narrating kayoz

Regular posting and/or writing

Clearly that regular posting thing has gone down the gurgler (is that the word?) since I went back to work.

Also I haven't yet sat myself down to plan out a regular writing time, much less sat myself down to write. However, I am getting there. In the psychology of change talk I think I'm in the contemplation phase (after pre-contemplation, but not yet on to planning, much less action).

I've been back at work two weeks now. This will be the third week (started Wednesday, because Monday and Tuesday are devoted to unpaid house and parenting work). I think maybe next week will be one to get serious about making time to write again. Next week.

Last day of the month (another post in dot points)

Today is the last day of my post-a-day month. It's been interesting but I don't think I will keep it going, quite. I have liked that it's forced me to post some things I wouldn't have gotten around to otherwise, but I wouldn't have gotten around to them otherwise because - well, time is in short supply. Right now I am posting instead of having time with my husband (though granted, right now he's cleaning the kitchen, but he'll be done soon), which I can only justify for so many nights in a row! On the other hand, I think I'll keep the calendar there in the sidebar for another month, just to see how it compares.

However, here is my last post-a-day post, in dot points, because I couldn't narrow it down to one topic.

• Mikaela went to sleep by herself today for perhaps the second time in her life. The first time being when I popped her in the hammock when she was sleepy on about the third day of her life. I was so thrilled she went to sleep on her own that day, but then she never did it again. Until today that is. Today she just did not want to nurse to sleep - she didn't want to go to sleep at all. She wanted to play in her cot. She kept saying she wanted to be in the cot, so I'd put her in and go do something else for a little while, then dutifully try our nursing down routine again when she started to protest. Finally I got sick of that and left her there for longer. I figured she would either go to sleep, or she wouldn't. Usually when this happens (which isn't very often actually) I'm not prepared to let it go on for so long because it gets too late for her to have a nap, but today I decided to just see what happened. She yelled out for me from time to time, then got distracted by a book or maybe by her own sleepiness. And eventually she went to sleep! It was about an hour and a half after we initially started the nap routine, but hey, she slept.
• I am not all that impressed with TypePad's new 'compose post' screen. It is too slow and can't keep up with my typing. This may be a problem listed in their 'known problems', I haven't checked, but if it is, you'd think it would be something they'd fix before releasing it. I rarely have a bad thing to say about TypePad, but this is irritating (so much so that I am typing directly into the html- lets hope I don't stuff it up).
• I have not yet become a dog person, but I am much more of a dog person than I was, say, a year ago. Still, some days I do wonder insanity gripped me when I said we could get a dog. But, today Chris got a little more work done on our permanent chook run fence. When it's finished the chooks and Lochie will be separated, and we won't need to tie him up and listen to him bark while they eat (in order to prevent him from eating their food) and he won't get all their eggs. That will improve things around here quite a bit. Plus the little bit of lawn we have will be able to recover from the sad state the chooks have it in, which will also be nice.
• Now I know I was planning to write a post tonight that was something about Kaely and Liam, but I can't remember what it was. So even when I do post every day, things still slip annoyingly through the cracks of my mind, to dribble unseen onto my dirty floor, never to be recorded. Damn.
• Have I mentioned that my masters project is meant to be completed by Monday? Yeah.

Now I'm going to take my tired brain and drink the cup of tea Chris is just making me (I think) and watch some West Wing on DVD. The good thing about not getting a lot of time to watch television is that these series take a long time to run out. I think we are still watching season two.

That's all folks.

Dishcloths and what not

Did you notice I added a calendar view in the side bar? Or am I the only old fashioned sort of person who still looks at actual blogs instead of feed readers?

It's only a temporary add-in anyway, just this month while I am trying to write something every day. And today it almost remained blank. I spent the whole day at a friend's (a regular playdate for Liam, though it doesn't usually go all day), then had my weekly pilates and grocery shopping night tonight. Exciting I know.

