productionMaven part deux

I am kind of hating this Serendipity interface - I just tried to do an entry with a link and it didn't post it.... and photobucket has been crashing Safari when I try to edit photos (thus the lack of images lately). Tell me - what are you using for a blogging interface that doesn't require any knowledge of coding or the like? Do you like it? Can you do pictures and trackback links easily?

I might want to switch. Maybe I'll go back to blogger. Who knows. Or maybe I'll just hang up the spurs for a while. I haven't been posting too much. So many options.

Anyone interested in placing a bet on the date and time of arrival for the Lad? Here's what I'll tell you: there is NOTHING going on - no contractions, no water breaking, nothing. My 40-week due date, as you well know, was on Monday 5/26. I will go in to be induced on 6/11 if he doesn't come by then.

So, leave a comment here as to your best guess on date and time that he'll be born, or e-mail it to:
jennb [at] gmail [dot] com

Whoever guesses the closest to the actual time on the date that they have specified will get a prize of some sort. I don't have an idea for a prize, perhaps the honors of changing the first poopy-diaper blowout.... or an uninterrupted hour of sniffing his little newborn head..... or I'll think of something fun.

So let 'er rip!

I've been meaning to post some significant carpet remnants on freecycle that we have had around the house since last fall when we completed the new guest room. This spring, when we replaced the rest of the upstairs carpet, we got even more.

So now we have rolls and rolls of carpet remnants. What does one do with them? I'm not going to have them bound off, that might look a little silly (although I might do some for our master bedroom, where one of the dogs likes to sleep - he's a messy boy). Seriously, though. We have a BUNCH.

And trying to post something to freecycle? Well, how much time do you have in a day? I'll tell you what I don't have, and that is lots of minutes to dork around on their site trying to figure out how exactly I post something. I had to join yahoo groups, so that's done. Whenever I try to post the carpet, it asks me to verify my web identity. So, I'll turn to you, dear internets:

Anyone know someone or an organization that could use some really lovely carpet rems? We have a tight berber in either a gray-green or beige, and also a looser-looped berber that is on the light-brown end of the spectrum. Do you have any ideas as to who might be interested in this windfall? If so, leave a comment. A friend of mine suggested that I cut it down and give it to the humane society.... I'll give it to the humane society, but I don't have the time to cut it down to certain sizes.

I welcome your suggestions.

I just saw this in our staff kitchen and gave it directly to our Art Director.

What could be better than a rich, chocolately, caramel-filled, king-sized candy bar?
Then graced by Dale, Jr?

Then given this name?




Nothing, I tell you. Nothing.

Because they're fun and because I am beat from this week:

My mom, P and I over Easter weekend. Check out the fierce karate kid!


A more demure child, modeling the dresses that my aunt sent for her and her baby.


Tomorrow is Lad TV, expect some photos of HIMSELF on Monday!

It occurred to me that I need to blog on the weekends too... this might be a little tricky sometimes, but I can do it!! Just like Rosie the Riveter!

OK. So today's post is going to be a list, and that's the theme of NaBloPoMo for March. I'll try to do top 5/least favorite 5s when I do a list.

Today's top 5 / flop 5 are: Boy Bands. Not just the ones that were called "Boy Bands" by the marketing execs at their record labels, these are my top/flop 5 throughout the ages - bands that were just dudes.

TOPS:
1. Duran Duran (they weren't called the Fab Five for nothing!!)
2. A-Ha (remember them? Such HOT Norwegians!!!)
3. The Clash
4. The Beatles
5. Catherine Wheel

FLOPS:
1. Backstreet Boys
2. New Kids on the Schlock I mean Block
3. The Rolling Stones
4. Most rap bands
5. N-Synch

I've made it official.

I've joined NaBloPoMo, and it's being taken to a monthly level, with themes.

Check back often! Join my Notify List! Learn all about the facinating collection of cells and hair that is me!

(This will be very interesting to see if I can follow through once the 2nd kid is here. Time will tell).

