Sharing Photos

My recent foray into digitizing my photos has led to yet another happy occurrence.

I went out last night with an old friend from college for a few drinks. We had a really great time catching up (she lives here in Austin, but we don't see each other nearly enough) and I was telling her about my recent obsession with digitizing my photos. I even told her about a few pictures I had found from back in the day when we hung out at a certain ZBT house too much.

So today I went through the photos and uploaded the offending proof into a Picasa Web Album and sent her an invitation to view it. These photos are mostly out of focus and document past boyfriends (and in one case, an ex-husband), but it was fun to pass them on to her.

I also went through and found almost 100 pictures of some friends and their kids I have assembled over the years. These friends have been at more birthday parties than not in the "history as recounted by kid birthdays" and it was fun to see their kids as well as my own grow. There were too many to upload to Picasa Web Albums, so this time I have burned them to a CD and I'll give it to her the next time I see her.

Sharing these photos was not even a tangential goal when I started this project, but it's a great side-effect!

PostSecret

I was spending my unemployment time wisely this week by surfing around the blog-o-sphere. I am not very good at following link after link just to see what was out there, but since I have the time I figured I could give it a whirl.

Yesterday I ended up on PostSecret. This site is nothing new and is based on an art installation from 2004 (see wikipedia for the whole history, including some annoying references to inconsistencies in when secrets are posted etc.) There are now a number of books out with the secrets in print.

The original concept was an interesting one... where people sent in their secrets to an address in Germantown, MD on homemade postcards divulging a secret they had never told anyone. The post cards were used for an art installation. Shortly thereafter a website was begun where around 20 secrets are posted each week.

What I find a little disturbing are posts like this one which implies that people are now posting in hopes of being found out or as a method of conversation. It seems that the point was to allow people an anonymous forum for airing secrets which are of some weight to their soul, but as so many things do, has become a place to witness the failings of others (and thereby making ourselves feel better?). How many people cruise PostSecret weekly in hopes of seeing something they recognize, someone they know they can then use that secret against?

This post in particular makes me wince: This is a very real feeling for a very real mother, by writing it down, it gives it some credence that it is a real problem. But by posting it and letting other judge, it just feels like so much voyeurism.

So, now that I know what PostSecret is, and I admit I even spent a few minutes considering what I would send in as a deep dark secret of mine, I think I will unsubscribe in my Reader.

The Family Man

This post from 37 signals called "Why I love working with family people" summarized a feeling I have had and couldn't quite put my finger on about why people with families are great employees.

Ryan and I have seen it over the years at the various companies we have worked. The young, crazy, unattached are prized over the married/settled down employees because they seem to be so much more willing to "go the extra mile" or "work all night". I was amazed how something I think is irresponsible, like working all night, is a prized skill in an employee.

What about the person who makes a schedule and sticks to it? What about someone who has other things to do with their free time, so focuses while they are at work, rather than long lunches or chat breaks? What about the person who chooses to surf the internet at home on their off hours rather than at work and then stays late to get the real work done?

In a slightly different view of the same subject, Ryan sent me this article a while ago about the relative productivity of men vs. women with and without children in the Lawyer world. It was surprised to report that "fathers with preschool-aged children are more productive than non-fathers.". I don't find this surprising at all.

When Ryan was in law school we joked that all our friend who arrived with kid(s) in tow were better off from the outset. They didn't have time for the weekly bar runs on Thursday, but they had an advantage because they had to focus the time they had between dinner-bath-book-bed and all the other responsibilities of being a parent and studying. I don't have any statistical proof, but many of our friends with kids ended up at the top of their class at Duke that year.

Hopefully companies out there are starting to wise up in the hiring of tied down folks like myself. It's not that I am not passionate about what I do, it's just that I have to focus that passion at something else for the hours I am not working. And that's ok. Mommy has enough love for both of you.

A dryer's view of the world

My dryer could tell a million stories about it's owners, but I like to think of it's life in era's:

The rarely used era
I used to wonder about those people who complained about doing laundry all week long. This was pre-babies, of course and the dryer was used only every other week. It was a sweet life for a dryer (and it's owner).

Spit Up Era
Life got a little more interesting when J came along... but his tiny baby clothes didn't add that much to the now weekly load. He wasn't a particularly messy baby and I didn't mind leaving him in slightly dirty clothes (provided it was only spit up).

