got some more entries entered, got my theme installed. Tweaked it up a bit. I need some sleep, because I can feel my self worth start to plummet. No one wants to go fishing around for their self-worth, especially at this hour of the night, so I’d better get to bed.

It’ll be nice when things get back to normal.

wheeee.

James updated the OS on our server, and in so doing, accidently grabbed an old backup instead of a current backup.

All of my blog entries were lost. I started this thingee in Sept, and the backup was from Sept 6th.

So…. I have managed to grab quite a few from cached search engines, but am missing probably around 20. Also, with the server upgrade came wordpress upgrade, thus the default design.

I’m trying to get all my old posts entered in. then I’ll see about the layout.

james was very very upset when he told me what happened, and I told him it really is ok. I mean, what is this? Words? But the relief that came over me as I found more and more of these words was overwhelming, and the sadness at what I might be missing is growing on me.

Anyway. That is what is up. Oh, and I registered a domain. I’d be more excited about it, except for all the work that is ahead of me.

anyway. off to bed now.

I have a bee in my bonnet.

It’s been there a while now, on this particular issue, but now I just can’t be silent any longer.

It started of course, with the live-action movie, How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I have not seen it, nor will I ever see it. I actually recorded it with our Tivo, but then couldn’t bring myself to actually watch it. I think that a live-action movie could be made that would be true to the original, but just from what I’ve heard, this one wasn’t it.

Various things have come to my attention since the passing of the great Theodor Geisel, otherwise known as Dr. Seuss, that have made me cringe. But this most recent takes the cake.

We have many of Dr. Seuss’ books, some of them from our own childhood, over 20 years old. When Ethan was born, our neighbor gave us Dr. Seuss’ A B C, a delightful book that goes through the entire alphabet, and one that Ethan could “read” to himself, word for word, when he was about 2 and a half. It was in circulation for bedtime stories in massive purportions about a year ago, and has since fallen out a bit. With Jocelyn getting older, I know it will probably come back into use soon.

While, of course, it is wonderful to sit and read stories to your child for bedtime, I must admit, that I used to try to get Ethan to pick a different book, because this one is pretty lengthy. It has paper numbered pages, and I think there are more than 40 pages total. Especially in the beginning which has,

“Big A,
little a.
A.. a.. A..”

on the first pages, then have to turn to read and see,

“Aunt Annie’s Alligator,
A.. a.. A.”

He speeds it up after the first few letters and has the letter’s introduction and then the stuff for the letter all on the same page.

“Big G,
little g,
G.. g.. g.

Goat, girl,
Goo-goo goggles,
G.. g.. G.”

The illustration is on the opposite page, so you have 2 pages per letter (except for the first few letters, which is 4 pages per letter). Then you turn the page and read about H.

You are turning the pages pretty quickly of course, but still, it’s a good 5-10 minute read as opposed to Byron Barton’s Trains book, which is a minute, maybe two to read through. (Great one btw, still in bedtime circulation.)

Anyway, this is all background that brings you to me, at Costco Saturday morning, browsing through the books, when I hit upon Dr. Seuss’ “A B C”, and “Hop on Pop” in a large board book format. Very cool, because Jocelyn still rips paper pages on occasion, and I like the sturdy non-destructible kind. I open it up and glance at a few pages and not only is it a board book, but it appears to have condensed some of the page turning by putting 2 letters on one page, and 2 more on the opposite page – this appeals to me, because of the aforementioned tons of pages, so after debating about whether to get “A B C” or “Hop on Pop” I tossed “A B C” in, because it will mostly be read by Jocelyn at this point, and “Hop on Pop” is mostly read by Ethan, who can be gentle with the paper pages. I also get “Pokey Little Puppy” which is a classic children’s book, but I haven’t actually read it before. I’ve just found that if you’re going to come home with new books, better have one per child.

Blah, anyway, so I get home and show them both the new books I bought, and later settle in to read it to them. It doesn’t dawn on me right away, but this version of “A B C” is DIFFERENT, in more ways than mere layout.

FOR EXAMPLE!

Now, maybe this really is a small thing and I’m blowing it way out of proportion. But to me, it seems like the whimsy and wonderfulness THAT IS SEUSS, is taking out of the changed version. It’s just lacking some of the original nonsensical essence. What fun Ethan and I had exclaiming at the top of our lungs, “ker-CHOO!!!!!” If I were to keep this version (oh, like THAT would happen. Maybe when they’re serving up milkshakes IN HELL) Jocelyn would never know that sipping six sodas could make you SICK SICK SICK!

