narrating kayoz

C25K; Eliane @ 17 months; New travel blog; Solar panels

This is one of those posts you write when you haven't been blogging much and you have too many different things to talk about to not use dot points.

- I have just committed to the couch to 5K program. Not much more to say about this right now as I have literally just started, or rather haven't started - I am going shopping today for my first ever proper pair of joggers, and also a sports bra, and then tonight I will begin with the first 30 minute training session. It's something I've been meaning to look at for months/years, but now I've found out that I supposedly just need to commit 30 minutes 3 times per week for 9 weeks... How hard can that be? Famous last words? We'll see...

- Eliane is still not using many words, but she has the cutest yes ever. I'll go to get her up in the morning and she'll be standing there in her cot making the sign for milk. So I'll say 'do you want some mummy milk?' and she'll say 'Yay! Yay, yay, yay'

She doesn't actually mean 'yay', she means yes, cause she'll use it in other situations too, even when she's half crying, but it is very cute even then. And when she says it happily, it sounds just like a celebration.

- I've finally decided to do something with my kayoz.com domain. It's been pointing to this blog (in all it's various incarnations) for many years, but I've never set it up properly. Well, in a few months we are going on an o/s trip. We've got a lot to organise before then, from house & pet sitters, to passports for the kids, to suitcases, but we have booked tickets. So I'm going to start a separate travel blog.

Why, you might wonder, would I make it a separate blog. Can't I just blog here? Full disclosure: I am going to put ads on this travel blog. You probably won't see them if you click over from here - I'll set them up so they only show up to search traffic. Y'see, if I can set it up so that I make a little bit of money from it - because I do already make some money from writing online content - I can claim my part of our trip expenses (and maybe for one of the kids too, if I'm writing about travel with kids, though I'd have to be more careful with  that) as a business expense. Which could save us quite a bit of money.

So for this travel blog, I'm probably going to have a 'personal blog' category, and that's the only category that will show on the front page. But I will probably also write some posts specifically directed to search engine traffic ('Top 10 things to do in San Francisco with kids'). Those posts won't show up on the front page and won't be in the personal blog category, but they will show up in the archives.

I haven't actually set this up yet, obviously. At the moment www.kayoz.com still just points here. But soon, I expect, that link will go to 'narrating kayoz goes traveling (with 3 kids!)'.

So when are we going and where? Well, you'll have to read the travel blog to find that out I guess ;) but suffice to say for the moment, it is going to be for almost two months, and we have round-the-world tickets. Actually, that makes it sound more glamorous than it will really be. We have the minimum number of stops on the tickets (or perhaps, the maximum number for the minimum price), and we'll be spending most of the time in one country. Still, I have to say, I am feeling pretty excited about it.

-By the way, did I mention our new solar array? We're pretty pleased with it :)

Four weeks!

Somehow, when it's past time for me to go to bed at night, that's when I feel inspired to write blog entries. Mostly I resist the temptation, because actually I need all the sleep I can get at the moment.

I think the thing is that by 10pm, I've been child free for two or three hours, and had some time to think, to chat with Chris, and my brain is feeling up. At 10am I've been doing morning routine with kids for three or four hours and my brain is sluggish at best.

So what was it I wanted to write about at 11pm yesterday? I don't know.

But I do know that there are only four weeks left (less, in fact) until this baby could be born, without being considered pre-term. Four weeks! Suddenly my to-do list feels much more urgent. So urgent I might even need to commit it to paper some time soon.

By the way, the to do list from the other day? Some of it got done. Not the big things though (like tidying the master bedroom - although we are back sleeping in there anyway, which is awesome - or sorting through Mikaela's clothes). This weekend maybe...

Getting back on track: writing, blogging and the Fab Fatties Challenge #2

I have been back at work for nearly a year now (I started back at the beginning of July).

In that time I have written almost nothing, submitted absolutely nothing (despite having several pieces either ready and waiting or just about ready to submit), have blogged very little, have gained about five kilos, have had one miscarriage and have not (since then) gotten pregnant.

One of the reasons I haven't been blogging much is that people at work might read it (being in a web team is quite different that way, as it turns out, to being in a communications team). Not that I mind if they do, exactly, it's just that there are things one usually doesn't talk about at work - trying to get pregnant, for instance - that one might blog about ad infinitum.

So here's my little disclaimer* for work folk:
Feel free to read. Feel free to comment. Don't talk to me (or preferably anyone else) about it at work. At least, not if it's something you think I wouldn't talk about at work. Like trying to get pregnant - not always something that's good for one's career, though it's not politically correct to say so. But I learned that the hard way last time.

