sueeeus

One Saturday morning, not too long ago, we loaded up the car at o-dark-thirty, and headed for the water. After a long drive, which was much longer than it needed to be, but that’s an entirely different story (suffice it to say that, had we filled the gas tank when Mama suggested it…   …oh, we weren’t going to talk about that now…)… …We made it to the fishing spot. It was too late to fish for salmon, but it wasn’t too late to enjoy the scenery.
There was a fabulous bridge.

The water views were stunning.

There were big mountains, not so far away.

There were many more mountains, far off in the distance.

Shhhh! Someone doesn’t have a license! (Phew, fishing is free when you’re nineteen months old, and you have friends who own a boat.)

Look! We’re catching crab!  Who knew one could catch crab with a fishing pole   It’s fun!
This boat is kind of scary.  It’s a little hard to keep balance.
Sometimes it’s better to just take a nap.

This is even better than driftwood.

Gee, Daddy’s friends have the neato toys, but I don’t know how to drive!

And this thing doesn’t have any seatbelts!

Once upon a time there was a blog. And then there were more. And more and more and more. One day, a fine blogger named Blackbird started a fun game called Show and Tell. Oh, the bloggers who liked to play along! Show me a chicken, said Blackbird. And some bloggers did. One day, another blogger, who was very far behind in blog happenings, happened upon (name withheld for privacy), where she exclaimed, “What a fine chicken!” (or something to that effect). In nearly a blink of an eye, said chicken took flight, and made its way across the miles. The flight was long, the journey was arduous, but the weary chook is home to roost, happily in my kitchen.

The end.

I am constantly amazed, and grateful, at the sense of community and connectedness that blogging brings into my life. Truly, it’s a beautiful thing.

Thank you!! This fine bird is holding an assortment of tea bags, and is quite content passing the time with Cookie Monster. Oh the tales they tell. The wild and crazy goings on of the Sueeus kitchen.

In all honesty, I have a warm spot in my heart for a kitchen chicken, as there was a white hen crock perched atop a shelf in my mother’s kitchen for as long as I can remember. Nostalgia. 🙂

I didn’t even mention the part about the kindness and generosity of fine people out there. I’m astounded and blessed.

(Thank you again!!)

Self Portrait Tuesday

. . . Love is . . .

. . . . . nothing but smiles . . .

. . . it doesn’t hurt to have a captive audience either . . .

. . . because . . .

. . . it’s not so easy to sit still when you’re nineteen months old!

I’m loving every minute of this journey called motherhood.

It’s not so much that I hate technology (although I do, I DO!), it’s that things just don’t stay the same. Ever. Why is that Why can’t things just stay put

My permalinks have crumbled and fallen into the sea. Or something to that effect. My archive links. All gone. None of them work.

Did I do anything to make this happen To my knowledge, no. NO!

And do I have an abundance of time to try and figure these things out No. NO!

Grrrrrrrrrr!!

Update:

So. For the time being, my temporary fix is to disable permalinks. When I have the time, I’ll see if I can fix the permalinks.

Until then….

GRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!

It’s not like my work makes a huge impact on humanity, or anything like that, but once in a while I do something that gives me a nice feeling of accomplishment. I built a dynamic web calendar some time ago, that provides a two month rolling window, minus the weekends. I was quite pleased that I was able to figure out how to make it, at the time, but it had room for improvement.

We have multi-tiered organizations, where I work. There are many departments, groups, and sub-groups. My calendar shows a complete group’s schedule, sorted by its sub-groups, with the supervisor and leads highlighted. The beauty of this particular calendar is that a supervisor (or anybody) can see at a glance the coverage (or lack thereof). Availability is important where I work, as we are a service organization.

Each person has control over their schedule and can input their planned out of office days. Each type of absence has its own color code. We also have flexible work schedules, where our pay periods are two week intervals. We can work non-standard schedules (within reason), as long as we work 80 hours every two weeks. In general, that means 4×10 hour days each week (a day off each week), or 80 hours/9 days each pay period (a day off every other week). I originally had a table look-up function where I had a sub-set of alternate schedule possibilities and holiday dates pre-loaded. Not very robust. It worked, but wasn’t very elegant, and I had to manually update the table each year to load the next year’s dates. And there are so many possible day off combinations. Too. Much. Work.

So. I made it calculate on the fly. It doesn’t sound like much, but I am quite pleased with myself for figuring it out. It’s not the most efficient code. It’s nearly 900 lines, after all. And, I probably reinvented the wheel, because someone else has probably already done this. All the same, I did it, and it works. For leap years, as well. Imagine that! It can calculate all the 4×10 and 9×80 alternate work schedules, and company holidays. Each day for each person, it says, hey, I am dd-mm-yy. What kind of a day am I Am I a day off Am I an alternate schedule day off Am I a vacation day Okay then. I will be color X. Next And so on. Yes, there is a LOT of looping taking place.

It’s taken a lifetime of bicycling discontent to reach the conclusion that I am not a cyclist. I’ve had several bikes, and have enjoyed the occasional ride, but not enough to overcome the discomfort of shoulder, head and neck strain, not to mention the pain in the rear. Who designs bike seats   What are they thinking   C’mon.

