The Barbie Chronicles

If you are not friends with me on facebook, then you do not know about my alter ego, Computer Engineer Barbie. She has lots of adventures. Like, starting longingly out the window on a sunny Saturday while she tries to finish up a 60 hour work bender. Computer Engineer Barbie, or CEB, hasn't been this tired since she had a 2 day old baby.

It's Almost Alice Cooper Time

The countdown to the end of school is in full swing and we are all singing our favorite song: School's Out. Last year Luke was a precious first grader, who loved his teacher, so he was very unhappy about blowing the school to pieces, and teacher's dirty looks. Unfortunately, it's such a catchy tune, that it's really hard not to sing the refrain all morning before the last day of school. We tried to modify it a bit, but I can't remember what we came up with and I am too lazy/multi-taskery to look and see if I blogged about this last year.

But now that Luke is a too cool for school second grader, going on third grader in 5 days, he started the whole thing with a little Alice Cooper sing along before bed. Or maybe I started it. Regardless, I was very interested to hear what he had to say after, "I'll modify this song so it's more appropriate for me."

School's out for summer.
School's out for evah!
School's been blown to pieces.
No more pencils
Lots more books

Sigh. I just love my little bookworm.

On that note, did I mention that I updated the list of books read? (See above re: too lazy to look at yesterday's post.) Hopefully Luke and I will spend the whole summer reading, if I survive this weekend.

Computer Engineer Barbie

Computer Engineer Barbie and I worked about 40 hours over Easter weekend. Today, she is trying out the new "standing desk" craze that she's been reading about. I am sitting on my bottom and thinking of new career options. Pizza chef, perhaps?

MetaMultiTasking

Sunday afternoon I was making a leisurely, pre-Thanksgiving trip to the grocery store, forgetting things, getting stuff that wasn't on the list, back-tracking, breaking into a sweat, you know, the usual.

Then I made the mistake of turning on my phone to see what time it was while I waited in the interminable line at the deli for my 10 slices of stuffing-destined prosciutto. And what happened? I read a txt from Dave that said I needed to hurry home so one of us could pick Luke up from a birthday party, and that also, work was calling me.

Cue extreme panic attack. OMG! I was at the grocery and my phone died. PEOPLE AT WORK NEEDED ME ON A SUNDAY AND I WASNT AVAILABLE IMMEDIATELY. I decided to forget the rest of the list and get home as fast as possible. Also, Luke needed to be picked up.

So I drove home, honked the horn, Dave ran out to drive off to get Luke while I dragged the groceries in the house. I called my co-worker, got the scoop, and started unloading groceries, and logging in at the same time. And because I think I am awesome at multi-tasking, I also started composing my blog post about the whole thing. "Look at me! I can put all the groceries away in the time it takes to login to my work computer! Look at me, bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan and tossing off bon mots all the while!"

If my camera wasn't broken, I would have the picture that captured my (slight lack of) success. And that picture would have been taken 2 hours later, work problem still not solved, and it would be a picture of a pile of lonely groceries on the floor in the kitchen.

File Under: Tragic. Cross Reference: Time to Job Search

This blogging once a day thing is going to be more difficult than I thought since, not only can I not take pictures, but I can't get current pictures off my camera. Yea me!

So onward to misc. Jack news: Jack can recite a poem. Adorable. No video due to the camera situation, but maybe he'll do it over the phone if you call. See how I stopped pretending that anyone besides grandparents are reading this?

Umm. In other news, all I do is work. I really need to remember what my hobbies are and become too busy to do anything but have a life, and write a blog about it.

Today my work strategy was to wear a lot of eye makeup. The plan was two-fold. 1.) It was a great way to procrastinate. 2.) Less chance I would get really mad and start crying.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being MetaMegan

Embarrassing things I have done or said at work:

This attempt to end my work related blog writers block is brought to you by my dad who says, "Laugh at yourself or spend your whole life crying."

1.) It was possibly my first meeting at a new job, and I hadn't met everyone on my team yet. One team member was giving a little presentation on some of the reports he had written to help us manage our databases. He meant to give a little background and then run the report to show the results, but he ran the report right away and said, "Oops, sorry. That report was prematurely generated." I laughed, looked around, realized no one else laughed, remembered that I am extremely immature, and tried to stop laughing, because it felt inappropriate. And what's funnier than extremely inappropriate laughter? Nothing. Well, aside from someone that can't stop laughing, but is trying to hide it. I spent the rest of the meeting silently weeping as I tried not to laugh. I don't work there anymore.

