This Just In

This will interest a couple of you, and the rest of the whole entire world will not care. I went into Starclipper today, walking with the B on University Row. It was sad to be there by myself, but I consoled myself by buying myself some damn Pocky.

The B also got some toys, and a painted letter B for her room. It was a beautiful day and I thought a nice walk on a stroller-friendly street of shops would be just the thing.

It was. :)

New Template

Heh, now you all have to look at new graphics just because the baby decided to take a nap. Made 'em all myself, including the background. I always wanted to know how to make a plaid from scratch, and it turns out it wasn't that difficult. Thanks, The GIMP!

The "geography" shown on the banner is the first town I grew up in. That larger road running sort of down the middle of the image is the street I wasn't allowed to cross. Thanks, Google Maps!

I still might tweak the white space around the text, and there's still one hole in the style sheet I want to address, but for now, it's going to have to fly as-is. Hope it doesn't make your eyeballs bleed!

Something Good Came Out Of It

New toy
Originally uploaded by lostonpurpose.

We went to the worst ghetto flea market yesterday. It was stinky, in a bad part of town, and not at all like Flea Market Finds with the Kovells on HGTV. I've been to flea markets before, and they're not all like this.

There were the Amway-type booths, where people had obviously sent away for cheap purses and hair doo-dads to resell at ridiculous prices. There were the weird, I-could-swear-it-was-dry-ice fragrance burner thingies that made the whole place smell so horrible that I had a weird headache and felt terrible until hours later. And there were the desperate people who kept after you to buy things (what size shoe do you wear? there are children's videos right there, did you see the toys?) the entire time you were trying to look at their stuff, all of which was overpriced because they were convinced it was old and rare and not just old and busted. Then there were the booths selling stacks of CD-Rs with what I'm sure was bootlegged music and DVD-Rs of movies that are still in theaters. I really wanted to turn them in—it's the people doing that shit that translates into you and me watching fifteen minutes of FBI warnings on the DVDs we legally own, and also why we are trying to be sold on buying a license to play a song instead of the media that it came on to do whatever we like with. I still might turn them in, if I can do it anonymous-like.

We did, however, find this toy at one booth. I was too worn down to haggle and we might have paid three dollars more for it than we could have if I'd bargained, but I think it was a good buy. It's sturdy and not at all busted up. All the enamel on the wires is intact and the paint on the wooden blocks is still flake-free. The lady who sold it to us didn't harp on us the whole time, but she was friendly and cooed a bit over the B.

I gave this thing a mighty good cleaning and presented it to the offspring this afternoon, and I must say that she seems to like it. It helps her sit up, and she likes to chew on it (good thing I cleaned it so well) and push the blocks around a little. I suspect it will be even more popular when she has more fine motor control.

But man, I still wish we'd never set foot in that flea market. Ugh. Made me want to take another shower it was so nasty.

See This Vase?

It's nicer in person than it looks in this picture, I promise you. It is sort of irregularly shaped, but deliberately so. The colors are much more vibrant when they aren't under the harsh light of the flash.

However, my taste isn't the point here. This vase is notable for another reason.

You see, a year ago last April (is that how you say that, if I mean April of 2005?) LWC and I went to the Spring Craft Market. It was a carefree Saturday afternoon without the boys. There were a lot of things that were already set in motion at that moment that I didn't know about yet.

First, I was pregnant and didn't know it yet. I would actually find out the Friday following the Saturday of the craft show. I remember being sort of tired walking around at the craft show and I couldn't figure out why that would be. I'd ridden my bike that morning with the usual suspects and I'd gotten dropped, also because I was oddly tired.

Next, I'm sure the round of layoffs at That Place were already in motion as LWC and I walked around looking at lovely crafty wares. This vase was the last frivolous thing I bought while we were still carefree and pre-layoff. I remember staring at it, less than two weeks after we discovered we were going to have Brigid, not knowing what would happen or where we would have to move to. God, I felt dumb for buying it. I remembered LWC and I standing in the booth marveling at how inexpensive their vases and other pottery were for how nice they looked. I think I paid $35 for this one. And yeah, you can't do much with $35, but you can buy some groceries. You can buy enough diapers to last a month with that much money. It was easy to fixate on.

But...it wasn't about the money I spent. It was what the vase represented. It represented a lifestyle where we had no debts (other than the mortgage on the house and the loan on my car, but no credit card stuff) and we had enough disposable income that I bought a rather pointless vase just because I liked it.

It always made me wonder: did everyone who got the axe from that company, no matter which wave they were in, have a thing in their house that represented everything this vase did to me?

