The common cold generally involves a runny nose, nasal congestion, and sneezing. You may also have a sore throat, cough, headache, or other symptoms. Over 200 viruses can cause a cold.

MedlinePlus Medical Encyclopedia: Common Cold

Koff, koff. One of those 200 viruses got me. Which is kind of funny, if you think about it. Ha! Colds are fun. Want to create a festive holiday sculpture out of my mountains of used tissue? No? Well, don’t say I never offered you anything.

I started to feel a little punk on Friday night, when my throat began to seriously hurt. My throat rarely hurts, so naturally I assumed I was being felled by some exotic avian virus and responded accordingly by staying up until midnight doing chores. What is up with me getting all uber-responsible the minute a virus hits my system, and how can I use this power for good instead of evil? I’m thinking petri dishes and injectible antibiotics.

My mighty immune system has rallied spectacularly, and after spending yesterday swaddled in blankets and shivering miserably, I feel almost well today. Sore throat: finally gone. Snuffles: less snuffly. My head is full of phlegm, but it’s benign phlegm now; not that evil, scheming phlegm of the last few days. Bastardly phlegm. Down with phlegm!

Just in time to miss the big Alt dot Life holiday party, unfortunately. Not So went in my place, but it just wasn’t the same, mostly because laying in bed = different from celebrating with friends. Unless you’re a polygamist. Which, hey, not my cup of tea, but as long as you have a big enough bed, right? I digress.

Not So and the baby had a lovely time, even though poor Not So didn’t really know anyone even peripherally, since they’re all My Friends From The Internet. I like that I have friends from the internet, and these are particularly good ones to have.

I got to see pictures after the boys got home. And then I had a cup of tea. But no polygamy. Follow along, kids.

technorati tags:alt dot life, adl, holiday party, virus, cold, phlegm

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I am not blogging about the Kim family, because I do not have the proper words.

I am not blogging about my anxiety, because who wants to hear about how my brain regurgitates at least a dozen possible-death scenarios for any given situation? No one, that’s who.

I am not blogging about my relationship problems, because we talked and things are better and I don’t want to jinx that.

Things are actually pretty good in the Cranky house. Right now Not So has the baby upstairs, so I have an unexpected window of solitude. It’s very odd and I don’t really know what to do with myself. I’ve already tweaked the theme on my blog (the new version of Tarski came out today, so of course I had to go and mess with everything after I installed it) and gone through all my rss feeds (including the ones on LJ, which is totally just an aggregator for me these days). I took a picture of myself with my camera phone. I read some BSG fanfic and wished, again, that I could write decent sex scenes. Now I’m…sitting. And it feels very odd.

I used to crave solitude the way some peope crave cigarettes. I’ve always been someone who has no problem going to a movie by myself or spending an entire day reading a book. On the other hand, I loathe sleeping alone and I get weird if I go too long without talking to anyone, but there you go. My incongruousness is endearing. You were totally just thinking that.

Now that I have a moment to myself, I feel like I should do something to take advantage of it. Paint my toenails, or clean the house, or write a paper. Something. Instead I’m doing the same thing I do when the baby’s in the room, only without the constant interruption and frequent play breaks. Solitude, these days, feels like a deadline I’ve got to meet. It’s exhausting.

technorati tags:solitude, busy, sahm

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The last 24 hours have been somewhat sucktacular. Last night I spent three hours working on some holiday-themed icons in Illustrator, only to have the program crash. But of course I had saved, right? Wrong. So three hours of work went *poof* and all I could do was stare at the screen and kick my own ass for being an idiot. Because who doesn’t save? Me, that’s who.

Then this morning I got up late, showered through the UPS guy’s arrival and missed the delivery of Not So’s new cell phone, which he’s been eagerly anticipating for the last week. This of course prompted a frenzy of weeping, since Not So and I have been having…I don’t know, problems?…and this is just another example of How I Manage To Screw Everything Up Due To My Incompetence As A Stay-Home Mom. Back when I was gainfully employed, we would never have had issues about whose time was more important. Back when I was gainfully employed, I had people paying me for my time, so I knew exactly what it was worth and could prioritize accordingly. If I chose to work overtime, I got paid even more. Now that I’m home all day, I have to somehow make sense of the fact that I am working all the time and still find myself with more things than I have minutes, and no one is offering me time-and-a-half as compensation. Or even hazard pay. Which, if you’ve ever changed the diaper of someone whose diet consists primarily of bananas, is really not too much to ask.

Lest you think I am always thinking in the negative, I will share with you this list of things that make me happy:

• Kittens
• Babies
• Sleep
• Autumn leaves
• Etymology

Now then. See? I am practically bursting with positive energy!

technorati tags:stay-at-home mom, SAHM, incompetent, bah

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A while back we got sick of our blank bedroom walls and printed out a bunch of pictures on Post-it photo paper. All the pictures heavily featured the color yellow, and I arranged them to have the most visual impact, because I watch too many design shows. This lasted approximately a day, and then the stickum stopped sticking and the pictures began fluttering, leaf-like, to the ground. It was all very autumnal.

This morning Happy Fun Baby found one of the pictures. This isn’t unusual (paper is, in his opinion, the best thing EVER for chewing and I’m constantly pulling paper pulp out of his mouth, even though it’s not like we leave paper out where he can get it, and OMG why would you want to eat paper anyway) but what happened next is: he held the picture out, studied it, and then said “Da!”

I looked, and the picture he’d found was of him and Not So at the playground. “Yes,” I said, “That’s a picture of you and daddy.” He bounced and giggled and kicked his legs so hard he almost fell over.

