Category Archives: National Blog Posting Month

Bandwagons, National Blog Posting Month, Photos

Hey hey it’s picture day

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Today is #OneDayHH day on instagram. It’s the brainchild of Laura Tremaine of the Hollywood Housewife blog, which isn’t actually a blog any more, but she’s still around and so is her yearly photo hashtag adventure.

The idea of #OneDayHH is that you spend the whole day sharing glimpses into your life, however mundane or exciting they might be. This is the fourth year I’ve participated (2014, 2015, 2016). We’ve eaten out on three-fourths of my #OneDayHH days, and I’ve eaten cake on half of them. That could turn into three-fourths of them, but I don’t anticipate a cake materializing for me before midnight. But a girl can dream.

This year’s #OneDayHH project started earlier than usual, because I’ve been getting up to help Pete get ready for school and weirdly they make those kids start really early.

6:35am | I still haven’t taken them all

Good morning, friends! Good morning, #onedayHH! Good morning, #fishoil and #vitaminD and #loratadine! I woke up with a headache, so I also added an ibuprofen to the mix.

7:20am | Goodbye, gents

Marsha T. Cat and I bid farewell to our gentleman, who were off to work and school. Neither of us are generally as perky in the morning as that ear might suggest, but some geese performed a really tight Flying V maneuver over the house this morning and we were both happy to see it. #winteriscoming

8:20am | Organizational efforts

I was trying to get Poppy’s work for the day ready and get my ducks in a row before heading out, and that was more difficult than normal because I needed to leave early.

9:20am

I had to leave early to catch a very patriotic Veteran’s Day performance at Pete’s school. The kids did a great job.

11:20am | I love homeschoolers

We crafted haiku at homeschool co-op. We also talked a bit about musicians we like today, and the following conversation made me laugh:

Me: What kind of music do you like?

Child 1: I like Dusty Springfield. And Nina Simone, and James Brown.

Child 2: I like Taylor… what’s her name? Taylor Swift.

Child 1: Who’s that?

1:45pm | #YayFriends

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It was hang-out-with-Rachel time at co-op! #yayfriends

2:40pm | Formidable flora

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I wandered around a parking lot waiting for the eldest to finish her video production class, and I’m thinking it’s probably getting too cold for this guy.

3:45pm | Art in progress

Our friendly neighborhood video store was getting a new mural! Boba Fett was in the works when we stopped in later. I tried to take a better picture, but my phone died just as I was about to take it.

4:57pm | A treat for the Potterheads

After being out for most of the day, I was not amused when I realized that I’d forgotten to take our overdue books back to the library. But when I got there I realized it was the last day there for the librarian with whom Poppy has been volunteering, so I was grateful for the chance to thank her in person for being so good to Poppy. As for the photo: Our library has the first signed US edition of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” — which they won in a contest from Scholastic — and it’s always fun to visit.

5:50pm | Downtime

I’d planned to have roast chicken and sweet potatoes for dinner, but oops I read a book instead of starting it. Sorry fam. Let’s go get some tacos. (The fam was not terribly upset.)

6:30pm | A little spicy

I opted for chicken tortilla soup. 🐔🍲 #soup #dinner #ididnotmakeit #notataco

7:29pm | Insta Blog Inception

Blogging in the gloaming. #nablopomo #onedayhh #instabloginception

8:23pm | Tim Gunn time

Poppy and I like to watch “Project Runway” together. We’re an episode behind, so no spoilers.

9:35pm | Stranger Things

This was a very TV-heavy day for us. All of Poppy’s friends watch “Stranger Things,” and Rockford was thrilled that she finally decided to watch it with him.

9:55pm | A cake manifests

A dream is a wish your heart makes, and a mug full of cake is a wish your tastebuds make. This means 3/4 of the years I’ve participated in #onedayhh have included cake.

11:30pm | Bedtime for Bonzo

And just like that, another fine #OneDayHH is in the books.

National Blog Posting Month, Social Media

what we had there was a failure to communicate

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Butterscotch Sundae Dot Com has been having issues accepting comments lately. I’m not sure how long the problem’s been going on, but it came to my attention when National Blog Posting Month started and a couple of people said, “Hey! I can’t comment on your blog.” But then when I asked some other people to try, they could comment and it was all very confusing. Then I figured out that people on mobile devices could comment but people on computers couldn’t, and I passed that on to my security people and they said, “Huh, that’s weird. Your comment system is rooty tooty dablooty[1]I didn’t understand what they said. and they only way we can figure out how to fix it is get a different comment system.”