Toddler Era
Again, a little more hectic, but not so much more so, just bigger kid clothes and the same adult quantity.

Toddler + Spit Up Era
Here's where the fun begins. What used to be three loads a week has grown to 4, and the kid clothes are adding up.

Sand
J went to a pre-school in Chapel Hill with Sand+Dirt as the playground flooring material. This era has led to about 3 cups of sand sitting in the vent (I can see it, but I can't reach it with any implements which might be able to get it out). The sand even prompted me to ask a repair man how to take the dryer apart to get it out. He has given me instructions but I haven't done it yet.

Dog Hair
In Denver we lived in a a very small house with a very small yard with severe winter weather. All this added up to MASSIVE amounts of dog hair. Brushing only put a dent in the problem. Each time I washed and dried there were black pills of dog hair on everything. I eventually bought these little velcro covered balls which scrubbed the dog hair off of things. They helped, but it was incredible how much she shedded, didn't she need that hair?

Acorns and Rocks
In Austin we are now in the Acorn and Rocks era. Both of them bring these things home in their jeans and the end up in the wash. J and P had an all out war the other day about an acorn one of them had brought home from school. "It's mine!" "What did it look like?" "It was brown and round and pointy on one end" "Just like every other acorn in the world?" "Bwahhhh!" Each load of laundry comes with a load of rocks and acorns which unearth themselves in the washer and dryer. I should start telling people that "stone and nut washed jeans" are back in style.

One more reason to love the internet

I just got the kids school pictures back and they are.. eh. J's smile is exactly the kind of smile I get from him when I take pictures myself, so at least he is consistent. P is cute, but I give him one more year and he'll be smirking too.

Rather than buy the "$10 a sheet" racket that the photographers offer, this time I went with the CD only. It was a bit pricey, $30 for P's and $25 for J's, but I think this is going to work out in the end. They included a letter giving me the right to reproduce and now I have loaded it up with all the other photos from this year in Picasa. It will probably make an appearance in the "A Year of Bates" that I am making.

Now comes the part where I love the internet. J and P's grandparents live in 3 different places (or 2 and one unknown place as my parents aren't ever in one place for long. They are kind of like Schroedinger's Cat. If I am sure they are in a single place, they are sure to be going someplace else, if I think they are moving, they are certainly in a local I didn't expect) and all have differing levels of display in their houses of the "grandparent wall of fame".

Rather than guess what they'd like, or decide who is the lucky one to get the 8 x 10 rather than the 5 x 7, this year I have sent them an email saying "what size would you like?". Ryan's Dad and Stepmom wanted 8 x 10's. So I went to Picasa, choose to have them printed at Walgreens (there is one near them, they were even kind enough to provide the address), and Walgreens even let me pay for them online!

So for $5 I printed 2 glossy 8 x 10's of my kids, I didn't have to mail them, and they can pick them up tomorrow! Awesome!

Great visit to Denver

P and I had a wonderful visit to Denver to see many of our friends there. We had a whirlwind visit planned to see some of my friends at Cricket, P's friends at Primrose, our great friends and godmother Diane and one of P's very special friends G.

The trip was a success. P was an angel for the majority of the time. He didn't agree with me that I got to see my friends too, he didn't want to wait until after lunch with my Cricket friends to go to Primrose or until the end of the day Saturday to see his best friend G, but we worked it out.

It is apparent that he has his mother's ability to remember places and locations, but not names. I spent the whole weekend trying to remember the names of the places we went to and the street names, but had no problem navigating the back ways to get there (even went to my friend Rebecca's house with no address only by memory). When I was back in my old work place I was grasping for names (mostly of people I only tangentially worked with). P apparently has the same gifts. At Cricket he ran straight to my old cube and said "this is where you work!", but when we went to his old daycare he couldn't remember the names of the other kids (except for G, of course).

It was wonderful to see everyone and particularly nice to have such a great reaction from people at Cricket. Some even asked if I was moving back to Denver and would I please come back to work there? Can I bottle that feeling and sprinkle it on people I am interviewing with here in Austin?

It was also wonderful to see the mountains and feel the very bright sunshine and dry air. Then people started to tell me how it had snowed just a few days before... which I don't miss so much.

Hair Drama

After three failed attempts at getting J's hair cut last week (the barber shop was closed at 4:30 each day, no posted hours, so it was mysterious when they were open), I took the kids by yesterday afternoon and they were open!

