cranky pixels

The boys are camping this weekend.

Wait a second. Let me say that again: the boys are camping this weekend.

Given that there are three of us, with two of us gone that just leaves me. Alone. Completely, blissfully alone. For the entire weekend.

I barely know what to do with myself. I feel like the horse in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. To wit:

It slowly surveyed the whole field, and then decided to plan out a nice relaxed day for itself. A little trot later on, it thought, maybe around threeish. After that a bit of a lie down over on the east side of the field where the grass was thicker. It looked like a suitable spot to think about supper in.

Lunch, it rather fancied, could be taken at the south end of the field where a small stream ran. Lunch by a stream, for heaven’s sake. This was bliss.

It also quite liked the notion of spending half an hour walking alternately a little bit to the left and then a little bit to the right, for no apparent reason. It didn’t know whether the time between two and three would be best spent swishing its tail or mulling things over.

Of course, it could always do both, if it so wished, and go for its trot a little later. And it had just spotted what looked like a fine piece of hedge for watching things over, and that would easily while away a pleasant preprandial hour or two.

Good.

An excellent plan.

And the best thing about it was that having made it the horse could now completely and utterly ignore it.
- Douglas Adams

The horse, people? The horse is me.

Heeeeeeeeee.

The internet. I love it, and yet it sucks the lifeblood right from my veins.

We’re dealing with the Terrible Threes, not only with the kid but also with the business. Both are growing at an alarming rate. Both demand huge amounts of time and attention. (Only one regularly elbows me in the sternum, however.)

I’m beginning to think that finding a balance is code for something else, like Discovering Valium or Hiring a Nanny. It doesn’t help that the last couple of months one or both of us has either been sick, out of town, or working through the night in order to catch up on the work that being sick or out of town interrupted. And since Not So’s job comes with more exciting deadlines than mine, guess who nobly “works” from home with the kid? Yes, because a clinging preschooler is an excellent business partner, let me tell you.

I’m behind. I’m stressed out. And it was 107 degrees in Portland today.

Oy.

Things:

• We’ve actually started going to the gym! A leading motivator is the fact that they have kick-ass childcare which Ellison LOVES. He begs to be taken to the gym. It’s cute. (Related things that are kicking asses, namely mine: pilates. Ow ow ow.)
• Ellison got into preschool! SO EXCITED OMG. He starts in the fall. I may or may not be marking off days on the calendar.
• The kid continues to be potty trained, and this continues to amaze me. (Though I have not brought him to Ikea yet.)
• Matt landed a book deal with PeachPit and we’re in the process of writing the next Visual QuickStart Guide for WordPress. Woot!
• I’ve got two spanky new work projects that should be really fun and now I will stop talking about work because this is my personal blog damnit and I can totally talk about other things, right? Right?
• Uh…
• I like donuts.

My kid’s breath smells different when he’s sick. Not gross-different, but definitely different. My mom used to say that my breath smelled like rubbing alcohol when I was sick, and it’s kind of like that with Ellison too. It’s cool that the mom nose notices things like that, isn’t it? It’s like an early warning system.

I mention this because today Ellison’s breath smells like rubbing alcohol, and I foresee nothing but doooooom. (Though it does explain yesterday’s foray into Meltdown City, in which a sobbing tantrum was thrown every five minutes or so by my normally cheerful kid.) We all had the flu a couple of weeks ago & are only just now getting back to normal; the last thing I want is another illness! But the kid’s got a fantastic immune system and usually kicks whatever bug he gets pretty quickly. Mommy and daddy, though, are another story…

It was my birthday last week. Yes. I am 35 now, a solid, respectable age. I would have posted about it sooner, but usually I loathe my birthday for reasons which have absolutely nothing to do with age and absolutely everything to do with that one time when I was 14 and no one came to my party, but this year? My birthday did not suck! In fact, it was as lovely as a birthday of mine can be (which, as it turns out? Pretty lovely). Not So took me out for a phenomenal dinner at bluehour, which is pretty much my favorite restaurant anywhere ever, and we partook of the cheese plate, about which sonnets could be written. I also had two lemon drops, and anyone who knows me will recognize that 2 lemon drops = 1 drunk me. (This picture illustrates, pre-inebriation, how ridiculously excited I was to go out on a date with my husband. Behold, the massive smile and flushed cheeks!)

So, show of hands: how many of you are looking at this site on IE?

Yeah, that’s about what I thought.

I’m debating making my graphics into PNGs, because GIFs are lame and full of lameness, but there’s the whole “IE can’t handle PNG transparency” thing* and it just makes me sad to think of poor backward IE people, looking at my site and going “Why did she put all her graphics in white boxes?”.

But who is thinking of me in this scenario? No one, that’s who.

I could check my stats, but that would be too easy. Plus it doesn’t involve ticky boxes.

Fill out a survey! You know you want to.

(If you can’t get the pop-up to load, click here.)

*Yes I know there are hacks, but I’m allergic to javascript & refuse to ask Not So for help. SUCH IS THE STORY OF MY LIFE. I do the same thing when I need to rearrange furniture.

I went to see Heather Armstrong at Powells last week. Room was packed, but I had a fab seat. She’s hilarious, and not just because of the way she pronounces “crayon.”