So I installed Disqus, and I’m currently working on importing all of my not-Disqus comments over to the Disqus system, and that’s causing me headaches, too, because my blog is 12 years old and Disqus isn’t handling all that importing very graciously. I may have to do some more laborious behind-the-screens work to get things where they need to be, so things might get weird here for a bit.

Anyway, you ought to be able to leave comments from any internet-able device now. And I hope you do.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 I didn’t understand what they said.
Family matters, National Blog Posting Month

How Pete sailed into our lives

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I was freshly 29 years old a decade ago, and I was heavily under the influence of anesthesia. Little 2-years-and-3-months-old Poppy was waiting at home with her doting grandparents, and Rockford and I had gotten up in the wee hours of the morn and driven over to the hospital to greet our little gentleman, Pete.

We’d only moved to the area two months earlier, so my original birth plan — which included midwifery, rainbows and a harpist playing gentle, lilting tunes in the corner[1]only 2/3 of these were part of the plan — was out the window. I had to scramble to find a practice that would even see an 8-months-pregnant human person. The doctor I ended up with told me a lot about his plans for the weekend when I saw him, and after Pete was born he gave me what turned out to be awful advice for my personal self.

But he delivered unto us our Pete, so he’ll always hold an appreciative but complicated place in my heart.

Anywho, it was November 7, 2007, and we were at the hospital for a scheduled C-section. We twiddled our thumbs in the waiting room for an eternity, and then they whisked us back for Go Time.

“Do you have a playlist you’d like to hear?” a nurse asked.

“A what?!?!” Rockford asked, astounded and miffed. “You didn’t tell me we could have a playlist!”

“I’M SORRY THAT SLIPPED MY MIND,” I said calmly and lovingly.

“Here’s my iPod,” the nurse said. “Is there anything you’d like to hear?”

“Do you have anything from the ’70s?” Rockford asked.

“Sure,” she said, and she pushed the Play All My ’70s Songs button.

The anesthesiologist didn’t believe me when I told him that he wasn’t going to need to give me as much of whatever he was dishing out as his charts and PhDs and what-have-you told him, so he went ahead and followed his heart and then suddenly I couldn’t feel my lungs anymore. So they flipped me hither and yon and gave me some oxygen until things were A-OK again, and then we went trit-trotting along our merry way to Babytown yet again.

Rockford didn’t notice when “Come Sail Away” started to play. Nor did he notice when the song when it hit its crescendo just as Pete’s tiny head — and he did have a very tiny head — crested my splayed-open abdomen and entered the world. He didn’t notice it at all; I had to tell him later that the world’s most ridiculous song had ushered our child into the world.

As soon as Pete was out and uttered his first cries, Dr. Weekender held him skyward as Styx declared “We climbed aboard the starship and headed for the skies” and the doctor said “Boy, someone hasn’t missed a meal!”

“Hey,” said I. “I’m in a very vulnerable position here and that’s a really inappropriate thing to say.”

And Dr. Weekender apologized to me for that at every appointment for the next two years, even thought I assured him every time that I knew he was talking about Li’l Petey and that I was making a hilarious joke.

Pete, meanwhile, was perfect and tiny and one of the greatest things I’d ever seen. His sister came to meet him later that day and said “No Baby Pete” when we asked if she wanted to hold him, and then she threw up on the way back to the car because she had, unbeknownst to us, a raging ear infection.

A few days later we took him home, and he was the most easy-going, cheerful newborn on the face of this planet or any other. He stayed that way for quite awhile, too. He slept through the night when he was just over a month old, and he’d eat just about anything we offered him, and he smiled with his entire being every time he saw his sister.

Today he’s 10. He almost always sleeps through the night still, and he’ll still try most anything we offer him. Except mashed potatoes and sushi. He hates those. He’s funny and bright and determined and brave, and he’s still one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

Happy birthday, Petey. I can’t imagine my life without you.

Footnotes

Footnotes
↑1 only 2/3 of these were part of the plan