I stuck it on the mantel in the old house and tried not to look at it. When I unpacked it here, even with the job and the move straightened out, with new health insurance cards in our wallets and some certainty before our lives got turned upside-down by the B, I still felt uneasy looking at it. It represented something we had that we lost, that we'll never get back. An innocence, really, that things were nice and fun, that we had our friends and nothing would ever change. Friday night gaming would always be. My chair at the table, prime heckling position, would always be.

I saw the picture of the bathroom as it was when we looked at this house, considering if we should buy it, when I made my before/after bathroom wallpaper stripping/painting post awhile ago. The previous owners had a fussy flower arrangement in an equally fussy-looking vase on this goofy shelf type thing in the bathroom when they were showing the house, and I thought our newly repainted bathroom might benefit from the Tom and Kathy version of that. So I rescued my poor, maligned vase from the high, dark shelf where I'd stuck it and carried it upstairs. The blues were similar. The scale was about right.

One trip to the craft store later, and I had some strange-looking beige and brown stuff to put in it. Flowers—too fussy. Weird, curly stuff—just about my speed.

I've been getting used to having it around. The shower is glass, so I can see it while I'm showering. I almost don't even notice it anymore. Someday, I suppose I might not even remember where I got it or what the circumstances were soon after.

But I doubt it.

Good News Everyone!

Comedy Central has ordered 13 new episodes of the animated series that Fox canceled two years ago. Billy West, Katey Segal and other stars signed deals this week to return the show to TV. In getting a second life, "Futurama" is following the path taken by "Family Guy," which also found post-cancellation success on DVD and cable reruns.

read more

Dumbest Trip Out Ever

Today, I was starting to get cabin fever. I've been staying in with the baby because I've been pretty tired. She's been a little more difficult to get to sleep for the past few days. I think she's going through a growth spurt, and her schedule is a little thrown off. She's been skipping her first morning nap, and as that's also my morning nap, that makes for a tired Kathy.

Anyway, I was looking for a new place to explore, and I found a website for a lovely-sounding street of antique and curio shops. I got directions, printed them out, packed up the forty-five pounds of baby equipment, and headed out.

I found myself on I-70 for part of it, snickering at the signs that dub it "Mark McGuire Parkway". Just seems strange to name major roads after sports stars who retired less than a decade ago.

After inching through a traffic jam, I found my destination. I was so proud of myself for finding it without getting lost even once that I didn't really look around before I parked the van and got the stroller and the B out and started to roll.

Tiny little narrow, two-story shops. Each and every one of them sporting anywhere from one enormous step to four or five just leading to the front door. Narrow, heavy doors. Lots and lots of signs saying "no strollers".

So, the baby is over twenty pounds now. Her fully-packed diaper bag is at least eight or nine more. I can't just carry her around. So, I went for a stroll up the street, looking for a shop that wasn't entirely impossible to get into.

I squeezed into a used book store, finding that the books therein are all considered rare works of art by the proprietor, even though they are regular old battered, used books that weren't especially rare. I almost laughed out loud when I checked the price on a softcover Dr. Seuss book and saw it was $27.50. It wasn't even a first edition softcover. Unless it was signed by the Grinch himself, I can't fathom what the thinking was there. I was able to get through two aisles of the bookstore before I found the rest were too narrow for the stroller.

Did I mention it was also a million jillionty degrees outside today?

I topped off my trip with a visit to the wacked-out cafe on that street, owned and operated by a few hippie-lookin' people. Now, I've got nothing against hippies, but I do have
something against hippies who make shitty food. The B had fun though, and she had her regular lunch, so her meal was great.

I finally admitted defeat and headed back home. I considered stopping at Target on the way home, but in the end, I really just wanted to get home and relax.

Worse. Trip. Out. Ever.

The Obligatory Parental Poop Story

So, around noon, the B was in her high chair, happily eating her pears and sweet potatoes (not at the same time). It suddenly became clear that she was working on another project down in the hinterlands. She still wanted to eat (she's subtle about that, banging on the high chair table and opening her mouth) so I kept feeding her and figured we'd take care of that other little issue as soon as the sweet potatoes were all gone.

A few minutes later she's done eating and I unstrapped her. Picked her up, and it suddenly became clear in a most graphic way that I will not describe here that her diaper had not been up to the task of containment. Now, I could carry her all the way upstairs to the changing table and get the cover all mucky, or I could just throw down the plastic changing sheet out of my diaper bag and take care of it right there. I think you know what I chose.

