the rain is coming down, giving the world a scrub and making it look all fresh and green and lovely. My cube-mate and I are looking at it through our office window:

amy: the world is in such high resolution.
amy: I can’t beleive I said that.
cube-mate: I can’t believe you did either.
amy: yeah that was one that I shouldn’t have said out loud.
amy: it looks so clear. so crisp.
cube-mate: probably because of the rain.
amy: probably because i put in fresh contacts this week.

I bet you’ve thought at one time or other, probably while watching someone’s sweet, young impressionable kid, how funny it would be to raise them always beleiving that “yellow” is called “blue” and vice versa, or some derivitive thereof. I know you have. We all have. It goes back to that inate desire to prey about the naive. My best friend in high school Emily babysat her neighbors’ kids once, and they were SO young and impressionable, she actually convinced that that when they grew up, they were going to be cows, and they had better start practicing how to graze and moo. Imagine being that mother pulling up, seeing your children milling around the front lawn eating grass and mooing.

This talent must have run in the family, because my other best friend Melanie, Emily’s younger sister, once convinced a somewhat naive sophmore girl that her (Melanie’s, not the girl’s) shoelaces had an electric current running through them. (The girl was … exceptionally gullible. I’ll refrain from using other terms.)

James recently was taking a psyllium pill (basically a fiber pill. check it out for your colon health!) when someone asked him what it does.

“Makes it so my shit doesn’t stink.” he blithely informed them. “REALLY?” they said, astonished. “No, dumbass, of course not.” he replied.

Everyone loves to con the gullible, and who isn’t more gullible than a young child. A sweet little child, like a blank chalkboard… just waiting for someone to come along and scribble all over it.

I’m all for conning the gullible, but programming of an innocent toddler with the “black is really white!” crap is just silly. Whenever anyone has said anything like that to me, I always thought to myself, “Yeah, that’s the stupidest idea EVER, dumbass. And SOOOO original.” Plus, you get a bit more defensive when it’s YOUR CHILD’S blank innocent slate that someone is wanting to scribble all over.

However, I have recently been trying to “program” my child.

That’s right.

I’m attempting to brainwash Ethan.

We recently went and saw the movie “Cars”. It was fantastic. Ways to make it even MORE fantastic? Take your 4 year old son who loves race cars. Watch him sit on the edge of his seat totally enraptured, sighing “Awesome!” in reverent tones every now and then, as the cars zip around the race course with the occasional smashup occurs (those are the parts he likes the best).

After we left the movie, I started project brainwash. I don’t know why it occurred to me. It just happened! Really! Everytime I heard him say “Awesome!” for something, I would agree. “Yeah, Awesome! TOTALLY RAD, DUDE!”

Because screw that “he thinks black is white and white is black, hee hee hee!” crap — i’m going for the GOLD baby. I want that 80s phrase to catch on AGAIN by more than just Wil Wheaton! Let’s shoot for the entire next generation*! A whole new crop of kids saying, “TOTALLY RAD MAN!”

HOW TOTALLY RAD WOULD THAT BE!!

Every time Ethan exclaims that something is cool or awesome, I agree with, “Yeah, TOTALLY RAD!” It’s only a matter of time before he starts to say it too, right?

I’ll let you know how it goes.

– amy walks like an egyptian.

ps: I’d like to thank miniAnn for messaging me on Friday with a breathless, “I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE! PLEASE TELL ME YOU FOUND YOUR KEYS! I HAVE TO KNOW NOW EVEN THOUGH I’M STILL READING AND WILL FIND OUT IF I JUST SKIP TO THE END, TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME**” – for totally, completely making my day 🙂 You too Krys!

* this unfortunate, but necessary use of the words “next generation” in the same sentence as “Wil Wheaton” was sadly, unavoidable. I humbly apologize and promise never to do it again.

** retelling of message may have been exagerated for dramatic effect. yeah. like you don’t do it on YOUR blog.

Featuring Ethan’s knee!

!

