Drops of Awesome

A little while ago, one of my new blogging friends left a comment where she said “woot!” to express her excitement about something. I thought it sounded really cute and I had never seen or heard it before.

When I asked Dan how I would use that in a sentence, like “Woot! That’s awesome news,” he laughed and said it was a commonly used hacker term…….but that he’d never actually heard someone say it out loud before.

Definition from UrbanDictionary.com:

Woot originated as a hacker term for root (or administrative) access to a computer. However, with the term as coincides with the gamer term, “w00t”.”w00t” was originally an trunicated expression common among players of Dungeons and Dragons tabletop role-playing game for “Wow, loot!” Thus the term passed into the net-culture where it thrived in video game communities and lost its original meaning and is used simply as a term of excitement.
“I defeated the dark sorcerer! Woot!”

This got me to thinking about all the acronyms I’ve learned since I first ventured into a chat room my freshman year of college. (My chat room days came to a quick end when a couple of my roommates started icky chat romances with supposedly married men and I realized I’d rather hang out with real friends than make fake friends on the internet. No offense. I really like you guys.)

I remember the first time someone typed “LOL” and I could just picture them with their tongue lolling out of there mouth. Lol? What’s lol and why are you telling me about it? Sicko! I was only trying to make a joke.

Somehow I figured that one out and started using it myself.

Now that I find myself wanting to say “WOOT!” when I’m excited, I wonder which will be the next internet acronym to make it into my already lazy spoken English.

BRB / Be Right Back – [berb]
“Hold on a sec Dan. Berb.”

BTW / By The Way – [bee-tee-dub-ya]
“Oh, bee-tee-dub-ya, I really like your smurf pajamas.”

CU / See You – [koo]
“Koo in two hours.”

MIL / Mother In Law – [mill]
“My mill makes the best prize salad. Yumm-ers!”

LOL / Laughing Out Loud – [el-o-el]
“Eloel. That is funny.” (said with a completely straight face)

Think of how much time and energy I could save if I didn’t have to actually laugh anymore.

Update – since posting this, Dan has asked me approx 100 times if I have brought the milk in from the milk box. I finally replied, “IITFF!”

Ha HA, computer hacker man. Bet you don’t know THAT one!

And he didn’t. It’s In The Flippin’ Fridge. (sidenote – he only actually asked me twice and the milk was delivered….um….Friday…..morning…..)

If you want to read about an amazing woman, go over to Mom on a Wire and check out my guest post.

Karli, who’s all about provoking thought and inspiring action is asking for submissions about amazing women.

I’ve been planning to launch a new web ring for a while now. A few people have already joined but I’ve been waiting to announce it publicly until the BoBs were decided.

I figured that if I were in the top three, I’d get a lot of traffic the day the awards were announced and if not, I could post about the ring and it would look like a whiny loser’s angst-ridden attempt at gaining popularity and friendship, which is also very cool.

There are a lot of great web rings out there. There are several great ones for mothers, but they are open only to women with children.

I’ve seen so much motherly, nurturing advice and love from my blogging friends, many of whom have not actually given birth to children. So, I decided to start a ring for all women who see themselves as nurturers or in a motherly role. I want the ring to be full of fun, clean, and uplifting blogs by great women.

Karli, from Mom on a Wire, came up with the ring name, Cirque des Mamans.

A note on how rings work:
Joining a web ring is adding yourself to a listing of blogs, centered around a specific theme or topic.

When you join the ring, you are asked to put code on your site. Our ring code looks like this:

«»
^{Powered by RingSurf}

The “des Mamans” button takes you to the ring’s main page, which is super-duper ugly and plain at the moment, but tells you what you need to know about joining and lists the current members with links to their sites.

The arrows on either side work like the “next blog” button in Blogger. They take you to the next ring member’s blog so you can surf through the ring by clicking on the arrows on each person’s blog.

There are several blogs I read that wouldn’t fit with this group and I don’t want anyone to feel pressure to join. It’s sure fun though, if you feel like joining us.

I also wanted to let you know that DYM is currently the second hit on an MSN SEARCH for:

dog bounty hunter mullet wig

Honestly, could you BE in better company?

And it looks like I will be going to prom with my cousin Floyd again this year. (It’s okay. He likes the mullet.) I know the point of these awards is to gain exposure and new reads and readers and that has been accomplished, in a big way.

After over a month of waiting to see what would happen, I had convinced myself that I didn’t care if I won or even placed in the top three. Well, I thought wrong. It’s sort of fun to win….and sort of not as much not to. I would be lying if I didn’t admit I feel a little humdrum not to be standing on the podium today. Ah, well. There’s still a big baby in me somewhere (no I’m not pregnant!) who needs a swift kick in the pants.