2.) OK, same job, some person even. I walked by the guy's new office, and there was giant coffee stain on the wall. I said, "Oh my God it looks like..." And then I realized that what I was about to say was, "you peed on your wall." Rorschach test much? Who thinks and then says something like that? So instead of coming up with something clever like, "It looks like... you should hang a poster over that stain." I just started laughing. Then crying. Then silently weeping at my desk because really - what was I going to say at that point? Once I gathered myself together enough to talk, how was I to explain what was so funny? I basically said, "It looks like you peed on your wall." And the crowd that had gathered just slowly backed away.

3.) Most facebook and other friends have probably already heard this one, but it needs to be told again. Have you ever worked in an office in the summer? And are you also a woman? Then you know that no matter what you wear, you are either going to melt outside, or freeze to death inside. So the day that it was 80 inside our office was probably the most pleasant office day I have every experienced. I was dressed for the weather I ridden my bike through to get to work. And I wasn't freezing as I discussed the weather at my friends desk. We both agreed the day was perfect. And just then, we were interrupted by another co-worker who came by to accuse Laura of messing with the thermostat and causing him to be terribly uncomfortable. "IT's so HOT!" he said. The gentleman in question was wearing khaki pants, a khaki shirt, and khaki hiking boots. Laura sent him to his desk with a thermometer so he could see that perhaps he was imagining the level of the office temperature. While he was gone, remarks were made that perhaps it was his desert storm themed ensemble that was to blame for his assessment of the temperature. I was annoyed. Way to much khaki for my delicate sensibilities. Plus, why should I be cold all the time?

He came back with the temperature and announced that it was in fact 80 degrees. And, "It's way too hot in here."

I replied, "THEN UNZIP YOUR PANTS!!!"

Because, you know, what is the f'ing point of khaki pants that zip into shorts if you are going to just wear pants and complain about the heat? I realized it was sort of awkward that I had said, "Unzip your pants" to a co-worker so I started to try to find a way to explain that I meant, unzip the part of your pants that will turn your pants into shorts without betraying that I find those kinds of pants horribly unfashionable and work inappropriate. But that line of thinking was rendered irrelevant when I realized he was not wearing pants that unzip into shorts. At all. Just regular khaki pants.

"I meant.." (commence laugh crying. Hysterical, horrified, laugh crying.) I sort of blacked out for a bit, but I know I made it back to my desk, and that I did actually sob a few times on the way there.

It was very cathartic. And I couldn't help thinking of Daniel Day Lewis saying, "Take off your clothes" in The Unbearable Lightness of Being and how I am nothing like that character at all, but it makes for a good blog post title.

What Do You Think Of This

If you were in a training class and you asked a question, and the trainer told the following anecdote before answering your question... What would you think?

"I teach a lot of classes around the world, and I taught a class once in Egypt, and in Egypt they have a hierarchy about who is allowed to ask questions, and in what order. It wasn't obvious to me what the order was but everyone in the class knew it. So everyone takes their turn asking their questions when the more important, or senior people ask their questions. Then the last person that gets to ask a question is the woman."

So, what do you think?

Parenting, Glamorously

You may be wondering why I am getting parenting advice from Glamour magazine. I wasn't actually so sure myself when I wrote that post yesterday. But as all MetaMegan readers know, I have a magazine addiction. Sadly, Blueprint, Domino, Wondertime, and Cookie have all gone out of business in the last year or so. And as each one went out of business while I still had a lifetime left on my subscription, they converted into Glamour subscriptions. So now I am subscribed to Glamour for 4 lifetimes.

Why am I not getting parenting advice from Parents? Because that subscription has lapsed. It was with a tinge of regret that I recycled 6 months of issues without ever making fun of a single one. But faithful reader, and good friend Laura made sure to rip out an article for me about the dangers of the cocktail playdate. I am just going to assume that was geared towards stay at home moms who start drinking at 10am and not for the "glass of wine at little league" types. I think the gist of the article was getting drunk while you watch your children is bad!!! Sorry to say that when I tried to refer to the article today, (aka read if for the first time) it appeared to have been stolen with my wallet a few months ago. Google was no help either - just a bunch of people who have already written about how stupid the article was or else how having one drink will cause your kids to stick their finger in an electric socket.