Since I am now in my forties…  …ahem…   …I am somewhat more humble than I have been in years past, and have embraced come to terms with the fact that I am not a nimble athlete.  It pleases me to learn that there is a bike for riders like me.  Middle aged, sit-at-a-desk-all-day, non-nimble-athlete types.  It’s called a comfort bike.  Comfort!  Now that’s what I’m talking about.  That has me written all over it.  Finally!  I can sit upright with no weight on my shoulders, so I don’t have to strain my neck to hold my head up.  I can enjoy the scenery as I peddle on by.  Not only that, I can put my feet on the ground without having to get off the seat.  And, to put icing on the cake, look what I found –a WeeRide for my wee rider.  He sits safely in front of me and sees what I see.  He’s a part of the action, and we both like that quite alot.

Look at us go!  The bike even comes with a bell.  See   My little smartie is busy letting everyone know that we’re on our way.  Ring-ring!

It’s almost unthinkable.  I am home.  Alone.  Alone!  This is such a rarity, and there are so many things I want to do with this time.  I thought it would be an excellent opportunity to clean the carpets, what with no little feet trampling around this way and that.  But I’m also exhausted, since a certain young man decided to wake up at 3:30 this morning, and didn’t let  his poor mother get back to sleep until 5:30, after which it was nearly pointless since the official wakeup time is 6, followed by the normal flurry of bathing, dressing, packing diaper bag and lunch boxes, flying out the door, working a full day, wrestling with rush hour traffic, unloading the gear from the van, finding something suitable for the love bug to eat, hugs and a little teeny bit of play time, all which brings us to 6 p.m.  (At which time Mr. Gadget whisks my little blondie off to the ball game with the guys, having acquired free tickets from some benevelont soul today.)

Me time!  But of course, I find my way to the computer.  And I stealthily peruse as many blogs as I can before I surrender to the couch.  If only I weren’t so tired.  There are so many ways I would love to spend this evening.  But a nap is a very good thing, and a treat indeed.  I am giddy, even, that Mr. Gadget offered to take my sweet munchkin to the game.  Of course, he knew he would be walking on very thin ice if he even suggested a guys night out without offering to take the wee one, what with the delineation of tasks, chores, and responsibilities around here…  Even so, I am very thankful.  Grateful!

There has been much ado around here lately, and I’ve been meaning (and wanting) to write, but I find that the thoughts are slipping as the days go by. If nothing else, I can make a fragmented list, and perhaps one day I can go back and explore things in further detail. Or not.

• a month of stepchildren, nieces, nephews, siblings, in-laws, parents
• elevated blood pressure
• camping at the ocean
• a road trip to God’s country
• a boat ride on a beautiful lake
• lake swimming
• heat stroke (not me, but dear Lord, how fragile and precious life is, I must always remember)
• a puppet show
• a theme park
• a new deck
• The Salon, a three day role playing game, taken very seriously
• Cafe Sueeeus
• trials and tribulations with opc (other people’s children)
• Sueeeus, the Wicked Stepmother
• tearful goodbyes
• thank God it’s just us (did I say that out loud )
• blood pressure back to normal
• a new bike
• a new baby bike seat
• yearning for fresh air, better health, and a more simple life
• and so much more…

• A certain somebody is nearly 19 months old, which marks the transition from the infant daycare price to the toddler rate.
• Has his mother filled his baby book with any of the important milestones along the way   Sadly, no.  She is remiss.
• Because his vocabulary is significantly less than the dozen words that ‘typical’ toddlers have mastered by this age, his pediatrician suggests he see a speech therapist.  His mother is not convinced.
• It’s not that she has anything against seeing a speech therapist.  It’s just that she has observed that her child is cautious in nature (at times, and in general).  His hearing and comprehension are excellent.  He babbles with exuberance.  He hesitates when asked to repeat words, but his expression shows that he is thinking about it.
• It doesn’t help that the new insurance plan, under which referrals are no longer necessary, doesn’t appear to have any speech therapists on the approved provider list.

I noticed today that WordPress strongly recommended an upgrade, for security reasons.  As I’ve been plagued with spam, I decided to upgrade.  The thing is, my server has this fancy helpful interactive ftp doohickey for transferring files, but it’s not well suited to efficient updates of multitudes of files.  It’s more of a one by one thing.  So.  I had to find another way, which meant learning whether an old fashioned ftp thingymajiggy like we used back when unix was the only thing available, and which worked great, by the way…  That sentence ran on way too long for me to even attempt to figure out what I was trying to say… Anyway, I did find something called SmartFTP, and woohoo, it’s free!  It works like A DREAM!  Almost no learning curve necessary, and voila.  My bazillion little files that make this fabulous WordPress blog run, are now updated with the latest and greatest.

We shall see if the spammers are inhibited.  I’ve turned the comments feature back on.

Did I mention that during my upgrade, my very helpful sidekick, who loves buttons of any sort, pressed the power button on my computer   Oh.  Well.  Slight interruption in the otherwise efficient process.  And where was Mr. Gadget during this   After all, I had told him that I needed to install an upgrade this evening.  Did I need to spell out the translation that it would be nice if he could actually watch Mr. Busy Body for a few minutes.

Husbands.  Sigh.  It’s not as though I work full time myself.  Or change thirty diapers to his one.  Or prepare all the meals.  Or do all the laundry.  Or put it all away.  Or anything like that.   I’m a woman.  These are my jobs.

Duh.