It’s been a great experience though and I’m so glad Caryn found my site and liked it enough to send in a nomination. She’s long been one of my favorite reads as well.

What I’ve learned through awards processes (pronounce – ‘pro-sess-eez’) during the past 6 months:

1. I can win Christian awards.
2. I cannot hold onto Christian awards.
3. Some people will always like me.
4. There are more good people in the world than the other kind.
5. You can make it pretty far in the BoBs with a few wisecracks and a floating head.
6. You can’t make it all the way to the top with a few wisecracks and a floating head.

I’m pretty sure this is the end of the awards line for my little blog. I’m not edgy, deep, or experienced enough to be a contender in the bigger contests and that’s okay.

Now that the pressure’s off and the twinge has subsided, maybe I can get down to some serious kick-butt blogging – mommy-style.

Thanks to everybody who voted and encouraged me. It’s been a ride.

That’s one of my favorite expressions a pirate would use if he lived in my house.

Another is, of course, the old standby “in the drink.”

Laylee drops her baby in the toilet. “Arg! She fell in the drink.”

Marilla asks Cordelia Anne what happened to her amethyst broach. “Oh, that? Yeah. I dropped it in the drink.”

Magoo is ripping the tubes out of the Medela while I’m trying to pump. “Throw ‘im in the brig!”

Seriously. I finally couldn’t take it anymore so I stuck him in the pak ‘n play where he could see me…..without leaving a path of destruction. I gave him a few toys. Laylee gave him a few hundred more, several directly on the noggin and he played happily in his padded cage until I was done.

But it started to give me ideas, ideas relating to the fact that I could get a lot of things done if I weren’t constantly worrying that the flailing, spastic, melon-headed human vacuum cleaner was self-inflicting blunt head trauma whilst choking on very tiny baby dolls and very large pieces of lint.

Back in the 80’s, weren’t they called PLAY pens? Didn’t parents use something very closely related to the pak ‘n play to cage up their children for “play time”? Then I think it became somewhat taboo and somewhat associated with “doing time” so people stopped using them altogether. Now they’re coming back as a “nap time” device but….iiiiiit might not have been good for me to witness the pak ‘n play’s diverse uses.

On the one hand – development of gross motor skills. On the other – a clean house AND a son who’s still alive at the end of the process?

Yeah…..

He looked happy. Didn’t he look happy to you? I mean, he was licking the thing. That has to be some sort of a sign of affection.

~30 hours after I lent my copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince to my friend….um…..Beulah, she sent me this email:

Kathryn,
I just thought I would give you an update on your Harry Potter book. It is doing fine. I have removed the dust cover so that nothing would happen to it. If I take the book outside (on my way to the car) and it is raining, I put the book under my sweatshirt so that it is kept completely dry from the rain (although after doing that, I can’t guarantee that your book will come back smelling the same way as it did when you loaned it to me). I am progressing through it nicely and I anticipate that when I am done I will go through some sort of Harry Potter/ wizard/ magic withdrawal since I read all Harry Potter 1-5 in the last 2 weeks. My dreams consist of magic and Harry Potter and I think that deep down inside I am just using this fantasy world of Harry Potter to escape from the horrors of my own life. I mean, let’s be honest, my life is crap. Everybody is always looking at me funny, they think I am some sort of show off and they don’t ever believe a word I say. My parents were killed when I was 1 and the only thing I have to show for it is this lousy scar….Oh, see. I’ve done it again. Off to Never-Never-Land, I was. The lines between fantasy and reality have blurred for me now, I don’t know if I will ever be able to get a grip.
Anyways…..just wanted to let you know that I am taking real good care o’ yer book.
-Beulah
PS. Thanks for the recipes!

I liked this. It was bloggable.

Today we went grocery shopping together. Before following me in her car, she mentioned my X-man super-parking-powers and said something like, “I guess I won’t be parking near you. That’s not one of my special talents.”

I told her that it might be possible for me to extend my powers to include her….as long as I was still using them for good, not to show off or put myself in a one-up position in the hierarchy or our relationship (Sorry. I’m speed reading my book-club book right now).

When I got to the store, it was lunch time and the lot was packed. However, I drove straight to THE spot and it was once again empty. I’m starting to wonder if that spot was formerly used as a toxic waste dump or contaminated with the plague and that’s why no one else will go near it.

I took my life in my hands and parked there anyway.

I got out of the car to take a picture of the spot, since car parking is the new theme of this blog. As I was lining up the shot, the guy in the spot next to me pulled out. I started losing it. I planted my body in the middle of the spot and as cars came up and turned on their blinkers to pull in, I waved them on to the back of the lot. I HAD to get this picture great parking spot for my friend.

People (and I mean people who obviously do not read this blog and did not recognize me from my floating head which resides immortalized on the internet) WERE MAD! I got me some major stink-eyed looks. Heads were shooken and choice words were muttered. I did not personally witness any “friendly” hand gestures.