So, we are stuck with Glamour, where I can learn to embrace the chaos as well as um, whatever else in is that magazine.

Bookin' All Over Town

You can thank me later about the many times I started this blog post only to realize that the extremely long intro about the thousand things that were stressing me out yesterday and the many different plans I came up with to deal with them were actually quite boring and made me look crazy.

Suffice it to say, I felt stressed, and instead of taking the dumb, complicated, stressful path through my evening, I decided to take the easy, simple, stress free way. This is pretty much a first for me. In fact, I was recently reading Glamour magazines tips on not being a stressed out working mother and one of them was to embrace the chaos. So I was trying to embrace chaos while simultaneously not creating more chaos when things got chaotic yesterday.

Baseball season is upon us, and Dave picked up Luke for practice and the game. I figured I had time to pick up Jack, go to the library, pick up a few things at the grocery store and make it in time for the first pitch. (And yes, this was the simple version of my evening.)

Jack was adorable at the library. A mom to a teenager was just looking at Jack and I with fond memories spilling out of her smile and all over the books. We picked up my two books, and Jack picked out two books for himself. We checked out, got in the car, I handed Jack one of the books, then headed to the grocery store on the other side of the divided road. There was a loud noise, and Jack said, "What dat noise?" He doesn't like loud noises. I said, "It's just that water bottle rolling around in the back of the car."

Jack: Nope. Dem books.
Me: No, water bottle.
Jack: Books
Me: Did you drop your book honey?
Jack: Nope.
Me: THE BOOKS WERE ON TOP OF THE CAR! Did you see them fall off?
Jack: Yes.

Then I tried to figure out what to do. Make a u-turn, then another u-turn to get back to where it happened? How long will that take? Pull over right here? Nowhere to park! Pull over on this side street? Too late I am about to make a u-turn! The books! Pull over, and park! Go back! MY god! U-turn!

I finally decided my best option was to just part at the next side street and walk back. This was dumb, because if I had driven back via the 2 u-turns, I could have parked at the library, and the books would have been in the street right in front of the parking lot. Instead I had to walk/run two frantic blocks with Jack on my hip. As we got closer, I could see the books repeatedly getting run over. But they seemed fine when the traffic cleared and we picked them up. Both of them. Of course, there were three missing books. So on the walk back, there was a lot of, "We lost one book? It gone? It on toppa car still? It gone?"

The third book was still on top of the car. I guess all the frantic swerving I did while trying to decide which way to go kept it sort of centered.

We got in the car and headed to the grocery and I took some cleansing breaths. Jack didn't like the sound of that. He said, "You scared to me." Which either means I was scaring him, or I am scared of him, or I sounded scared to him."

We finally made it to baseball about half an hour into an hour game, and I got to see Luke play catcher and make a nice hit before Jack and I needed to head to the playground. I also got to enjoy a delicious glass of wine from a plastic cup, which I then stashed in my purse pocket. While I socialized with the other moms I tried to share the Glamour tidbit about embracing the chaos. This question was asked: HOW? I'll need to go back to the article, but I don't think it said how.

Jack and I were "driving" at the top of the playground structure when the cup fell out of my purse and all the way to the ground. Jack said, "Momma! Why you pourin' your wine out on the ground?" Maybe you heard him, he said it really loudly.

I may have made a lot of mistakes yesterday, but spilling wine was not one of them. Maybe that's how it's done. Embracing chaos: One plastic cup of wine at a time.

It's Almost Midnight... Do You Know Where MetaMegan is?

I am about 5 dozen cookies into my contribution for the bake sale. Because I didn't start until after 10:00 P.M. Because I was working and watching The Wire.

Work Dummening

I blame all my work dummening this week on the fact that I absolutely had to solve a problem before I went to sleep on Tuesday night. Did I say Tuesday night? Because I guess I meant Wednesday morning at 2:30 am. That pretty much threw off the rest of my week.

