Happy Valentine’s Day, blogosphere! In case you didn’t know, Valentine’s Day isn’t just a genetically engineered plot device meant to boost flower sales during the slow months of winter. Valentine roots can be traced back as far as the Roman Lupercalia festival, in which young men dressed in loincloths spanked women with strips of goat hide. Of course, then the Christians came along and did away with all the spanking, and that’s how St. Valentine got his name on all the cards. Or something.

Anyway, we’re celebrating by not going out and not having a romantic dinner. We may also not give each other cards or flowers or anything that sparkles. Chez Cranky: the place to go to get your Valentine on.

It’s been an eventful few days since I last updated, and instead of trying to make it all flow together in Zen-like homogeneity, I will once again resort to list-making. You will read the list and rejoice, and all will be right with the world.

And if you don’t like it, I will spank you with a strip of goat hide. You know, for Valentine’s Day.

• Last Thursday was my blogiversery (blog-a-versary?). Want to know how I know? Because my domain name expired! If you noticed that the site was down for much of the weekend (and I know you did), that’s why. Happy Blogiversary to me.
• Saturday night Not So and I left Happy Fun Baby with an actual babysitter and went on an actual date. Woo hoo! We saw Glen Phillips at the Aladdin. Glen (I am so totally on first-name basis with him) was exquisite as always, though not barefoot. This could be because it is the middle of winter. His opening act was a woman named Vienna Teng, who I now love and adore. Brilliant pianist and singer. Glen made noises about touring with her and…someone else, whose name I don’t remember but yay, great…during the summer, and I am so, so there. Assuming we can get a sitter.
• Taxes: done. Waiting for refund, which promises to be rather substantial. Will use to buy practical things like a new laptop for Not So and an Apple TV (see next item for the why).
• Cable: gone! We got sick of plying Comcast with ridiculous amounts of money for ridiculously sub-par service and had them cancel our cable television yesterday. Unfortunately we’ve got to keep them for internet, since they’re the only option for high-speed in our neighborhood (and what is up with that? We’re in North Portland, not the North Pole) but at least we won’t be paying them as much. Also, Happy Fun Baby watches too much TV, and I know I won’t just leave the damn thing off if I have the option. Hooray, good parenting! But so we will be watching a lot of Netflix and downloading a lot of stuff from iTunes. Hence the Apple TV. You see. Because at least that way there won’t be commercials.
• Speaking of Happy Fun Baby, he has discovered that he can scoot various furniture items around the room to facilitate dangerous climbing experiments. Yesterday I happened to look up to see that he had pushed the little ottoman up to the baby gate and had climbed up and slung one leg over the gate in preparation for – what? What, exactly? You’ve got to think these things through, kid. Happily I grabbed him before he went tumbling over and splatted on the hardwood.
• I’m cutting way, way down on sweets in an effort to slow my slide into Screeching Harpy-dom (and hopefully lull my anxiety disorder into remission). This means I’m cooking a lot more, since I can pretty easily make lower-sugar versions of delicious things and trick myself into feeling like I’m not dieting. It’s been one day. So far I have not noticed much of a difference. I know you are surprised.

Now I must go do those productive things that good housewives do while their husbands are at work. None of those things involve goat hide, but wouldn’t the world be a more entertaining place if they did? (By the way: I’m totally just going to go read my rss feeds. But you can pretend I’m scrubbing the baseboards if it would make you feel better.)

technorati tags:comcast, glen phillips, vienna teng, sugar, Valentines Day, Lupercalia

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

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

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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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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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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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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