cranky pixels

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

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.

Unsurprisingly, the longer I am solo parenting, the harder it gets. Actually that’s not true. Some things are actually easier when I’m the only one around. Sleeptime, for example. When the kid’s tired, I put him down. If I’m tired too, we both go to sleep, in a bed that suddenly feels spacious and accommodating. I don’t need to worry about whether the lights are off or the door is locked. I don’t need to feel bad that I’m not dividing my attention. I can just…sleep.

Other things aren’t so smooth. Happy Fun Baby threw not one, not two but three marathon tantrums in the last three days, which isn’t that unusual since he’s 18 months old. What is unusual is that afterward there was no one to watch him while I took a desperately needed mental health break. Even things like taking out the garbage became a big deal: the garbage cans have temporarily been relocated to the first floor while the elevator is being upgraded, so taking out the garbage means going down two flights of stairs. Sounds simple, right? Except how do you wrangle garbage bags and a toddler? In the Ergo, that’s how, but you’d be surprised how long it took me to figure that out.

Yesterday was…challenging. We went to Saturday Market (yes, I know it was Sunday) and the kid insisted on walking so I didn’t bring the Ergo. People! Learn from my mistakes! When your child is younger than, say, twelve, you must provide an alternate method of transport! Anyway I foolishly went out with a walking kid, and it was actually fine for the first bit. We wandered, we chatted with our friend Chyna, we had some lunch at Mother’s, and then we went home. This is where the problem started. Mother’s is just far enough from the MAX that I stupidly thought “We can just walk from here.” Stupid decision #2: “Oh yeah, we need diapers! I’ll just pop into Rite Aid on the way home.” And guess who started refusing to walk after three of the nine blocks? Guess who needed to be carried? Guess who would not stand still in the drugstore even though mama had her hands full? Guess who screamed when we handed the diapers to the cashier? Those were the longest nine blocks of my life, and several times I was very tempted to just sit on the curb and set up camp. The homeless people like us, for the most part, and the kid is very friendly.

I was lucky in that I was able to take a mini break from work the past two days, and the new school session only starts today so I didn’t have homework, either. Yes: my vacation is a weekend of solo parenting during which I only had the kid and the housework! You totally wish you had my life.

Not So gets back today, and it’s a good thing. My poor beleagured brain is so distracted with kid stuff that when Chyna said “You look cute today!” I didn’t even consider that she might not be talking to the baby. It was only when she followed up with “Do I recognize that skirt?” that I realized she was talking about me.

Despite the fact that Happy Fun Baby threw an inexplicable hissy fit last night and screamed non-stop from 7pm until around 9 (I was beginning to freak out a bit myself but he calmed down just as quickly as he’d melted down), we made it through the night without incident. The kid is a bit bedraggled today, but very cute.

Not So called yesterday around 6pm to let us know he’d gotten in okay, but aside from that we haven’t heard from him. I wouldn’t think twice about that except, man, if I were away from the kid for a protracted period of time? I’d be a mess. Not So and I have always reacted differently to absences, so I guess it’s not that weird that he isn’t all OCD like me. When I went to WebVisions for the day, I had to physically restrain myself from calling every hour to check up on the kid. (Which worked, apparently, because I didn’t call once. Which…maybe is bad in the other direction?)

We’re doing great over here, actually. The weather’s beautiful, I’m weirdly caught up with business stuff, and the kid is cheerful and cooperative. Time for a field trip!

Right now Not So is somewhere in the sky* between Portland and San Jose, eating peanuts and reading a book. There is no one kicking him or demanding to run up and down the aisles, and he got to carry all his baggage on the plane with him instead of having to check all the myriad accessories that must accompany a trip with a toddler. That, my friends, is the way to travel.

While he’s gone, it’s just me and the munchkin. Four days of solo parenting. Woo hoo! I am looking forward to it, let me tell you. Except if I told you that, it would be a lie. Really the only perk that I can see is that I only have to share the bed with one person for the next few days, so maybe – just maybe – I will actually get to roll over during the night. (I’m not counting on it, though. Happy Fun Baby is a bed hog.)

Before Not So left this morning we took the kid to his 18 month Well Baby appointment. The involved getting up at 7:30 (not popular with the baby) and hopping on the Max out to Kaiser. Oh, wait – did I say hopping on the Max? I meant waiting for 45 minutes at the station a mile from the clinic and cursing TriMet for being utterly and completely useless. Apparently, a signal wasn’t working. Could they have told us this when we got on the train, instead of unceremoniously announcing that they were going out of service and dumping us at the Rose Quarter? Did they actually believe that there was a train “right behind us,” or was this a bald-faced lie? Because 45 minutes for a train that is supposed to come every 15 really doesn’t count as “right behind us.” Also: screw you, TriMet.

So we were late to the appointment. Very, very late. Happily the doctor had time to see us anyway, and he assuaged most (but not all) of my concerns about Happy Fun Baby’s development. He said he wasn’t worried about the fact that the kid isn’t talking all that much, and that if he keeps growing at this rate he’s going to be very tall indeed, and that we should feed him whatever he’s willing to eat (within reason, of course) and not try and force the issue with foods he’s not into at any given time. I love our pediatrician. Pretty much the only thing he said that wasn’t all “Go, Ellison!” was when we asked him about the headache-looking thing Ellison’s been doing:

Us: He’ll squeeze his eyes shut and press his hands to his head like it hurts or something.