What is exciting (to me) is that I have started knitting my first dishcloth. I'm using this pattern, except all one colour (blue of course) and with lots of stuff ups in the first 13 rows (which is all I've done so far) and especially in the first 7. Still, it's only a dishcloth I tell myself, and just get on with it. I'll post photos when I'm done, so that the knitting types among you can have a good laugh!

The non-post, which quickly became Me Rabbiting On

From the claytons post direct to the non-post, and I haven't made it two weeks of posting every day yet. I wonder if this spells doom of my plans to make it through the entire month?

Two people I know IRL and one online (but not through blogging) are currently pregnant and happy about it - two via IVF one via an accident (though they were planning to start trying within a couple of months, just hadn't quite got there yet).

I am tired tired tired. Yet the idea of having a newborn in the house does not fill me with dread. Maybe that's just because I'm too tired to feel dread. Actually, I wouldn't want to have one right now. Kaely is not quite two and still seems waaay to young to me to introduce another baby into the house. All those people who have the second when their first is under two (or even under three, truth be told) are amazing to me. How they manage, but more than that, how they can even contemplate having another one early enough to have produced another one that quickly is totally beyond me.

Kaely is seeming quite a bit better, by the way, but still very grumpy.

I went to pilates tonight. I've been doing it since about three months before we started trying to get pregnant with Mikaela. I told my cousin (after her second baby in as many years) that doing pilates is just a price of having children and really must be done. A very middle class perspective.

I start back at work in only about 6 or 7 weeks. Seven I guess. Not sure how I feel about that yet, but it will be for a different government department than the one I left, because of the shuffling of portfolios with the new government, so that's sort of exciting. Or perhaps exciting is too strong a word, but you know what I mean I'm sure.

Liam's school has it's annual Autumn picnic this Sunday, but I can't go because I'll be writing. The deadline approacheth fast. I'm also missing one of his best friend's birthday parties the following week for the second or third year in the row for the same reason.

And now that I have rabbited on and on I am going to bed.

The problem of unrealistic expectations

Sometimes lately I seem to be yelling at Liam all day. Not screaming, angry yelling, but definite voice raising and frustration. And the subtext, I think, is often "Don't be so stupid!" Not that I would ever say that to him: I wouldn't. But that's part of what I'm feeling I suppose. Quite aside from the fact that I don't think yelling is a great parenting tool, the fact that this is happening a lot leads me to think - either he is stupid (and he's not) or I must be expecting too much.

I know that in fact I do expect too much, I've been catching myself at it ever since he learned to talk in reasonably coherent sentences. His language skills trick me into thinking he's rational, even though I have read over and over that rationality, logical thinking, and understanding of consequences, is all very slow to develop, and really only just beginning at the age he is now - six. So why do I have so much trouble converting this intellectual knowledge into practical parenting?

An aside about blogging every day: one of the effects of this is nothing-posts like yesterday's, but a good effect is posts like this one. I was just thinking about this while I prepared dinner (while the kids are in the bath), and normally I'd think - 'I should blog about that' - but never do it. Because I'm trying to post everyday, this time I decided to take the couple of minutes I have before the kids emerge to post something. Not a long, thought-out analysis maybe, but at least the kernel of thought, and the record of a parenting challenge.

Sleep, sleep, glorious sleep

I have written a post for today, but I wrote it in my head while I was nursing Mikaela to sleep for her nap. It was all about how she says 'nooo' in a thoughtful sort of voice, in response to virtually any question she is asked, unless it is 'do you want mummy milk', or (be prepared to be horrified, all good Steiner parents) 'do you want to watch PlaySchool'. If you say, for instance, 'Are there some balls at Nanna's?', when she has just been at Nanna's playing with balls, she will think about it briefly and then say (try to imagine this in a good Ocker accent) "Nooo..."

So I had a post all written (in my head) but instead of actually committing it to virtual paper I am going to bed. As my Facebook status says today, I am operating on less than two hours of (broken) sleep since midnight, and my brain is mush.

