Another day

  • I should write a book about what I don’t know about technology

    I have never been more grateful that my daughter got a Snuggie for Christmas than I am at this moment. Mainly because I have commandeered it for my own personal use. And while, yes, I still believe that it is nothing more than a backwards robe with a clever marketing campaign, it’s hard to deny the warmth it provides while sitting on the couch and typing a blog post.

    (Oh, my twenty-something self would be so sad at that entire paragraph. Writing a blog? On the internet? While draped in a zebra-print blanket that’s nothing more than a backwards robe? There is a queen of the nerds and it is me.)

    (I also need to disclose that my Snuggie and I just got off the couch to glare out the back door at our neighbor who has been loudly revving the engine of his vintage Mustang in his driveway for the last ten minutes with no regard for children who may be sleeping. Apparently the queen of the nerds lives next door to the king of the idiots.)

    And speaking of nerd, Sophie and I have been trying for weeks, WEEKS, to record a podcast. This used to be something we could do without much effort at all, which kind of makes me wonder in hindsight why we only recorded them about once every six months. But lately there have been all sorts of technical issues and I won’t bore you with all the intricate details. Largely because I don’t really understand the problems in spite of spending at least five minutes on various message boards attempting to troubleshoot and ultimately realizing that I don’t really know much about the internet.

    However, yesterday, we decided to give it a go one more time since she was stuck at home in the middle of ICE STORM 2011 and I was at home because that’s what I do. Sure enough, after about thirty seconds of conversation, the iChat kicked us off. I suggested that she call one of our friends in an attempt to pinpoint the origin of the technical issue. In other words, I was hoping she’d have the same problem and I wouldn’t have to shoulder the blame all alone.

    Alas, she had no problems with the iChat. Which could only mean that the internet issues are on my end. Which meant that I was forced to call AT&T customer service and spend an hour of my life in utter frustration as I reset my modem and waited while they ran diagnostic tests on the internet.

    (Is this the most boring post ever? Because it feels like it from this end.)

    To make a long story short, two hours later we were still unable to get the podcast to work and I can no longer access our home email.

    Perfect.

    Like I haven’t suffered enough at the hands of AT&T and their Cotton Bowl.

    If anyone has any idea what the issue may be, I’d appreciate your input. The error messages keep saying something like “Remote ip blah blah blah trying to connect to remote ip blah blah blah” and I’m about to suggest that we get out one of those old-fashioned cassette players and just record something on a tape.

    In the meantime, my podcast microphone has been turned into a device to secure balloons to the floor.

    At least it’s good for something.

  • Because books are your friend

    I returned the Emerson microwave to Target yesterday and replaced it with a Panasonic model with maximum wattage because I don’t want to listen to P talk about how it takes him six minutes to heat up his coffee every morning. Not that it’s not a perfectly delightful way to start the day.

    My trip to Target also resulted in an economy-sized container of cheese balls, a new sweatshirt and some blocks that spell out LOVE that I found in the dollar aisle. I don’t know how this happens every time I go there but WELL PLAYED, TARGET. WELL PLAYED.

    Later I picked up Caroline from school and we went to HEB because we were officially out of all the major food groups and I was begging to catch a bad case of tetanus if I didn’t invest in some new razors. And that’s when it happened.

    P had written Zyrtec D on the list. In fact, he writes Zyrtec D on every grocery list I start. Zyrtec D is the York Peppermint Patties of 2010-2011. So I stopped by the pharmacy to purchase the Zyrtec D since you have to jump through hoops to get the real decongestants in these litigious times.

    I requested the large box and the pharmacy tech asked me to scan my driver’s license. And then, AND THEN, I was denied. Thanks to P, I have exceeded my maximum allotment of products containing pseudoephedrine and am possibly being investigated for running a meth lab in my spare time.

    So there I stood, denied and Zyrtec D-less in the pharmacy line, feeling the need to loudly proclaim that I am not running any sort of meth lab but that we live in South Texas and the cedar allergies are through the roof and we are just looking for a little relief from all the histamines.

    And I think you and I both know that there is a great likelihood that P didn’t really even need a new box of Zyrtec D right now and is merely trying to create a massive stockpile in case of a decongestant emergency.