Then today, I needed to create a database link, but I didn't know the password and the person who knows the password was at physical therapy, so instead of connect to user identified by password, I used connect to user identified by values ' '. And that apparently can trigger a bug that causes ORA-0600 errors. (ORA-00600: internal error code, arguments: [kzdlk_zt2 err] to be specific.)

Oh, the hilarious and wacky adventures that I get into at work. I bet you are all wishing I talked about it more often. The reason I am evening talking about work at all, is that I was one dummening story short for the work week, and I am saving a good one for tomorrow. But really, if I start getting hits from people searching on kzdlk_zt2 err I am totally turning this into a DBA blog and I am going to get rich off the add revenue.

Until tomorrow...

(Oh - to you DBA suckers, you need to get rid of the quotes and use the real password. See metalink note 456320.1)

Leaves

Note the time. I had already been up for 2 hours when I took this picture. I started to shut down databases and applications, and I watched the scripts run on part of my screen, while on the other part, I watched Weeds while I pedaled my exercise bike. I had the pancake mix almost totally ready to go on the griddle before the boys woke up at 6:45. I was feeling pretty good about things until my big stack of pancakes fell over and I realized it was going to be a really long day.

Dave was not yet awake when I took this picture, but I can't complain because he did some serious yard work today.

Comment Contest Winner

Hello long suffering MetaMegan fans. The comment contest winner will be announced this evening and the prize will be a souvenir from Yellowstone. I have been thinking about the contest a lot, but I don't want to be the one to pick the winning name, I want a child to draw the name out of a hat. And fortunately, there are no children around at 1am, when I have time to work on my blog, at the end of my work day. That also explain the lack of posts since all I have to say at that time of day/night is, "blaaaaaah." As opposed to Friday, at 4:30, when I am in a meeting waiting for a bunch of people to come back from a break so we can finish our tasks. At that time of the day, I am freaking hilarious! By "hilarious", I mean "hostile".

You Might Be A Mom If...

If I were to rip off Jeff Foxworthy and start a comedy act about being a mom, I might use a lame line like this one:

If the highlight of your week is finding Tension Tamer tea on sale (buy one get one) at the grocery... You might be a mom.

Of course, that isn't really true. Luke has had some major milestones in the fine motor department. He's learning to tie his shoes and how to buckle a belt. It's big. See, he has holes in almost every pair of pants and I couldn't bring myself to buy a bunch more size 5 pants when he'll grow out of them immediately. But 6 is way too big. I almost cracked and bought some pants at Target, but then that same week the snap broke on a practically new pair. So Dave picked up 5 pairs of pants for a $12.00 total at Savers. Unfortunately they don't all have the adjustable waist so they are too big. At first I thought, "great, what a waste." Then I realized that there are things that could be done about this problem! I could sew elastic into the waste! In these hard economic times, I could salvage the $2.00 pants with a little seamstressing. Good, old fashioned do-it-yourselfedness. I was sharing this revelation to Dave and he said, "Or he could just wear a belt." Apparently that is how men keep their pants up.

Also big! His picture was in the paper. So cute. I rarely have time for the paper in the morning, but this must have been the one day this week where everyone's alarm went off on time. So I glanced at the paper and there he was!

Jack has an ear infection, poor little guy. He's been pretty uncomfortable. And I stayed home with him Wednesday and a half day today. I am so lucky I can work from home. Otherwise, I would have used 4.5 out of my 6 sick days for the year this month already. Good times!

On the bright side, Jack has gotten really good with signs since he has been in the toddler room and his vocabulary seems to be exploding. He can sign more, please, thank you. And he sort of says more please and thank you. And basketball. It sounds like "boy-guh-ball". And he says, "Eh uh. Eh uh. Eh uh." Which means, "may I please have that?"

So that is all the rambling for now. Time for some tension tamer.