Busywork, blogging and bandannas

Thursdays are my busywork days. Every day is a busy day, but Thursdays are the day I do housework and cooking and so on. Also they're my only 'free' day, that is, my only day without a regular commitment (aside from school drop off and pick up), and aside from Tuesdays (when I usually hang with my cousin and her two daughters, four months older and twelve months younger than Mikaela), most of our regular commitments are structured around Liam. So I tend to use Thursdays to make any social engagements I might want to make for myself, or for Kaely.  Hence the state of my house (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).

Today I had my Dad over (which involved driving over to the other side of Canberra and back - about twenty minutes each way - to pick him up, and again to return him, though we did that as an extension of school pick up) but also tried to get the busywork done. I did cook a huge pot of chicken passata, and tidy up a bit. I also did a load of washing, but thanks to Kaely only taking a 25 minute nap (courtesy of having dozed off on the way back from picking up Dad I think), I forgot to hang it out. Damn.

Actually, what I meant this post to be about was the fact that I have posted every day so far in May. That has surely got to be a record. I noticed the trend on about the 3rd, and decided to try to keep it going for a week. Then today I knew it would be hard to find time (what with the busywork, and the exhaustion that usually arrives on Thursday night as a result of not sitting down all day. Not that that's particularly unusual, I'm exhausted every night!), so I thought, 'Well, if all else fails I'll just put up a post pointing out that I posted every day for a week. Even if one of those days was just a quote from someone else.' But now the kids are in the bath (supervised by their fabulous father) and because I cooked this morning, I have dinner taken care of. So I can sit here and rabbit on about busywork and blogging.

Oh, my first mate (Liam) is calling, having finished his bath. I think I need to go tie a bandanna on his head, as all good pirates have.

Anyway, did you notice, I posted something every day for a week? And now I've started another week. I wonder how long I can keep it up for?

Blog providers

(and in an effort to move the whinge post from the top of the screen...)

I'm sort-of, half thinking of changing blog providers, although I've been very happy with Typepad for several years now. But what I would like is to be able to password protect individual posts. Posts with, say, pics of the kids. Posts with, say, whinges about relatives. And maybe in the future I could password protect the Mikaela and Liam archives or something. And I can't do that on Typepad without going professional, which is just a little too pricey for me.

What I love about Typepad is it's reliable, fast, has otherwise all the facilities I look for in a blog provider, and has a great help department.

So any suggestions which have similar characteristcs and are not more expensive would be much appreciated.

protecting privacy

Last night I cooked dinner from a recipe I found on another blog. Later I heard Liam telling Chris this on the phone (Chris being in Melbourne for work), and I starting thinking about Liam and blogging.

I remembered that Dawn mentioned a while ago that Noah wanted his own blog, and I thought - that will be Liam one day in the not so distant future. I've already started talking about blogging to him, a very little bit, so the idea that I am talking all about our lives on the world wide internet won't come as a shock down the track!

But then I started thinking: if Liam will want his own blog, probably some of his friends will as well. Which means they'll be reading blogs. Which means they could, conceivably, come across this blog. With funny (and not so funny) stories about Liam from the moment of his birth (leaving aside for a moment the unlikelihood of a prepubescent boy reading the blog of a boring middle aged women, with no sexy photos or nothin'). And while I haven't put many photos of Liam up since he was about three, it wouldn't take long to figure out that it was him I was writing about. So maybe, I thought, I should have used pseudonyms for the kids.

So I'm wondering, if you blog about your kids - do you use pseudonyms? And why do you, or why don't you? And are you happy with that decision?

For the Readers

Thanks to Robin at The Other Mother, today is Blog Reader Appreciation Day.

So this is for you, dear reader.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for staying with me in the lean months (and years) - or at least coming back from time to time to check on me.
Thank you for your support in the harder times.
Thank you for your parenting advice (sometimes looked for, sometimes not, but always appreciated).
Thank you for your book recommendations (I'm always looking for more book recommendations).
Thank you for your wisdom in response to my questions or thoughts, and for your interesting links to elsewhere.
Thank you (those who are bloggers as well as readers) for linking to me from your blogrolls. :)
Thank you just for commenting on my blog, even simply to say Yes! or No!.
I love your comments, each and every one.