Also - some notes for anyone new to the blog, eg, someone from work:

• it took me 17 cycles and one miscarriage to conceive Mikaela.
• I only have one ovary.
• my mum started going through menopause before she hit 40.
• my sister took four years to produce her beautiful son
• I am 37, Chris is nearly 41...

So just because I'm trying to get pregnant, doesn't mean I'm going on maternity leave any time in the next year. Or ever. Just so we're clear.

Now, back to the point of this post, which is not that it's seven months since my miscarriage and I'm not pregnant, despite being convinced that May was the month it would happen. Nor about the lack of blogging lately.

No, it is about the fact that I've put on about five kilos since I started back at work.

There are a few reasons for this - too much junk food at work and not enough exercise being high on the list - but the main one is that I lost my focus.

I got back down to my goal weight of 63kg early last year.** I had a health check within a month of starting work that determined that my healthiest weight range is something like 62-66kg. All good. And then I started trying to get pregnant again. And then I got pregnant again. And then I had a miscarriage. And somewhere in there I told myself I could eat whatever I liked (ie lots and lots of chocolate) because obviously I deserved it.

Yes, I have issues around food and deserving and comfort and anger and self image and shame and probably all sorts of other things. As I'm sure have blogged before,*** I took a long time to acknowledge any of this, let alone to acknowledge that I was overweight, still less that I cared. I was a feminist. And we feminists don't care what we look like, do we? Right...

Actually it was two things that snapped me out of it. It was realising (shortly after Liam was born), that I was unhealthily overweight (and I was, trust me on this, I'm not talking putting on five kilos here), and also that that was not okay now that I was a mother, and realising that however much I pretended not to notice or care, other people just had to look at me to know I was unhealthily overweight. I was fooling no-one.

Despite all this, now that I am back to an ordinary sort of weight I have largely gone back to pretending that none of that happened. That I don't have any food/weight issues. That I am, in short, too cool to care.

Well, I'm not. And that is why I am now taking back my focus and my control. It may take me another year to get pregnant (although we've given ourselves a deadline of this December, so lets hope not), or it may never happen. So to say even half consciously to myself (as I have, if I'm honest, been doing) that I can wait till after the next baby's been born to get back on track is ridiculous. It is self-delusion.

Food tracking, I've discovered, is my best defence against over-eating. So food tracking is what I will do. And to jump start myself, I am signing up for the Fab Fatties Challenge #2 - there are about five hours left to sign up, but if you do, make sure you tell them I sent you so I get me some 25 points in the challenge!****

The challenge goes for two weeks from today (May 29) and involves the following - all of which I am going to try to do every day (except the one about not drinking 'soda pop' since I don't do that anyway).

• Eat 5 servings of fruits and vegetables daily- 5 points
• Drink 8 glasses of water a day- 8 points
• Exercise- 1 point per minute
• Do a random good deed- 5 points
• Stop drinking soda pop for a day- 1 point
• Actually read someone else’s blog post and leave a comment- 1 point
• Answer [their] Fab Fatties random bonus questions about [them]- 5 points
              -Bonus questions will be posted daily on [their] blog.
• Recommend 2 fabulous friends from twitter and tell us why we should follow them- 2 points
• Eat a healthy breakfast-1 point
• Lose weight- 1 point per pound
• Keep a food journal for the day- 5 points per day
• Take a walk during you lunch break- 5 points
• Have a friend join this challenge- 25 points per friend
              -make sure your friend tells us you recruited them!

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*I've probably said this before, I'm just a little paranoid and still haven't come to terms with this weird collision of offline-personal, work, and online lives that facebook has created.

**Back down not from all the weight I gained during pregnancy - though there was some of that - but from all the weight I gained while trying and failing to become pregnant beforehand.

***But it was a loong time ago, before categories, let alone tagging, when I still did each entry by hand in dreamweaver, and I can't find it.

****And thanks to Food Food Body Body which is where I discovered the challenge.

Life before CMS's and broadband - can you imagine?

I begin with a warning: I've had a few glasses of wine. I don't often write after a few glasses of wine, because I don't often drink. But I make an exception today because we are at the start of watching the last ever episode of Alias (our TV free month interrupted our watching of the last season on DVD, which I bought Chris for Christmas)* and Mikaela has woken up. Chris is soothing her back to sleep (I hope) so I need to entertain myself. And I have so many blog posts waiting to be written. Of course, I can't remember what any of them are....

For some reason I went back today and read the first post recorded here on Typepad, from about 20 January 2000. It wasn't the first post I ever wrote, it's just the first one I imported to Typepad (because I imported all the ones in my old pregnancy and pre-conception archive and that was the entry I wrote when I first bought the book Natural Fertility). But as I was reading it I was struck by the difference in tone and style to 'modern' blog posts. It was more an online journal post, which is what I called it back then, in the days when online journals and blogs were two significantly different creatures. It was more rambling, not thematised. Instead of starting a new post about a new topic I just popped in an asterisk and a para break and off I went.

