cranky pixels

My wretched cold has moved into my ears. Why my ears? Why not my lungs, like usual? I’m used to hacking stuff up from my lungs; the ear thing, though, that’s just unpleasant.

Not So was sick enough to stay home from work today. He’s losing his voice, so the two of us are an unintentional comedy routine today.

Him: Hey, (mumble mumble mumble mrf)
Me: What? What?
Him: I said (mumble mumble) the baby (mumble mumble mrf)
Me: What? What?
Him: Never mind.
(Curtain.)

In an effort to regain at least one of my senses, I took a homeopathic sinus pill. I had to melt it under my tongue, which is very unpleasant and made my mouth water like a sprinkler. It also made me really dizzy. Or maybe the congestion made me dizzy. Either way, my head goes SPIN! and I kind of want to lie down, only not, because, hello, congestion? So instead I’m online. Which is like sleep, only with more keystrokes.

In other news, I wrote an essay for the Weblog Tools Collection about my love affair with my blog. You should go voite for it, right now. Go. Do it.

And if you have any words about the new theme, use them in the comments. I will also use words to respond to you. Brilliant!

technorati tags:hylands, homeopathic, sinus, congestion, weblog tools collection, essay

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Why, hello, anxiety! It seems like it’s been days since I’ve heard from you. I didn’t think of you, honestly, but let’s not dwell. You’re here now, and it’s as if you’d never left.

The anxiety thing is funny, if by ‘funny’ you mean ‘annoying.’ There’s almost always a thing that sets it off, so instead of being all say, I’m having an anxiety attack but everything is actually okay I think oh god I’ve made a huge mistake and now everything is going to hell in a handbasket. And I panic, because that’s what you do when things go to hell: you panic. What? You don’t? Well, that’s nice for you.

Even when I know I’m having an anxiety attack (which is most of the time), it’s sometimes hard to evaluate just how much of the triggering event is all in my head and how much is that I have actually, you know, irrevocably screwed up my life in a fit of incompetence. Because seeing that someone I know on a social networking site and adding them to my contact list only to have them send me an e-mail saying “I’m really not into social networking and I don’t know how there’s an account in my name” is probably NOT a sure sign of the apocalypse, but how can I be sure? Especially when that someone happens to be my landlord, who surely thinks I am a shifty, inappropriately-social cyber-stalker now. Just as an example.

If you’re wondering, my warning label would say “Contents Under Pressure.” And there would be a graphic of my head exploding. I might just have to make a tee-shirt out of that.

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Delurking week. Delurk, damn you! I know you are there. Lurking.

I would just like to point out that I am a comment whore, and feel somehow validated by people commenting on my site, even if they are just saying “Like what you have to say. Your blog makes good since to me….” and linking to a spam site. Which, as an aside: I *heart* Akismet. Did you know that Akismet has caught 1,162 spam for me since I first installed it? And to date only one of them has been a legitimate comment. I think.

So, yes. Delurk. It’s the right thing to do.

technorati tags:delurk, delurking week, comments, akismet, spam

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Oh, crazedparent, you don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into! I’ve jumped on the 10-Minute Writer’s bandwagon with this exercise in memory. (For da rules, check out this post on crazedparent’s blog.)

I remember watching Sesame Street as a kid and thinking it was just the most magical thing ever. To me, it felt real – the puppets, the characters, all the people. I wanted to live on Sesame Street.

Back when I was little, there was no Elmo, no Prairie Dawn. Snuffy was Big Bird’s imaginary friend, and no one but Big Bird could see him. And, perhaps most importantly, the theme song was not all techno-fied. What is up with the updating of the theme song? It was fine the way it was!

I think that’s the crux of it. I want my childhood memories (the few good ones, anyway) to remain intact and immutable. I want to be able to show my kid exactly how my memories looked, how they felt, what they sounded like. I don’t want to have to explain, uselessly, that all this newfangled “hip” puppeteering was absent from the original Sesame Street, and that cookies aren’t “sometimes” foods, they’re ALL THE COOKIE MONSTER EVER EATS. Because he is the cookie monster. THE COOKIE MONSTER. Follow along, people.

I remember how much I loved the Cookie Monster, and Oscar the Grouch (so cranky!), and Grover, and the Count. They’re all side-notes now, the minor characters who aren’t as compelling to baby eyes as Elmo or…Elmo, and can I just take a moment to say that Elmo’s laugh is like THE CACKLING OF HARPIES? Oh, if I had a fork with some sharpened tines…but that is neither here nor there. The point is, Burt and Ernie are supposed to be The Odd Couple, not the sterile dorm-buddies they are now, and at some point the one-two-three-FOUR-FIVE-six-seven-eight-nine-ten-eleven-twelve song is supposed to play, because it’s my favorite, and I always looked forward to it. Still do.

Some of the spots are still there. The weird floating stop-motion guy with the big letter cutouts? I totally rememeber that. The oddly-animated number sequences? So freaking cool. The badly-dressed playground children? I was so one of them.