    But let’s talk about a more pleasant topic.

    The book club.

    I’m so excited that at least four of y’all think it might be fun. And I’m also glad to see that many of you share my feeling that it needs to be something fun and light. My thought is that there are great opportunities online to participate in discussions about serious books that really make you think and contemplate life and I’m not going to reinvent that wheel. I just know that I’d like to read more books this year and this might motivate me.

    So here are my thoughts:

    1. I think we ought to allow 4-6 weeks to read the first book. I know everyone is busy and I don’t want this to become a source of stress. Not to mention that I am also very busy with my meth lab.

    2. On the appointed day, I’ll write a post with my thoughts on the book and a few discussion questions. Everyone can participate in the comments. Or you don’t have to participate. Whatever. I’m easy.

    3. I kind of have a book in mind for our first venture into book club territory but I’d love to hear any suggestions y’all might have. (I don’t want to read any books about vampires that sparkle in the sunlight.) I’d prefer for it to be a book that’s already in paperback because it will be more affordable and will keep anyone from having to wait for it to become available at the library or shell out $25.00 for a hardback book.

    4. If I choose a book that doesn’t interest you in the least then you don’t have to read it. In fact, you can mock it endlessly and decide that book club is dead to you unless we choose a better book next time.

    5. I don’t know that there will be a next time. We’ll just see how it goes.

    I’ll announce the book selection sometime next week after I worry and stew about it for a little while. This all makes me feel a little bit like Oprah, but without the house in California, the tea room that looks out on my rose garden, and the massive media influence.

  • Back to life, back to reality

    Well. Yesterday morning was everything I imagined it would be. Complete with crying and real tears over all the tiredness along with an attempt to possibly manufacture a little stomach pain. And it was rough on Caroline, too.

    (I totally used that same joke on Twitter earlier. I apologize but I’m struggling for material here.)

    But, in the end, I helped her get dressed, put her hair in a ponytail, found her schoolbag, and sent her off to school with a cheery “GOOD NEWS! YOU ONLY HAVE TEN MORE YEARS OF THIS AHEAD OF YOU!” before I crawled back in bed.

    Not really. I didn’t go back to bed. Although I seriously considered it for about five minutes. Instead I fixed a cup of hot choffee and listened to some of Passion 2011 online before I finally made myself get dressed and go for the run I’ve been dreading for the last three weeks. Yet I did it because I’d promised myself I would every time I reached for a sugar cookie over the Christmas break. Which means I promised myself about 8,064 times.

    I survived the run, but didn’t experience a runner’s high so much as a MOTHER OF PEARL! THE PAIN! THE PAIN!

    (I’m using a lot of exclamation points today. I don’t know why!)

    After I got home and quit hyperventilating, I decided to run up to Michael’s and look for some picture frames for the living room. They’re currently 50% off with an additional 25% off coupon. (Supplies are limited. Limit one coupon per customer. I promise that Michael’s did not pay me to mention this and I’m just oversharing about the craft store savings.) Anyway, they were out of black frames in large sizes except for one that had a big scratch on it.

    I debated driving across town to the other Michael’s but that would have taken at least eight minutes and I was cold and lacking in frame ambition. So I went home. But I still need to find a frame because I finally ordered a vintage Texas map for the living room wall in the hopes that it will offset the large antelope hanging on the opposite wall.

    (Just play along with me on that. I realize there is no way to offset an 800 pound animal hanging on your living room wall with horns that make it look like a minion of the devil. But I need to hold on to just a bit of false hope.)

    I got back to the house just as P was getting home from having lunch with Caroline. He’d brought sushi up to the school because we are not opposed to food bribery when we’re trying to convince our child that she’ll have a great time being back at school after two weeks of all the fun, all the time.

    And so P and I sat down on the couch and spent the rest of the afternoon watching Rudy like we were a couple of kids in college with nothing better to do during the middle of the day than watch a movie that’s almost twenty years old and one of us has seen several times.

    (P had never seen Rudy. He didn’t even realize it was a true story. I don’t even know what to say about that. However, he did know that he was supposed to chant, “RUDY, RUDY, RUDY” so at least there’s that.)