50 Quick, Painless Ways You Can Help the Environment Today

There are some things here I hadn't thought of: The Action Blog - 50 Quick, Painless Ways You Can Help the Environment Today.

Tomorrow is Blog Action Day, so I'm off to draft my post.

Pseudonymous no more

Over the years I've been blogging there've been discussions now and again about the benefits of being anonymous vs not.

I've always been semi-pseudonymous. Kay was a nickname given me by an IRL friend years and years ago, but rarely used (except as 'K' in letters). From time to time I've fessed up to my real name, though I don't think I've ever actually put my full name on this blog (not wanting to be googled, see).

In recent years though, it's started to get confusing. First there was my family's blog, on Blogger. They didn't like that my posts and comments came from this "Kay" person. It was confusing. But I'd been Kay online so long at that point that I now had IRL friends who called me Kay. And if I changed my name in my Blogger profile, then all the other blogger blogs I commented on regularly wouldn't know who I was. So I became "Kay aka Kirsten." A rather ungraceful compromise.

But now. Now I have discovered Facebook. Only I've discovered it by being 'invited' to join by an IRL friend (the same one who gave me that nickname years ago, funnily enough). And it wouldn't really work as a way to rediscover old school friends (for eg) if I registered there with an online pseudonym would it? But, on the other hand, most of the people I am going to know on Facebook are going to be bloggers, many of whom won't have a clue who I am if I 'poke' them from my real name. Damn. 'Real' life and the internet have finally collided.

So, henceforth I am going by my given name, here, there and everywhere. It's Kirsten.  But you can still call me Kay if you like. :)

I'm finally popular!

But not in a good way... I have had a spat of comment spam this week, so I have finally enabled CAPTCHA for posting comments.

New technology

I'm writing this post from Word 07 and on my new laptop. Two firsts for me.

We bought the laptop a few weeks ago, but I've barely used it yet. Chris uses it a lot at night, after I'm in bed, since we sleep in the study these days so he can't get at the desktop. I've been wanting a laptop for ages (and we're actually paying for it out of the tiny bit of money I've earned doing web editing work since I've been on maternity leave), but shortly before we got it we finally got a wireless router, since which time I've been doing most of my (writing/studying) work out in the Rolfing studio. So it's not so exciting now. It may be more exciting once uni starts up again. I have the idea that I might go work at Starbucks for a morning here and there – though at this stage I still need to be home to nurse Mikaela around lunch time at least. (Though I started working two days a week when Liam was this age and he learned to do without 'mummy milk' on those days without much trouble.) For the moment I am on 'holidays' for three weeks, which means I don't get my writing days, but that we do actually get family time. As of next week Liam is also on school holidays for three weeks, so I won't even get my Tuesdays and Thursdays when I can write/think or even just do housework, while Kaely sleeps and Liam is out. I am planning lots of play dates!

But, back to the laptop, I've also discovered that I have to be extremely careful how I hold my hands while typing or I end up making the curser jump all over the place by (I presume) accidentally brushing the touchpad. Which is a pain, especially typing on a table that is really too high to type on. Then again, that's probably not a good idea anyway.

What I do like is the idea that I can have it out and check email etc while Mikaela is playing, without me having to go into the study. That's going to be nice.

Blog birthday

Today is my seven year blogging birthday.

I've missed it every year till now. Not this year.
This year I have Typepad's 'Publish On...' function.

Ha!

The speed of a meme experiment

Lots to say about small children, holidays in Moss Vale, and my brother's wonderful wedding last weekend (organised brilliantly from afar - California - by his now-wife). But instead here is a link to a meme experiement. How fast does a meme travel?

Via Raising WEG, Scott Eric Kaufman is doing an experiment, trying to measure the speed of meme for his talk at some conference. He asks people to link to his post, and ask their readers to link also. Also to ping technorati. So get linkin'!