So I'm kneeling on the floor over this plastic changing pad, using up an entire trial size plastic container of wipes trying to take care of this issue, and I finally get it mostly taken care of. Now I just have to figure out how to get her outfit over her head without getting her completely dirty. I urged her to sit up so I could manuever the onesie better, and she sat up and gave me a little, still can't believe I can sit on my own, can you? grin. As I was trying to disrobe the poor child, I heard an urk sound and when I looked down, she had thrown some of her lunch up, drenching both of her feet and hands.

I actually black out there on the details, I think in some attempt on my brain's part to keep me sane. I imagine a lot more wipes were involved (there were 15 in that unopened trial pack and they're all gone now). I had an emergency onesie in my diaper bag along with a new diaper, so I put her in those and popped her into her exersaucer so I could do some damage control on her little outfit so it wasn't quite so gross. I did things with the little sprayer on the kitchen sink that, I assure you, it wasn't designed for. Then I used some sink cleaner with bleach in it to make sure it was clean, wrapped the sopping wet onesie in a bunch of paper towels, and took it down with a few other things to the washing machine.

When I retrieved the offspring from the exersaucer, I took her straight upstairs and started running water for her bath. No matter how many wipes you use, after something like that, only warm water and baby shampoo are going to erase that experience from your memory.

She is now clean and happy. I mean, of course she's happy. She never has to remember this experience. I, on the other hand...

Foraging Monkeys?

After a moment's thought I figured out sort of what this article was about, but did anyone else just picture Willard Scott as a monkey for a second? You have to admit this is a strange headline.

You Know When An Actor Looks Familiar?

I just put it together. Doctor #10, David Tennant, looked so damn familiar to me and I couldn't place why. It just came to me while I was lying here unable to sleep (dammit).

He played Barty Crouch Junior in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire! Honestly, anyone with a browser and access to IMDB could have figured this out, but I always try to place why the actor is familiar on my own before I consult the source of all sources.

Yikes! I hope he's less scary/creepy as the Doctor.

A Rough Day

When your baby is usually such a sweetheart, you really notice when she has a bad day.

This morning, she awoke at her regular time, right around 6:00 am. She was all squeaks and smiles, and took her bottle and her change very well. I rocked her a bit and she started to seem a little drowsy. I put her down and tried to go back to sleep, thinking she'd drop back off to finish up her overnight sleep, as she's been doing for weeks.

About an hour and a half later, she was still rolling around in the crib with open eyes, squeaking and generally demanding attention.

The mister took the baby downstairs and let me get some more sleep, which was much appreciated. I went back to sleep for another couple of hours, going downstairs at 10:00 am to see how they were doing. Imagine my surprise when they weren't there!

I set in to finishing the childproofing of the cabinets (a more truly horrible job, I have not seen for years) and before long, the rest of the family returned. I learned then that she'd been cranky all morning, not taking food or succumbing to her obvious fatigue to take a nap, so they went for a car trip in an attempt to lull her to sleep.

Sleep, she did not, but we did get her to take a little food and play for awhile, showing off her newly good mood, until she finally did get tired and allow me to take her upstairs, put her in a sleep sack, and then lie her down for a nap.

She slept for several hours, then we went out to the grocery store, all three of us, once she woke up. She was her usual silly self while we were out, but she started to get cranky again in the car. A general lack of her usual level of food and rest seemed to be catching up with her.

I did manage to get a little food into her once we got home, until she started to fidget and pull away. She fell lightly to sleep on my shoulder, so I took her upstairs at about 9:00 pm to put her to bed for the night.

An hour later, she was still crying and unhappy, even though she was clearly rubbing her eyes and tired. I finally really listened to her third bout of crying over the monitor, and realized it sounded like her hunger cry. Didn't make sense, really. She'd just rejected the rest of her bottle a little while before, but I was willing try anything. I went upstairs and gave her a little bit of food, and she curled right up and put herself to sleep as soon as she was done and I'd laid her in her crib.

Common sense and babies do not mix. I really didn't think she was hungry. Why would you think that, when she'd turned her nose up at food so recently. But, babies are fickle, and it was food she wanted. And now I can sleep soundly for another night.

Like, is this a Lost Cause?

Do you say 'like' when a pause would do just as well? For most of us, the answer is probably, regrettably, "yes".

I am going to resolve right now to attempt to stop doing this. I think it will be hard. This may be on the same scale as trying to stop saying, "um" or "uh", which are also lofty and worthwhile goals.

Wish me luck.

Ten Things

Okay, I'll jump on the "ten things" bus. Here are ten things that most of you will not know all of. Horrible sentence, that. What I mean is that most of you will probably know one or two of these things. There may even be some lucky (?) soul who knows most or all of these things.

