Mama Ginger Tree tagged me for a meme, and although I am not always a great fan of memes, this is a really nice one. You are to choose the sixth photo from your sixth album and post it along with a description or the story behind it. I was not the only one a little puzzled by this, but then Mama Ginger Tree (being a very intelligent being) explained that you could use virtual photo albums from your computer.   Ahhh!! I get it now. Thank you Mama Ginger Tree.

(See how I managed to get three links to her blog into that paragraph? That’s because I like her).

I decided to use the kind of arbitrary “events” that iPhoto sorts photos into, apparently by date and/or some kind of smart photo analysis, who knows.

Problem is, The Daddy has imported a lot of our older digital photos into iPhoto, so that the sixth photo of our sixth album turned out to be this:

A shot no doubt taken for posterity in the days when we people working on sorting out the Year 2000 issue thought we were pretty cool and saviors of the earth. Or something. That is the sign on screen for one of our Y2K test databases. It was called Y2KITE, but we never called it that, preferring to replace the K with a SH. It is displayed on my after hours support laptop, meaning the photo was probably taken at 2 or 4am, or some other ungodly hour of the morning when a job would typically choose to fall over.

Anyhooo, no one in their right mind would be interested in that, so I decided to cheat and begin with the moment I started having children. This is, after all, strictly and unashamedly a Mommy Blog. Having counted up six albums and to the sixth photo, this is what I came up with:

The T-Bot, aged 3 weeks. He had a bad case of facial eczema not long before this photo was taken and still looked like an extra on Star Trek. But that’s OK. My husband happens to like Star Trek**.

Quite fitting that the sixth photo should land on the T-Bot and not, say, on a shot from the Dover-Calais ferry or our (at the time) new apartment. Since the T-Bot will no doubt be the subject of my next post. Given that I am seeing a lot of him these days.

In the meantime, I am going to tag… oh goodness. As my 2.4 readers know, I have been on blogging semi-hiatus for a while, and that includes reading and commenting on other blogs. Did anybody tag Marinka already? Do you think she would play along, what with her being such a big enormous award-winning blogger and all? I would also like to tag the following people, who will not know me because mostly I am a very rapid lurker:  Parisienne Mais Presque, texasholly, Flotsam. There. That’s 4. Along with the two extras already given by Mama Ginger Tree  that makes 6.

We’ll just say she stole them from me.

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(**He would probably want me to clarify here that he only likes certain Star Trek series like for example not the one with the gloopy music and sentimental story lines, and also not certain other ones. Really! It’s all just a load of people running around with Play Doh on their faces and who can keep track?

Oh, I just realized I might be mixing up Star Trek with Battlestar Galactica which is also on a space ship or vessel or whatever you want to call it. Although I seem to remember there is less Playdoh and more posing and deep significant silences in this one. Please, no hate mail…

Damn, was I actually thinking of Star Wars? I should just shut up now).

Just a quick note to say thank you to everyone who has commented and emailed, and not to forget those who spent the day in their nightwear, tracking Ike’s progress minute by minute on the internet. It gives me a warm fuzzy feeling to know you care. 

The Ike experience will be ongoing for weeks and months for so many people, for us it has become merely a slight inconvenience, so we will leave it there. I am just hoping nobody asks my kids what they did during the hurricane. They are likely to come out with statements such as

“Mommy and Daddy put us in the closet”,  and

“Mommy was mad she couldn’t use her shower because of the squirrel in there”. 

The squirrel, by the way,  is finally gone. The Daddy finally had to admit that she had recovered, especially after she ate a whole granola bar and a handful of raisins and later deposited the resulting waste all over the shower floor. The shower has been severely scrubbed with bleach, but still her smell lingers, and in case anybody is wondering, a squirrel smells like RAT, only stronger.  

Goodbye Sandy Squirrel, and good luck. 

So I figured that since I am not getting much done right now - and by not much I mean wandering around gathering up hurricane supplies and trying to put them in some semblance of order, while wondering if I should be trying to board up the big window in the master bathroom, and how do you board up an aluminum window anyway? - 

So anyway, I figured I may as well take a few minutes out here and there to blog a little about what is happening. Especially since, unlike some folk, we are not in an evacuation zone, so are not on the road right now, desperately watching our gas meter and hoping that all those non-evacuees won’t have bled the gas stations dry by the time we have to pull off the I-10 to fill up.

Seriously, in 2005 when we lived further North in a community people were evacuating to,  all our neighbors had filled up all their cars so that they could sit them in the garage, just in case. Leaving people who had evacuated from the coast stranded the length of the I-45. This morning, The Daddy went to gas up at 6.30am (because both our cars were near empty) and there were people there filling up dozens of canisters sat in the beds of their F-150s. I have since been told that you use gas to power generators and this makes sense, but dude, I just hope you are going to share your generator with your neighborhood, and any stranded motorists who come your way. 

