cranky pixels

Had a lovely time at the Crafty Mamas Bazaar at Milagros this weekend. Maybe I only sold one toy. I admit nothing. Possibly I gave away more than I sold. But that’s the best part about making stuff! I totally don’t buy into the whole time=money thing. Time=love. Love=money? (Yay, prostitution!) (Ha. I kid. I have watched enough Julia Roberts in my life to know that prostitutes do not kiss on the mouth.)

Speaking of…what were we speaking of? Oh yes, money, and time, and love, which brings us (naturally) to Ikea. We took a family trip to Ikea today, totally spur of the moment, and realized when we emerged, slightly shaken and confused, that we had been there for four hours. Now, I am all about the Ikea love, but four hours? Seriously? Still, we managed to get a truly unlikely number of housewares for a mere $40, and that’s a win by any standard. And meatballs. There are few things on this earth better than Ikea meatballs. My mouth is watering just thinking about them.

It’s 9:15 pm, and the baby? The baby is sleeping.

This is unusual enough to prompt a whole blog entry, as is the fact that I’m typing merrily away on a laptop which actually connects with the internet (it belongs to Not So, but still). So, yes. 9:15 pm. Baby sleeping. Me online. Me online and not working. Has the world gone mad?

The secret to getting my kid to sleep at a reasonable hour is twofold, apparently: put him to bed early, and put him to bed with mama. The first part is something all the sleep books insisted upon and which, at first, I brushed off. My kid? Night owl. I couldn’t possibly put him to bed at 7:30! Which…I still can’t, but if we get him to bed at 8:30 he’s out like a light at 9. Whereas, you know, if we put him to bed at 9, he’s bouncing off the walls at 11:45 and mama is losing what little mind she has left. Because, oh my god, woe betide anyone besides me who thinks they can lure the child into slumber. Not So attempted to put his son to bed tonight, and it was only after listening to an excruciating 15 minutes of hysterical screaming that I came in…and the kid calmed right down. It was like flipping a switch. And then, you know, there was sleep, and can I argue with sleep? No, I can not.

It’s weird, though, having him sleep so early and so seamlessly. I feel like I should be Doing Something. Celebrating, perhaps?

Notable LSD researcher Peter Stafford died on Thursday.

Peter was the only one of my mom’s ex-boyfriends I have anything good to say about (except for Barbara, who wasn’t a boyfriend and so is exempt). I wasn’t super close to him, but I liked him a lot, and he was always kind to me. He had the added bonus of being crazy-brilliant, which is a plus. The first time I did acid I went to the house where he and my mom (and a bunch of other people) were living, crying because I’d had a bad trip. My mom gave me niacin so I could feel my skin again. Peter stayed in the other room. She told me later that he wanted to interview me about it but it could wait until I was less freaked out. The interview never happened, but I thought that was sweet – both the eagerness of a researcher for new information on his pet subject, and the unspoken decision to give me space when I needed it.

Peter was a good person. I’ll miss him.

Tags: peterstafford, lsd

Some friends of ours who just bought a new house confided that they’re giving themselves a year before they start feeling bad about the things they haven’t unpacked yet. An immensely sensible attitude, says I, and one I would love to share, except for one thing: we have no place to squirrel away our unpacked-ness. A two-bedroom apartment, as it turns out, does not so much accommodate three bedrooms worth of stuff. I know! I am shocked too.

We’ve been here for, what, two months? And I have clearly wasted an inordinate amount of that time on working, sleeping, and bathing, because our house is a disaster. Do you see? Do you see the disaster that our house is? (Do you also see the crappy excuse for a webcam? Clearly no competitor to the lovely iSight, which is currently on the office computer.)