Ped: Headaches are pretty uncommon in babies. It’s hard to diagnose unless he’s got a secondary symptom, like copious vomiting or sudden loss of muscle control, like leaning to one side or losing use of one leg.

Us: And that would indicate…?

Ped: You know, nothing good. A brain tumor or something like that. He seems fine, though. I wouldn’t worry.

Thanks, Ped. I am totally not going to spend the next four days obsessively Googling “toddler brain tumor symptoms” and anxiously monitoring my child’s every movement. Good day to you too.

*I mean that in the literal sense, not in the metaphorical “Daddy’s looking down at you from the sky” sense.

Man, I’m in a bad mood today. You know those days where everything seems to be arranged in a perfect tableaux of pissing you off? I couldn’t even find the floss. Clearly all my teeth are going to fall out now, which would be the perfect end to a perfect morning, and also prove that I have deeply prophetic dreams, especially if they crumble while still in my mouth. Dude, you’ve all had that dream, right? It’s such a bastard. I always forget what it means, too, aside from you are a crazy person who needs to floss.

Anyway, enough of all that. I will tell you about other things. The kid, for example! The kid is enormous now, all long legs and big grins and the very beginnings of actual speech, much of which involves either “Go!” or “More!” He’s ridiculously musical, which is baffling, given that Not So and I are…not. I wouldn’t use the words “tone deaf” to describe us, but you could, and we probably wouldn’t correct you. Not So does play a mean harmonica, though, so perhaps that gene just got passed on with interest. Plus, you know, my dead brother was all sorts of musically inclined, so you never know. The kid, though, he thinks everything is an instrument. He drums on boxes, strums his wooden sword like a guitar, and blows on puzzle pieces like they’re horns. You have not lived until you’ve seen him bouncing in front of the TV, watching Dan Zanes and strumming along on his sword.

The weather report said it was going to rain today, but it looks pretty shiny outside to me. We’re at the office, trying to get some work done before heading back to the house and trying to get more work done, plus laundry. The good news is we finally (finally!) have internet at the house, so working from home is decidedly more productive. The Covad people came out and hooked us up on Monday, and I celebrated by staying up until 3am working on all the projects I’ve had on the back burner for the past month. Because (and I know you will be shocked by this) it is not entirely productive to go to the office, frantically download everything that I might need for a project, transfer it to the ipod, bring it home, get it all uploaded to the home computer and then try to blindly make changes without being able to check to see if they’re working. And then bring them back to the office the next day to start the process again. I did that for a month. A month! And the fact that I managed to get anything done at all is testament to my extreme refusal to let something like lack of web access get in the way of web design.

But now I can work from home again, joy of joys and all that. I have to admit that part of me is a little disappointed that I no longer have an excuse to sit and read a book in the evenings anymore (because I couldn’t work anyway, not if I had something that required being online). We watched the last episode of Alias last night (only a year late! Go us! But it was full of stupid so I’m not really sad I didn’t see it when it aired) and I spent the entire time glancing at the computer, making a mental tally of all the things I needed to do as soon as the show ended. Hooray, OCD! How I’ve missed you!

You’re probably thinking Gee, it sounds like you need a day off, to which I respond Have you been talking to Not So? Because it isn’t nice to conspire behind people’s backs, you know! Also: that rhymed. I am so funny! And I do not need a day off. I have too much to do! Once I have done it all, then we can talk about a day off every once in a while. Assuming, of course, that I am still capable of speech by then and am not communicating by a series of expressive blinks.

Kidding! I’m kidding. Besides, I’m too tired to blink.

I thought that life without an in-home washer and dryer would be the pits, and I was wrong, mostly. The building we live in has about 20 units, and there is a laundry room on the 4th floor with two washers and two dryers. I’m home on weekdays, and when I go up to do the laundry the room is almost always empty. It’s sort of a pain to have to schlepp up two flights of stairs after a half hour to transfer it to the dryer (and again in an hour to retrieve) but the two machines do save a bit of time in the long run. I miss our lovely front-loader, but this isn’t so bad, really.

We’re slowly settling in to the new place. Every box we unpack makes the muscles in my neck unclench just a bit. We still don’t have internet at home, so my stints at the office have begun to feel increasingly frenetic. I have so much I need to get done, but Happy Fun Baby only tolerates the office for so long. Not So insists that he can be reasonably productive at the office with the baby, but when he took the kid on Monday so that I could have some desperately needed non-baby time, only an hour and a half passed before he called me saying the baby was bored and did I mind coming back soon? No hurry, of course, it’s just that he couldn’t get much work done with Happy Fun Baby all crankified and craving distraction. Which – yes. I SO GET THAT. (Note: Monday = holiday, yet where were we? Working! Don’t you wish you could start your own business too?)

Living downtown, though? Freaking awesome.

Wednesday I took the kid and headed out to Jamison Park so we could splash around in the fountain. Portland’s having a heat wave, so the fountain was absolutely swarming with people. Ellison took off running the minute we got there, splashing delightedly while I let the water run over my feet and tried to keep an eye on him. Afterward we headed home, where I managed to get a spoonful of peanut butter and half a glass of milk into his tummy before he crashed out on the couch for a nap.

This is the kind of life I want, I think. Just with a little more connectivity.

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