I'm back online! Time Warner Cable are a bunch of jive-turkeys.
LONG story less-long: After 8 hours (EIGHT HOURS) on the phone with various tech support people over 2 days, they set an appointment to come fix something at my house between 8 and noon. But they ended up fixing it remotely and never told me so, and so I waited at home until the end of time without knowing the problem was fixed... until I happened to turn on the computer for something else and found "HP updates are available" and I said "How do you know this?" and the computer went online to get the updates-- which is how I learned that TWC had in fact fixed the problem without telling me.
What's most annoying about this? It was a server outage on their end. Which is what I thought it was in the beginning, that is to say, on Tuesday morning!! I told them so, and they kept telling me it was a hardware issue on my end. So I tested: 2 different wireless routers, 2 different cable modems, 3 computers, 2 different cable jacks in the house, a wireless connection, an ethernet connection, and a USB connection, with and without the router in play, enabling and disabling the firewalls, while holding a mouthful of coffee in my mouth, while standing on my head, seated and standing. I also tried playing JS Bach for the modem (good for babies, why not for modems?). They still wanted to tell me it was a hardware issue on my end. I told them that I was almost positive that they had a DHCP server issue, and they ignored me. Then they said it was the cable coming into my house. Which I knew it wasn't. And it wasn't. And I said I'd make this LONG story less-long so I'll just stop talking now.
Later I'm going to post some e-baby videos. E-baby is good for lowering blood pressure, and she can bost your immune system. And I know you want to see the proof. And it's cold& flu season. Consider it my good deed today.
Thursday, November 9, 2006
Monday, November 6, 2006
Saturday night was our 2nd annual Guy Fawkes day bonfire, and a good time was had by all. Or, at least, that's my story and I'm stickin' to it. Unlike any other party we've ever thrown, the salad was the first thing to be finished off. That's probably because we forgot to show anyone where the hot dogs and s'mores were until after I noticed a couple of people eating their own hands.
We burned a lot of stuff, and I have to say that burninating with the assistance of youthful pre-pyromaniacs is really, really fun.
To see a photo-blog of the fun, go here. There are notes on most of the pictures because that is My New Trick. I should also mention that nearly all the pictures were taken by Dianaverse, which explains why she isn't actually in any of the pictures.
We burned a lot of stuff, and I have to say that burninating with the assistance of youthful pre-pyromaniacs is really, really fun.
To see a photo-blog of the fun, go here. There are notes on most of the pictures because that is My New Trick. I should also mention that nearly all the pictures were taken by Dianaverse, which explains why she isn't actually in any of the pictures.
I have pictures from the Guy Fawkes party but I haven't been able to sit and post about it yet because there's this baby, who is all warm and soft and fuzzy on top, who smells so nice, who curls up around my neck and snores a little bit all morning long. She is there now and this took about 10 minutes to write. I should have it posted by this evening?
In the meantime, I put a link to Week 6 pictures on Flickr a couple of posts down from here, if you haven't seen them yet.
In the meantime, I put a link to Week 6 pictures on Flickr a couple of posts down from here, if you haven't seen them yet.
Sunday, November 5, 2006
Test Post: Flickr Blog and Notes
I'm testing a feature in Flickr that lets you add notes to a picture. Neat. It also lets you post pictures directly to your blog. You can see the notes of you click on the picture.
Friday, November 3, 2006
Isn't it a Bit Early to be Sick of The Christmas Season?
It drives me bonkers that Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. Case in point: In college I was frustrated when Christmas stuff hit the stores a few weeks before Thanksgiving. In grad school I recall complaining that Christmas stuff was in the stores the day after Halloween. This year, Christmas stuff hit the stores the day after Labor Day. What the??
To make matters worse, most of the Christmas stuff is cleared out the make way for Valentine's stuff on Dec 26. That's right, the "First day of Christmas" is really the First day of Valentine's shopping. Uh, Hello? The Christmas Season lasts until Epiphany. I have a sinking suspicion that the worst culprits of all are the turkeys who boycott stores for having Happy Holidays in their windows. Because for some reason they hate sharing December with anyone else's religious holy days, but they probably take their trees down on the 26th. But I have no proof that this is the case.
