| Takin' care of business |
[27 Mar 2007|08:40pm] |
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mood |
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entrepreneurial |
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In one of those rare flashes of inspiration, I came up with a plan to launch my own mini-business, one with hardly any start-up costs and that I can do in my spare time, one that uses my talents and skills. One I might actually enjoy. Thus was born Custom Scrapbooks by ScrapMama, my scrapbooker-for-hire business. So far I have my own website and am working on some flyers, plus I've posted a cheesy ad on Craigslist (which has already netted me one emailed response - ecstasy! Someone out there is interested in what I'm offering!). I have my first customer (my mother-in-law)'s photos spread out on the table upstairs, and my second one (my sister-in-law)'s in the queue, but after that, I'm free, so - tell your friends! ScrapMama is here to save them from their scrapbooking conundra!
Seriously, if you know anyone who'd be interested in this type of service, I'd be honored if you'd mention me. I'm excited to see where this business goes. Thanks!
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| Postcards from the Blog |
[03 Nov 2006|08:45am] |
Greetings from sunny Vox-land! It's November, and I've signed up for NaBloPoMo and kicked off a month of daily blahging. I know we haven't seen each other in a while, and I know I've abandoned the ranks of LJ-ers for the blue skies and sandy beaches of Vox, but I hope you'll still come by and say hi, and watch as I embarrass myself by posting daily entries despite only having anything interesting to say every two weeks or so.
Wish you were here!
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| I can't d'oh it, Captain! |
[14 Sep 2006|04:05pm] |
I'm sure the entire universe has seen this by now. But just in case you haven't: Doesn't this video immediately make you think of justin??
My suspicion that the guy in this video is actually justin posing as a British person was confirmed when I watched a second video of his, here.
He even does the justin dance! Eerie!
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| Blogwarming |
[14 Sep 2006|08:00am] |
Greetings, LJ! This blog has moved.
Throw me a party!
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| Lucky |
[24 Jul 2006|10:10pm] |
Sometimes I still can't believe I not only found a man who tolerates my singing the "Hallelujah" chorus with new, revised lyrics centering around mashed potatoes - not only tolerates, but sings along.
Sigh.
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| By popular demand |
[11 Jun 2006|12:04am] |
I'm posting the piece justin and Amanda asked me to write - and read - for their wedding, which was this afternoon. (In typical me fashion, I ignored writing this for the EIGHT ENTIRE MONTHS I had been given, and instead wrote it late this morning in the hotel, while I nursed a minor hangover with Dr. Pepper and Advil. During the course of this morning's procrastination, I found the perfect Douglas Adams quote: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." Story of my life.) Here goes:
( Something Abi-ish )
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| Swiped, blokes! |
[23 Feb 2006|08:03pm] |
Stolen from ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) ladylyonors:
the American-to-British translator!
I had particular fun translating:
So there I was, reading the newspaper, minding my own business, when out of nowhere this naked man runs up to me and shouts, "I ALWAYS WANTED TO SHAKE HANDS WITH THE QUEEN, AND NOW SHE'S DEAD!" I mean, what are the odds?
P.S. I recommend reading it out loud.
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| With friends like these |
[13 Feb 2006|01:37pm] |
David has a Fisher Price schoolbus with three Little People who ride around in it. He has recently named his Little People, and their names are all: "Jesus". Which means, I guess, that David's toys have a lot to live up to.
Could be worse. When my sister was a kid, she named all her dolls:
( Warning Warning Warning )
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| Grace |
[08 Feb 2006|09:51pm] |
David's bedtime prayer tonight:
"Dear God, thank you for Jesus' good day at work. Thank you for the snow and the sun and the stars. I would like some goldfish. In Jesus' name, amen."
I think this says everything that needs to be said.
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| Humina |
[07 Feb 2006|03:20pm] |
As a native Tennessean (by choice and by heritage, if not strictly by birth), it is my humble opinion that chili is not really chili unless it contains the following three ingredients: barbeque sauce, bacon, and a generous splash of Jack Daniel's Old No. 7 firewater. (Followed by a second generous splash for the chef. Two, if no one's looking.)
