Fun Baby was born, I loved to be able to shut myself in a room and paint or write or draw. Now it feels like doing that is denying my kid somehow. Because god  forbid he have a mother who does something just because she loves doing it. ::face:: Besides, the web design – and even the toymaking – I can justify by pointing out that it will, theoretically, generate some sort of monetary compensation. The art is just for me. Well – in this case, it’s for Auntie Pep and Uncle Speedracer, but still.

On the Cranky Pals front, guess whose toys are being carried at LilyToad? If you said “Cranky Mama,” give yourself a shiny nickel! No, really – you deserve it. Seriously, I’m ridiculously excited about having my toys in an actual store, not to mention being able to feel like I’m contributing to LilyToad’s success, since I love that place unreasonably and would hate to see it go out of business. Dude, who went and got all serious here? I’m still doing the happy dance because someone likes my toys.

My backup is, like, 65% done. Woo hoo! I’m going to go have a sandwich.

technorati tags:painting, art, cranky pals, LilyToad, creativity

The other day Not So and the baby and I went over to our favorite kid shop (they sell kids there! Thank you, I will be here all week) to pick up some black-and-white stripey BabyLegs so I can continue with my master plan of turning my toddler into a wee little goth. I was still sick, of course, because I am stubborn at just the wrong angle and refuse to actually go to the doctor. So my ears were still quite plugged for our little outing. Plugged ears make the world seem somewhat surreal and disconnected, like watching the TV on mute. A lot like that, in fact. As an added bonus I had become completely unable to gauge the volume of my voice, so in addition to constantly saying “What?” I was also, probably, shouting like a crazy person. Fun!

So of course I decided to get into a conversation with the owner of LilyToad about my recent flirtation with toymaking, which led to her expressing a genuine interest in carrying Cranky Pals at the store, which is highly improbable but nonetheless true. So, yay! Also: eek!

My “inventory” (if by inventory you mean a stack of felt remnants and a bunch of batting) is woefully sparse, and I still haven’t figured out the damned sewing machine, so naturally my first instinct was to go out to Bolt on Alberta and touch all the fabric. We picked up some yummy fuzzy something-or-other (one of these days I’m going to keep track of which fabric is which) and then, bolstered by our brave foray into the outside world, decided to walk a mile and a half in the fresh air, which surely held health-giving powers. Yes?

No. I spent the next day sick, exhausted, and weeping, completely unable to do anything in the least bit useful and annoying Happy Fun Baby by my refusal to be fun and/or engaging. Did I go to the doctor, you ask? I did not. But, to be fair, I felt much better the next day.

I have been sewing like a mad fiend since then in an effort to make up for the days I lost to my stupid cold. I’ve been referring to it like that pretty consistently – my stupid cold – and I intend to continue until every trace of phlegm is out of my system. Which might be never. I’ll just be that girl with the perpetual case of the sniffles.

Related: I’m thirty-two, for Christ’s sake. Enough with this “girl” thing already. ::shakes head at self::

So I’ll be bringing a bunch of Cranky Pals over to LilyToad tomorrow; keep your fingers crossed for me.

technorati tags:cranky pals, lilytoad, crafts

One of my New Year’s resolutions was to Make More Stuff. I’ve had Craft Envy for a while now, and when I watched my favorite Maggie knitting in the park last time I visited Santa Cruz I knew I was going to have to figure out how to make something out of yarn.

Knitting baffles me, but my mom taught me to crochet when I was fifteen so I felt a lot more comfortable giving that a try. I went over to Knit/Purl on Monday to pick up supplies…and promptly fell in love. I never thought of myself as the sort of girl who could develop a yarn fetish, but there you go. It’s the Apple Store of yarn shops. Gorgeously laid out, minimalist, and quiet like a library. The yarns sent me into a tactile stupor – so many textures! So many colors! My brain immediately went into overdrive, imagining all the things I could make. Assuming, you know, that I could figure out how. Compounding matters was the fact that there were all sorts of completed projects on display with the yarns. Each project (which looked like it would be equally at home in a designer boutique) bore a tag with a pattern number instead of a price.

On the clerk’s recommendation I bought a simple wool yarn (which I know will shrink all to hell the first time I accidentally throw it in the wash – and it’s not like I have any illusions about that) and a bamboo crochet hook, and I’ve been slowly re-learning how to crochet. I remembered having a lot of trouble with edges, but this time around they at least seem to be managable. I haven’t tried any fancy stitches yet, but every row I don’t screw up makes me feel a tiny iota more confident about the whole thing.

Crocheting is surprisingly Zen. I thought it would make me anxious because I could be using that time to do, oh, any of the ten thousand other things on my to-do lists, but instead it makes me feel wonderfully productive. I’ve been picking it up during my downtime – while a website is loading, or while the baby is napping on my lap, or while we’re upstairs and I don’t have my laptop. Doing something with my hands is a great way to quiet the chorus of “Oh my god oh my god I have so many things I should be doing right now” in my brain. Cheers to that.

technorati tags:crochet, crafts, knit/purl, yarn

You may have noticed a conspicuous lack of postyness yesterday. I was all set to thrill the internet with my tales of wonder and delight (some of which might have involved my ears, but I make no promises), but before I had a chance, my angelic child spilled a cup of lukewarm coffee on my keyboard.