Wednesday

And tomorrow is Wednesday. {Redacted long boring section about how I work all the time at night and on weekends and if I don't get a lot done on a Wednesday I more than make up for it except sometimes people need me to get things done, right then! and I need to do things, right then! regardless of Jack's mood/temper. End redaction. Seriously, it was longer and more boring before I edited this section out.} Jack will often play for a while with his upstairs toys while I sit at the breakfast bar and work. But downstairs is a totally different story. Downstairs is where we keep the real toys. But I can't sit at the desk in the office, or else Jack will want to chew through all the computer wires. And I can't sit on the couch with the laptop on my lap. But if I put the laptop on the landing and stick my arms through the banister, I can work while Jack happily plays. Yeah, so, that is what I do. Last Wednesday, I thought, "This is really crazy. He is so busy playing, why don't I just sit on the couch?" And two seconds later, I heard the rebel yell and Jack was running across the floor and pushing the laptop out of the way to get into my lap. All this time, I have thought that he just wanted to push buttons on my laptop, but if that were the case, why isn't he climbing the stairs to get to it when it's on the banister? I'll tell you why! Because Jack thinks my lap is his lap. So I headed back to the stocks to continue my work day.

Jack can't go to the toddler room until there is space and he can survive on one nap a day. And that means I need to survive on one Jack nap a day. And wouldn't you know it, I need to dial into a meeting tomorrow during morning nap time. Don't worry, as long as I take the call standing up, and let Jack get whatever he wants out of the lazy susan, and allow him to make prank calls on my cell phone then it should be just fine!

Expect a call from a baby tomorrow.

Where in the World is MetaMegan?

Where have I been? Le Sigh. I have been very busy trying to incorporate more cardio into my life and then recovering on the couch for days in front of Six Feet Under marathons. Also I have a bit of a cold.

Dave found coupons to Breckenridge for $10, so we decided to see if there was room for Jack at the daycare this past Wednesday so we could go together. There wasn't room. Cue panic. See, I worked half time from home with Luke until he was about 10 months old. Perfect little Luke who slept until 8 am everyday and took a 2 hour nap every morning. But at 10 months I thought, wow, he really needs more attention and stimulation then I can give him while simultaneously working. So somewhere in the back of my head I have been pondering the fact that Jack is ready for a little more daycare. I ponder this when Jack is hanging from the top rung of the dishwasher, or surfing on his rocking chair. But I have really enjoyed being home with him. I love the time we have had together. I haven't loved that my work day often starts again at 8pm and goes until midnight, or that I have to go into a complete panic if a work problem comes up when Jack doesn't feel like entertaining himself. So when I heard the infant room was full on Wednesdays, I got really worried. I always thought I had Wednesday in my back pocket, ready when I needed it. So, I asked if Jack could start going on Wednesdays when he transitions to the toddler room. Answer: Yes! Hoorah! As much as I love Jack, I felt like a tremendous weight had been lifted. I currently spend every Wednesday working through his naps, and working whenever he feels the desire to play independantly for 3 minutes, and checking email every 5 minutes when he needs more attention, and then working after bedtime every night. So then I said, "Wait, when is Jack moving to the toddler room?" And the answer was, February." And then I was back to, "Wah! My baby! He can't be a toddler yet. Wah wah wah. I'm not ready for him to go to daycare on Wednesdays."

And then yesterday happened. And yes, at one point he was hanging from the top rung of the dishwasher. I'll let the photos tell the rest of the story.

"Poor me, I have to read to myself while my mommy works":

"I'll have this expression on my face later when I climb to the tallest point in every room in the house":


"I can now grab the camera off the kitchen counter and this is how I feel when you take it from me":


"Hey, you turned your back on me to wash a dish. This is what you get. You think I'm kidding? I'll show you!":

In Some Ways, Bean is Still With Us: Part 2

This morning I was groggily preparing breakfast for Jack after quite a night. (I went to bed late, and then was paged at 12:45, and 3:45, and Jack was up to be nursed at 5am and then up for the day at 7:30.) I was starting my work day, and cooking something for Jack and I left the cabinet open, and Jack helped himself to a tube of graham crackers. I didn't think he could open them, and he was having a great time walking around crinkling. With all the crinkling, I knew where he was without having to watch him, so it seemed like a great way to keep him occupied for 3 minutes. Then for some reason, I walked down the hallway and back. When I got back, Jack had half a graham cracker in each hand and the balance in his mouth. He was smiling and saying, "Nom! Nom nom nom!" Cracker crumbs were tumbling down his pjs and all over the floor.