1. I used to love Macs. I even sent away for a bunch of promotional literature once and I planted it at our local Best Buy back when they didn't sell any Mac stuff. Now I wouldn't touch one with a ten foot pole. Microsoft's far from perfect and I'm just not "counter-culture" enough to use Linux every day, but the waft of sanctomonious BS coming from Cupertino has completely put me off my lunch. Every single one of those new Mac vs. PC commercials features lies, exaggerations, and general slight-of-hand nonsense. Make your point, because you have one and I know that you do, but for heaven's sake, don't frickin' lie. Now that most of you have closed this browser window in disgust with me, I will divulge my next nine secrets.
   


2. I can be hooked into nearly any crappy television show or movie if there are two characters that have chemistry and you are led to wonder if they will ever become romantically involved or not. I blame Han and Leia for this.
   


3. My favorite color growing up was blue, but only because my sister's was pink and I wanted to be different from her. It took me years and years to discover that I really didn't like blue that much, and that I like green and pink much more.
   


4. All those years I said I didn't want to have any kids, I still caught myself thinking up names and how I would teach them right from wrong.
   


5. I write the first chapter or so of a book every once in a while, then I decide I hate it or the idea behind the book in general, and I shelve it and almost never look at it again. Sometimes I just trash it so I don't have to think about it. I have probably deleted enough prose to fill a Harry Potter book jacket in the past fifteen years or so. I show this stuff to no one before it gets incinerated.
   


6. Though I never did anything with it and it was a nightmare to deal with, I still kind of miss my really long hair.
   


7. If I was like a Gilmore Girls character when I was growing up, I'd like to think I was Rory. I have a secret fear that I was actually much more like Paris. I don't know if that's true or not.
   


8. I quit trying to do things way too soon if I'm not good at them right away. Among other more important things, this is why I cannot knit.
   


9. Though I would not want, nor would I be qualified, for the job as Donald Trump's 'Apprentice', I would love to compete in those challenges.
   


10. I sometimes give inaccurate answers to casual questions if the inaccurate answer is funny. I wonder sometimes, though I don't really lie in more important situations, if that makes me a compulsive liar. Maybe it makes me a compulsive comedy liar.
    

Search Terms

Here is how people have recently come across my goofy lil' blog here:

honda odyssey (Google)

I doubt my entry about buying our new car was much help to this poor soul.

kate and doug fanfiction the cutting edge (Yahoo)

Hmmmm. I am #1 for this query on Yahoo.com! I did not do this by design. For those of you tricked into coming out to my jacked-up site looking for Kate and Doug goodness (did they win that gold medal, or not?) I suggest fanfiction.net for all your fanon needs.

lyrics from the movie "The Cutting Edge 2" (Yahoo)

Wow. Just. Wow. I hope this wasn't a person who thought The Cutting Edge 2 was really bitchin'. I hope there are no people who thought The Cutting Edge 2 was really bitchin'.

piano recital practice (Google)

I can't even remember what entry would have brought someone to my joint with those search terms. Maybe me bitching about my senior recital back in college?

"david tennant" (Google)
"eccleston" (Google)

Dueling Doctors. My Doctor Who entry was up for less than 24 hours before three or four people came by via Google and those two actors's names. How many pages do you have to drill down on Google to get to my goofy DW entry?

wii (Google)

Sort of ditto for this. With all the stuff being written about the Wii, I don't have the patience to go find out how far down in the results I am.

"lite-brite lamp" (Google)

Boy, that is a cool lamp. I'm glad someone was looking for it.

"lowell the hammer stanley" (MSN)

Heh. I wonder if that person was looking for a lawyer to hammer, hammer, hammer, until they got what was coming to them?

"murlock rpg" guide (Google)

Not just the Murlock RPG. A guide for it. Heavens. Who wants to be a Murlock?

It just occurred to me that I've doubled the chances that other people will reach this space when using these search terms. That's why I've removed all the porny search terms from this list so I don't continue to disappoint people who are looking for people who don't just suck at geography, if you get my meaning.

You should be ashamed of yourselves. (ha)

I've Monopolized Mkae's Blog Enough

I figured it was about time that I wrote my own damn Doctor Who season finale blog entry, seeing as I've damn near taken over the comments area on poor Mkae's post. I kept thinking that I didn't really have anything new to add to this discussion, or that it really isn't that important in the great scheme of things. However, I can't get it out of my head, so I suppose this is my attempt to purge it so I can go back to, you know, devoting my full energy to raising the offspring and whatnot.

That being said... As you may have guessed, big fat, honking spoilers after this point for the season one finale. I may even talk a little about the half-hour or so of S2 David Tennant that I've seen courtesy of some bootlegged stuff on YouTube. You have been warned...and 3...2...1...

