cranky pixels

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 finally scored a beta invite to Skitch! The happiness, it is all mine. Mine, I tell you. Here’s my first image, all notated and simple-like.

Uploaded with Skitch!

(Yes, I know, the bags under my eyes know no rivals. Have I mentioned I’ve been having dreams that I am a) trying to find an apartment in a country where no one speaks English or b) trying to kill my sister for borrowing things without asking? The sleep, it is not a thing I have these days.) (That reminds me, I need to set up my sister – who I don’t want to kill, even a little bit – with an Akismet account so that her site doesn’t get quite so much spam. I am totally going to do that now, even though I said that very same thing on Monday.)

Um, yes, but Skitch! Skitch is the rockingest, especially if you have a Mac. Which I have. Because, see, it only works on a Mac, so the rocking does not so much happen on the PC. I mean, sure, Grab is fine for screenshots, but it inexplicably insists on saving everything as a tiff. I have nothing against tiff files per se, but they are somewhat…how shall I put this…useless. I have to go through a ponderous opening Photoshop and saving as a jpg process every time I want to do anything with a screenshot, and do you think I have that kind of patience? Because I do not. I am very important and have many lofty responsibilities. You see.

Skitch is lovely in that not only does it solve the whole pesky tiff problem, it also lets you do other things. Neat things. Like, I can browse my iPhoto library! Without opening iPhoto! And I can take pictures with my iSight! And write on them! And upload them to Flickr! Wheeeeeeee.

I’m going to go play with my new beta account some more. At some point I will have invites, and when I do? You, my lovely friends, just have to ask and I will send one. I am nice like that.

technorati tags:skitch, plasq, grab, screenshots, isight, beta, beta whore

Yeah, so I’ve finally transferred all my POP mail over to Gmail. I wanted to love the BlackBerry Push service, I really did, and I would have if it didn’t SUCK SO MUCH. Seriously, when I can’t find messages from my clients in the daily barrage of “Enlarge Your Penis!” and “I am a lonely Russian girl…” (apparently the SpamBots think I am a hetero male, who knew?) it might be time for BlackBerry to come up with some sort of filtering thing, possibly, yes? And the Gmail client on the Pearl is so lovely and responsive. Love the lovely Gmail client.

When I’m not espousing the myriad ways Google owns my soul, I’m pledging my eternal love to Apple. I’ve got an ancient – er, three year old, which is close enough to ancient in the tech world – iPod with 40 gigs of storage, and I’ve been using it to transfer work files to and from my work computer. Why use an iPod when I could use Box.net or something similar? I will tell you why: no internet at home right now. This means if I need to design something, I need to do it the dumb way, with no impulsive internet searches or fortuitous downloads. I’m getting the hang of it, but I can’t say I will be sorry when the folks at Covad finally give us WiFi.

technorati tags:apple, ipod, geek, mobile office, google, gmail, blackberry

Frog’s legs are, actually, very good. They do taste quite a bit like chicken, which is reassuring when confronted with a food that used to be covered in a slick reptile skin. I was afraid that they would come like that, covered in frog skin, and I was certain I would not be able to consume anything covered in frog skin. They were deep-fried, though, battered, and only resembled the extended, leaping legs of a frog in shape.

My week was a lot like that: unexpected goodness in unexpected places. I was surprised on Thursday by an e-mail from the Portland Picks folks, saying they love my Cranky Pals and are featuring them in (last) Friday’s newsletter. Squee! The Crankies, they are all about the love. (I accidentally typed “lobe” there, the Crankies, all about the lobe, and then spent a period of time contemplating what sort of lobe the Crankies might be all about and where in the brain it was located. Although perhaps the ear. It is hard to say.)

The kid = still weaned, which is good since my supply is finally (finally!) dwindling. Apparently I am a milking machine. Several third-world countries could be sustained on my milk supply. Unsurprisingly, now that the milk is finally going the way of the dodo, I find myself suddenly deflated. This means none of my bras are even remotely functional. You’d think I’d just start wearing one of my less immense bras, considering that I had a stash of them from my less endowed days. You’d think that, but that would presuppose that I knew where any of them were, and could locate them as needed. I suspect that they are in a box somewhere, like pretty much everything else we own. Being prepared is not one of my strong suits.