I just saw 2 things on the news that made me bristle, and so I thought I'd share them with you.
First: Our local Macy's, which is new, is trying to establish itself in a city where the Old is sacred (kind of like New Orleans, so I can't really knock it). Macy's recently displaced (bought out) a local department store that was something of an institution (think D.H. Holmes or Godchaulk's in NOLA, but Raleigh-flavored). So, to endear themselves to the locals, they're having a "Macy's Holiday Parade." Come on out and join the fun... this Sunday, November 5. They could at least have the decency to wait until the weekend before Thanksgiving or something, but no. The weekend before Election Day is close enough to the holiday season for these guys. I'm already sick of Jingle Bell Rock.
Second: This is totally unrelated to the holidays, and it was a few days ago, but it friggled me so it fits into the current post theme. I was watching some drivel on the cable channels up in the hundreds, something like a biography of Bela Lugosi or a 25-year-old British comedy or a documentary on the city of Jericho or somesuch. Anyway, the Emergency Broadcast System BRAAAP BRAAAP BRAAAP comes over, and a banner across the bottom of the screen tells me that:
"The North Carolina department (of something-or-other) has issued a Child Abduction Warning for the following counties..... until this evening at 20:45"
That was all it said. Not information on who the abductors might be, where they might be, what to do to find more information, why they were interrupting a brilliant interview with a Harvard epidemiologist, nada. There was nothing on any of the local news stations, and no other warnings were issued. So, um, I HAD been thinking about putting e-baby in her stroller out at the corner with her little thumb sticking out and a sign saying "Mexico or Bust" but NOW, with that warning in place, NO WAY. Thank goodness for the NC Dept of something-or-other. Since e-baby wasn't abducted that day, I'm sure it was all because of that excellent implementation of the Emergency Broadcast System. Hmph.
But today is Friday, and tomorrow is the BONFIRE! and so I'm pretty stoked (pun intended). Tonight Peace and Fuzzy will come over with the printout of Parliament and some poster board. Armed with glue sticks, frosting, gumdrops and about 2 gallons of salsa, we will have a craft project to keep us entertained for hours.
It drives me bonkers that Christmas decorations go up earlier and earlier every year. Case in point: In college I was frustrated when Christmas stuff hit the stores a few weeks before Thanksgiving. In grad school I recall complaining that Christmas stuff was in the stores the day after Halloween. This year, Christmas stuff hit the stores the day after Labor Day. What the??
To make matters worse, most of the Christmas stuff is cleared out the make way for Valentine's stuff on Dec 26. That's right, the "First day of Christmas" is really the First day of Valentine's shopping. Uh, Hello? The Christmas Season lasts until Epiphany. I have a sinking suspicion that the worst culprits of all are the turkeys who boycott stores for having Happy Holidays in their windows. Because for some reason they hate sharing December with anyone else's religious holy days, but they probably take their trees down on the 26th. But I have no proof that this is the case.
I just saw 2 things on the news that made me bristle, and so I thought I'd share them with you.
First: Our local Macy's, which is new, is trying to establish itself in a city where the Old is sacred (kind of like New Orleans, so I can't really knock it). Macy's recently displaced (bought out) a local department store that was something of an institution (think D.H. Holmes or Godchaulk's in NOLA, but Raleigh-flavored). So, to endear themselves to the locals, they're having a "Macy's Holiday Parade." Come on out and join the fun... this Sunday, November 5. They could at least have the decency to wait until the weekend before Thanksgiving or something, but no. The weekend before Election Day is close enough to the holiday season for these guys. I'm already sick of Jingle Bell Rock.