Not that that's un-heard of today, but the format was more 'today's journal entry' than a particular topic like a blog post of today tends to be.

But what also astounded me (although I haven't forgotten, not really), was the change in technology. I refered to having to go back online, before going to bed, to check out the correct links to put in the entry, to check my email, and to ftp the entry to my server. And then I realised that I had to go back to the last entry and the index to add links to this new post. Yes people, I was updating all those links by hand. There was no CSS, there was no CMS - it was all done by hand in Dreamweaver, or, depending where I was, directly in the code in Notepad. It's not that long that I've had broadband, and even less time that I've had wireless broadband, but it seems like it's always been this way. To go back to dialup... I don't even want to think about it. But to go back to pre-CMS days? That's unthinkable!

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*this is why I make an exception to blogging while somewhat inebriated, not to why I've had half a bottle of wine. That's another story and probably a boring one (something to do with opportunity - a bottle open - and nothing else very interesting), so I'm not going to tell it here.

Web 2.0 projects in Australian government

I thought it would be interesting to put together a list of web 2.0 projects the Australian Government is/has been running, if only for my own interest. Only because it seems to me that everywhere you turn at the moment there is another project team/department asking if they should have a blog or how they can do online collaboration or if they should use a wiki setup for their intranet.

I'm sure there are a gazillion, but I'll start with the ones I know of off the top of my head.

• Future Melbourne (run by the city of Melbourne to update their city planning)
• The ATO's Facebook page for eTax (aimed at raising awareness of etx with gen Y)
• The department of broadband had a two week blog to consult on "important questions of the future of the digital economy" in December (comments are closed but it's all still there)
• DEWHA's new one stop green shop project blog (which aims to engage people in the process of developing the website, share learnings along the way, try out some social media and see what works before the website is developed)
• I know a number of departments use wikis internally
• GovDex is the government's own for "collaboration across portfolios and administrative jurisdictions" which has numerous communities, both closed and open.
• The War Memorial has a blog - this is a bit different to most of the other things listed here because it's not a consultation style exercise, but it's the sort of blog I imagine we'll see more of quickly.
• Lots of libaries have blogs.
• The Australian Human Rights Commission had a blog for their sex and gender diversity project, which closed on 5 December. They seem to have also had a forum which may still be open.
• FutureProof is "a place for people to learn more about the NSW Government digital recordkeeping strategy and to share information about their own activities, projects and experiences in regards to digital recordkeeping."
• The NSW Commissioner for Children and Young People has a blog.
• The Sex Discrimination Commissioner had a blog as part of her listening tour last year.
• (edited to add Zoe's addition from comments:) NSW state archives has a flickr account. 

Okay, that wasn't exactly just off the top of my head, I did use Google. And there were dozens more of the style of the library or war memorial blogs. I'm particularly interested in the use of online collaboration tools as part of a consultation process, like the sex discrimination listening tour.

I'm also interested in the idea of building online communities, be it for sharing sustainability information & experience (part of one stop green shop's eventual idea), sharing digital recording keeping experiences (futureproof), or sharing information about books (I don't know if the library blogs allow for this, beyond the librarians doing it I mean, but they may - or a wiki system might work better). But of course, these don't have to set up by government organisations.

Blogging in gov 2.0/identity issues.

Trying to decide if I should set up a different wordpress account (or open id or whatever) - one that doesn't link here - to comment (and potentially post) on the new blog set up by the project team I am involved with at work. Do I keep - or create - two separate identities: a professional one and a "private" one?

If this would be a for profit blog in some way it would be clearer - or less clear maybe.

Let me think about this. If, for instance, I were a web 2.0 professional, and this was a related blog, and I was employed by gov as a consultant, then it would make sense to keep an identity that links back here I guess. But if I were a web 2.0 professional, and this was a related blog, who was *separately* employed by gov (on salary), then it would be important not to link back here, so there could be no suggestion of profiting from my use of public service resources (which, needless to say, is against the public service code of conduct etc).

But as it happens neither of these is the true scenario. This is in fact an entirely non-profit blog which I keep for my own entertainment, and all my paid work is done on salary for the gov.

Then again, I've already established that I don't necessarily want to send all my work colleagues to my personal blog, so that should make it easy to establish that I should set up a separate account, right? but then what of posts here about web 2.0 in gov etc. Should I have an entirely separate blog for them? But that doesn't make sense because I'm not posting about it enough to justify a blog. And I have always mixed up musings about writing, reading, internets, sustainability, and of course my lovely children, do why stop now?

