Daily Dose

Oh, Happy Day

Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I changed TWO dirty diapers today!

We read two books on my iPhone and they made us laugh.

We visited honorary Grandma Joy and that was lots of fun — we love coming home smelling of Joy. It makes us happy. Very happy.

We watched Barney. We love that big purple dinosaur.

Someone ate organic bananas and liked them — someone also let the puppy lick them off his fingers, which made the puppy happy.

Michelle will be here in about an hour.

Today was a good day. Tomorrow will be a good day, too.

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Swipp Surprised Me

3 Comments / Community Chest, Daily Dose /

Chris Carfi works for Swipp. Chris Carfi is Lisa Stone’s partner, and a wickedly smart, super-duper, all round awesome guy. Neither of them asked me to blog about Swipp or even asked me to try Swipp. This is all me…

If you don’t know what Swipp is, you should read Virginia’s post: Swipp Your Way to Social Intelligence and get used to seeing my swipps appear in your Facebook or Twitter streams if we’re friends/you follow me. I’m kind of addicted to swipping stuff. I even swipped what I’m having for dinner tonight. Heh. It’s a social media tool, telling people what yummy things you’re eating is a must. 😉

Besides having fun coming up with stuff to swipp and swipping stuff others have swipped, I’ve learned some stuff about myself.

I don’t like negative swipping. I don’t mind it when others do it but it takes a lot for me to slide that little slider down into the negative range. I’m doing it but I’m not really loving doing it, in most cases.

I had no problem swipping a -5 for Rand Paul a minute ago. I am passionate in my dislike of him. But most other things, I don’t feel so strongly passionate in my dislike that I want to push that slider. I’d much rather move along and find something I like, even if I only like that something a little.

Dunkin’ Donuts, for instance. I’m not a fan. Someone else swipped it with a +5 and I had to really force myself to swipp it down. It’s just not ME to rank and rate that way. I’m still doing it, as a way to explore my own ambivalence about the negative swipp, but I suspect it won’t be long ’til I stop negative swipping except in the most extreme of cases, (soup, for instance. I HATE soup and will have no problem swipping that down if I ever see it in the stream.)

I’m also surprised by just how much fun it is to be the PRIME swipper of a topic — particularly a topic that I was really interested in or really felt strongly about.

What I’m not surprised by is that I find it interesting to see what other people are swipping — and their feelings about what they’ve swipped. TW asked my why I like this thing — and that’s it. It’s not just that I’m having fun sharing my feelings about stuff, it’s that I really like seeing what other people think and feel about everything under the sun. It’s interesting.

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40 Years of Roe v. Wade

Daily Dose, Health and Wellness /

It’s Blog for Choice Day and I was going to skip it because lord knows I’ve blogged a whole lot about abortion and what else is there to say, really?

I’m not just pro-choice, I’m pro-abortion. You want one — have one.

Any woman who wants one — should have one.

Your body. Your life. Your choice.

Etc. Etc. Etc.

I did, however, buzz my kid and wish her a Happy Roe v. Wade day, as I generally do. And, I asked her if she knew where to find abortion services in her area, as I generally do. It’s just symbolic really — she obviously knows how to find abortion services, wherever she goes. And lord knows, if her internet connection goes down and she can’t find her way to a women’s clinic, she can call me and ask me to find a location and give her the bus schedule to get her there. (And throw money in her bank account, if she needs it.)

I decided I’d just go ahead and blog about this again — because wouldn’t it be nice if I’d not felt like it was important to point out the Planned Parenthood every time we passed it in NJ. Or if I didn’t feel like it was important to buzz my kids and remind them that they should know where to find these services, for themselves and for others. Wouldn’t it be nice if they grew up knowing without a doubt that they could schedule an abortion, if they chose to do so, just as easily as they could schedule an appointment for any other medical procedure (not that our health insurance programs always make THAT easy… which is another story.)

But they haven’t grown up knowing that.

40 years of Roe v. Wade and women still fight for access to affordable, safe abortion services. So many women in this country don’t have a provider anywhere near where they live. So many women have to cross horribly offensive and violent protest lines to gain access to abortion services (or general women’s health services if they happen to be getting them at an abortion service provider.)

Fuck that.

Roe is Here for Good and I’m not just blogging for choice, I’m making a donation for choice.

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Something’s Burning

1 Comment / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I was sitting at my desk this morning, reading blog posts, looking for spam, doing all of the things I do every morning (even though it’s an official holiday) when I smelled something burning. I mean I really smelled something burning.

The laundry room is right next to my office and both the washer and dryer were going, (I almost always do some sort of laundry first thing in the morning, while I boot up my laptop and make a cup of coffee.)

I got up and turned off both the washer and the dryer and sniffed a bit, thinking it must be my imagination. But no. Something was definitely burning.