Second: This is totally unrelated to the holidays, and it was a few days ago, but it friggled me so it fits into the current post theme. I was watching some drivel on the cable channels up in the hundreds, something like a biography of Bela Lugosi or a 25-year-old British comedy or a documentary on the city of Jericho or somesuch. Anyway, the Emergency Broadcast System BRAAAP BRAAAP BRAAAP comes over, and a banner across the bottom of the screen tells me that:
"The North Carolina department (of something-or-other) has issued a Child Abduction Warning for the following counties..... until this evening at 20:45"
That was all it said. Not information on who the abductors might be, where they might be, what to do to find more information, why they were interrupting a brilliant interview with a Harvard epidemiologist, nada. There was nothing on any of the local news stations, and no other warnings were issued. So, um, I HAD been thinking about putting e-baby in her stroller out at the corner with her little thumb sticking out and a sign saying "Mexico or Bust" but NOW, with that warning in place, NO WAY. Thank goodness for the NC Dept of something-or-other. Since e-baby wasn't abducted that day, I'm sure it was all because of that excellent implementation of the Emergency Broadcast System. Hmph.
But today is Friday, and tomorrow is the BONFIRE! and so I'm pretty stoked (pun intended). Tonight Peace and Fuzzy will come over with the printout of Parliament and some poster board. Armed with glue sticks, frosting, gumdrops and about 2 gallons of salsa, we will have a craft project to keep us entertained for hours.
Tuesday, October 31, 2006
Monday, October 30, 2006
Gunpowder Treason! Gunpowder!! Treason!! Yay!
Sunday, Nov 5 is Guy Fawkes Day. I would guess that few of you (except LeBon, of course) are familiar with the holiday, unless you recall the discussion this time last year. This year our annual bonfire/backyard burn-a-thon will be open to kids. I figured it was only fair, since our own little burninator will be present at the festivities.
We're having the party on Saturday so we can get to bed on time Snday night. Yes, we've become That Old That Quickly. In fact, I try to start getting into bed around 9pm. That way I'm usually able to nod off to sleep by 11:30 or so.
The bonfire will again feature hot dogs, s'mores, burgers, and anything else you can cook over flame. Aluminum cans, gummy bears, plastic army men, the usual stuff. At the end of the evening we burn the scarecrow effigy of Guy Fawkes to much native dancing and fanfare. A lot of beer is spilled.
One small point continued to irritate the proverbial skin, however, like a minor case of diaper rash: We and most of our friends are Catholic, and it's a little weird that a bunch of Catholics would celebrate Guy Fawkes Day by burning his effigy. Since, you know, he represented the Catholics trying to assassinate the Protestant government officials and all that jazz. We were bothered by this dissonance last year and resolved it by just burning more stuff and spilling more beer.
This year, the Catholics will have a voice. The Burninating Committee determined that we need a little cardboard model of Parliament, frosted and decorated with gumdrops like a gingerbread house. That will be a fun project for the kiddies, don't you think?
Then we dig, in the backyard, a teeny little basement underneath our sugar-sweet little Parliament and Big Ben. The kids can play out a puppet scene of a teeny little man in period clothing transporting a little miniature keg filled with gunpowder while old gentlemen in powdered wigs sip Brandy upstairs.
For the play's climax, a cleverly inserted match (GROWNUPS ONLY HERE, PLEASE!) will blow the place to smithereens.
The only question that remains is this:
Should we use this one?
Or this one?
Sunday, Nov 5 is Guy Fawkes Day. I would guess that few of you (except LeBon, of course) are familiar with the holiday, unless you recall the discussion this time last year. This year our annual bonfire/backyard burn-a-thon will be open to kids. I figured it was only fair, since our own little burninator will be present at the festivities.
We're having the party on Saturday so we can get to bed on time Snday night. Yes, we've become That Old That Quickly. In fact, I try to start getting into bed around 9pm. That way I'm usually able to nod off to sleep by 11:30 or so.
The bonfire will again feature hot dogs, s'mores, burgers, and anything else you can cook over flame. Aluminum cans, gummy bears, plastic army men, the usual stuff. At the end of the evening we burn the scarecrow effigy of Guy Fawkes to much native dancing and fanfare. A lot of beer is spilled.