(I am looking across the road. Our neighbors appear to be evacuating now, as I write. I am quite relieved to note that they backed out and then came back to drop their basketball hoop to the ground. I don’t fancy that through my window…) 

So, this morning after the school drop-off The Wictor and I made a run to Wal-Mart, your one stop shop for hurricane essentials. The lines were long but everyone was in good spirits. I was just happy that I did the bulk of my hurricane grocery shopping yesterday, before everybody else had the idea. It was around 85 degrees today, but the humidity has been very high and truly it has felt like 100. 

Really nothing is happening here, everybody is just waiting and watching, and although the hurricane is forecast to go more or less over the top of us, we are far enough inland not to expect anything but wind damage, unless we are incredibly unlucky. Friends of ours from town were planning to come ride out the storm with us, but have since changed their mind. The most exciting event of the day was caused by The Daddy, who put oil in a pan for hamburgers before coming out to help move garden furniture into the garage, let himself get sidetracked by garden ornaments and an impromptu soccer game, and burned a hole halfway through the pan.  We had to open all the doors and windows and invite the mosquitoes in before the hurricane had even arrived. I am calling it a dry run. 

I haven’t blogged in a long time. There just seems to be so much going on right now and if there is one thing I have learned in my thirty(coughcough) years it is how to prioritize.

I thought once the kids were back at school I would have more free time but I had forgotten about all those little tasks that had been neglected over the summer, ones you try very hard not to undertake with three children in tow - visits to doctors and dentists, car services, repainting of water stained ceilings (requiring, incidentally, many coats of primer and paint to the point of extreme frustration. When taking a shower at my house, please do not look up). Then, The T-Bot and his school have not been seeing eye to eye and that is an understatement. My mental energy has mostly been focused there over the past two weeks. And my physical energy? Well, apart form the above mentioned tasks, there has been housework and lots of it. My cleaning lady hasn’t been for two weeks and OMG I had forgotten how much I hate housework. 

To add to that (and being me of course I would add to that, can I never be satisfied???) there is the not insignificant task of launching a new website and supporting blog. The launch of my new website is the first step in the expansion of my business and we all know that expanding a business takes work, work and more work. When necessary until 2am. And then something will still go slightly wrong and make a liar out of you when you say “launching  July! August! September 8th!”  I have The Wictor at home and so my little issue is not being solved fast. Maybe tomorrow. I am just thankful I don’t have a boss to call me into meetings about it. 

That has basically been my life the last few weeks.  So, imagine how excited I was when a friend invited me to lunch on Friday! Better than just lunch actually, Childless Lunch! Our lunch date coincided perfectly with two estate sales I had planned for the morning and the restaurant was just around the corner from both sales, which in this city is like saying the planets had aligned.

Everything was perfect. Well, almost perfect. Because I found treasures! Lots of treasures! And wanted to take them all home and drool over them Gollum-like, but then I remembered I had a lunch date.  At a nice restaurant, except of course I didn’t know it was a nice restaurant because I had never been there, given that it is not the sort of place you turn up to with three little people in tow…

It was a lovely environment with good food and good company and (as The Daddy put it) I felt like a “real person”. And if there is something else I have learned in my [redacted] years, it is not to show any sign of embarassment when you walk into an unexpectedly fancy restaurant dressed in shorts, T-shirt and sandals.

At least I didn’t have 1950s dust on my hands because I had wiped it all off.

With a baby wipe, but nobody could tell. 

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I am not sure when I will next have time to write here. It would be great if blogging was my day job, but it isn’t. I have two day jobs, here and here&here, and I feel guilty when I neglect them to ramble about my day. I’m sure I will be back, probably sooner rather than later, but something has to give… 

In the meantime, if I read your blog, here is a little secret. I have proven to be as terrible at social networking online as I am in real life. I just can’t bring myself to fish for visitors. So if I visit you and leave comments, it is because I want to. (See how I just shot myself in the foot? Proof at how I suck at this game. I’ll never get another visitor now. Except maybe Mum and Dad. Hi Mum and Dad).

In other words, you will still be seeing me around :-) 

You must all think I am so rude. All those people who have sent email and left comments. I don’t tend to reply, but I do read them and appreciate them, I really do. 

Oh, except for those emails from the last few weeks, which I didn’t appreciate - until today. No, stop! I didn’t read them until today. You see, recently I set up my blog Yahoo email to forward to my regular Yahoo email, but I was either in a hurry or I was under the mistaken impression that I was an Average Male.  

I didn’t read the instructions.

And those engineering types at Yahoo obviously like to punish anybody who doesn’t read instructions. By letting them go for weeks thinking they have set up mail forwarding - after all, the steps were followed, the mailbox was created - when, in fact, they have not.

Believe it or not (probably not) I used to be what is so quaintly termed an “IT Professional”.  I have become so lazy these days that I can’t even bother to set up a proper email account and then  - this is the crucial part - test it.

Pause to whack flat of hand dramatically on forehead.  

So, this morning, I did. You may now email me at sophie AT inzaburbs DOT com.  