Really. Try it for yourself.
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| Oh, poop. |
[26 Jan 2006|10:32pm] |
Today’s entry deals almost entirely with bodily functions and should not be read by the faint of heart, weak of stomach, or anyone else. Go away.
Baby poop is harmless, innocuous stuff. Noah’s still exclusively eating caffeinated breastmilk, and the stuff that comes out nothing more than an innocent, yellowish mound of slightly digested caffeinated breastmilk. It’s cute poop. Even when it rockets out his cute little butt, overflows his diaper, and explodes up his back, through his sleeper, and onto the carpet, it’s cute poop. Sometimes Aaron and I (Aaron will deny this, but it’s true) still find ourselves oohing and tittering with complete baby infatuation over the cute little contents of our cute little baby’s cute diaper. We take pictures of it for his baby book. If this poop were art, it would be a cartoon.
David’s poop, on the other hand, is – well, it’s awful. This is horrible, stinky, installation-art poop. As foreign as it is for me to consider anything that comes out of my little angel offensive – this poop is offensive. Picture your own poop (okay, not your poop; I know your poop doesn’t stink. Try someone else’s poop, then. Your most recent ex – that person’s poop) wrapped up in a diaper and left, reeking, to fester in the bathroom trash can for a couple days and this is what I’m facing, several times a day.
Which is why we’re now viciously potty-training. I’ve discovered one of the Secret Parenting Truths: No one potty-trains their child because they (or the child) want to. It is inconvenient. It is hard work. My life was much easier when I could just plop David on a changing table, wipe his little butt, and get back to aimlessly wandering the grocery store. Those days are gone: Now I have to find the nearest available restroom, FAST, as soon as I notice him making The Face that means, Poop is imminent! Aruuuga! I have to rush him there, balance him on the icky public-restroom potty with one hand while I hold Noah with the other, wipe him, and then wait while he flushes the potty about 16 times. If I had a choice, I would not do this, because it is a pain in the butt; I would keep him in diapers until he is embarrassed into permanent constipation by the kids in his first-grade class.
But I do not have a choice, because this is just too, too stinky. His poop is not cute little baby poop; his poop is a giant playground bully who pushes you off the swings, steals your lunch money, calls you Twinkie, and has to shave twice a day. His poop has prison tats.
Potty training, though – potty training is hard. This is not covered in any of the “So You’re Thinking About Getting Pregnant” books you read back when you and hubby used to lie in bed and dream about this perfect little angel you’re thinking about making together. Every mom I’ve talked to has used a different technique for getting through this time, and none of these techniques had particularly exceptional, magical results. The common denominator to all these methods is: bribery. Some people use M&M’s; some people put stars on a chart on the fridge; we give David money to put in a jar, to save up for a new race car. It doesn’t matter; any two-year-old is smarter than this. ‘Do I want another race car?’ you can see David asking himself, ‘or do I want the luxury of never having to wipe my own butt, never confronting a cold toilet seat, ever?’
Duh.
So in the meantime, we are positively cherishing Noah’s cute, non-stinky poop. If you like, I can send you some pictures.
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| Sleep |
[25 Jan 2006|04:39pm] |
One of the biggest lies of the new-parenting scene is the Sleeping Through The Night lie.
People who have never been new parents have no idea how difficult it gets, what an ordeal it becomes to drag yourself through each day unable to concentrate, unable to focus on anything except I Need SLEEP NOW and knowing that once you do finally get to drag yourself to bed you will only get to close your eyes for an hour, maybe two, before your precious little bundle is awake again and clamoring for FOOD, or a cuddle, or someone to play with and grin adorably at.
People who have been new parents forget how debilitating sleep-deprivation is, after nine months of waking up every three hours to go pee followed by four months of feeding a hungry baby for half an hour at a time, three or four times a night, and so they smile knowingly and say well-meaning but completely obnoxious things, like: “Don’t worry, he’ll be sleeping through the night before you know it”, or offering advice: “You should just let him cry it out – he’s got to go to sleep eventually,” or “Feed him some cereal before bedtime; it’ll fill up his tummy and he’ll go right to sleep for you.”