One small point continued to irritate the proverbial skin, however, like a minor case of diaper rash: We and most of our friends are Catholic, and it's a little weird that a bunch of Catholics would celebrate Guy Fawkes Day by burning his effigy. Since, you know, he represented the Catholics trying to assassinate the Protestant government officials and all that jazz. We were bothered by this dissonance last year and resolved it by just burning more stuff and spilling more beer.
This year, the Catholics will have a voice. The Burninating Committee determined that we need a little cardboard model of Parliament, frosted and decorated with gumdrops like a gingerbread house. That will be a fun project for the kiddies, don't you think?
Then we dig, in the backyard, a teeny little basement underneath our sugar-sweet little Parliament and Big Ben. The kids can play out a puppet scene of a teeny little man in period clothing transporting a little miniature keg filled with gunpowder while old gentlemen in powdered wigs sip Brandy upstairs.
For the play's climax, a cleverly inserted match (GROWNUPS ONLY HERE, PLEASE!) will blow the place to smithereens.
The only question that remains is this:
Should we use this one?
Or this one?
Friday, October 27, 2006
Biker Chick
It should come as no surprise that e-baby had her first bicycle before she was born. My parents found the world's smallest mountain bike, used, and snapped it up for her. Our plan is to teach her to ride (when she's a little bit bigger!) without training wheels. We 'll take the pedals off of the bike and let her cruise around with her feet for balance, learning to steer and roll, and then when she's ready, put the pedals back on and she can ride like a big kid. The idea is not ours; it's the same thing that Rolli-Riders do.
Anyway, here is e-baby modeling her riot-red mountain bike.
It should come as no surprise that e-baby had her first bicycle before she was born. My parents found the world's smallest mountain bike, used, and snapped it up for her. Our plan is to teach her to ride (when she's a little bit bigger!) without training wheels. We 'll take the pedals off of the bike and let her cruise around with her feet for balance, learning to steer and roll, and then when she's ready, put the pedals back on and she can ride like a big kid. The idea is not ours; it's the same thing that Rolli-Riders do.
Anyway, here is e-baby modeling her riot-red mountain bike.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
Mom went back to Austin yesterday, but I think we'll be OK. She left us enough frozen meals to get through three winters, and I learned a number of baby-soothing tricks from her along the way. Right now, my favorite one is to pat-pat-pat the baby on the toosh to settle her when she is frazzled. It works really well, but you have to do it for about 4 hours before you can walk away from her. She appears to sleep but as soon as you stop patting the toosh, she wakes up and roars. She's a lot like a baby lion cub. When she's mad, she growls and roars and opens her mouth big to show you her big, scary teeth, but all she has are gums, and she stomps her tiny feet and no matter what she does, she can't be scary, but she sure as heck tries. Like this:
See? Just like a baby lion cub.
See? Just like a baby lion cub.
I've posted 2 more sets of pictures on Flickr. I went ahead and got a real account because I decided to eventually put other pictures up there too, like vacation pictures and such. But for now, it's all about e-baby.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Two updates from yesterday:
1. The La Leche League meeting was really fun. It was a group of moms with babies between 4 weeks and about a year, as well as 2 LLL leaders who had a few semi-structured conversation starters, and we basically spent the 2 hours asking and answering one another's questions about adjusting to the new baby, nursing problems, etc. No weirdos, no militant judgemental booby-police. Just a bunch of women like me who probably get as much out of the "we've had the same problem you're having and here's what I did" as from just getting out of the house and being social. Only thing special was that it was not at all weird to feed the baby right there in front of everyone without any kind of cover-up. I will definitely go back.
2. e-baby SMILED AT ME! She's not real confident in her smiling abilities yet, but she did it 4 different times. NOT GAS! A REAL SMILE! She's so beautiful. It made me into a complete babbling goon. I tried to catch it on film, but haven't been successful yet.