I hope you will, even if it is only to reassure me that I am not senile, stupid or both. I promise I will read your emails. I think I can still remember how to read. 

I have been swamped since we returned from vacation. First there was the usual - unpacking, laundry, children on San Francisco time bouncing around until 10pm - then at the end of the week items from my Etsy store were featured in several forums. Which led to demand. I am not complaining.

I went on a buying trip on Saturday and came back with less than I was hoping. But I did get some cute stuff and am working to get it online as quickly as possible.  I am not sure how I have so much energy on 5 hours sleep a night but maybe it’s because I am busy doing something I enjoy. 

Tomorrow we are hosting a major play date, and on Wednesday my sister-in-law arrives for a visit - different but also enjoyable activities which should force me to slow down a little. 

Normal Service should resume shortly.  

…before I spent an hour cursing and searching for my paint roller which refused to be found!

I had purchased new roller covers, brushes and paint in careful preparation for an afternoon spent finishing the painting of the dining room. 

Then, suddenly, as I walked in the door of Lowes on my way to buy a new roller, I remembered the old one is in a landfill. 

If you  look closely you will see I managed one thing this evening. I put an AllMediocre button in my sidebar…

I will not tell you, even under torture or if you ask really really nicely, how long it took me to accomplish this task. Because my template and me, we do not see eye to eye. I insert the right lines, in the right place and then sit back all expectantly and see … broken blog. Then I start wailing and The Daddy turns up several years later and inserts the same lines in the same place and it works. You see? It’s a conspiracy! Templates? Not for the likes of me! 

So what do you do now? Well, you click the button of course! And if you are like me and have a blog which is not getting the recognition it deserves, then sign up. Even if you don’t you should still click and discover some of the other brilliant but undiscovered bloggers out there. 

Oh, you thought it was a site for mediocre bloggers? Maybe you need to join me on the Dunce chair. 

AllMediocre is  the brainchild of Meghan from AMomTwoBoys. Who is totally my kind of woman, I mean her tidied kitchen cabinets look a lot like my tidied kitchen cabinets, only tidier. Now Meghan did something that would never ever occur to me, she actually emailed Guy Kawasaki and asked permission to copy his AllTop formula,  but in reverse, creating an index of good content with mediocre comment level and traffic stats, rather than … oops I almost said vice versa, which would be bitchy and also not at all true. In short, AllMediocre is for people who aren’t on AllTop but still want a piece of the action.

And that makes it really cool. So go there. 

I feel the need to apologise again for the state of this blog. Someday, I promise you, it will be… at least …um…  I would hope fairly attractive.  

The Daddy - who was supposed to take care of all prettifications - has been very very busy at work with a project which has a two week deadline but involves re-writing the web from scratch… or something. I am not too sure because 5 minutes into his detailed explanation I sort of… well… to be totally honest I tuned out. There. I said it! I. Stopped. Listening.

I promise you it was only because I was scared my head might explode and I might become a different person. Forever. 

Also the reason why, when he began to explain to me how I, myself, could beautify my blog, I found myself mentally putting my fingers in my ears while chanting a virtual La-la-la-la-la.

Silly really. I used to be able to do all that stuff. Second nature. Along with a lot of other unrelated stuff which I have also forgotten. 

But it’s all gone now. Because I am the Queen of the Brain Dump. If I need it I can learn it but if I don’t I dump it. Two weeks maximum and it’s gone. Poof! Disappeared into thin air, as if it never was.

I like to call it Selective Retention. You may call it just a Lazy Brain. I maintain that it is just Hugely Efficient. No junk in this brain! 

But that really doesn’t help me because after a few days of waiting, waiting, waiting and no Prince Charming in sight,  I relented and decided to try to work it all out, to do at least some of the work myself.

But …

oh …

so difficult…

Why do they have to make it so complicated?

Groan. What goes where?

The Daddy could do this in three strokes of the mouse or probably even just by muttering Abracadabra.

Damn… 

OK. I admit it. Lazy Brain.  But I am sure, somehow, sometime I will work it out.

In the meantime … really sorry about the Fugly Blog. 

It just occurred to me that you never see those “Under Construction” signs on the web anymore. Well… very rarely anyway. If I do I tend to sniff “how unprofessional”, stick my nose in the air and click on. 

Seems I am not the only one.

So, all I will say is Please Bear With Us while we undertake a painful blog software migration. And a big Thank You to The Daddy for taking care of all my blogging needs now and on an ongoing basis

I loved the look of my old blog, but that was about all. It failed me in just about every other way. It was like the flash fancy man who sweeps you off your feet, only for you to learn that he is a mommy’s boy with a coke habit who is always late and likes to stay in on a weekend with the lads to watch the football. 

So I traded him in for a new, and hopefully dependable blog. We’re still at that awkward stage. It will take us a while to get to know each other, but I hope he will turn out to be The One. I can update him in real time! He has comments! (Imagine that, a blog with comments - please use them but don’t abuse them people). He’s a funny color still but we’ll soon sort him out.

Oh, and you can find my old blog here.