The worst, though, are the people who are new parents: we LIE. We blink blearily at each other and boast that our babies have been sleeping through the night since they were four weeks old; we’re getting more rest than we ever did when we were single; and we’re having sex at least three times a week, minimum. This is a subject no one can leave alone; since babies have so few distinguishing characteristics, personality-wise, at this age, we grasp for whatever we can find to brag about, even if it’s completely untrue: My baby sleeps through the night. Mine never cries, ever. Mine can roll over front to back and back to front. My baby speaks in complete sentences and has been memorizing the OED.
The truth is, we new mothers no longer exist in our own right. Moms, especially those of us who don’t Work Outside The Home, have so little time to invest in our own identities that our own personalities and accomplishments have no choice but to disappear in the face of these perfect little people that we’ve made and who, let’s face it, are a zillion times more interesting than we are anyway. Our whole system of self-worth is tied up in these little creatures, and we could not bear it if our little wunderkind would fail to meet that simplest of baby milestones, sleeping. Any less would mean that we were failures, I am failing my child, and my sweet darling, this amazing little person who somehow emerged in perfect condition from my very own vagina is somehow, unbelievably, less perfect, more flawed, than I am willing to admit.
This is the real postpartum depression. Listen up, Tom Cruise: last night I got David to bed at 8:30, fed Noah from 9 to 9:30, got him to bed around 9:45, and then cleaned up the dinner dishes until 10:15. While I watched Law and Order, I worked on packing away the Christmas decorations that have been up for well over three months now but that I don’t have time to do anything about during the day when the kids are awake. Noah woke up again a few minutes after 11; I gave him one last good-night nursing, then went to the bathroom, brushed my teeth, and fell into bed around 11:45. At 2:00, David woke up crying because he had managed to stick his hand through a lose string on one of his stuffed puppies that he sleeps with, and it was cutting off his circulation; so I had to perform emergency puppy surgery with a pair of scissors, and then comfort David, who was traumatized that I had needed to injure his puppy (as well as a little bothered that his fingers had been blue). Then I got to sleep again until 4, when Noah woke up to eat again; I dozed off feeding him in bed, but was awakened again at 5:15 because David had had a nightmare about llamas (his current Akron Zoo nemesis). David dropped off again after a quick snuggle and a reassurance that the llamas can’t get out of their pen at the zoo and certainly aren’t downstairs waiting for him to get up for breakfast; and then I burrowed back into my bed and passed out until 7:15, when Aaron’s alarm went off, waking up Noah, who was starving again.
And so on.
I spend my days in a fog. I don’t think in complete sentences. I work myself into a frenzy wondering whether I should have that second cup of coffee: on the one hand, it will help me wake up enough to get through the day; on the other hand, my caffeinated breastmilk will keep Noah up for the next week and a half. I routinely call my kids by the wrong names. I routinely call my cat by my children’s names, and my kids by the cat’s. I stand in the middle of the grocery store, list in hand, staring at the rows and rows of canned tomatoes in all shapes and sizes, wondering which kind I need and what it was I needed it for, while David rummages through the diaper bag so he can pull every diaper wipe out of the container, one by one, and throw them on the floor, and Noah sleeps soundly in his baby carrier, while I think, It’s only two more hours until naptime. Just two more hours, knowing all the while that even if I do manage to convince David to go to sleep for a couple hours, that will be the exact moment Noah wakes up from his morning-long slumber and decides he won’t be soothed by anything less than my complete attention. Which I will give him, because despite the fact that I desperately want to take a shower and brush my teeth for the first time in at least a couple days, despite that I would kill for a nap or a chance to read more than two pages of a book at once, despite everything, I think he is the most fantastic, phenomenal, incredible creature I’ve ever seen (or at least since David was this age).