I called TW in to help me investigate — we looked around the dryer. TW cleaned the lint duct. I looked outside. I opened up the basement hatch and looked out there. TW sniffed around her mother’s room (which shares a wall with the wall the dryer is on.) I wandered upstairs to sniff around the attic. It really only smelled like burning yukkiness in the laundry room — and strongly in and around the dryer.

Hell.

I got so distracted by the idea that the house might be on fire that I never opened Outlook… at least not til almost 3:30 in the afternoon.

The landlord, I love that guy, came over tonight and discovered — yes, there was definitely some fire stuff going on in there — and he brought us a new dryer. It’s not hooked up yet, because he needs a different gas attachment thingy and a new lint duct thingy, but it’s here and tomorrow it will be all ready for me to finish drying the load I started today.

And for me to do the thirteen other loads that are waiting.

Besides the catching the house on fire thing, we spent most of our day cleaning the laundry room/stockpile room, Prince J’s room, and the kitchen cabinets. We spent HOURS on this and there’s still tons more to do, just in those three rooms. Gah. I don’t even want to think about the girls’ rooms upstairs — talk about a MESS.

I guess we can work on those on President’s Day — and maybe I won’t open my email until 8pm on that holiday…

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10 Things I’ve Learned in 79 Days

7 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

Sitting here drumming my fingers against the desk and reloading Facebook/Twitter/BlogHer do not help me come up with something to blog. Neither does looking at my saved drafts or my Evernote tab of partially written posts. Doing those things makes me wonder why I’m so determined to keep doing this daily blogging thing. Which led me to the kitchen to clean up the dinner dishes which led me to a topic. Neat!

Here are the things I’ve learned about blogging since I forced myself to commit to this monthly blogging thing.

1) A blogging calendar/plan is a good thing.

2) A blogging calendar/plan is a good thing only if you make the time to blog what you’ve planned.

3) Trying to blog after 12/14/16 hours of work and/or family life is not a great idea.

4) All six of my kids provide great blogging material on an almost daily basis — too bad I can’t actually blog all of this stuff.

5) Coming up with lists of things you’ve learned is easier when you’re loading the dishwasher than when you’re actually sitting in front of your computer.

6) Having a spacebar that sticks every time you touch it does not make blogging easier — I’ve got to fix this, or buy a new computer. ASAP. (And not just for blogging, it’s hard to work with a sticky spacebar, too.)

7) BlogHer didn’t kill my blog — Facebook helped. Maybe kill isn’t the write word, since I am here blogging and some people do read these posts. Maimed it?

8) Kill might be too strong of word, since I’m sitting here blogging and some people do read these posts. Maimed it?

9) I should never count on finishing a book on a certain day so that I can blog it on a certain day. That’s a sure-fire way of finding myself with 150 pages left to read on the day I would have sworn I’d be book blogging.

10) When I blog regularly, I get more spam comments — and I notice them more — and that means I have to clean them up CONSTANTLY. I have an illness that prevents me from allowing spam to sit, even in an unpublished spam queue, for more than a few hours (unless I’m asleep.)

Well. That was actually more interesting (to me) than I thought it was going to be when I started typing. Maybe I really have learned some thing in the last 79 days.

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Pizza — My Way

8 Comments / Daily Dose, Foodie /

We order pizza at least twice a month (usually more than that) and have done so for more than 10 years. That’s a lot of pizza but it’s NEVER been pizza the way I like pizza.

If I could choose any pizza at all, it would have mushroom, onion and black olives.

Prince J won’t eat mushrooms.
Most of the little kids won’t eat onion.
TW won’t eat black olives.
Elly prefers MEAT, MEAT, and more MEAT but she’s happy to have MEAT and mushrooms (but Prince J doesn’t eat mushrooms and RJ won’t eat meat.)

See the problem there?

So, depending upon the subset of children here for dinner, here’s our normal order and the variations dependent upon children in residence.

1 extra large pepperoni
1 extra large mushroom

or

1 extra large pepperoni and mushroom

or

1 extra large mushroom

Ho-freaking-hum.

I’ve taken to ordering a side of fried ravioli, for myself (though some child who shall remain nameless, RJ, always begs a few and I am nice so I give them to her — grudgingly.)

TW always says, “You know you could order one that’s 1/2 whatever disgusting thing you want and 1/2 what the rest of us want…” but I don’t because I am nice. I know that sometimes restaurants screw those things up and if an extra large pizza showed up with mushroom, onion and black olive there would be hell to pay (and I couldn’t eat an entire extra large pizza all by myself if my life depended on it.)

Well tonight… I did it! I ordered a pizza with half mushroom, red onion and black olives and I LIKED IT. (It looks like other people might also have liked it since an awful lot of it is gone… probably TW’s mom, since I’ve never heard her complain about any of those things on a pizza.)

Yay me! Ya for pizza my way! I’m going to do it again next time, too. Probably.

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Uh Oh

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I just realized, I forgot to blog so I’m blogging. Sort of.

Long work day.

Sadness from Hawaii.

Video of Johnny Mac Pippin rolling over.