So, my choice of picture is symbolic. CE couldn't skate away from Doctor Who fast enough, could he?

I realize that sounds bitter on my part when I see it typed out like that without the benefit of vocal inflection, but I really don't mean it to sound that way. I honestly understand why you would leave after one season if you wanted to ever be taken seriously in another role ever again. The Doctor is iconic (which is odd, considering how much he changes in different incarnations) and it would be difficult to reach escape velocity if one were to stay in the role too long. I completely get it. Not everyone is Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellan, who seem to be able to catch on in at least one role other than the big "franchise" roles they came to be associated with.

I also really feel I'll miss that actor in the role, even more than I missed Tom Baker after Doctor 5 showed up. I suppose my disappointment that CE's run was only one season long is a compliment. I really liked his work and his chemistry with other characters, Rose especially. While I realize that people I respect have said that David Tennant is doing a bang-up job as Doctor 10, I find myself wishing that wasn't the case, so I would have an excellent excuse to stop watching the show and let it all end for me along with Doctor 9.

A side note on Christopher Eccleston, before I consider the cessation of the beating of this deceased horse. After reading his entry on Wikipedia (yes, I told you, I was pretty bummed out that he left the show, and I went looking for answers—this includes a drive-by at Wikipedia) I conclude that I could walk past him on the street and never realize it was him. He looks different in every single picture! At first I thought it was the close-cropped haircut showing off the ears that made the Doctor look different from his previous roles, but there's another picture of him in a buzz further down the wiki entry and he looks different there as well. That's actors for you, eh?

Another random factoid I read while trying to purge all this from my brain is a rumor that the part of the ninth Doctor was offered at one point to Bill Nighy. I have such mixed feelings about that. I do like Bill Nighy and I can't begin to imagine the Doctor he would make, but I wouldn't trade the CE season to see it. I did think it was interesting, though, and I thought those of you who also like Love, Actually might like to hear what we almost had, casting-wise.

Maybe this is all guilt from when I was sitting in my brother-in-law's basement/rumpus room watching Rose and I thought to myself, "Oh, come on. Tell me that goofy-looking fucker is the Doctor." I got over that quickly, before the end of the episode, in fact, and now I can truly say that I thought he was...fantastic.

(Okay, mind. Can we move on now?)

(Yeah, right. You know you can't let the 'ship go.)

(sigh)

Marriage Amendment Voted Down In the Senate...

...by a scarily small margin. Here, for your perusal, are the politicians who just failed their Turing test^[1], meaning that they voted for the amendment.

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Byrd (D-WV)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Cochran (R-MS)
Coleman (R-MN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeWine (R-OH)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Fitzgerald (R-IL)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
McConnell (R-KY)
Miller (D-GA)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Nelson (D-NE)
Nickles (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

^[1] I realize I'm stretching the definition of Turing test to mean that it is a test of whether you are a human being or not. I would argue that's what the term means to most people who know vaguely what it is, and I feel quite strongly that voting for this preposterous amendment to the constitution, when there are a million other things that need our politicians's time and attention, is a big fat F on the test of humanity. If you feel remotely the same way and your representative's name is on this list, be angry. Write a letter to them listing all the things you wish they'd have spent their time doing.

Half Birthday

Brigid has reached the very important half-birthday milestone! Of course, this was two days ago, but I haven't had time to sit down and write the blog entry until now, and I even think I'll have to save this as a draft and come back and finish it later as it is.

She's started to roll over with impunity now. She managed one roll over before we went on our big tour of Virginia, but now you really can't put her down on her back and expect her to stay there. You blink and she's on her tummy, trying really hard to scoot herself forward with her legs. She'll be crawling any day now. This is simultaneously great and terrifying, as she will soon be moving around all over the place and trying to injure herself on everything in the house.

She is also becoming curious about food. She's been grabbing the bottle for nearly two months now, but she's really begun to become interested in the solid food she's eating. It started with trying to grab the spoon, but now she seems to realize that the food on the spoon is coming from the cup or the baby food container. She grabbed this cup away from me and tried to eat from it in the only way she knows how—she opened her mouth and waited for it to jump in. When that didn't work, she tried knawing on the outside of the cup. It's very cute, but I think she's just about to figure it out and start dipping her hands in to check things out, ahem, "first hand". Sorry about the pun.

Anyway, it's hard to believe, but it's been a half year since she showed up almost a month before her due date. I hope the two of us have as much fun for the many more half-years we will spend together until she leaves us to go to college. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and teach her how to play with her new exersaucer toy.