(Here is my Technorati Profile which I'm linking to solely in order to 'claim my blog'.)

archives added

I have finally added all my blogger archives here. I wanted them to remain separate to the rest, so I've added two new categories - Blogger posts (2002-2004) and Liam @ Blogger (2002-2004) (because I had a different blog for Liam's Log). This still isn't all my archives - I did all my coding by hand January 2000 - September 2002, so those are not so easily imported. That will be a project for another day (or several days, or perhaps weeks!). Of course, there are likely to be some broken links within these new posts - ces't la vie.

PS Still sick. bleh.

Writing vs Blogging

Tamar has closed up shop. This makes me a little sad, because I loved reading her posts -  about her son, her parenting, about moving cross country, about her writing - but I sort of get it too. She has a number of reasons, many about lines in the sand and what's appropriate or not to post, but one of them is that she is writing fiction now and it fulfills some of the same needs the blog once did.

I'm not about to follow suit but it has added to some thinking I've been doing about blogging. A number of other things have also made me question the time I spend blogging - talking (emailing) with Trish about her new column writing gig, joining Dawn's new Insecure Writer's group, reading (once again) Dawn's call for submissions to her op ed section in Literary Mama... I can't help wondering if I should be spending the time I blog writing pieces for these sorts of markets.

But then I remember that I don't really spend a whole lot of time on these posts - I don't actually use this blog as a place to 'practice' quality writing (is that bad? am I inviting myself to get into/maintain sloppy habits?), I use it to record things - about Liam, about being pregnant, about my thoughts about blogging or writing or studying or whatever - as well as to communicate, have a presence in the 'blogosphere', and every now and then to rant about something.

And you know what? The periods in my life when I haven't kept some kind of journal - online or off - have later frustrated me. I actually do go back to them to check things. In fact, there've been occasions when I've gone back to this blog and it's predecessor and not found stuff - because it's from before I discovered blogging (ie from last century) and been quite put out. It's so much easier to search through, in general, than my handwritten journals of the past.

Of course, being online does limit what I write. Every now and then I write a post to a private (but still online) journal that I keep just for when I want to record something but don't want to make it public, but mostly those entries simply go unwritten. Still, all in all this format is working for me at the moment. I think I'll keep it up. I'd like to add 'but I'll also put more time and effort into writing for those other sorts of markets' but the truth is, with six weeks left to my intended deadline to get my uni work done, and another 6 weeks (give or take) until Liam's little sibling is due, I probably shouldn't make any promises to myself that I won't keep. Still, you never know...

Something weird...

Something weird is going on.

First, I got about 4-5 times as many visitors as I usually do on Friday, but no obvious reason for it (except my Google ranking going up maybe?) (and only one of them is in love with her/his doctor, as far as I could tell from a brief check).

Second, I just tried to comment on two different posts and got this message: "In an effort to combat malicious comment posting by scripts, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again. Please try to post your comment again in a short while. Thanks for your patience."

Now I have done nothing of the sort, so I'm not sure who 'I' is in this context. And I hadn't posted any other comments yet, so according to the message I shouldn't have had to wait. Couldn't find anything on the TypePad site about this, but I've created a help ticket, so hopefully will get it sorted out.

In the mean time, apologies to anyone who tried to comment and couldn't.

(PS Almost 5.5 weeks now, and all is still looking good.)

A weird little meme

From Dawn:

Rules:

1. Go into your archive.

2. Find your 23rd post (or closest to).

3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).

4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.

I decided on my archive since being at TypePad since the 23rd post in my original archive gave me only Answered the phone a handful of times, sent two faxes, answered a few emails. In a boring post about the problem with temp jobs from February 2000.

My TypePad archives produced this:

On the other hand when I put him to bed just now (ie took him down to bed and left him with his Dad) and told him I loved him, he said "I love you. Always, always."

Which I thought was really rather nicer.