The thing I remember most, though, is listening to the theme song and trying to figure out which direction all those kids were going. If I could have figured that out, I’d have it made.

technorati tags:ten minute writers, I remember, writing, crazedparent

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When Not So changes Happy Fun Baby’s diaper, he has a whole routine. There is the diaper-changing song. There is the ceremonial Holding of the Clean Diaper by the baby, who stops wriggling in order to devote his full attention to this critical task. There is the countdown to diapering (“One…two…three…butts up!”). There is even the baby-powder shimmy, in which Not So grabs the baby’s ankles, holds them aloft, and gives them a wriggle. It takes Not So about three times as long to change the baby’s diaper as it takes me.

Happy Fun Baby likes Not So’s diaper changes the best.

The baby thinks I’m okay, too. I have the Magic Boobs, and therefore I am required whenever the world becomes too much for him. It’s hard to be a toddler. There are so many things he can’t do, like reach doorknobs and talk, and there are even more things that he isn’t allowed to do, like play with mama’s cell phone, change channels on the TV, and climb from the futon to the top of the end table. But, see, if I would just let him climb up there, he could reach the lampshade! I am a mean, mean mama. He tells me this at length, but since he doesn’t speak English yet, I remain blissfully ignorant.

Although, today? Today he was coloring (a new development in and of itself) and when Not So said “Here is a red crayon,” the baby quite clearly and distinctly said “Red.” He repeated it several times for good measure. Can full sentences be far behind? (Of course, he then proceeded to call all the crayons “red,” so perhaps signing the baby up for podcasts is a bit premature.)

I’ve been woefully tired, probably because me and my Magic Boobs haven’t had a day off in more than a year. We’ve been working nights, too, since there are molars on the horizon and Happy Fun Baby’s sleep has gone to hell. Not that it was far from hell before, but now? Now I think fondly of the nights when I’d “only” get four solid hours of sleep. I think I’m adapting, though. I might not remember what it’s like to be well-rested, but I no longer feel like my brain is encased in cotton. Which is a good thing, really.

technorati tags:diapers, baby, speech, verbal, crayons, sleep

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The cats were being absolute monsters last night. First there was the tag-playing, which goes runrunrunrunTHUMP runrunrunrunrunHISSSSSS runrunrunCRASHrunrunrun. Then there was the yowling at the bedroom door, prompted by the tag-related hallway exile. Then there was the body-slamming of said door, interspersed with more pathetic yowling and some door-scratching, for good measure. I dare you to sleep through that, especially when you’re sandwiched between an extremely cranky (but blessedly sleeping, finally) baby and a snoring spouse.

Last night’s cat drama might have something to do with today’s case of the blues. I feel very ninth-grade today, all glasses and braces and ugly bangs. Why, you ask? Well. I failed to survive the cut on the LiveJournal friends list of someone I know IRL (that’s “in real life” to those of you who have, you know, lives), and even though I know I rarely update my LiveJournal I still felt like the popularity police had revoked my cool license. Which they totally would if they had read that last sentence. (Cool license? Seriously?) Then I found out that I hadn’t been picked for a blogging gig on a new multi-author parenting blog. Which I’m sure lots of people applied for, blah blah blah, but I’m a good writer. Right?

On the other hand (the one that’s still popular – yay!) I am now a proud member of the 9rules Network. Can I explain how happy that makes me? Can I? Because it makes me really freaking happy. Joining me in this round of acceptances are people like IzzyMom and Plain Jane Mom, so obviously I am in extremely good company. Congrats to everyone who made it!

technorati tags:9rules, izzymom, plain jane mom, geek, popularity, cats

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2007 so far? Food-tastic. You may not think foodtastic is a word, but then, you haven’t been eating at our house.

On January 1, when most sane people are nursing a killer hangover, we whipped up an entire holiday meal, complete with 12lb turkey, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole and stuffing. Oh, and a pumpkin pie. Why not start out the new year with a feast and set the tone for the months to come? I expect this theme to continue into my bank account, and will be most put out if it just means I’m going to gain 10lbs.

Also on Monday (though after a tryptophan-related nap), we launched the couldbe studios site. Seriously! I know, it’s been, what, six months since we originally planned for the site to go live? Now that it’s finally up and running, I feel all official. I also feel like I should be scrambling to do something, anything, to generate buzz, which in turn makes me feel like a (wannabe) sell-out. Sigh. But that’s neither here nor there – the exciting thing is that our business is finally a business. We have a portfolio, a blog, an office…we’re practically legitimate! Now all we need is clients. The kind that pay us. You know the kind.

Today I decided to take a break from my obsessive code-checking and made banana muffins. Banana muffins are delicious and do not involve css, html or detailed stats reports. I can’t wait until Happy Fun Baby is old enough to help me cook; this was totally the sort of recipe he’d dig on. Mashed bananas! Mashed! Also, I suspect that if he could help, he’d spend significantly less time hanging off the baby gate and wailing.

I’m hoping the banana muffins bring me inner peace. I mean, hey, the turkey dinner brought us clarity and productivity, so it’s really not too much to ask.

technorati tags:couldbe studios, couldbe, business, site launch, baking, banana muffins, 2007, food

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