I know I've been complaining about the white stuff lately, but honest to god, it's annoying. My mom always says that I'va always been at least a month ahead of everyone else regarding the weather. I have distinct memories of going to pick up my dear friend Cupcake to walk to the bus stop and reporting to her mother how many more days there were until Halloween (if school had just started) or Christmas (if we were past Halloween). The same goes for me as an adult. I can't wait for the leaves to turn in the fall, then I wait anxiously with baited breath for the snow to come - and stick - then I bitch until the leaves start to pop and finally you don't want to be around when I'm counting how many more 90+ degree days I can stand. I'm relentless.

Winter's taken a whole new spin this year, because we've had extreme amounts of snow, and I'm not only tired of it, I've had to work from home a lot - at least one additional day per week, along with my normal Fridays of working from home - due to our daycare closing. If there was something extremely important at work, then I'd be there, and luckily there hasn't been too many of those days. I have a 40 mile commute that takes about an hour, and if the roads are bad then it takes longer.

Anyway.

I've stuck with my goal of posting every weekday, and I'm going to continue that. My next order of business wil be to attempt not complaining about the weather so much. I'm glad to live in a part of the world where we have seasons, and now I'm going to work on appreciating them while they're here.

Besides, I'm making bread for my Daring Bakers challenge for February. French bread. Should be interesting. Bread and pastry scares me... but you can look for a new post on that before Friday! So all is not bad today, despite the snow. And also: thank god we got satellite TV.... we let P melt her brain in front of the box on days like this. No wonder she hates going to school. TV is much better.

This week, like so many others, was stupidly busy. I was able to post every day - yay for me!! - but today got away from me.

Here's what happened, in a nutshell:
- I got the hacking cold from Parker, as you know from the peeing entry
- Garrett got it from me
- I worked 2 days in the office, one day was chock full of meetings and the other day the server was down until 1pm, making for no e-mail, no internets, no server, nothin'.
- My brother and his wife welcomed their baby boy into the world - I am an auntie again, and he is just as cute as can be!!!
- We had a lame-o Chamber mixer.
- I spent today doing errands and shopping and spending money that I hate to part with on tires for my car, but at least I can get up and down our driveway
- I've been inunndated with owls - sightings, hearings, etc. Anyone know anything about Owl Ghosts or any other kind of sending in the form of any owl? In the last three weeks, I've seen one in the morning, had, on 4 different occasions, owls cross in front of my car at night while they're hunting, and today there was one about 20' from the house, perched in a tree. Prior to this, I had seen maybe two or three owls in my life.
- one of our dogs turned 6 and celebrated by finding a deer head in the woods and snacking on it periodically. Frozen venison treats!

Now it's 6:30 on Friday, my parents come tomorrow to babysit while G and I enjoy ourselves at a wine-tasting dinner based on the Oscars that we won tickets to. I'll be doing that - just tasting - but I hear it's quite an event. I'll take photos.

Time for dinner!

Got kids?
Like classic films?
or are you a Spongebob affictionado?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you must - you MUST - see this:



I laughed so hard I peed... although we know from Monday's entry that that's not a hard thing to make me do lately.

OK, did anyone happen to catch The Simpson's Valentine Special on 2/17? Cute and all, but for some reason I was VERY BOTHERED by the Sid & Nancy take-off... not so much that they did a take-off from that movie which was a favorite of mine when I was a Troubled Teen, but the fact that they showed Nelson-as-Sid and Lisa-as-Nancy cutting chocolate powder into lines with a razor blade (they didn't snort it, but they did put it in their cocoa) and cooking down some chocolate in a spoon was a little too close for comfort in today's drug sensitive atmosphere. And they were all wasted and disheveled on Chocolate.... I'm sure Hershey and M&M/Mars will have something to say about that!

I'm all in favor of controversial television, but that was a little more than my ethics could take. I know it's Fox and all, but geez.

Am I overreacting?

