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The new URL: http://academom.syr.edu
Please disregard the bugs as I work things out. 
Category Archives: ye olde blog
and that’s…the rest of the story
What you do is this:
Like a flash, you SHOVE the baby with your knee/thigh, so that instead of falling off the bed onto the floor, he is vaulted several inches so that he lands on a rolling office chair adjacent to the bed.
In lifting your outside leg to push the baby, you’ve also effectively slid the laptop AWAY from the edge of the bed.
You realize afterwards that this was probably the dumbest action you could’ve taken, since you relied on a CHAIR ON WHEELS to remain steady and catch the baby.
You realize that you could not have conceived of nor coordinated that feat with any forethought.
You realize that you haven’t backed up any of your work on this fragile machine.
You realize that if you try to explain it to anyone, they’ll think you’re lying.
You are NOT making this up.
a moral dilemma
You’re sitting on your bed, laptop in your lap, writing.
The baby, who is also on the bed, crawls over and begins to climb onto your lap.
You attempt to stave him off for 15 more seconds, so you can finish typing your sentence.
Suddenly, the barometric pressure drops, the wind changes; the baby AND the laptop begin to slip off your lap off the side of the bed and toward the floor…
You cannot save both. Which do you reach for?
Updated to include
The bed is standard height, about 30 inches from the floor.
The floors are hard wood.
The baby is rolling in a kind of sideways fashion, but mostly head first.
I do NOT have Applecare on the laptop (I know I KNOW!).
in case you care
The ABOUT page has been updated.
No, I didn’t make it to 100. But close. Damn close.
blogkeeping and house notes
You’ll notice that my blogroll is gone. It’s sooo outdated that I have to completely re-do it, with categories and everything, and I just don’t have time right now, so it’s down. If I could figure out how to import my stuff from bloglines, I would, but I am less and less thrilled with the way that typepad lets me do, uh, let’s see, NOTHING when it comes to configuring this crazy thing. My dearest dearest friend from HS, MaryAnn, has had better luck with changing colors, etc. I can’t even figure out how to get to my templates to edit the code in them.
I assume it’s because I refuse to upgrade my account. I know, I know, I wouldn’t have to assume if I would, you know, look around for some answers, but AGAIN: no time for that.
In other news: baby eats peeled apple. This is great. Joshua (aka Monster Toddler) loves apples. He frequently will steal the older kids’ apples and chew them. (Ah, that’s what that strange sticky mess is on the floor: spit out apple peel). So today, when the kids got their after school apple, I peeled one and gave it to the baby. He was (and still is) happy for nearly and hour, gnawing it. And no spit out peels to step on with your barefeet later!
the problem is…
This is the problem:
I am too good of a Brownie leader to quit. I mean, what troop goes ICE FISHING?
Plus, our troop did a cookie “booth” sale in a local drug store this weekend as well, and they had such a blast doing things like calculating totals and making change.
I’m thinking that we’ll simply drop down to one intense, three-hour meeting a month next year. That way, we can still sell cookies, and do fun stuff, but I won’t have to plan meetings where everyone expects us to do crafts . We’re doing decoupage this week, and I DON’T know what I’m doing. (This is why my troop camps, does road races, snowshoes and ice fishes: because I’m NOT crafty.) We may end up Modge Podge-ing ourselves the the church library carpet.
by popular demand
A pic of the newest addition to my family, Grayson:
I am happy to announce he is healthy, strong, content, and absolutely adorable.
mommy blogs
Well, some people are a little, uh, pissed off over the article that ran in the NYT this weekend about mommy blogs, especially those who were interviewed for it.
I just have a few things to say:
Most of the “mommy blogs” I read are not o n l y blogs about parenthood; in fact, many parents blog about a bunch of crap as well as parenting. In fact, I am in the midst now of working up some kind of half-assed argument that ANY blog that thinks it is a KIND of blog (parenting, cooking, research, diet, etc) is out of its gourd. Blogs resist this sort of mono-topic stuff.
I would also be interested to hear mom bloggers respond to why they blog about parenting (I don’t suspect it’s because they don’t have anything else to write about). In fact, I’d wager that most of them are responding to audience currents.
The thing that is lighting people up most, though, is the stuff about mom bloggers being self-absorbed, attention- and validation-craving egotists.
Possibly? I’ll grant that I’m self-absorbed. But I think all writers are, to an extent. And I would argue the same for attention-seeking: writers of all kinds seek some sort of attention through audience. But validation? I write about baby poop and vomit not because I need any kind of validation, I don’t think. I write it because it’s funny. Because it’s real. Because it is what I’m surrounded by right now. Later, when I’m surrounded by teenagers who sneak out and steal cars, I’ll blog on that. When my kids are gone, I’ll blog about my dentures. Whatever.
But the last thing, here: the writer of this article appears to shun parents who wish to be acknowledged by the rest of the world, because, HELLO, parents frequently are the invisible silenced voice in the background of their children’s lives. (Mom, help me out here.) Face it, we are the stage managers of our children’s lives. The producers. The backers. The custodians in every sense of that word, but MOSTLY the mop-wielding sense.
By parenting, we accept and allow someone else to be the MOST IMPORTANT person(s) in OUR lives. It is selfless. It is hard, wrenching, thankless. It is not looking out for number one.
To blog is to put a voice back into that silence. Yeah, I might be arguing here that parents are oppressed. I just might.
We are oppressed when some dumbshit thinks they know why we do what we do.
I don’t know who Von Ferber is, but…
Misery always loves companyhere, Bad Mother feels my pain, and a little of her own as well.
I had the gagging, but not the vomitting; I’m counting myself lucky.
happy birthday to me!
Yep, I’m an olllld lady. 29.
The sleep experiment worked well last night. Josh did wake up twice. The first time I nursed him in bed and then stuck him back in the crib; the second time it felt like about 500am so I kept him in bed with us.
All in all, a much more pleasant and restful night than I’ve had in over a year.
The experiment shall continue.