J has really, really great hair (in my mommy opinion). Not only is it a great shade of blond, but it's thick, straight and looks great in a "John John" haircut, as it has been for years now. We have had numerous conversations about how he likes for it to be "floppy" and I have seen him run where he lets it flop from side to side. This makes me thing that he's fine with it too and it's not just me imposing my wishes on his hair.

So we went in for a long overdue cut. It had been months and months since he had gotten a cut. I had trimmed the back and sides to keep it presentable, but now it was too far past long.

I am trying to remember how my description of "he has great hair that we like just the way it is, just shorter, especially the back and sides" was interpreted as "I am a mother who has no idea what I want, please, don't listen to me and cut it so he looks like a mental patient, jagged cut all over, still long in the back and sides".

I almost started crying when I looked up from talking to P to see the mess that she had made. She did notice my distress and when I asked her if she was cutting a bowl cut her response was "that style has been out for 20 years. I haven't cut anyone's hair like that in forever. Why would you want that?"

So I asked her to cut the sides and back like I had asked. She tried to pull it off by claiming it was a bowl cut now! see!

What I didn't do and should have was tell her that she hadn't listened to me. That by not listening and then doing whatever she wanted she had not only upset me, but given him a terrible haircut too. Then I made another mistake in telling Ryan in front of J how upset I was at how it had turned out.

This morning Ryan took him to school and apparently everyone commented on his haircut (in an approving way, he tells me). As his teacher told him she liked his new haircut his response was "no! it's not what my mommy told the lady to do!"

I need to work on my white lies. All this truth telling I have been doing lately hasn't helped me out as much as I thought it would.

"Why did Jesus make school?"
asked P as we drove up to his Baptist daycare this morning.

"Because Jesus values education"

I have hacked again!

I have another post on Parent Hacks... this time about making a dinner party fun for the kids even when they have to go to bed before it even starts!

Here it is

Imagine taking Luke Skywalker to Target

We were going to Target this weekend to get a few things and P strolls up to me as we are getting ready to leave.

"Can I take my light-saber to Target? I promise I won't kill anyone"

Needless to say, we didn't take our light-saber to Target.

Looking for a new job. It's interesting what's out there right now. I'll let you know how it goes...

Meanwhile I am ripping all the CD's we have laying around the house. It's funny the music I decided I had to own years ago. I have Nillson's "The Point", some terrible ABBA compilation which has not a single song sung by the group itself, and a bunch of show tune CDs (Mack the Knife! The King and I! Les Mis! Evita!). Those don't really go well on an Ipod on shuffle, but eh, it's there now.

Now all I need is a mint

After years and years of saying that the first thing I would do when Ryan got his big-lawyer job was get a maid... I finally did it.

Months ago I got a reference from a friend for a couple who cleans houses. It sat on my desk for a long time and I kept looking at it. I was conflicted by my inability to keep my own house clean. I am able bodied, I am a relatively neat person, I enjoy a clean house, why wasn't I able to keep on top of it? I even subscribed to "fly Lady" for the past few months and read the "Today's mission, the entry hall: Clean off the tables and throw away any junk mail." It all sounded so do-able. But then the inevitable black-hole that is working full time and then rushing home to feed, bathe, read books and get kids to bed and then collapse on the couch ate all the energy I stored up in anticipation of cleaning off the hall table.

Then we took the kids to get tested for allergies. They are both affected by house dust mites, which live on house dust. "Cleaning the house can only help this situation", the allergist explained. So, that afternoon I called the number on my desk.

Last week they came and looked at the house and I am sure they were being nice when they didn't laugh at it's state. They gave me a very reasonable quote for weekly cleanings and then they said it would be more than twice that for the first visit. Then they started asking me what products I use for things like cleaning the wooden floors etc. I laughed but was equally embarrased to say that I hadn't, actually, cleaned the floors, but thank god you're here!

They worked from 8 until 2:30 yesterday and cleaned everything. Now it feels like someone else's house. They got the crumbs under the glass counter top, cleaned the toaster oven, and even got the grunge out of the master bath-tub (I scrubbed on that! Honest!). Ryan came home and looked a little bewildered too. P was confused when he walked in "It smells different... clean?"

So I guess now we have to get used to having a clean house once a week and I can worry about other things. Like all those projects which are half done and begging to be completed while I am looking for a new job.

Unintended Voyeurism

A few months ago we got a new DVR player from Time Warner. Our old one was acting up and we had to swap it out.