I’m feeling particularly downtrodden about the state of the apartment since my inlaws are in town. I love the lovely inlaws, but I cringe every time I picture them walking into our house and being confronted with…this. These are civilized people. The sort of people who rinse plates the moment they’re finished with them and place them carefully in the dishwasher, and vacuum on a daily basis. They are not the sort of people who realize, after living somewhere for two months, that they still don’t know where the lint rollers are (said realization being sparked by the fact that there is a blanket-like layer of cat hair on the cream-colored glider in the baby’s room). They certainly don’t consider simply covering said chair with a blanket rather than tearing apart boxes to find the lint rollers, which might not even be there, since we threw so much stuff away, and given that we threw so much away WHY DO WE STILL HAVE SO MUCH CRAP? (Note to self: do not open hall closet and furiously contemplate stacks of boxes full of things Not So meant to sell on eBay and did not, and then meant to toss and did not, which means we moved and are inexplicably keeping four or five boxes of stuff we do not want, while having no place to store stuff we do, and yes, that sentence is rambling, and OMG do I have any more Calm pills? Do I?)

Hmm. Yes. So today, today is all about the cleaning. Well, the cleaning, and the school, and the work, and the babywrangling, and the lunch-making, and the not flying into a shrieking fit and tossing all our belongings out the window. Because, did I mention? We are probably having the inlaws for dinner on Saturday. Tomorrow, for those keeping track.

Wish me luck.

Blogged with Flock

As if the mounting frenzy surrounding the July 25 opening of Portland’s first Ikea was not enough, I give you the Ikea Mobile:

Blogged with Flock

Happy Fun Baby did not nap yesterday, exactly. He dozed on me while we were on the bus back from our playdate at Urban Grind (and Urban Grind = my new favorite place anywhere ever, and we had a blast) but historically his transit naps have been somewhat unsatisfying. I kept trying to entreat him to snuggle with me on the couch, but he was having none of it…which was really too bad, since I needed a nap too.

It wasn’t until nighttime that the full ramifications of He Who Will Not Nap were in evidence, and they were not pretty. Meltdowns! Tantrums! Hungry! But not hungry, why are you trying to make me eat food, I HATE FOOD! And then a nice, long interlude in which the baby was in the bed, and yet not so much with the sleeping. A long stretch. Did I mention long?

At 12:30am, the kid finally fell asleep. 12:30am. Need I mention that I had to be awake that whole time too? Awake, and immobile, lest my slightest twitch disturb his already nonexistent rest? By 12:30 I was completely stir-crazy and not at all tired, and my hives – which I thought were on the mend, after popping Benadryl like a crazy Benadryl-popping person the night before – were back with a vengeance.

Not So was snoring next to the baby, so I left them both there and got up to do some work on the couldbe studios site. See, because I’d been working on it earlier despite Not So’s indifference to the TABLE-BASED LAYOUT OMG and UNTHRILLING GRAPHIC SCHEME and LACK OF LICKABILITY, and the only thing he’d expressed a definite, emphatic opinion on was the one thing I wanted to avoid: the illustration. Says me: okay, so. A photograph would be fine, right? Says Not So: Oh, an illustration. We need to show that we can do custom illustration, right? Plus, so much cooler! (I’m paraphrasing. Or am I?)

Illustrations take time. Lots of time. Time I currently spend trying to convince an eighteen-month-old that he does, in fact, need to sleep sometimes. However, now that the toddler was sleeping and I was, to put it delicately, not, I figured I’d take advantage of the evening by seeing how far I could get on the illustration before my eyes started to cross. I surprised myself; I was done in two hours. (Amazing how much faster I work when no one is pulling on my wrists or helpfully clicking buttons on my mouse.) So, couldbe site done, yay!

Except boo, because my hives were all hivetastic and so itchy I could cry. I went to bed, but kept waking up to find that I was scratching like a mad fiend, which didn’t help the itch but added a nice, bracing sting. When Not So’s alarm went off at 7, I gave up on the whole sleep thing.

The good news is that the hives seem to have faded, again. The bad news is I’m hopelessly behind and pretty tired, to boot. And the kid?

Hasn’t napped yet today.

Sigh.

Remember last year when I was all itchy and miserable?

Yeah, well. They’re back.

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Stupid hives. At least this time I won’t be consumed with guilt for taking Benadryl.

technorati tags:hives