    I had to leave to pick Caroline up from school right before Rudy actually got in the game. (I’m sorry if I just ruined the ending but it’s twenty years old and I figure if you haven’t seen it then you probably don’t care to.) She walked out of school smiling and holding hands with one of her best friends and they begged to have a play date, so it would seem that she survived the day in spite of the three part Greek tragedy she performed earlier that morning.

    Then I opened up her homework folder and the reality of spelling words and word problems hit me squarely in the face and I wished we could go back to Christmas vacation and a world where I don’t have to figure out how many hours Mary was at basketball practice if she got there at 4:00 and left at 10:00 but left for one hour to have a snack. Yes it’s basic math, but it’s still math that involves numbers.

    Of course I actually did my own math problem yesterday before she got home from school because when P asked me how much the frames at Michael’s were going to be if they were 50% off with an additional 25% off, I knew the right answer was CHEAP.

    Otherwise known as $15.00.

  • Happiness and cheer

    Well here it is, multiple days after Christmas. I guess I better take the time to recall all the Christmas memories before I forget them all. Especially considering that I can’t even make a trip to the HEB anymore without forgetting at least two things that are WRITTEN DOWN on my grocery list. I used to be able to remember all sorts of things, but have reached a point where the only thing I can recall with total clarity are the words to just about every Beyonce song. Which is a handy life skill.

    Caroline spent the night with Mimi and Bops on the eve of Christmas Eve with her cousin Sarah. I knew things hadn’t gone that well when Bops showed up at my house with both girls by 8:15 the next morning. Word on the street is that they were all hyped up on the Christmas excitement, woke up around 3:30 a.m. and never really went back to sleep. I think they should consider themselves lucky that Bops didn’t just come to a rolling stop in front of my house as he kicked them out of the car. Not that he would do that. He’s a grandfather and grandparents tolerate things that parents don’t because they have the luxury of dropping kids back off at their house the next morning and going home to take a nap.

    The girls helped me roll out the dough for the fourteen pans of cinnamon rolls I was making and by helped I mean that they punched their fingers in the dough and forced me to have to roll it all out multiple times while I wondered if these are the kinds of conditions Mrs. Baird had to work under.

    Later on in the day it was time to head to church for the Christmas Eve service. Before we left the house I wanted to take some pictures of Caroline in front of the tree. This is what I got.

    Bless her heart. It’s like she’s never seen a camera.

    After church we went to Mimi and Bops’ house to eat tamales and open presents with my sister and her family. At that point I was able to get a few more candid shots of Caroline that more accurately depict her Christmas Eve countenance.

    We ate tamales and then Caroline read The Christmas Story to us before we opened our presents.

    My nephew Luke was busy being a muppet and had on white knee socks and black dress shoes. I could have sopped him up with a biscuit.

    After we opened presents, we cranked up Caroline’s new iDog from Mimi and Bops and just enjoyed being together and playing a little Scrabble Flash until we realized she and Sarah had been up since 3:30 a.m. and might be about to head south on us.

    We headed home so Caroline could put out milk and cookies for Santa and get in bed.

    And then Santa Claus began the daunting task of trying to figure out how to hook up the Wii. Santa is a little frightened by all modern technology, particularly cables that have to go in the back of televisions and possess the potential to possibly screw up all the recorded programming on the DVR. Not to mention that Santa had to perform feats of strength to move the T.V. out of the armoire so his elf could help run all the cords through the back. It’s all fun and games until a television crashes to the ground and ruins Christmas.

    Fortunately, Santa managed just fine and in the scheme of all the past “some assembly required” Christmases, it wasn’t so bad. In fact, it was much easier and required far less wine than the Polly Pocket Shopping Mall Roller Coaster Debacle of 2008.

    Caroline woke up Christmas morning and was so impressed that Santa not only brought the Wii, but that he took the time to set the whole thing up. She and her daddy immediately began to play.

    While an antelope watched his tree by night.

    Yes. He’s still here.

    There were cinnamon rolls and breakfast casserole to be eaten and more presents to be opened.

    And then Bops couldn’t resist the call of the Wii, so he and Caroline took each other on in a round of boxing.

