In All Good Fun, For Brad

Since When is 3>7?

So, on my priority list for season passes on my TiVo, the top three are:

1) Veronica Mars
2) Lost (ironic, ain't it?)
3) 24

At seven, we have The Apprentice.

The TiVo is supposed to record higher shows on the pri list first. When 24 and The Apprentice were on against each other last night, ask me what my TiVo recorded...The Apprentice!?! WTFBBQ?

This is the first time I haven't come upstairs when I knew there was a conflict to double-check what the TiVo was grabbing so I could watch whatever the other show was, and I got screwed! Every single week I come upstairs to make sure I'm getting VM so I know to watch Lost real-time, and every week it does it right.

What the eff is up with my TiVo? I checked in the To Do list where it tells you why things didn't get recorded, and its excuse for skipping 24 is that something of a HIGHER PRIORITY was on at the same time. Last I checked, Lost and VM weren't on at the same time last night. Screwed!

So I took The Apprentice off the list (which is where it should have been in the first place, not on the list) and it added next week's 24 to the To Do list. What gives, TiVo? Is this some Trump conspiracy?

Milestones

That's my B, holding her rattle on her own! I had to curl a couple of her fingers around it, but once she had it she held on to it for a minute or two, looked right at it a few times (as though she was saying, "Whoa, what's this thing doing there?") and shook it around and smiled at the noise it made when she did.

She'll be driving any day now, won't she?

And then I have a funny story.

As those of you who've been keeping up with Brigid's milestones here at the blog (because I know you all care as much as I do, ha) a couple of weeks ago, she started to flirt with the idea of sleeping through the night. Some nights she'd go five, six, or even seven hours on that first stretch, which was like heaven. But like all babies, not known for their consistency and predictability at this (or any other) age, she had other nights when it seemed she stirred every couple of hours. Those nights, she didn't even always seem hungry or wet when she awoke—she usually just needed to be held for a minute or two and calmed, then she'd go back to sleep (unlike me).

Well, this drove me crazy. I had to know what we were doing right on the days prior to the long sleeping nights, or what we were doing wrong on the nights when she awoke over and over for no reason. I enhanced her already-established bedtime routine and stuck to it, trying to give her cues that it was nighttime and time to sleep. I thought about everything. Nap frequency and duration. When she ate, how many times per day, and how much per feeding. When we did tummy time and how upset it made her. How many diapers we changed. Whether we got any time outside that day or not. What her temperature was each afternoon and evening. EVERYTHING. I couldn't find a correlation, no matter how hard I tried or how far I stretched the information I had.

Then one night when she was having a wakeful night, I felt the bed shake as the mister shifted around on his side of the bed. I looked at the bassinet (she hasn't quite moved to her crib yet...ironically, we've been waiting for her to sleep longer through the night consistently first) and it was shaking too. I had pushed the bassinet right up flush with the mattress of our bed when we'd gone to bed that night. I pushed it just a bit further away, giving it a little buffer space, and laid her back down. Well, she went back to sleep for a nice long stretch after that. Since I have been aware of keeping enough space between the bassinet and our bed so that our movements in the night don't give her a shake, she's been sleeping really well.

Always check the obvious, low-tech solution first.

Gotta Love Comeuppance

I guess karma's a bitch, isn't it, Bode? You spout off calling Lance Armstrong a cheater and you've probably never even met the man. Well, ha. I've been waiting for you to fail to medal, and you didn't disappoint.

Maybe you couldn't see that gate in your last race around your ego. Tool.

He literally, on my television, just said, "I never got drunk...the night before a race." What a nice attitude for an Olympian representing our country. Pass the keg, Bode.

A Sad Man Talking to His Fat Cat

I've had this one up my sleeve for awhile, and I just went back and looked at it again to make sure it was really as amusing as I thought it was.

You see, there used to be a little widget web 2.0-type application that put together three random squares of Garfield and presented them to you. It apparently disclosed the fact that three random Garfield panels were just as likely to make sense as three panels presented in the correct grouping, so the company that owns the big fat orange cat seems to have sent a C&D to the poor schlub who coded the thing. Otherwise, I would have given you a link to that here. Now, that sounds like it could be entertaining for at least three seconds. You might think that is the funniest possible Garfield hack out there on the 'net.