A few weeks ago I bumped into an old coworker of mine from when I worked at SeaWorld, ages ago. She has a semi-fulfilling full-time job that she halfheartedly boasted about for a few minutes, then asked me what I’m doing now. When I told her I’m staying home with my kids, she condescendingly replied, “Oh, well, I suppose there’s nothing wrong with that,” and then she actually patted my arm. As if I had implied that motherhood was somehow a less-worthy profession, or that my kids had leprosy and harelips. And for a few minutes, before I started resenting her for implying that staying home with my kids is anything less than completely important and rewarding – for a few minutes I felt myself slinking down a bit inside, wondering why on earth I would want to debase myself this way, to squander my talents and deprive the working world of my presence.
But when the grandma in the checkout line behind me at the grocery store says that my kids are such angels, are they always so sweet?, I will smile and with complete sincerity tell her that yes, my children are absolute joys, they are the most wonderful children in the universe, and I love being with them more than anything. And I will mean it. Even when David the next minute begins throwing a tantrum because I will not let him take off his pants in the grocery store, I will mean it with all my heart.
Because I am too sleep-deprived to form any sort of rational opinion.
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| Smatterings |
[01 Nov 2005|08:02pm] |
Yesterday I almost saw a two-headed guy. But then it turned out to be two one-headed guys.
Rats.
***
I'm sitting on the lid of my in-laws' toilet, discussing God with a naked two-year-old. Bathtime, recently, has been the forum for many of the philosophical discussions I have with David (yesterday's was entitled "Why It's Not a Good Idea to Poop in the Tub"). Tonight's has been going something like this:
ME: Do you know who made you?
DAVID: ...
ME: God made you! God made David. And God made Mommy, and God made Daddy, and God made Baby Noah.
DAVID: And God made the kiki! (This would be Monster, our cat)
ME: That's right! And God made Grandpa...
DAVID: And God made Grandma!
ME: And God made Grandma! And God made the trees, and God made the grass.
DAVID: And God made the stairs. And God made the bathtub. And God made the potty.
ME: Er...sort of. And God made the water.
DAVID: And God made the microwave.
And so on.
***
Aaron has taken a job for our church, The Chapel - they've contracted him to put together all the video and media stuff for this year's Christmas concerts. It's a big job, but he's having a great time - I'm thrilled that he's finally doing some work in his Chosen Field (or at least, one of his Chosen Fields).
So, to show what a loving, supportive wife I am, I have appointed myself his Intrepid Research Assistant. This involves checking out all the classic Christmas movies from the library that I could find, watching them all, and making note of any scenes that would make good video footage for one of the pieces in the concert. I have 13 movies, checked out for 7 days, so I'm squeezing in roughly 2 movies a day. Yesterday I tackled A Charlie Brown Christmas and A Christmas Story, and today I watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas and The Santa Clause. Then, like the particularly overachieving Intrepid Research Assistant that I am, I watched the first half of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. I'm quite helpful.
Aaron thinks I am doing this for him, but really, it's all for me. I am a certified Christmas Junkie, and with no Hallmark to satisfy my Christmas fix this year, i'm already starting to feel a bit empty. Last year I set my tree up November 3rd, and had all my Christmas decorating done by the 10th; my excuse to Aaron was, "Once Thanksgiving hits, I'm going to be working gajillions of hours, so I'll never be home to enjoy them!" Now I'm searching for this year's early decorating excuse, since I don't have Hallmark to blame - I'm thinking of using, "Since I'm not working at Hallmark this year, I'm really missing being surrounded by Christmas things this early" - thus, my catalog of excuses will include both Working and Not Working. I'm not sure if he'll buy it. (Meanwhile, I'm secretly listening to all my Christmas CDs when he's not home.)
***
I probably qualify as a Certified Junkie for quite a few things besides Christmas. I can list several things without even having to think about it much:
Bagel chips
Law and Order
Blue Bunny Premium Super Fudge Brownie ice cream
Ben and Jerry's anything (okay, an embarrassing number of items on this list are foods)
The Bridget Jones's Diary movies
Anything by Douglas Adams
The application I filled out to work at the Hallmark store down the street from our house had the question, "Why do you want to work here?" I wrote, "I'm a Hallmark junkie". A bit desperate, probably, but I really am facing some withdrawal from Hallmark product in general, and Hallmark Christmas products in particular.
***
That's all, really. Goodnight.
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