    I wish I were kidding when I tell you that not only did he do the whole deep-breathing boxer thing with every punch, but he went full on Rocky Balboa and lifted both arms as he danced around in victory after defeating his seven-year-old granddaughter.

    It was a precious moment.

    After that we got dressed and headed over to P’s mom’s house to have Christmas with his family and apparently that’s the point when I completely forgot to pull my camera out and take a few pictures. There were more presents and food and family.

    Later in the afternoon we finally got back home. I could have laid down on the couch and slept for about six or seven years, but we hadn’t busted out the Just Dance 2 yet. And my need to dance triumphed over my need for sleep.

    Caroline put it in the Wii and picked “Call Me” by Blondie. Ten minutes later I had stripped off my sweater, taken off my boots, put my hair in a ponytail and was dancing like a woman possessed. Or obsessed. Unfortunately, my moves seem to be too much for the Wii. It doesn’t understand me or my rhythmic sensibilities.

    And so ultimately this will be the Christmas I’ll remember as the one where my child learned to talk trash to her mother.

    Good times.

  • Scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind

    I woke up yesterday morning at the crack of 9:30 a.m. and promptly pulled the covers back up and rolled over. Mainly because it was FREEZING in our bedroom. I actually dreamed that I was Kate Winslet floating on a piece of the Titanic at some point during the night and desperately wanted to get another blanket but that would require getting out of bed which would mean MORE COLD. And so instead I spent the night drifting in and out of sleep while humming “My Heart Will Go On” through my chattering teeth.

    Shout out to P for sleeping with the windows open when it’s 27 degrees outside. Last I checked we weren’t harboring any Eskimos or penguins. Let’s not be afraid to warm our bedroom up to temps above 35 degrees.

    Once I finally dragged myself out of bed and stumbled into the kitchen for some hot choffee, I was seized by a desire to organize the house. And then I promptly felt overwhelmed by that whole prospect so Caroline and I took Bruiser to the dog park with Mimi and Bops and their dogs.

    Later on, Gulley and the boys came over for our much anticipated Just Dance tournament. Gulley scored an all-time high 9,000 points and was on fire 66% of the time. Meanwhile, Caroline suggested that I should check my Wii remote to make sure it’s actually working. Everyone is a comedian around here.

    Anyway, at some point later in the day, I was once again taken by the urge to organize the house. But I decided to organize my computer instead. I have scads of photos that need to be burned onto discs and videos that need to be turned into DVDs. And so I worked tirelessly to burn photos onto discs and upload photos to Shutterfly while I made promises to myself that I will sit down at some point and create actual photo books. It is exhausting to be a family historian in 2010. Whatever happened to the good old days when all a kid had to document their childhood was a couple of Polaroids and yellowed 3 x 5 photo with curled edges stuck in some kind of ghetto album with a psychedelic 70’s cover?

    Now there is all this pressure to have hardback photo books and slideshows set to music and video montages. And that’s why I desperately tried to make several iMovies yesterday to burn onto DVDs. It all seemed to be going so well until I actually burned the DVDs and realized that none of them actually have sound and I don’t know why. They had sound when I made them, so where did the sound go?

    I don’t understand.

    And I’m too frustrated to try to figure it out right now. Maybe I’ll just set the whole thing to music and Caroline can just watch her childhood home movies Charlie Chaplin-style.

    Or maybe I’ll go with my other impulse which involves throwing the computer out the back door.

    So, now I’m curious. Do you actually have photo albums with pictures in them or do you keep everything on the computer? Or do you order photo books? Or do you have professional quality video that actually has sound? Or is there some other technology that I need to know about so I can feel even more inferior?

  • Merry Christmas!

    Well, this is it for me until after Christmas. We are covered up in sugar cookie dough, sprinkles and pans of homemade cinnamon rolls. And now we’re going to get down to the serious business of rocking around the Christmas tree and making merry and bright. I hope y’all do the same.

    I cannot thank you enough for taking the time to stop by and read all this nonsense every day. P, Caroline and I wish you all the felizest of Navidads.

    “But the angel said to them, ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.'” Luke 2:10