I don’t know if you’ve ever spilled a cup of coffee on your keyboard, but if you haven’t – I highly recommend it. So much excitement! So much shouting! So much mess! The baby was not interested in mama’s Dance of Woe, but was extremely angry that after all that work I wouldn’t even let him have the coffee cup. Didn’t I see all the effort he went to in order to get it? Because, clearly, if I were a nice mama, I would let my child drink coffee.

Once the keyboard dried out (during which time I cleaned, rather frantically, and paced, and tried without success to stop entertaining bleak fantasies of a computer-free existence), I discovered that all the keys still worked. All but one: the space bar. Stupid space bar. Who uses the space bar, anyway?

As it turns out, I use the space bar rather a lot. There was some more shouting after that.

(I do not like that I am a parent who shouts. Where is my therapist when I need her? My parents shouted. My parents also hit and broke things and scarred my psyche by saying things like “a monkey could do that better than you,” but is that merely the end-product of the shouting? Is the fact that I get angry and shout indicative of deep psychological issues? I would answer these questions, but like I said: no therapist. Sigh.)

So off to the Apple store I went, to purchase a lovely new keyboard and a lovely new keyboard cover, which theoretically would prevent this from happening in the future. Great theory, yes? Unfortunately flawed, as the keyboard cover makes the space bar stick. This? This is the definintion of irony.

However the Apple store is as wonderful as I remembered it, all sleek and modern and full of things I want so badly my palms itch. And they give you the cutest bags to carry your purchase! They are like wee trendy little backpacks. They are a carrying case, and an accessory. I love the Apple store.

Anyway, I can type again, and this is pleasing to me. And my child is unphased both by the shouting and the repeated admonitions to “please not touch Mommy’s coffee, Monkey, that is NOT for babies” so at least we’re coming up even.

technorati tags:coffee, keyboard, spill, baby, shouting

So last night as I was laying in bed, listening to the sound of my eardrums crackling gently to themselves, my left ear – the one that has hurt so badly I was thisclose to shoving a pencil into it just to get rid of some of the pressure oh my god – began to leak. I will say it again, just because it is so icky: my ear leaked. Ears? Are not supposed to leak. I tell you this not so that you will reevaluate your reasons for reading (although, and I am just saying, whoever came here searching for “how do lazy people get strong” is bound to find nothing but disappointment) but because it was such a novel experience. Also because I can hear now, so apparently the leakage was not comprised of vital ear lubricants. Although possibly I am missing gray matter. It’s really hard to say.

To celebrate my new and exciting ear experiences, we spent the afternoon at Baby Loves Disco at the Crystal Ballroom. Baby Loves Disco: wow! Crystal Ballroom: wow!

I’m sorry, did you want something more substantive than that? Okay: we’d never been to the Crystal Ballroom before (why not? I remember thinking before we even moved to Portland that I wanted to see a show there, and do I remember correctly that there have been several shows that I wanted to see, and didn’t? I am lameness, incarnate) and so weren’t prepared for the hugeness of the place. It was a veritable sea of babies, parents, balloons…

One thing I’m going to remember for next time is that dressing Happy Fun Baby like a minature raver would not be out of place at a disco for small children. He was all jeans and Trogdor onesie (which, yes, SO FREAKING COOL, but hardly unusual) while most of the children were decked out in costumes and scarves and glowing bracelets. And honestly, how many opportunities are there to dress your child like a wee little raver? More than you might think, probably, but still.

And the Crystal Ballroom was amazing. The floor? Bounces. I do not know if I can fully convey the fabulousness of the bouncing floor, but I do know that I now wish every floor I encounter has bounce. How much fun would that be? I would exercise a lot more if my living room floor were all sproingy. And yes, sproingy is the word I wanted to use there, not the more pedestrian springy. Shut up or I will ooze my ear at you.

So yes, we danced our little pants off and then put our little pants back on and danced some more. All three of us were somewhat less full of stamina than usual, given the Evil Cold of Doom that has spent the last week making mincemeat of our sinus passages, but we made a good show of it. Happy Fun Baby had a grand time (that’s him, perched on Not So’s shoulders, in the picture). He isn’t so big on the staying-in-one-place (hence the shoulders) but watching a room full of people groove to disco music definitely appealed to him. The only way it could have made him happier would be if the DJ had put on some Justin Timberlake.

Some of my mama friends were there, and I didn’t talk to them nearly as much as I wanted to – I believe I have mentioned already that I am lameness incarnate? Yes. I chatted briefly and then scuttled off to be antisocial and regretted it later, oh yes. This? Is what I do. I need to learn how to play nice with the other mamas so that I set at least some kind of good example for my kid. And I like the other mamas! I like talking to them! I just…feel all big and stupid and uninteresting when I’m around more than one person at a time.

Dude. Apparently the bit that leaked out of my brain last night was the one that dealt with cohesion, because this post is seriously out of control. Want to know what I had for breakfast, too? I go now.

technorati tags:crystal ballroom, baby loves disco, dancing, portland