I spent 2/3rds of the holiday weekend sick, really as sick as I've been in a while. This has been the kind of cold that keeps you up all night then requires a nap during the day; the kind of cold where coughing is a necessary but fruitless task, because you keep on having to do it, sometimes every couple of minutes all day long. The cough is semi-productive; not enough to make a difference to the mucus-rhino nestled in your chest very comfortably. Sometimes there's a little lung butter offered up to the tissue gods, but not as often as I would like. My nose is raw from constant, fruitless blowing, yielding little more than water. I've stuffed Vicks Vapo-Rub up my nostrils in a futile effort to open up the passages, allowing for a steady stream of air while I sleep to eliminate mouth-breathing and the subsequent snoring that G gets to enjoy for the few minutes that I can sleep. It's moved into my sinuses, so my ears are plugged and I can't hear a damn thing, and into my throat, so I can't talk. I've been a real peach to be around.

Being sick as an adult is one thing: call in sick to work, lounge on the couch all day watching daytime television, eat some ice cream, take a nap, drink plenty of fluids, take some Nyquil and halluncinate a little bit before passing out for 10 hours, read some of whatever book you're into. Being sick as an adult with a small child, that's another story. Because the small child, she doesn't WANT to watch daytime television, she wants to watch Spongebob or Clifford for the eleventh hour. I'm so lucky to have G to run backup on the days when I can't rally and be "mom". It's hard to take a nap with P around; she came in a few times yesterday to check on me which really means she came in to wake me up.

But being sick as an adult with a small child and pregnant? That.... that is a horse of an entirely different color, nature, and breed. Not only do you still have to be mommy to the child on the ground, you have to be mindful of what you can take to make you feel better - i.e. you can't take anything except for Tylenol. No cough syrup, no mucus breaker, nothing. Wait, that's not true. You can rinse out your nasal passages with saline spray. And if you're anything like me, every time you do that, it will cause you to dry-heave and cough and spit up whatever you last ate.

When you're pregnant, you really should only lay on your left side, so as not to cut the blood-flow to the fetus off if you lie on your back. When you're sick, you should elevate your head. When you're pregnant and sick, you have to elevate your left side and figure out a way to sleep comfortably. And, when you're sick, you drink a lot of fluids. When you're pregnant, you pee every 5 minutes anyway. When you're sick and pregnant, it's a constant flow of fluid in and out.... and let's not forget what happens if you happen to cough or sneeze, which you will do when you're sick. Unless you're relgious about your Kegel exercises - which, oops, I haven't been - you will wet your pants when you have a sudden forceful exit of air from your body. It's horrible. Ladies: practice those Kegels. They're annoying, but they do serve a purpose, mainly that the next time you're sick after the kid has come out, you won't leak a little every time you cough, sneeze, or laugh.

I've admited to the Internets that I have peed myself this weekend. It's a new day for me.

It's been a tiring day. From getting out the door by 9 to swim class to a doctor's appointment to grocery shopping to looking at a new daycare, we didn't get home until 2:30 and I've tried to fit an entire day, including about 70 e-mails for work and personal stuff, in. I wish I could have a drink tonight - or 10. But no can do! Not until after late-May, damnit!

I'll write about the doctor's visit - for P's head - and the new daycare (and oh, did I mention that our current provider has told us she really thinks it's necessary for us to have P professional observed for behavioral malfunctions? Isn't a 3-year-old's entire LIFE all about behavioral malfunction?) that we saw today. It might just fit the bill.

And I'm getting the hacking cough and cold that's been circulating around, complete with alcohol-doused throat razor-blades. Just in time for the long weekend.

Have a good one!

I watched my favorite John Hughes movie this weekend, Sixteen Candles. God, that movie's a time-capsule, bringing me back to the days of wishing puberty would hit, hoping the cute boy would look my way, dodging the geeks, wanting everything to work out perfectly.... The clothes, the technology (pizza on the turntable while the tape gets eaten and spit back out?), the hair, the racy, politically incorrect terms ("there's your chinaman!"). The stupid dancing, the awesome music. It's all great. The first kiss over the birthday cake for Sam? Heartbreaking. So happy she got the guy.

Classic.

What's your favorite 80s teen movie?

Also - Michael Schoeffling? Love you long time! God, he was a babe. Can't find him in anything recently, though....

Anyway. This is one of those short entries to keep up my promise of posting every day, but today's a shitstorm at work so it's back I go.

This is almost too good to be true.....

We've got to get rid of Huckabee, too. He's a religious freakshow!