It just makes me sad. It’s that same sadness I feel when I watch the original muppet shows and movies. I think that Henson Jr. is doing a pretty good job at keeping his dad’s legacy alive, with minor wrong turns here and there, but sometimes I wish everyone inheriting the rights to their spouse’s or parent’s art would just LEAVE IT THE HELL ALONE and let it end with them. We didn’t need Mike Myers being the Cat in the Hat, we didn’t need kermit to be a SECONDARY CHARACTER in the Muppet’s Christmas Carol (hell, we didn’t need a story that WASN’T ORIGINAL. Did you understand your father AT ALL?) and we didn’t need Jim Carrey as the Grinch.

I can understand why one might want his work translated to the big screen for a new generation to enjoy. I can kind of understand merchandising of his illustrations into other fields.

But I CANNOT understand how and why ANYONE EVER would want to take the “ker-CHOO” out of the A B C book. Seriously. It makes me want to cry.

So it’s winter. And that means that the heat is on all the time. And that means that all that heat is forcing all the moisture in the air to, I don’t know, go to Bermuda or something. And not much moisture in the air makes my skin dry. And when my skin is dry, I ITCH. Now, I itch all the time anyway, and I’ve been known to pester James to scratch my back even in the summertime, but in the winter, well, he’s very put upon. The best utensil I ever owned was a bamboo backscratcher. It’s gone now, and boy do I bet James wishes it wasn’t.

I’m always continually slathering on lotion and moisturizer in the winter. I also slather it on my kids. Jocelyn hollers, “LOTION!” when she sees the baby lotion (best baby smell in the world) and comes running, even when she’s hiding behind the chair in her room trying to be invisible until I say, “Where’s JOCELYN?!” She comes running over and lifts up her shirt so she can slather it on her tummy, because really, what’s more fun than slathering goo on your tummy which is then magically absorbed? Actually, that sounds a little scary. If I were a kid, I would be worried about where EXACTLY all that lotion is going.

So. Lotion slathering. The problem with all the dry skin and the lotion slathering, is that there are spots on my body that I cannot reach. Like the very middle of my back. So now not only am I pestering James to scratch my back, and insisting on proper technique and the correct level of hard or soft scratchiness, and no digging, but not too light… Well, now I pester him to scratch my back, and then slather it with lotion. Seriously, you could pour an entire bottle on me and my skin would drink it up like a camel in the dessert. James of course RUNS to wash his hands, lest he have any girly lotiony smell on them. Well, not always, because he has this very strange dry skin right between his fingers that always crack, especially in winter, so sometimes he keeps the lotion on, especially since jergens isn’t that girly smelling.

So the other side effect to all this dry non-moist skin is static electricity. I come to work, and if my clothes are made of certain fabrics (you know, the staticy ones), they STICK to me and it drives me absolutely BATTY. The solution? MORE LOTION SLATHERING!

So I just went into the bathroom, surriptitiously carrying my bottle of Jergens* in with me**, and close myself up in a stall. I pee, while I am waiting for everyone else to leave. It’s usually pretty slow in the bathroom but apparently everyone’s bladders decided they were JUST TOO FULL right at THAT MOMENT and the ladies room had full occupancy in all the stalls. As people flush and adjust their clothing I squirt out a little lotion blob and rub it on an arm, or on a leg, but mostly, I’m just waiting til they clear out so I can pull my arms out of my shirt and slather as much on my back as I possibly can, hoping that if there’s enough lotion on the rest of my back, that little area in the middle where I can’t reach won’t be able to produce much static-i-ness. I feel much better now, but it sure is a pain, all this dryness.

DAMN YOU DRY WINTER AIR!!!

* As I was walking into the bathroom, a guy was walking toward me toward the bathroom also. The women’s and the men’s bathrooms are right next to each other, and he was headed for the men’s, of course. Anyway, he spotted the bottle of lotion in my hand and I couldn’t help feeling guilty, like, I was doing something wrong, carrying lotion into the bathroom. And if it had been reversed, and a GUY was carrying lotion into the bathroom, well. I’d raise my eyebrow. Wouldn’t you? You know you would, and then you’d give him an icy look, like, “I see that lotion, you WANKER.” So it’s good that I was holding the lotion, and not him.

** There is a little bottle of hand lotion already in the ladies room. It is from Mary Kay, and I have never touched it. However, sometimes when I enter, I can tell someone has applied some, because it reeks to high heaven. Why would someone make a lotion have such a strong smell??? It actually reminds me of my mother, because she has a VERY! STRONGLY! SCENTED! HAND LOTION! which she always happens to put on RIGHT before we get into the car, and then you’re stuck in the car with this reeking smell of lotion. It’s not necessarily a bad smell (my mom’s, or the mary kay stuff) it’s just the OVERPOWERING ASSAULT ON THE NASAL CAVITIES that is utterly unbearable, and there is NOTHING you can do to escape. The end.