Aside from the frustration of losing all the shows we had recorded and hadn't gotten around to watching (Cold Case is my Rainy-Day show...) and all the programming of the shows we want recorded this transition was especially shocking...

When I plugged the set in and started surfing around I was surprised to find that Time Warner hadn't wiped the settings on the box. All of the previous owner's scheduled recordings and favorite channels were still saved.

It's safe to say that this guy (I will assume) had different tastes than Ryan and myself. Lots of sports channels, lots and lots of sports channels. And he apparently had some premium channels we don't subscribe to.

We have so many pieces of equipment which represent our personality and interests. DVRs, computers, ipods, even the radio stations in the car. It felt odd to be scraping this guy's personality from the DVR to make it our own... but I got over it. I wiped this guys porn off of our DVR and set up the recorder to make 5 copies of the Backyardigans.

More digital pictures scanned

Last weekend I went through the OTHER box of pictures and found around 20 more APX film cartridges and packet after packet of regular 35mm negatives. I put each in a Costco envelope and took it over again. One mess of negatives were just jammed into an envelope from who knows how many rolls.

They were happy to see me with my bag full of envelopes and promised they would be done within a week. Again they called on Tuesday to say they were all finished.

When I went to pick them up I was met with glee. The lady who helped me said that it was fun to scan my pictures. She also said that they had a new service which scanned slides. I had found a box of those too! And video tape to Dvd! Ryan's mom has sent us a number of tapes over the years which we haven't ever watched! And Super 8! WOW! Mom has a bunch of those!

So, now I have to gather some of these other items and take them to Costco for digitalization!

And you will be called transitional man...

Isn't it interesting that people who are rational and careful in one part of their lives can be reckless in another?

Take me for example. I was quite conservative in my dating days. I wouldn't even go a date with someone who wasn't a serious contender. I think it was the right thing for me, and it worked out quite well.

Jobs, on the other hand... I am apparently one of those people who sometimes has bad judgment in "men".

The job I had before this one was a fine job, but it was a lot of work and I knew it wasn't going to work out in the end. I kept on trying and trying to be the perfect girlfriend up until the last second when I had to go. I was really bummed that I hadn't done a better job or tried harder or whatever. I was also physically and emotionally exhausted by the whole thing. It took me a long time to be able to think in terms of dating someone else.

Then came this job. I thought it was going to work out, but in the end, he was just a transitional man. He was messed up in ways that made my neuroses look like child's play. I was the sane, stable, grown up one in the relationship. As time went on, it was more and more clear that no matter how sane and stable I was, he was always going to be messed up. And in the end, one of those self-destructive, taking out all your friends with it, kind of messed up.

So it's with no trepidation that I say adieu to my transitional man.

Yesterday, as the first day without him, I woke up, exercised, shaved my legs, did my hair and make up, ran 100 errands that hadn't gotten done in the past few months and in every way felt like a million bucks! We even had Ben and Sara over for a wonderful dinner! How can I even look back for a moment?

Now I am looking forward. Looking forward to "long term man" and all that he can offer. I am hoping he has a good health plan and 401k, but mostly I hope he's not a wack-a-doo. If you know anyone nice, send him my way.

I was another person for a year!

When I was a kid, I was brought up to believe that each move was a great opportunity. An opportunity to meet new people, see new places, have a new room, a new climate, so many new things. You also have the opportunity to leave behind things you didn't like... friends or enemies, schools, yourself.

One freedom this allowed, that I wonder how many people would consider trying out, was reinventing yourself. It was a low risk activity since we knew that no place was permanent. If you didn't like the new person you invented, that's ok, you'd move again soon and you could go back to your old self, or try someone new.

In third grade, I did just this.

I started a new school in London and we knew that it was going to be only for one year. I began the first day by telling the teacher that I was to be called Elizabeth (my middle name). Elizabeth quickly became Liz and I was Liz for that whole school year. At home, still Suzy, but Liz to all my friends & teachers. I am sure my parents thought this was funny/weird, but they were pretty supportive about it. They also knew it didn't have to stick if I didn't want it to.

At then end of year we moved back to Houston and I went back to Suzy. It was me, but it was great that I got to try it out.

Perhaps this experience is why I am quite partial to my name even though I am the first to admit it's a little girl's name. I have come to terms with being Grandma Suzy in years to come, and that's fine with me.