Maybe everyone out there in internet land is a total hottie. Hey. It’s the internet. We’re all hot on the internet, right? But this happened IN REAL LIFE. And I don’t know about you, but strange men blabbering on about my beauty does NOT happen every day. It doesn’t even happen from not so strange men! So this was a little flabbergasting event in my day today:
scene: The Dunn Loring metro parking lot (outside, not a garage). Me walking through the lot (not on the sidewalk, but down an aisle of cars) toward the metro. I’m wearing a snazzy purple skirt with a light purple blouse and black open toed sandals. Headphones on, listening to the Dawn and Drew Show. I’m not wearing any makeup. Even though I’m going to see some of my clients. I know, I know. Oh well. There is a man in a nice suit with a nice bag walking toward me. As he approaches, he stops and starts talking to me and I have to take off my headphones. All I can remember about the man was that he was shorter than me, and appeared to be in his right senses (despite all other evidence to the contrary).
man: *talking, but I can’t hear him so I take off earphones*

man: Oh, sorry, *motioning to the headphones*

me: Oh, no problem.

I am expecting to be asked for directions. I hope he hurries up, because I am running a bit late.

man: I’m sorry to bother you, I just noticed you over there, and I just had to come over and tell you–

(my mind is wandering a zillion miles a minute, still kind of thinking about the podcast I was listening to, and kind of searching through his words in the back of my mind for items I can lock onto to give directions too. I’m just waiting for “I66” or “beltway” or “hotel” or an address or something I can point him to.. and so I can’t remember any of the exact words he says, just the general gist that he is complimenting me in a rather cute, honest way. I mean, no other guys were around to have to pay off the bet, so.. )

man: –your face, and your eyes, I mean, I really don’t come over to strange women, but I would kick myself if I kept walking, and, even from the sidewalk, I had to come over, you just have this presence–

(I am blushing furiously and can’t help wondering if he is really serious or just pulling my leg or if there are hidden cameras somewhere that will jump out and holler, “HAHA!” and maybe this guy needs his contacts prescription checked? I really can’t form any words, and the only thoughts in my head were, “uhhhhhhhh really?? me???” and “but i’m married!” and still i’m kind of checking to see if he’s going to toss in “which way to tyson’s corner?” in there somewhere)

man: — so I hope you don’t mind me asking your name?

me: Uhhh. Amy.

man: And what do you do Amy?

me: Uhhh. I’m a web designer. I’m sorry, I am just in a little bit of a hurry. (I make strange waving motions toward the metro station)

man: Oh, right, of course, Can I walk with you? Would you mind giving me your number? I’d love to–
me: (seriously blushing so much that I beleive they may be able to see my red face from SPACE, because I am so embarassed) I’m sorry, I’m married.

man: (glances down at my left hand. )

(My ring doesn’t fit on my 4th finger anymore, so I wear it on my 3rd. I feel bad and even guilty, like I’ve misrepresented myself to him somehow and all this hoo ha could have been prevented if I JUST HAD MY RING ON THE RIGHT FINGER, but (thankfully) before brain could register all this and send words to tongue to babble on endlessly, the man turns to go)

man, turning to go: Ahh, sorry to have bothered you then, tell him he’s a lucky man!

me, totally flabbergasted, and kind of thoughtless: Sorry- thanks- I will!

On relating this tale to my husband, his primary comment was: “It must be the boobs.”

Could be. I do have nice boobs.

-amy doesn’t swagger or saunter. amy strolls.

So, I tried out this new sub from subway, but was dismayed that they didn’t have the nutritional info on their website.

So I emailed them, and they emailed me back this info:

6″ Tuscan Chicken Sub

Calories 390
Total Fat 8 grams
Cholesterol 60 mg
Carbohydrates 54 grams
Fiber 5 grams
Sugar 13 grams
Protein 29 grams

The Nutritionals include bread (Italian White), chicken, grilled peppers and onions, lettuce, tomatos, tuscan seasoning, tuscan vinaigrette and American cheese.

I know you were wondering about this. I live to serve you.

I have not been feeling the flickr love lately.

I know every loves flickr and flickr this and flickr that, but I’m starting to kind of adamantly dislike it.

First, I guess we went pro for gallery and archival purposes all in one.

So, archiving: Well, the new photos we take are in CR2 format (camera raw, which holds a lot more information than jpgs). So in order to upload them to flickr, I have to convert them, or I just pull out the embedded jpg. So already, it doesn’t really work for archiving, because it’s not the full raw file. We’d want THAT file, not the lesser quality jpg.