Well, you'd be wrong.

A thread on some random message board about Garfield takes the prize for that. It's a thread about redoing Garfield comics, without Garfield's thought bubbles. If you follow the link, it's worth at least going to the second page of the thread, where many more comics with Garfield's thoughts extracted appear for your viewing enjoyment. I urge you to take a look in your next free moment. It's scary how good the strips are without putting words in the cat's mouth, all apologies to the artist.

Good News and Bad News

Good news: A new series called Masters of Science Fiction is in the works. Let me throw a few names at you: Ellison, Heinlein, Bradbury, and Asimov. Real live scripted drama. Sounds good, yes?

Bad news: It's going to be on ABC. The same network that cancelled several shows that I loved without giving them a chance or a new timeslot.

I hope they put out enough episodes to release a DVD.

Bust It Up

I have an unfortunate talent. I break things.

I mean, I don't do it on purpose. I don't look at things and think, "Gee, I think life would be better if that was busted." They just seem to spontaneously stop working if they come within a certain radius of me.

The latest victim is flickr. Now, that's a big website to break, I know, but I managed it. I've been meaning to go through pictures of the baby and tag them according to what week of her life she was in, and find the couple that aren't in the set and add them. I got about 40% done (five pages, and I'd finished almost two of them) and I got a message that the flickr API wasn't available when I tried to add tags to the latest image I was working with.

Maybe I've been gone long enough that it's fixed itself. I think I'll nance off and check.

Update: The sound on my laptop broke two days ago, and I got it fixed this afternoon. Just another in a long line of things I touch, which then summarily break before my very eyes. I promise to be very careful with the baby. (!?!)

Do We Live In A Post-Literate Society?

This article on the death of literacy at wired.com is enough to make you question, “Is literacy dying?” Not just literature or the "finer" points of culture, but literacy itself. The slightly finer points of literacy above and beyond the base ability to read, such as the ability to distinguish between homophones, navigate basic punctuation, and correctly spell the majority of the words you write...is she dead, Jim?

Is this why reality television is so popular, because there is no longer any demand for crafted writing and traditional dramatic structures? (Understand, I am not coming to that from a holier-than-thou attitude. I watch Survivor, so I can't throw too many stones.) Has the pride that we should take in mastering our own mother tongue eroded so much that we now prefer our entertainment given to us in an English of crumbling standards, questionable grammar, and limited vocabulary?

I'd wager most of the people reading this have been chided for using "big words" more times in their lives than most. Are we going the way of the dinosaur? Is English, in this new battered and bruised form, passing us by? Will writing that we consider to be examples of skillful, higher-level language be as difficult to read for upcoming generations as Shakespeare is for some (most?) now?

Moreover, do we care, and if we do, is English salvageable? Or is this the natural progression of language, a simplification and evolution brought on by societal changes? For the record, I hope it isn't. Higher-level thinking requires higher-level language skills, and the death of one is the stagnation of the other. Where will we be in a hundred years' time if complex thought is nearly impossible because the innate language skills of humans no longer grant them the tools to form the concepts in their minds or communicate them to others?

Happy Donderdag, Two Days Late

I learned from this blogger sketchbook that "Thursday" in Dutch is "donderdag".

How much cooler are all the other languages of the Earth than ours? Who wouldn't rather say "donderdag" than "Thursday"? Why don't we know how to have any fun?

All the Cool Kids...

What the hell, I'll play.

(Be nice, now.)

I notice none of us elected to do the negative 'Nohari' window. All I ask is, if you elect to fill out the negative one (and I actually would appreciate it, because if I'm raising a child full-time I may as well know what my failings are) please, for both our sakes, don't leave your real name. I'd like to know what you think but I don't want to associate it with a particular person or I'll be tempted to bug you about 'why', and that's not good for anyone.

This Just In:

We're all idiots.

It's oddly comforting, in a way.

Happy V.D.

Well, everyone else was making their happy V.D. posts, so here's mine.

I made it 'til 2:30 yesterday with the attitude that it was wasteful to buy a Valentine's Day-specific outfit for the B. Then on the way back from her doctor's appointment (she's fine, just sad because they gave her two shots) I stopped at the local baby superstore and bought the smallest outfit they had left. It's a titch big (where are my hands, mommy?) but it's not so VD specific that she won't be able to wear it in a few weeks when it is just the right size.