There are other downsides to all the dryness. James shaved and was looking all sexy personified and I was having some nasty dirty little thoughts and gave him a “mmmhmmmm you know” kiss, but then when he ran his hand over my back, all of a sudden my BACK IS ITCHING LIKE A MOFO. All the horny sexy kissing feelings flee as I insist that he scratch every square inch of my back until it is red and raw and then lather me up like a lesbian mud wrestler. All that itchiness ruins sexy dirty thoughts. Scaliness and sexy just do not go together.

I have never once mentioned the having of the sex and even though the previous paragraph was far from it now I feel weird and must go.

amy runs her fingers through your hair and murmurs, “there there.”

Have you ever felt like you have so many things to do, that they are choking you, smothering you and you can’t possibly do any of them? That’s how I’ve been feeling so far this week, despite the beautiful snow – usually it snows and nothing can keep me out of the clouds, because really, snow is beautiful and wonderful and sometimes comes with the added benefit of not having to work. But while it is beautiful and wonderful, I do have to work, and I do have to clean the house and watch kids and bath kids and feed kids and answer 1 kid’s questions (which is infinitely better than the next one) and try to determine the desire that isn’t being met by the other kid who is throwing a huge tantrum and let’s not forget about the work part and the not sleeping part and the being stuck in my head with all the same old depressing thoughts and mentalities that make me just want to pull the covers up and stay put all day.

Lately I’ve been wishing that I was someone else because I’m so sick of being me. It’s not that I think my life is so awful, really I quite like my life, it’s more that I’m just so tired of being depressed by the same things over and over that if I could just swap mental faculties with someone else, their mental problems would be a refreshing change of pace. I’m bored and frustrated by my own tendencies toward depression, I guess. And generally speaking, I am not a depressed sort of person. I generally can go through my days pretty happy and contented and loving life and (oh here she goes with all the ands and no commas and what in the world did we do this Tuesday morning to deserve this Amy?!!!!) oh ok ok OK ALREADY! I’ll stop!!

So. Funny anecdotes. Nope, not in the mood for any of those. Witty anecdotes? Sorry, this is me we’re talking about and I’ve already used up my one allotted witticism for the year. Sad anecdotes? Hmmm, more in line with the mood, so I will tell you that last night when I got Jocelyn into her jammies, I put on the sort that have pants and a shirt instead of the all-one-piece-that-zips-and-has-FOOTIES!! and while it seemed fine at the time, I forgot to put socks on the girl, and at this age she doesn’t really keep her blankey on her all the time, and so this morning at 5:45 (5 minutes before my alarm went off) she woke up crying because her poor little feet were like icicles and our fucking heating system upstairs was designed by idiots because the thermostat is on our bedroom and the vents manage to actually get hot air to our bedroom while bypassing the other rooms nearly completely which results in our room becoming warm, the thermostat registering the temperature in there and turning off and thus the other rooms including the ones where our children sleep being little ice cubes. We have tinkered with the flow valve thingees up in our attic to try to shut air off from our room and push more air into the secondary bedrooms but it never seems to do any good. Any suggestions welcome. What we should do is leave their doors open at night but then we have the problem of Ethan getting up at 6:30, turning on every light switch he can find on his way to the potty which I’m sure would wake up his small sister. If of course, he didn’t just go in there (and he would, if the door is open) and holler, “WAKE UP!!” or “WOOOO WOOOOOOOOOOOO!” at her. We don’t need that at 6am, don’t you think? So. Back to the original sad anecdote, my daughter’s feet were frozen half the night and she finally woke up and complained about it loudly. This is saying something, because she will stay in her bed hours after she’s woken up, just sucking her thumb and musing about world peace, probably, waiting for someone to fetch her. So James got up and went to check on her and felt her icicle feet and had to put her back in her crib while he went in search of socks because there weren’t any in her drawer because last night instead of putting away the massive amount of clean laundry like I said I was going to I was smothered by all the things I needed to do and therefore did not do any of them except wallow in a chair watching Gilmore Girls. He swore in the darkness and Jocelyn wailed in her crib where she thought she was being redeposited for good and she didn’t like that because the icicle feet had not yet been thawed and covered. I got up and went in and held her while James put her socks on and then I rocked her for a bit with her blankey all snuggly around her and told her I was sorry about the socks and she looked at me and said wisely, “Socks.” I nodded and apologized again and then she forgave me if I never let it happen again, and put her head down on my chest and breathed slowly. I held her until I really had to go get in the shower because of the whole needing to drive to work thing, and so put her back in her crib and tucked her blankey all in around her. I miss her so much sometimes. I see Ethan often, I get him up and take him to school and pick him up and take him home, but James and Jocelyn sleep a bit later and they’re still in bed when Ethan and I leave the house. So I see her in the evenings and on weekends, but I never see her during the week until Ethan and I get home and she screams, “MOMMMY!!” and throws herself at my legs until I catch her and swing her up for some bear hugging. I miss my daughter.