SNG and I just got home from a 12-mile mtn bike ride, about an hour. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's the most my hiney has done since June. Since I outgrew my bike and all. It felt really good, and I could've definitely done more. But, I was worried about a hungry baby at home and wanted to get back to her. Did I mention? She smiled at me? As if I could stay away from that for more than an hour.
1. The La Leche League meeting was really fun. It was a group of moms with babies between 4 weeks and about a year, as well as 2 LLL leaders who had a few semi-structured conversation starters, and we basically spent the 2 hours asking and answering one another's questions about adjusting to the new baby, nursing problems, etc. No weirdos, no militant judgemental booby-police. Just a bunch of women like me who probably get as much out of the "we've had the same problem you're having and here's what I did" as from just getting out of the house and being social. Only thing special was that it was not at all weird to feed the baby right there in front of everyone without any kind of cover-up. I will definitely go back.
2. e-baby SMILED AT ME! She's not real confident in her smiling abilities yet, but she did it 4 different times. NOT GAS! A REAL SMILE! She's so beautiful. It made me into a complete babbling goon. I tried to catch it on film, but haven't been successful yet.
SNG and I just got home from a 12-mile mtn bike ride, about an hour. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it's the most my hiney has done since June. Since I outgrew my bike and all. It felt really good, and I could've definitely done more. But, I was worried about a hungry baby at home and wanted to get back to her. Did I mention? She smiled at me? As if I could stay away from that for more than an hour.
Thursday, October 19, 2006
Next Sunday e-baby will be 4 weeks old! She's so cute. Soon she'll learn to smile. For now, she only smiles when she poots.
I'm still jogging just short distances of about two miles at a time. The distance is too easy now, but the longer I stay out, the more I feel like I need to get back to the baby. It doesn't matter whether she's with my mom or with SNG or with a band of gypsies. It's not the quality of the child care that is pulling me back home. It's just her little face and squealy gurgly voice in my head. I put on my iPod and listen to an audiobook and can't follow the plot because I'm thinking about e-baby too much. I really do want to get away and run for maybe 5-6 miles-- that would be perfectly reasonable and would take an hour, maybe 75 minutes. But the teeny supermagnet won't let me go that far.
If it's this hard to go running by myself for 30 minutes, what will the first business trip sans bébé be like? Oh, I hate to even think of it.
Anyway, so here's the skinny (haha) on recovery. I dropped 20 pounds of pregnancy weight in less than two weeks. And since then, nada. That leaves five pregnancy pounds and another five vanity pounds and my weight hasn't gone anywhere for the past two weeks. They say nine months to put it on, nine months to take it off, but Bah! eight more months for 10 measly pounds? It'll be well into triathlon season by then.
The problem is that nursing makes you HUNGRY like nobody's business. It takes a lot of calories to make all those calories, but I'm mostly jonesing for sweets. I think I'm hungrier than I was pregnant! At least with mom here it's harder to make bad food choices because she's doing all the shopping and doesn't buy boxes of rice krispies, bags of marshmallows, and a stick of butter which is really all I need to make a little something to tide me over until dinner, honest I won't have to snack on anything else.
Oh, and add a bag of butterscotch chips while the marshmallows are melting.
I went to a "Moms in Motion" fitness class on Tuesday. It was nice to meet other new mothers and be somewhere that a screaming baby was not a nuisance. But I get more exercise diapering e-baby than I got in that class, since my house has stairs. Just how bad off do you have to be, how rough was your delivery, that after your OB gives you clearance to recommence exercise, you need to keep it that low-key? But, I might still go back to the class because like I said, I enjoyed going somewhere that e-baby could yell and holler without any dirty looks and I enjoyed meeting other new moms.
Tomorrow I'm going to try a La Leche League meeting. At least I won't have to pretend I'm getting a workout. I might have to pretend to breastfeed, though. E-baby will have had her breakfast and 2nd breakfast already, but it'll be too early for elevensies yet.