And my goodness, is she growing. Nearly 13 pounds as of yesterday, and up to the 50th percentile on height, length, and noggin circumference from the 25th percentile last time. She now officially has no more lingering effects from having been three weeks early. Yay B!

Wish we could spend this lovely holiday with some of you. You know who you are.

Gladys Kravitz

I have a stalker. She's, like, 68 years old and lives up the street from me.

Here's the deal. She was friends with the (older) lady who used to live in this house. The day we were moving in, she walked right into our house amongst the movers and started chatting to me while I was a) five months pregnant b) trying to get the movers to put everything in the right place. It was a stressful visit, mostly because I don't like people I don't know walking right into my house (!!!) and because I was clearly VERY busy and she just chatted along like nothing was amiss. She was like one of those people who stand there talking to you even though you're carrying something heavy that you clearly want to set down, but she won't let you walk far enough away from her to do so without being what she would probably consider "horribly rude". (I'm not sure when it became rude to point out that someone else is being rude, but I guess I don't make the rules for people like that.) She invited me about fifteen times to join some sort of "Bunko" group, which I gather is a card game played by ladies who like to bet on card games and don't like to play poker.

She left that day, way back in September, and after the time about two weeks later than that when she stuffed a copy of the newsletter put out by our homeowner's association that I already had, along with a note asking me to join the Bunko group again because they are down one player now that her friend has moved away, I never heard from her again and I put it out of my mind. I'm not good at telling people, even subtly, "No thanks, I don't think we have anything in common, I'm busy, and I don't really want to hang out with you," so I rather hoped she would take the hint and make friends with someone else who shared her interests. Plus, the lady who lived here just moved to a newer house in another area of town, so they could stay friends.

So yesterday, our phone rang at about 11:00 a.m. and it was a local number. I picked it up (this was my mistake—I never pick up unless I recognize the number, and I can't tell you why I would have broken my rule) and it was her! I can't remember if she got our last name when she was here barraging me with questions back in September, but she must have waited for our number to show up in Information and then called. She asked a LOT of uncomfortably personal questions about the baby (I don't discuss whether I had a C-section or not when I had the baby during an unsolicited phone calls with perfect strangers, I don't care where their house is located) with little to no preamble, as though I was a famous person and she was a reporter for Us Weekly and this sort of publicity was expected. She proceeded to lean on me to bring the baby by her house sometime (!!!) and then talked about Bunko again until I graciously extracated myself.

Before you all hate me, I realize she's just trying to be nice. But intentions are not the only things that matter. Effects matter too, and I'm a very private person in my everyday life (blogs notwithstanding). I think it's a horrible insinuation to look up someone's phone number (why oh why didn't I make it unlisted, I don't know, but the mister doesn't like that) and then call and ask them things like she asked me. Perfect strangers who live on my street don't need to know if she's sleeping in her crib yet or how LONG MY LABOR WAS.

It's as though she's hard coded that she is friends with the lady in this house, and dammit, it doesn't matter that there's been a changing of the guard. She is friends with the person in this house by gosh, and that's just all there is to it.

Come to think of it, the lady who used to live here is a little nosy too, actually. She stopped by a couple of months ago to see how we liked the house, which I thought was odd but not quite as intrusive as the other lady up the street. It also occurred to me that lady we bought the house from might be curious what we've done to it (they lived here from the moment the house was built until they sold it to us, 18 years total) and she may be trying to get her friend to look inside and spill the beans on whether we repainted or replaced anything. (Yes, and yes.) But my goodness, I wish she'd just call and ask if we repainted. I don't think I can take one more Bunko invitation.

Real Life Quests

Check out Quest for Glory. Wish I'd been there. I could use some of those chocolate gold coins.

(Once you're there reading the story, click the next link near the bottom of the page to continue. For some reason I had trouble figuring that out at first, so I don't want any of you to fall victim to the same thirty seconds I spent thinking, "Huh?")

Best quote: "Men with grey beards really don't like to be called, "fellow wizard." (Although, their wives are likely to find it funny.)"