My computer died with 7 minutes of Bunheads left unwatched and then the sound wouldn’t come back on.

My inbox is not at zero.

Do we really want to move?

It’s freezing and I’m tired of freezing.

Johnny Mac Pippin needs mittens!

Chris never answers my darn texts.

The prairie dogs ate another set of mini blinds.

And there you have it – my life, in a nutshell — so I guess I blogged after all.

Posted via email from Life. Flow. Fluctuate.

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The Good, Bad Day

Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I really hate it when you’re having a perfectly fine day and then POOF, it’s turned into one of the most horrible days EVER.

But then, you get some news that is the most AWESOME NEWS EVER.

How do you work with that?

Horribly sad and angry and just exhausted by the bad stuff in the world but filled with joy and excitement about the awesome things happening.

It’s the kind of yo-yo that I really hate. I mean really.

Not that I didn’t want to hear good, happy things — particularly this good, happy thing.

But, it’s hard to really enjoy it when you’re sad.

And none of this makes any sense, but that’s what my day was like, today.

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A Year of Mockumentaries? Err, I Mean Documentaries?

2 Comments / Daily Dose, Movies & Television /

For years I’ve been padding my non-fiction reading lists with books from Zandria’s year end “This is what I read” list. (She reads non-fiction almost exclusively.) Non-fiction can be so hit or miss that it’s always nice to have someone you know and trust read one first and tell you what she thought. (She’s also been very nice and elaborated on some of your opinions on books via email so that I was sure I was getting what I thought I’d be getting.)

This year, she also posted a “This is what I watched” post full of documentaries. Ohhhh boy! One of my personal favorite things about having the ROKU has been watching the occasional documentary, just because I felt like it. Unfortunately, the girls tend to monopolize the ROKU on the weekends and I haven’t watched as many as I’d like. I also was never sure what I should watch — there are so darn many, after all.

I sat down on Sunday and added a ton of documentaries from her list to my Netflix queue and in the process added some more that she hadn’t watched but caught my eye.

I figured this would be a good way to force myself to work on JMP’s Christmas stocking — watch some documentaries and work on this thing at the same time. Win/win! So on Sunday, I picked a short one that I wasn’t sure TW would be interested in, since she was working in the bedroom but before a few minutes had passed, she wandered out to join me in watching. Prince J watched along for awhile too.

We watched “Between the Folds” — super interesting! The art, the history, the science of paper folding. (Oh, I actually watched this on Amazon Instant because Netflix was grouchy. Too many kids in the house watching other things on MY Netflix account, probably, lol.)

Then, because we enjoyed that so much, we moved over to Netflix and watched Vegucated. A vegan in NY recruited (via Craigslist) three people to go vegan. Pretty much what you’d expect. They watched videos about animal farming/meat production, wandered into a farm and saw things they didn’t want to see, struggled with friends/family who don’t understand the vegan thing, missed cheese (mmm cheese) and they all lost weight, improved cholesterol and blood pressure — as expected.

While we were watching these, alienbody was watching documentaries from Zan’s list too, heh. (Zandria is becoming a legend!) Alienbody coined the phrase “mockumentary” and oh how I look forward to mocking some documentaries this year. It’s gonna be funnnnnnnn. And interesting.

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Two Great Things That Work Great Together

4 Comments / Daily Dose, Day to Day /

I love Evernote. I use it every single day. On my laptop and on my iPhone. I don’t know how I’d survive without my Evernote.

I love Moleskine. I never use them. It’s a sentimental thing. Who needs Moleskines when you have blogs and Facebook and Twitter and every other possible content creation platform under the sun. I still love Moleskine, though.

TW gave me the Moleskine for Evernote for Christmas. Yay!

But what in the heck was I going to DO with it?

So it sat here on my desk, right next to my computer — unwrapped but not unloved.

When I needed to write notes during a meeting, I used an old notebook. When I needed to tally up some numbers, I used an old notebook. None of those things are right for my Moleskine for Evernote.

Hmm, hmm, hmmm.

Then, around noon today, I was feeling unreasonably grouchy about some stuff and an idea for a blog post popped into my head. But, this was not something I could actually BLOG about. (I know. You’re shocked that there might be something I wouldn’t say online.)

I told my work peoples that I was grouchy and taking a lunch break (not to eat lunch, of course) and ripped open my Moleskine, (not without angst, which I did Tweet/Chatter) and started to write (not without input from Skeeter who is not used to seeing me with a pen and paper in my hand.)

The Moleskine for Evernote is really kind of perfect for what I wrote about. It stemmed some other ideas and it was fun to write something big and important in my notebook.

Then, I had to figure out how to send it to Evernote. It helps to watch the getting started video because I was totally clueless and just took a photo, which I can do with any piece of paper. After about three attempts, I figured it out.

And it is really VERY, very cool.

I kind of wish I had something else big, and important to write about. But I don’t, not right now. I’m sure I will, though. I’m feeling all inspired and happy with myself.

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