Boy. I’m afraid to reread what I’ve written above, but I think it’s safe to say that a tired depressed amy results in very long run-on sentences with lots of ands and no commas and not much comprehension. I think I’d better stop while I’m…. well, I don’t think I can say ahead, so I’ll just stop.

amy could use an upper this morning. damn her non-coffee drinking lameness.

To all those desparately awaiting the answer to the relative hard or softness of Plantation Lane… The judge knelt, felt, and proclaimed it to be hard. This was some time after the initial conversation, so unfortunately, the amount of interest in the road’s hardness had cooled considerably. In fact, he was a little confused why I was draggin him out into the road, and even expressed concern for getting hit by a car. As if his mother would let him get hit by a car! Now feel the road, dammit, the Internet wants to know!!

UNFORTUNATELY, the ride after the feeling of the car was hellish in OH so many ways. First, as soon as we were in the car, Ethan started to list several complaints about his body. In fact, he wasn’t even complaining, just informing me.

“Mommy, my ears hurt.”

DING DING DING DING!

“I’m coughing a lot, Mommy.”

“My eye is all goopy, Mommy.

Kid, you had me at “my ears hurt.”

I had the doctor on the phone, a SAINT of a woman whom I now love and adore more than anything. I asked if we could come in, and on hearing the affirmatived, informed her we’d be there in 20 minutes, about how long it takes to get from Ethan’s school to the doctor.

There are basically 2 exits off of 66 to get to our abode, and one of the exits have 2 routes one could take. So all in all, 3 possible ways to get to the main street that has all the developments on it. We took one route. It was WAY backed up by an accident, so then I, so cunningly, so COYLY, scootched over to a backroad which would take me around all the traffic, PAST the accident, and sail us on down to the main drag. All that intrigue, and it was for NAUGHT. The accident, snafu, whatever it was, was still past where we came out, and the cop directing traffic was turning EVERYONE AROUND. Including us.

I will spare you all the rest, but basically, it took us an hour to get to the doctor, with a stop to “water the grass” (IN THE RAIN!! I made sure we were standing DOWNWIND) and a stop to fill the gas tank (No euphemisms there, we really had to fill up with gas, it just sounded like it was slang for something nasty and dirty, but it wasn’t! totally clean here!)

So, finally, at the doctor’s office (who WAITED FOR US, BLESS HER HEART!) we discovered that Ethan was on sick boy.

Ear infection. Conjunctivitis (that’s pink eye, folks) (apparently, these two things often go hand in hand. Who knew? Not me.) Swollen glands. Swollen tonsils. Sore throat. Snotty snotty snotty nose. Slight fever.

My poor boy. After spending forever in the car, and then visiting the doctor, we then wended our way to Target and settled in to wait for his prescriptions to be filled, which was really starting to put him way past his bedtime. Then home, a snack, medicine, eye drops, and bedtime.

Anyway. I spent yesterday at home with Ethan, and James stayed with him today. I couldn’t today, because I got *cough* had to go to DC for some more training, and thus.. sigh… hand to forehead, I just HAD to go to perfect pita. Damn I love that place. I also finally met up with a friend of mine from the place where I temped for a month, and that was nice too. She’s the kind of gal who even when we first met, it seemed like we’d known each other for years, and we talk and the time zips by until I have to skedaddle back to training or be LATE!

Ethan seemed a lot better tonight, still a lot of coughing, and now it has turned all wheezy, which I wonder if I should be concerned about or not. His eye is much better as well. Tomorrow, BACK TO SCHOOL!

I’ll try to update again tomorrow, because this weekend, I am hosting another dreaded party, this time, of the Southern Living at Home, variety. This time, it looks like it’s not going to be that great of a showing, either, which makes me wish the earth would crack open and swallow me up, because you know, throwing a party and having no one come is never a happy thing. Ugh. I’ll be so glad when it’s over. I’m never doing one of these again.

EVER.

amy melts in your mouth, not in your hand.

I love to use words like this, especially in a highly techno weenie babble-talk conversation:

wonky
wussy
weird
flukey
funky
floo0hooey
goofy

“I was looking at the page on the dev server and somewhere in the programming it is duplicating the last two characters of the content include and reproducing them just outside of the css div content area. It’s totally wonky”

And then inform the person next to me, that it’s a technical term with a straight face.

At the rate I’m going, I’m going to go through all the kleenex in the world before I run out of snot.

I can’t feel too badly though, because Jocelyn is way worse than me, and has no way to deal with it (like blowing her nose).