February 2008 Archives

If you know me, and some of you do, I am a champion nose blower extraordinaire. Small nostrils + frequent drip for whatever reason = elephantine noise. Really, I'm told its impressive. By people who would know—tuba players even.

I can do a dainty blow, but it doesn't get the job done, so...why?

Add some rhinestones, and this baby is perfect for me.
Ladies and Gentlemen...

I'm still visiting with Superdad and Wondermom. Meanwhile, you faithful readers may enjoy this blast from the past, Thing 1 is letting Thing 2 suck on his finger, back when Thing 2 had sucking as a major hobby. SysGuy found a mystery film roll a couple weeks ago, surprise!! Enjoy!

I've been working on this poster project at Cricket's behest for the last week or so. We're graphic designers. Well, we were, but then we became moms at home with our kids. Being home with the tiny and growing children you've made with your sweetie is wonderful in many ways, but meanwhile, graphic design has gone positively ape-shit.

Cricket and I are feeling a little behind the curve. Recently, we were able to upgrade our creaking, aged versions of various Adobe products that enable one to create graphic magic. The software is practically unrecognizable from its former self. Its a good thing the kids are cute. We've missed out on a lot of the tech stuff, but we have some darn cute kids to show for it.

In the last week or so there has been a "what is graphic design" poster
contest on a design website called /veerle.duoh.com/blog/ that usually has some tasty Adoby skill enhancers on it. "Veerle" has a pretty big following and managed to get some good prizes for a contest that she herself got to judge. I thought it would be fun to enter, so I've been working up a poster design for it. The due date was today, which I knew. I forgot to factor in flying to Arizona to visit SuperDad and WonderMom today. Also, the brownies for the bake sale by Thing 1's class that needed to be made. Also Valentines day stuff. Oh, and music lessons this week. Did I tell you I'm taking a class in Dreamweaver online? Homework, fun!

After arriving at my folk's house this afternoon, I frantically booted up the laptop and got started, I only had to resize the thing and export it to jpg. from Illustrator. No big deal, done it millions of times. Naturally, I didn't have enough scratch disc to do that. So I backed up my iTunes content and deleted it. Still not enough. So I went about it three other different ways. Then I was supposed to put it on a flikr account, which I did not have. I do now!! And I got it going, went to add it to the contest flikr group—entries closed at midnight Belguim time (GMT+1). [expletive!]. I live in GMT-8. Sigh, it was a fun exercise.

Cricket still wants to see it, so here it is: Graphic Design = noise -> signal

Thing 1 gets first crack at the new shirt:

Okay, the school has really got to start holding up its end of things: I pay taxes, you teach. Weekdays. All 5.

First Monday of two stay at home Mondays in February for the kinder today. (The two in January were not enough for whatever extra instruction the teachers required. You know they're drinking tequila and yukking it up right now.) We spent the day practicing our instruments, doing laundry and making valentine matchbook covers containing the previously mentioned crayon hearts for our classmate exchanges on Thursday. It took a while, with the glueing and the sewing and the coloring and the arduous writing of names.
God! I am such a taskmaster!!

In a not-terribly-surprising development, Thing 2 delights in writing and drawing and that sort of thing, though he is massively inefficient at it, invariably makes a horrible mess, and always needs to include drawing on his face with markers at some point. Thing 1, though he is quite efficient and neat, can't focus long enough to get an entire name written down without a typo. We know whence these diverse skills come.

Also, Mommy got to play with Photoshop a bit. Yum.

Thing 1, junior surfer dude, is all excited by the 70+ degree weather we're having this weekend. Yesterday, after school, the things where whinging about how hooooot it was and can they go swiiiiiiimmmmminnnng?
Well, sure, if you really want to....

So today, February 9th 2008, at 12:45pm, Thing 1 jumped into the ce-ment pond, fulling believing it was going to be GREAT! despite our warnings that it might be, well, chilly. It was a beautiful exhibit of enthusiasm over common sense. He's so sweet.

And you know who you are, doubter.

I received a spiffy kitchen stereo for my ipod from VolunteerLady and HappyGuy at Christmas. It is the coolest thing ever, and has been providing me with continuous company in the kitchen since I got it installed over new years weekend. I promised VolunteerLady a photo, and here it is. Only a month later!

In keeping with my usual "hmm, how can I spend waaay too much time and effort on the [insert upcoming minor holiday gifting opportunity here] that the Things can hand out in class this month?" method of driving myself crazy, this weekend was the beginning of the crayon-hearts factory-palooza.

It was going pretty well, Thing 1 only wanted to partially bash to bits one bag of crayons before getting bored with the whole operation. Thing 2 could not be bribed to participate in any way. The Things think the finished products are way cool, however. I like projects where the Things want to participate, but I am just ecstatic as happy to do craft projects on my own. This one, from Family Fun magazine last year, seemed tailor-made for our overflowing bin of rejected crayons (crap I couldn't bring myself to throw away). You know, the fat ones "we're too old for these, Mom", the broken ones, from the "Mom! Mom! They make a cool snapping sound!" phase, the ones shaped like animals that you must anally probe in order to color with them. They've all come to the end of the road.

Today, its an OCD extravaganza: The sorting by brand (for consistent melt point)! The xacto-ing off of wee paper wraps! The removing of muddy colors (and setting them aside for lesser recipients? Nah, that's just cold-hearted.) The hammering into the exact consistency of perfectly balanced pie dough! In double zip-locks! The scooping of perfect portions into the heart candy mold tin! Oh! Simple fun!!

Well, like most things, its all laughs and grins, right up until I idiotically whacked the side of the heart tin against the freakishly reflective/invisible chrome moulding around our ancient oven, and splashed multicolored molten wax over a 5' radius. That's when the shrieks and cussing moans began. Fortunately, I had been smugly recording my progress on this project, thinking I would do a Martha Stewartesque blog post, so my camera was handy to record the horror. It was a pretty breathtaking mess, the photos don't do it justice. Spatter pattern worthy of CSI. The oven, the pan, the bottom oven, my new socks, the table and chair legs, the cupboards, the kickplate, the tile. The grout. Augh. The grout.

Several intimate hours with the iron, blow dryer and some rubbing alcohol later, the mess is all cleaned up. I still have about 3 more tins of hearts to go. And I will absolutely do them, if only to empty the dud bin.
[Insert expletive here.]

We went to In-n-Out for dinner. I was kinda done with the kitchen 'bout supper time.