He’s never really identified a photograph before (and especially not one of these). I tend to take “artistic” photos. It’s all fine and good to look at extreme close-ups or skewed perspectives as an adult, I can only imagine that they’re nonsense to an 11 month old. Except, Da! Da da da da da. Kick.

He held on to the picture for a while longer, staring at it (and kicking) and touching the surface, and then he forcefully handed it to me and watched while I put it back on the wall.

Kids are neat.

technorati tags:post-it, picture, photograph, baby, neat

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At 11 months (well, almost), Happy Fun Baby’s vocabulary is at a whopping four words: “ghee” for “kitty,” “luh” for “love,” “ba” for “ball” and “da” for “yeah.” “Do you want to go downstairs?” I ask. “Da,” says the baby. It’s like living with a little Russian diplomat.

I’m pretty sure yesterday (and today)’s crying jags are tooth-related. A couple of times today the baby has, apropos of nothing, put his hands to his mouth and wailed. I feel so bad for him, but I don’t know what I can do aside from offering snuggles and the occasional dose of Tylenol, which he sucks down like a little addict. Do you remember when medicine tasted bad? This cherry-flavored baby crack is not exactly off-putting. On the other hand, do I want to wrestle with my child before he will take his painkillers? No I do not.

The Code Fairy (aka my inimitable husband, who loves it when I call him a fairy) performed some sort of magic on my Buzzverb site and now it works gorgeously. I’ve posted the second of my 30 Days of Writing Links: if you’re doing NaNoWriMo (or even if you’re not) you should check it out. I’m not collecting all these links for my health, people.

I’m not doing NaNoWriMo this year (seriously, where would I find the time?) but I am all enamoured of a new manuscripting application. I downloaded the Scrivener beta yesterday, and it is, in fact, all that and a bag of chips. If you write novels, you know that Word is somewhat lacking in its outlining capabilities; I’ve always needed to either print out my notes and ideas so that I can refer to them while writing or have lots of windows open, neither of which is an optimal solution. And changing the order of chapters? Not exactly painless. Scrivener addresses these concerns and more. I’m digging the hell out of it. I may even do some work on the novel I started a couple of years ago and then abandoned in favor of sleep deprivation and mood swings. Er, I mean, parenthood. Stranger things have happened, you know.

technorati tags:scrivener, manuscript, writing, buzzverb, teething, tylenol, baby, nanowrimo, code fairy

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The CW: breakfast of champions, or overhyped zombie network? Too early to say, perhaps. I watch it in hopes my beloved Veronica Mars will step back from the precipice. At least this week was mercifully lacking in Aerie Girls. Can there be a less appealing gimmick than a room full of American Eagle-sponsored teenaged girls squeeing over primetime television? Also: I am. So. Old.

I will say this about the CW: it isn’t ABC Family. That’s a good thing, in case you’re just tuning in. They’re showing a horror movie marathon, ABC Family is. I can’t imagine how, but there you go. Sandwiched in with the clips from The Initiation of Sarah, Scooby-Doo 2 and The Corpse Bride are scenes from Misery. The promo ends with a truncated (…heh) clip of Kathy Bates taking a sledgehammer to poor James Caan.

Me: I have to say, that’s got to be one of the best horror-movie moments ever.
Not So: Mmm.
Me: …You have seen it, right?
Not So: …
Me: You haven’t seen it? You’ve read the book, right?
Not So: (unintelligible)
Me: …”I’m your Number One Fan”?
Not So: Yyyyeeessss.
Me: Yes?
Not So: Ye-es.
Me: Yes?
Not So: I must have.
Me: You must have read the book?
Not So: Or seen the movie. Or. Read the book.
Me: Or…maybe you didn’t.
Not So: But I think I must have. Unless I didn’t.

Well now that that’s cleared up.

technorati tags:misery, cw, abc family, aerie girls, movies

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I just finished my Corporate Identity class on Saturday (final grade: A!). I’ve got two weeks before the next class starts, which I am declaring The World’s Shortest Summer Vacation.

My vacation is off to an inauspicious beginning: Not So is sick. He has a cold, poor thing. Do you hear that? That is sympathy. I am sympathetic, because I am a good wife. I am certainly not inwardly irritated because I now have two dependents to coddle, one of whom claimed he would vacuum and clean over the weekend but, inexplicably, did not. (Damn Happy Fun Baby. It’s as though he has no sense of responsibility.)

No, I am filled with sympathy. Being sick sucks. Not So’s upstairs right now, trying to get some rest while propped upright on a mountain of pillows so he doesn’t drown in his own snot. That, folks? That is not a good time. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone, especially someone whose help I could use with, for example, the vacuuming and the cleaning of the house.

I feel comparitively footloose and fancy-free, what with the not having a cold and all. I feel, in fact, well enough to go out and play. The fact that I had a playdate scheduled for today would have worked out delightfully, had the baby not begun showing signs of inheriting his father’s Cold of Doom. Here’s a thing you do when you’re a parent: you stay home at the slightest sign of illness so as not to infect other kids, because bringing your sneezing, clinging baby to a public get-together is a definite faux-pas. You stay home and you do things like mopping and washing all the furniture covers to minimize the spread of germs, and then you turn your head, and in the space of that moment your angelic child somehow finds a used tissue (which, hello! Shouldn’t be within reach of the baby anyway!) and puts it in his mouth, despite the fact that you’re running toward him shouting “…Nooooooooo!” in slow motion. You think dear lord children are disgusting and you also think there is no way he’s not getting sick. And your child? He just laughs at you, like duh, mom.

Perhaps I will take a virtual vacation. I’ve got two weeks; where should I go? Since it’s all in my mind (like so many other things) I don’t have any financial or practical constraints. Well, guys? And suggestions?

technorati tags:virtual vacation, sick, illness, snot, tissue, disgusting, cleaning

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