Cute, funny, not all that harmful. I plopped him into his highchair and gave him the rest of his breakfast. But where were the rest of the graham crackers? Where was the bag? I walked around looking to no avail. Then Luke woke up and asked what I was doing. I said, "I think Jack hid a bag of graham crackers somewhere so he could snack whenever he wanted." In their short time together, Bean really did some serious knowledge transfer.

Ten minutes later Luke was yelling, "I hear crinkling! Jack is feeding himself a snack!" And Jack was indeed, behind the curtains in the dining room, helping himself to a cracker.

Momtrepreneur

Jack has a booger situation. Just lots of boogers. And he doesn't like to have his nose wiped. If he sees you coming with any form of washcloth, tissue, or even napkin he hides his face and it's all over. The best method is usually to hold him in one arm, and sort of trap his hands and wrestle him to the ground with the other arm wielding a wet washcloth. But if I miss, which I do about 80% of the time, then I get a shoulder full of mucus. My latest invention idea (said as if I have ever before come up with an invention) is a terry cloth shoulder/arm band that could act as a secondary mucus receptacle. Or could at least protect my clothing.

In fact, the other day at work someone was talking about which of their kids had the highest fever, and how bad they felt, when I moved as far away as I could in a tiny conference room and then refused to use their pen. I tried to make light of my germaphobia by saying, "No seriously, I just decided I didn't really need a pen after all! I have a little Howard Hughes thing going on. And I probably even have boogers on my shirt, ha ha." Hair toss, non-crazy smile.

"Yeah, you do. I can see it from here."

Eww.

So today I put a warm wet washcloth over my shoulder and went after Jack with a kleenex. He nuzzled right into the washcloth, yanked his head back and then burrowed into another, unwashclothed covered part of my arm, spreading the wealth all over the place. And I had a wet shoulder. So now I just have to go for plan C: wear t-shirts and do a lot of laundry, and brace myself for a long winter.

Technical Difficulties!

I was in a(nother) panic this evening when I got into my PJs and sat down in front of the Broncos/Browns game after putting the kids to bed and got ready for day 6 of my posting streak.

Dun dun dun! No internet!

Should I drive around the neighborhood in my pjs trying to borrow wireless? Go to the coffee shop? Give up on posting once a day? So tragic. I called comcast and they had me reboot everything, then stand on one foot, chant an incantation, reboot again, and then he said, "Oh, there's an outage in your area." Dave mentioned that he thought I would be more concernd about working tomorrow than blogging. But I figured I would solve that problem by just going in at 5am and working there until the comcast office opened and then exchanging my modem. Sure, sounds totally doable.

I made Dave hand over his fancy new phone and I started trying to write a post from there, but while I was getting a cramp in my finger from the tiny stylus, the internet came back up. Hoorah!

Now I can share this photo of a hotel that was recently trashed by a rockstar you all know and love. And by hotel, I mean crib/bedroom. And by rockstar, I mean baby.

Mobile: Ripped out of mobile holder
Picture One: Nearly knocked off wall
Picture Two: Knocked off wall, slipped out of mat, and stomped on
Pacifiers: Tossed randomly about

Needless to say, Jack's room has now been undecorated. The pictures are in the closet and the mobile is on the changing table.

Toast, It's What's For Dinner

I seem to go through phases where everything seems to be under control, and then I have phases where two nights in a row I am serving toast as a dinner side dish because there isn't anything else.

I think we are coming out of a toast eating phase because I ended my grocery store boycott (the remodel is finished) and I totally stocked up for the winter. We have grains! Vegetables! Snack options! And so on. I also cleaned off the kitchen counter and the top of the book shelf for the first time since Luke started school. That school is a paper and art project factory.

And I am even finished with my blog post early! Next up, I will figure out how I am going to vote on the 97 issues on the Colorado ballot so I can attempt to vote tomorrow. Because of a past issue with our mailman, I decided not to get a mail in ballot, even though Dave's arrived just fine. We also got confirmation that our next door neighbor was registered to vote at her address. (See? See!)

In other mailman related news, the October Parents magazine that I read cover to cover (against my better judgment) in the lactation room a MONTH ago arrived in the mail today. I started to feel irate again and then I remembered, I don't even have a subscription to Parents magazine!