The Threes

Stolen from Eve:

3 JOBS I'VE HELD: receptionist, buyer, webmaster

3 MOVIES I COULD WATCH OVER AND OVER: Love Actually, The Cutting Edge, Prisoner of Azkaban

3 PLACES I'VE LIVED: Salinas, CA; Reston, VA, Virginia Beach, VA

3 FAVORITE TV SHOWS: Gilmore Girls, Veronica Mars, Lost

3 VACATIONS I'VE TAKEN: Austria, Orlando, Minnesota

3 WEBSITES I VISIT DAILY: Bloglines, Yahoo Mail, Slashdot

3 FAVORITE FOODS: Soft Pretzels, Snow Peas, Bread

3 PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE: Disneyland, Disneyworld, Hogwarts

Guy on the Right

I have to ask myself, "What is the guy on the right adding?"

I mean, you're good, guy on the right. Without the barely movin' asian guy with beatbox and stupid dancin' white guy in the middle, you'd clearly be quite good. But, sadly, they outclass you, GotR.

At least you're cooler than the tool who comes in to ask the question.

(Click image to groove out with the commercial on YouTube.)

'B' Stands for Bomb

Usually the "B" stands for Brigid. Today, it stood for "bomb", "boom", "blammo".

I decided to go to a discount department store today because I got an email from them that they were having a baby stuff sale. (Their words, not mine.) (Sucky sale, by the way. Prices are better at the baby stores at our outletty-type mall that we have nearby, and the stuff is nicer with a better selection.)

The B slept in her car seat on the way there. I went to take her out of it to put her in the stroller (because mom might have wanted to try on a couple of sweaters, so no front carrier) and she got a little cranky, but seemed fine as we entered the store. I looked at a few things, she's fine. I walked further in where all the sale stuff was ...

WAH!

I thought perhaps she was hungry, so we went outside (not a bad day, not too cold) and she had a smallish bottle. Finished that, but she was still too cranky to risk going back in, and especially too cranky to risk going into the Barnes and Noble.

So, we went home. At least I got out of the house a little bit. Helps the day pass.

The good thing is that I decided to try out the swing chair that we got back in August at the baby shower to see if it would calm her down. She fit into it very well, didn't seem to have trouble holding her head up as it swung (swang?) and it calmed her really well, as you can see from the drool in the picture.

Tomorrow I plan to take her with me to the government office where I have to register her as an occupant of the house (believe me, I couldn't make this stupid shit up, I really do have to do that) and I hope she screams her little B heart out at the people making me do dumb things like that. With my luck she'll be her usual little angel self.

The Hardest Thing

The most difficult thing I've found with the B is that sometimes, you have to let her cry.

We came downstairs a few minutes ago. She'd just finished eating and I changed her, then we migrated to the living room. I needed to pay the bills (let me just herald right now how much easier this is with BofA online bill pay) and I can't really do that and hold her at the same time as bill paying is a two-handed effort, even online.

She's in her playyard bassinet, where I put her as soon as we came down here. She laid there for a few minutes, then decided she was lonely (again, she's fed, she's changed, she's not sick, and she's not bored, as we played for awhile upstairs and she'd started to do that gaze avoidance thing little babies do when they don't want to play anymore). She yawned several times while I changed her, and I know she's drowsy enough to sleep.

However, she took a left turn at sleep and proceeded directly to, "I'm lonely; pick me up, dammit!" and cried the most heartbreaking keening little cries. Not the screaming she does when she needs a change or a meal, but sad little whimpery noises because she's not with me, even though she is close enough to where I'm sitting that I can literally reach in and touch her foot.

Do you have any concept (many of you do, I know) how difficult it is to let this little person you're responsible for cry when all they want is for you to hold them? The only thing wrong in her life right this second is that she's not on my lap. I want so badly to fix it, but she'll never learn to comfort herself if I don't leave her, at least for a little while before I relent.

I liked it better when she was a teeny newborn and the credo was that 'you can't spoil a newborn.' This whole teaching her to tolerate being on her own at times thing is not my favorite part.

(For the record, she has settled herself down once, but has now started crying again. I don't know if I should pick her up now, since she did get a little practice calming herself, or if I should let her try it again.)