Also, the other weird part is that I have an established blogosphere identity. So if I start posting on some blogs with one identity and some with another, doesn't that get a little confused? Especially since I also have both bloggers and colleagues and IRL friends 'following' me or as 'friends' on twitter and facebook.

What do other people do about this?

Convergence: work life, play life, blog life

My work life is starting to converge with my blog life. It's a weird thing, for someone who's always blogged semi-anonymously.

My nine year blog anniversary is coming up on 16 January. I started out blogging under the name Kay, an online pseudonym (and IRL nickname of sorts*) back in January 2000. Then I met some local people who I knew through their blogs, and it was a little weird being called Kay by some people and Kirsten by others, since I don't think I'd mentioned on the blog that Kay was a nickname. Finally I switched to using my 'real' name when my IRL and blogger friends collided on Facebook.

But the convergence continues. First, my colleagues at work became facebook friends. That was a little weird, what with it coming just after my miscarriage, which I hadn't told anyone at work about but had blogged about (and my blog was being imported to facebook). So I created a special friend list for colleagues that didn't include my blog feed or blog URL.

But then we started talking about web 2.0 at work, and the fact that I'd been blogging for a number of years came up, and I started doing some work with a project team who want to develop online community/collaboration/conversations around and through the website they are developing. When I say 'work' I really mean having some conversations, but this led to me giving my blog URL to a couple of people at work (though I don't know that they've looked at it).

Meanwhile AGIMO** are talking about web 2.0 in government and releasing draft guidelines for, for instance, public servants who are also private bloggers (that would be me).*** And on Friday I attended a 'workshop' to begin talking about the online collaboration strategy for this project I mentioned. It's early days yet (although things are moving fast, by dint of a close deadline), but we're talking about wikis, blogs, user reviews and ratings, transparency and collaboration.  All in a government context, but also in a public context.

Maybe it makes me an incredible geek, not only being interested in - nay fascinated by - web 2.0 and what it means, but also being interested in government, but I find this all incredibly exciting. Doubly so because the content of this particular project is going to be related to sustainability, another favourite subject of mine.

Still, it's an interesting convergence and I'm not sure yet how I'll handle it. The project team has set up a blog on wordpress. It's not in use yet, so I won't link to it, but I might do when it gets started. I've always been particularly careful not to say exactly where I work since I joined the public service. Which is different to many people who blog quite openly about their work, though this is probably more common for those who are self employed.

I've mused, from time to time, how I'd handle this blog in the context of getting more than an occasional article published.**** Dawn Friedman, for instance, has a blog that mixes the personal and professional (though she's careful what she says about work when she's working for someone else). She is "immersed in web 2.0 marketing" and has recently created a twitter landing page which links to her professional web pages and her blog.

But if I were to publish, say, a novel, would I want my readers to have access to my blog in all its years of openness? Or for a potential publisher or agent to judge me by my blog in all it's unfocussed uneditedness? Because in truth I use my blog mostly as a dumping ground for things I want to remember (about the kids especially) and for ideas I'd like to explore. And I mostly don't do the things I told the project team are the hall marks of most successful blogs, eg edit posts (or at least proofread thoroughly), know what the point/focus of your blog is, and ditto for individual posts.

But I hadn't considered the convergence would come from this side of my professional life. Not at all. On reflection that seems a little short sighted of me, but there it is.

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*But as an IRL nickname it was only used by one person, and she lives o/s now so it's really mostly be an in-print thing. And actually that one person doesn't use it now anyway.

**The Australian Government Information Management Office

***I've seen some draft guidelines on paper, but couldn't find anything on the website.

****Publishing world famous, critically aclaimed bestsellers, for instance :)

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.

domain hijacking - mine!

Today I received this email:

Dear Valued Member,

According to our site policy you will have to confirm your account by the following link or else your account will be suspended within 24 hours for security reasons.

http://www.kayoz.com/confirm.php?email=<my email address>
Thank you for your attention to this question. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Sincerely,Kayoz Security Department Assistant.

The only thing is, I don't have a security department. Let alone a security department assistant. But www.kayoz.com is my domain, has been for several years. It has never had members.

I have no idea yet what, if anything, I can do about this, but if anyone else ever receives something from the kayoz security department, do let me know.

Tracking back

David of treppenwitz fame has a great post up about using TrackBacks today, so I thought I'd link to the post AND send him a trackback! :)

Um... Yeah, I knew about that!

blog roll

My blogroll is woefully out of date. I used to list only those blogs that I read every time they update. I use it to get to them see, rather than my favourites list. But actually there are numerous ones in that list now that I only read occasionally and plenty of others that I would like to read more often... but they're not on the list, so mostly, I don't.

Someday soon I am going to break the list into sub groups and update it.

But right now I have to go study. Although first I should link to a new blog I just found as a result of her linking to me.