Not nursing is pretty great, though. I heartily recommend it.

technorati tags:cranky pals, portland picks, frog legs, milking machine, weaning

A couple of people asked how I was managing to convince Happy Fun Baby that his favorite pastime (nursing) was no more. I’d like to offer some sage advice on how to wean. I’d like to, but I really don’t have any, so in lieu of advice I will just tell you what I did:

Stopped nursing. (Dude, I know.)

This is how it worked:

Saturday morning (when we decided to run with the whole weaning thing) I hadn’t nursed the kid yet, so we just kept not doing that all day. He’s typically pretty take-it-or-leave-it about the daytime nursing, so we kept him well supplied with snacks and drinks and he didn’t really seem to notice. Not So took bedtime that night, and the kid put up his usual pre-sleep fight but didn’t really seem to notice that he hadn’t been nursed.

Until 3am. At 3am, he woke up wanting to breastfeed. Mama did not accommodate. He woke up more, pulling at my top and weeping. We offered water, milk, rocking, singing. The weeping escalated to screams. Scream, scream. After 45 minutes (!!) Not So put the kid in the Ergo and took him for a walk around the neighborhood. Apparently he calmed down pretty fast once they got outside. When they came back to bed, Ellison grabbed on to my neck like a drowning person and fell asleep like that, clinging.

The next day there was a fair amount of “Nuh? Nuh?” and me saying “No, we don’t nurse anymore,” which prompted brief teary episodes but nothing like the screaming of the night before. That night he woke up at 3:30, screamed for 15 minutes, and then fell back asleep clinging to my neck…right after Not So finished getting dressed to take him outside again. Poor Not So!

But the next night the kid slept through, and last night he only woke up briefly and fussed before going back down.

He’s still obviously quite interested in nursing, but he seems to accept that we’re not doing it anymore. He’s eating a lot more solid food. He’s also a bit clingy, needing more hugs and snuggles than usual…which is nice, actually, because I feel a bit bereft as well. It’s not that I miss nursing (I so, so do not) but it’s really hard to hear my baby cry and know that I could make it better and I’m just not.

So, yeah. That’s my big reveal. If I were to proffer advice, it would be to start the process on a weekend so at least you can nap during the next day, since there’s going to be no chance of sleep the first night. Of course, if you are clever and have already night-weaned, you’re one step ahead of me.

(By the way, I’m still in a fabulous mood. Am I the only person in the world whose weaning hormones actually make her feel better?)

technorati tags:weaning, breastfeeding, nursing

Friday night I completely lost my shit, which is impressive considering that an argument might be made for my never having had my shit together to begin with. I’m not a particularly upstanding girl, but you know it’s bad when I’m making detailed plans for who’s going to watch the baby while I check myself into the mental ward.

Not So rallied spectacularly, and I’m happy to say that I feel much, much better today. Good, even! Want to know my secret? Wait for it…we’re weaning.

Yes. I know. My inner Attachment Parent cringes at the thought of abrupt cessation of breastfeeding. What happened to my warm, cosy daydreams of child-lead weaning? Where is my slow, gentle weaning process? WHY THE HELL DO MY BOOBS HURT SO BADLY? (I can answer that last one: I’ve never had supply problems, and apparently the kid was consuming a lot of milk. Milk which now has nowhere to go and is making me look like a poor-man’s porn star. Not cool, mammaries, not cool at all.)

The kid’s almost 18 months old, so I’m basically telling my guilt over sudden weaning to sod off. He doesn’t need to nurse. He likes to nurse, but he doesn’t need to nurse. Yesterday when I gave him his breakfast, Happy Fun Baby chowed right down on his croissant in a way I’m not used to seeing, and it took me a minute to realize – he was hungry. Which, isn’t that a good reason to consume food? And also illustrated the fact that he’d really been getting a lot of his nutrition from nursing, still. In a way, I think it’s good that he’s now eating because he’s hungry and not just for kicks. Maybe we can consume a little more than the occasional spoonful of peanut butter and our body weight in french fries, huh, kid?

My outlook has improved noticeably since we stopped breastfeeding, which is weird. I keep waiting for the hormone cocktail to kick in and render me useless (well, more useless) but so far I feel…great. Really great. Here’s hoping that it stays that way.

technorati tags:nursing, weaning, breastfeeding

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.

technorati tags:portland, jamison park, fountain, downtown, urban, summer