Second, maybe if I had a couple hundred photos, and tagged each one carefully and knowingly as I uploaded them I wouldn’t feel this frustration, but I took all the photos from our old (now non-functional) gallery and uploaded them in many various sessions, with minimal or no tagging as I went. The photostream is in the order of uploading, not ordered by when the photo was actually taken. So the trip to Oregon we took when Ethan was 4 months old is kind of in the wrong “place” in the photostream because I uploaded it a few months ago. Again, not a big deal if we didn’t have a ton of photos, but we have over 4,000. When I went looking for Ethan pictures to use on his birthday post, it took way too long to find ones that I wanted to use.

I do like the sets, and how a photo can be a member of more than one set at a time. Maybe I need to load up the photos by date taken and make a set for each 3-6 month period or something similar. I should probably go ahead and use their “resize me!” before uploading option to save on bandwidth. Since it doesn’t really do too much good to have the original jpg there since we have the original CR2 file on our machines. I guess it is handy for backup though.

I am just wondering if I should keep uploading photos there or perhaps I should just put up the ones I particularly like and keep the majority of them on our server. You know the ones I mean, we have pages and pages of baby Ethan and baby Jocelyn pics where they are in the same place with a slightly different expression on their face. Maybe overkill for the flickr account. If I don’t upload them all though, then if I’m looking for something and not at home, I won’t see them.

Oh, what a quandary. There you go, there’s my flickr dilemma. To their credit, I LOVE the whole community thing they got going. That part rocks. It’s just finding the photo I’m looking for in a timely manner, that is what is kicking my ass.

Do you use flickr? What do you think? Do you like it? How do you use it? Do you upload EVERYTHING or just some stuff? Are you a diligent tagger? Do you ever get annoyed at your photostream? I can’t think of any of my friends that use flickr, so I may be reaching out into the unknown readers, which I *beleive* there are some (maybe even FIVE!!), but have never actually said anything to me. I know you’re there. I SEE YOU IN MY STATS! So step out of the shadows and spill it, yo, I need the info!

OK. I’m done.

And I have a batch of photos that I’ll probably be uploading to flickr this evening 🙂

– amy loves loves loves the Canon 30D

A while back, I posted one of my (yes, there are many, people) crappy mom days. You remember, the one with the spanking?

Amalah posted about one of her bad days. I’m all in agreement with writing it out and letting other parents know that everything is not just supposed to be all rainbows and roses all the time. This stuff is HARD, and it can definitely wear you down.

I posted a comment with a link to my crappy day post, so if you are here for the first time, hi 🙂

-amy

• The last song at most all the dances I went to (mormons are all about the youth dances), ended with Alphaville’s Forever Young.
• I have (with my friends, and their boys) sent a boy on a scavenger hunt where at the end is the big, “Will you go to X dance/date with me?” I can think of 2 distinct times, once for Sadie Hawkins in High School, and the other in college.
• I am secretly taking Glamour Shots photos in my basement.

Am I the only one who can totally relate to this whole movie, or are there others, out there, desperately seeking help?

* Guess which one of these isn’t true! When you get it right, you can go, “Yessssssss!”

Early on in this blog, I kind of wrestled with the whole, “oh my god this is on the internet and should i really be writing X or Y and if I do, what will happen?”

I usually go through this all over again everytime I’m pissed at James and want to rant. I don’t though, because that’s not fair to James, for me to tell you just my side and? he gets no chance to tell his. Generally, my rule of thumb is, if I’m thinking about writing about someone, I need to make sure that if they read it,? they won’t be peeved about it.

Generally, I think I’ve done pretty good, and at times I’ve just skirted the topic I really want to write about outright rather than tread in dangerous territory.

This weekend I came to some self realizations that I’d love to blather on about and therefore clear my mind and be able to move on to other things, but in coming to the realizations, it involves folks other than myself, and so I’m a bit squidgy about writing it all in true amy-mind-vomit style. The fact that it involves my family makes it even more difficult, so I’m more inclined to go the “full-stop” route.

Don’t you love it when someone says, “I want to write all these interesting things I’ve found about me. But I can’t. And I won’t. So NERRRRR.”

Seriously, why didn’t they just say nothing at all.

I suck 🙂

I think I *will* write it all, but I just have to figure out how first.

Find your own pose!