But hey, I got the spot….and the shot.

Today, I would encourage you to head over to Stephanie’s and help complete her story. Fun and games people, fun and games. What will happen? Only YOU can decide.

Have you seen THESE??!!

HAVE you seen these?

Go buy these now.

My friend Judi listened to me whining yesterday about washing the teeny tiny pump parts 8 times a day and she drove 45 minutes to a baby store and bought these for me.

You rinse the pump parts and bottle nipples, throw them in this bag with water and microwave them for 3 minutes and they’re sterile. No washing or boiling. They’re made by Medela and I am in love with them.

5 bucks for 5 bags that can each be used up to 20 times.

Judi – You, ma’am, are a scholar and a gentlewoman. Also a genius and a lifesaver.

Thanks, man!

01.31.06 Valentine’s Day – Romantic Surprises

01.24.06 What’s For Lunch?

01.17.06 Eating out With Kids

01.10.06 To the Happy Couple

01.03.06 Name My Van – A Tip Day Contest!

Why did no one tell me this 3 years ago?

At age 4 months, Laylee suddenly quit taking a bottle. Period. End of story.

Magoo at age 3 months. Same story. In fact, I wrote about this cold-turkey experience in my second blog post.

I love nursing but it is so frustrating to feel like you can never go anywhere for more than 2 hours because your child is completely dependant on your appendages for their nourishment.

Now Magoo has 4 small, sharp, pointy, jagged, fangoreous, razor-sharp, pincer-grasping (did I mention sharp?) teeth. He’s chewing the heck out of me right now and I’m in a ton of pain. It hurts way worse now than when I started nursing him.

I wanted to go a full year, but yesterday I was right on the edge of giving it up. The problem, folks, is that he will not take liquid by any other means, besides my tattered and extremely painful breasts. I felt that if I “weaned him,” he would shrivel up like a raisin and die.

All of a sudden I got this thought, “Hey, maybe he doesn’t like the bottle because the letdown from the breast is so much faster. Maybe I could punch a bigger hole in the nipple.” So I did. He drank it. I’ve been pumping and bottle-feeding since yesterday afternoon with great success and I’m starting to heal.

Maybe I’m the only dumb kid on this slow bus, but it didn’t occur to me until yesterday that they sell nipples with different flow rates for an actual reason and that my kids might be “out-growing” their flow level.

So I thought I’d make a public service announcement.

When the lactation consultant says, “Have you tried all the different bottles and nipples?” she also means, “Have you tried all the different flow rates of each individual nipple? Do this and you may be able to get out once every few months or so.”

Happy getting ready for Valentine’s Day! You are, aren’t you? Getting ready?

I can see all of you now, individually wrapping each of your beloved’s toothpicks and socks in heart-print paper, spraying perfume on be-jeweled handkerchiefs so he can carry your sent with him always, melting down hundreds of Dove bars to make a perfect chocolate likeness of your most treasured loved one. Yeah, me too.

But this year, I want to go beyond the basics. What are some great ways to surprise that special someone for Valentine’s Day?

I’m talking good surprises, surprises that bring tears of joy and belovedness, surprises that cost very little money and can be prepared in…um….14 days or less, surprises that please and delight, surprises that can be talked about on a G-rated weblog where I don’t really care about the most private details of your intimate relationship and will delete you if you decide you MUST share?

I will give you a couple of examples.

1. Last year for Valentine’s Day I made Dan a “Book of Love”. It contained all of the pictures we’ve had taken of the two of us (wedding not included) and cards listing the things I love most about him. It cost a total of about $20 and maybe 10 hours of work (I told you I’m not a great scrap-booker) but he LOVED it and now it’s a family treasure we will keep adding to. I was actually surprised how few pictures we have of just the two of us. It seems we’re mostly taking pictures of each other or the kids.

2. Dan THINKS about me. When he finds ways to let me know he’s thinking about me, it drives me wild. These include things like shining my shoes without being asked because he knew they were scuffed, making the bed while I’m in the shower, taking me out on surprise dates, buying me a fairly expensive but awesome book on HTML programming just because he knows I want to learn, giving me his Palm today because mine has died and my life would spiral out of control into an endless abyss of disorganization without it. Good surprises, all.

I can’t do the “Book of Love” again this year. It just wouldn’t have the same je ne sais quoi. I need ideas, stat. What are you gonna do for the shmoop? What have you done in the past that’s been a smashing success?

As an added bonus, if you would like the shmoop to do something specific for you, send me your requests and I will provide a service this year where I send anonymous cupid-email to him/her, strongly “hinting” at what you would like done.




Important Bulletin – Please visit Beth’s site today. She has a new game and I believe she mentioned something about free advertising as an incentive for the winner.