I'm still jogging just short distances of about two miles at a time. The distance is too easy now, but the longer I stay out, the more I feel like I need to get back to the baby. It doesn't matter whether she's with my mom or with SNG or with a band of gypsies. It's not the quality of the child care that is pulling me back home. It's just her little face and squealy gurgly voice in my head. I put on my iPod and listen to an audiobook and can't follow the plot because I'm thinking about e-baby too much. I really do want to get away and run for maybe 5-6 miles-- that would be perfectly reasonable and would take an hour, maybe 75 minutes. But the teeny supermagnet won't let me go that far.
If it's this hard to go running by myself for 30 minutes, what will the first business trip sans bébé be like? Oh, I hate to even think of it.
Anyway, so here's the skinny (haha) on recovery. I dropped 20 pounds of pregnancy weight in less than two weeks. And since then, nada. That leaves five pregnancy pounds and another five vanity pounds and my weight hasn't gone anywhere for the past two weeks. They say nine months to put it on, nine months to take it off, but Bah! eight more months for 10 measly pounds? It'll be well into triathlon season by then.
The problem is that nursing makes you HUNGRY like nobody's business. It takes a lot of calories to make all those calories, but I'm mostly jonesing for sweets. I think I'm hungrier than I was pregnant! At least with mom here it's harder to make bad food choices because she's doing all the shopping and doesn't buy boxes of rice krispies, bags of marshmallows, and a stick of butter which is really all I need to make a little something to tide me over until dinner, honest I won't have to snack on anything else.
Oh, and add a bag of butterscotch chips while the marshmallows are melting.
I went to a "Moms in Motion" fitness class on Tuesday. It was nice to meet other new mothers and be somewhere that a screaming baby was not a nuisance. But I get more exercise diapering e-baby than I got in that class, since my house has stairs. Just how bad off do you have to be, how rough was your delivery, that after your OB gives you clearance to recommence exercise, you need to keep it that low-key? But, I might still go back to the class because like I said, I enjoyed going somewhere that e-baby could yell and holler without any dirty looks and I enjoyed meeting other new moms.
Tomorrow I'm going to try a La Leche League meeting. At least I won't have to pretend I'm getting a workout. I might have to pretend to breastfeed, though. E-baby will have had her breakfast and 2nd breakfast already, but it'll be too early for elevensies yet.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
False Starts
So we are supposed to do announcements, right? OK, I've been working on that, with all my spare time. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I've been doing this little project one bit at a time since, well, before e-baby was born. I started by checking out the cute little stationary store nearby, and their announcements, while beautiful, were going to run us about $3.50 apiece after photo, printing and stationary. Which would be fine if I only had 10 (or 30 or even 50) to send out. But I have a big family. My and SNG's parents have a lot of friends. SNG and I have a few friends of our own. We're looking at many, many announcements. Not quite wedding-invitation-many, but still about 150 or so.
Mom kept offering to hand-write them for me. I told her that this solution would not be optimal. It would not even be minimum variance. Besides, her time can be spent on better things. Like washing another load of stuff with poop and spit-up all over it.
I decided that the best approach is a simple one: have little cards printed with a color-graphic design on the front and the announcement text inside or on the back (depending on the type of card). Then, insert perfect-wallet-sized-baby photo with custom border, seal envelope, and voila, annonce accompli. We even already have a box of 150 little announcement-sized envelopes! What could be easier!
Staples is just around the corner. That was easy (sorry, couldn't resist). I found a moment to over there while e-baby was sleeping peacefully with my parents watching her. I was on the lookout for the right cardstock and to price the printing. Then to Wolf or Eckerd's for the picture.
Went to Eckerd's first: "Wallet sized pictures are $1 per print."
Went to Wolf: "You can't put a border on wallet-sized pictures."
Went to Staples: "We cannot print on non-standard paper sizes. Must be legal or letter sized."
Went back to Eckerd's: Their machine cuts of part of the cover design graphic without my permission. Got to have cover graphic printed because cover will have to be color photocopied. Went back home, edited the cover design graphic to have a border so that it would only crop the border.
Then at Staples the copier kept jamming and we were gone for over 2 hours and when we got home the baby was howling with hunger and anxiety and I was a wreck and
(pant, pant, pant) here the story has to stop. Because that only accounts the first 2 days of a 2 week epic saga in which I faced obstacle after obstacle to having the announcements done, not even the way I wanted them, but done at all.
I was going to write all about it here for you to feel the pain along with me, but as I started, I felt my blood pressure soar dangerously high. And just a moment ago, as SNG sat here next to me and slurped a spoonful of soup RIGHT NEXT TO MY EAR, I reflexively smacked him in the teeth. Well, not really, but in my mind I did. So, it'll be safer for all in my sweet little household not to tell you of the epic saga of Getting Announcements Made.
It suffices to say that they're done now, and if I have your address, and if I remember to do it, I'll send you one. I hope you enjoy it, because it nearly cost us a few thou in orthodondist bills for SNG. He is about to try his hand at a bowl of cereal. I will go to another room and find my center. Oohhhmmmm.
So we are supposed to do announcements, right? OK, I've been working on that, with all my spare time. Ha. Ha. Ha.
I've been doing this little project one bit at a time since, well, before e-baby was born. I started by checking out the cute little stationary store nearby, and their announcements, while beautiful, were going to run us about $3.50 apiece after photo, printing and stationary. Which would be fine if I only had 10 (or 30 or even 50) to send out. But I have a big family. My and SNG's parents have a lot of friends. SNG and I have a few friends of our own. We're looking at many, many announcements. Not quite wedding-invitation-many, but still about 150 or so.
Mom kept offering to hand-write them for me. I told her that this solution would not be optimal. It would not even be minimum variance. Besides, her time can be spent on better things. Like washing another load of stuff with poop and spit-up all over it.
I decided that the best approach is a simple one: have little cards printed with a color-graphic design on the front and the announcement text inside or on the back (depending on the type of card). Then, insert perfect-wallet-sized-baby photo with custom border, seal envelope, and voila, annonce accompli. We even already have a box of 150 little announcement-sized envelopes! What could be easier!
Staples is just around the corner. That was easy (sorry, couldn't resist). I found a moment to over there while e-baby was sleeping peacefully with my parents watching her. I was on the lookout for the right cardstock and to price the printing. Then to Wolf or Eckerd's for the picture.
Went to Eckerd's first: "Wallet sized pictures are $1 per print."
Went to Wolf: "You can't put a border on wallet-sized pictures."
Went to Staples: "We cannot print on non-standard paper sizes. Must be legal or letter sized."
Went back to Eckerd's: Their machine cuts of part of the cover design graphic without my permission. Got to have cover graphic printed because cover will have to be color photocopied. Went back home, edited the cover design graphic to have a border so that it would only crop the border.
Then at Staples the copier kept jamming and we were gone for over 2 hours and when we got home the baby was howling with hunger and anxiety and I was a wreck and
(pant, pant, pant) here the story has to stop. Because that only accounts the first 2 days of a 2 week epic saga in which I faced obstacle after obstacle to having the announcements done, not even the way I wanted them, but done at all.
I was going to write all about it here for you to feel the pain along with me, but as I started, I felt my blood pressure soar dangerously high. And just a moment ago, as SNG sat here next to me and slurped a spoonful of soup RIGHT NEXT TO MY EAR, I reflexively smacked him in the teeth. Well, not really, but in my mind I did. So, it'll be safer for all in my sweet little household not to tell you of the epic saga of Getting Announcements Made.
It suffices to say that they're done now, and if I have your address, and if I remember to do it, I'll send you one. I hope you enjoy it, because it nearly cost us a few thou in orthodondist bills for SNG. He is about to try his hand at a bowl of cereal. I will go to another room and find my center. Oohhhmmmm.
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