PooBou.com

Isn’t that what you crazy kids call a video blog entry? Anyway, here’s mine.

I mainly got the idea for this because I wanted Dave to hear the psychotic Elmo singing, but he’s at work, so I needed a way to record it, because no way in hell am I keeping this thing in the house for Catie to find and want to play with later. Watch the video & you’ll see why.

Also, side note for those of you going to BlogHer: this might help you recognize me in the crowd. Although I’ll hopefully remember to put on some damn lipstick then.

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Since I think the mood is in dire need of lightening around here:

1. This post of Sally’s from 5 years ago. Read the comments. Had me laughing until tears ran down my face.

2. This video, no matter how many times I see it.

3. Oh, and while I’m linking videos, let’s really hope that this isn’t the house we’re buying. (Thanks, Angie. I love this one.)

4. Catie, who in the past couple of days:
4a. Has started trying to sing the alphabet song, and OMG I have to get a video of that, because it’s hilarious.

4b. Was really good at the gym’s nursery while I worked out yesterday, so as a reward we went to the pool afterward. We haven’t been to the YMCA’s pool yet this year, I forgot how nice it is. They have a “splash zone” which is basically just an area of fountains that shoot water out of the ground in various formations. Watching Catie run around sticking her hands and feet in the water was so much fun. (She never jumped into the fountains, she’s way too cautious for that. And she got pretty mad when she stuck her hand in one fountain and it splashed water in her eyes.)

4c. Bashed me in the face with the back of her head during a particularly overzealous toddler bounce and split my top lip open. When I told her that she hurt me, she wanted to kiss it to make it better, which was sweet, but my lip was gushing blood at the time, so, NO. I let her kiss my lip when I finally got the bleeding under control, and she said, “All better now?” I said, “Thank you, sweetie, but no, it still hurts.” She said, “No. It all better now.” Well, thanks for setting me straight then. Guess there’s no need for this ice pack I’m holding to my face.

4d. Got irritated with me for getting too interactive during our bedtime routine. We lie in her bed together and read books, and the Curious George alphabet book has a line about “C is for a crab with two clamping claws,” and I tried to do a crab claw and tickle her tummy. Usually she thinks that’s funny, but I guess she was particularly tired and grumpy on this night, because she pushed me away, sighed exasperatedly and said, “Mommy, go to bed.” Nice.

4e. Has started calling me “Mom” as well as “Mommy.” It’s cute because using “Mom” makes her sound like a grown-up, but I thought I’d be Mommy for a few more years. I’m not sure I like it so much.

4f. Sang “Do-Re-Mi” in the car this morning on the way to daycare. I didn’t realize that she knew all the words, but she does – complete with holding her hand to her chest during, “me, a name I call MYSELF.” It was so cute I almost cried.

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In case you missed the drama about my website last week, here’s the short version: my website went down for 3 days, and when it finally came back online, all of my data was gone. Every last entry since I started this blog 6 years ago? Gone. So I was a tiny bit distraught, as you might imagine.

While I was freaking out, I wrote about it on Twitter, and within a few minutes, I got a response from a web hosting company called PinchHost offering to help me. They’re a new company, and didn’t have much of a proven track record that I could find online, but I appreciated how fast they responded. Especially considering that the customer service at my old (then-current) web hosting company, Globat, was always somewhat lacking. It’s basically impossible to get anyone on the phone, they take an extremely long time to respond to email support tickets, and while yes, they do have support via live chat, the techs aren’t exactly helpful. Usually the only response I get is, “We’re so sorry for your inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.” Not exactly top-notch problem-solving.

But really, my main problem with Globat is the availability. They were fine when I first signed up a few years ago, but over the past year or so, my website crashed a lot, because I seemed to always be under Denial of Service attacks by spammers. So that’s my main beef with them – if you can’t keep my website running, I’ll go host it elsewhere.

Meanwhile, during that whole incident where I had no blog entries at all? I threw a temporary WordPress blog here that you might’ve seen if you happened to click over here. On it, I mentioned that my last manual backup of my website was from May 2008, hence my panic. (So all the entries about selling our house, moving to North Carolina, the holidays, Catie’s 2nd birthday? GONE.) Then the tech from PinchHost – the same guy who responded to me on Twitter – left me a comment telling me that he had gone through Google’s cache of my archives and found about 100 entries from May 2008 to now, and saved them to a zip file for me to download.

Which, DUDE. I wasn’t even a customer of his, and he did all that legwork for me? Yeah ok, they’re a new company, but with that type of customer service, I’ll take a chance on them. So I switched over yesterday, and it was basically seamless. I might be imagining it, but my website even seems to load faster now. Obviously, I am very happy with them so far.

Of course, the hard part now is cancelling my account with Globat. They’re notorious for having a crappy billing department, so I know I’m in for a fight. Example: over the past few years I’ve gotten over 100 emails from them telling me about new offers, and unless I clicked the link to opt out, they automatically charged my credit card for the upgrade, regardless of whether or not I wanted it. If I called afterward to say, “hey, you billed me for this, and I don’t want it, so give me my money back,” they’d try to hem & haw and squirm their way out of refunding me the money for a service I’m not using. So, yeah. I’ve gotta get my Don’t You Dare Try to Eff With Me, Buddy hat on and let them have it.

But the fact that I’m now basically done with them and have a cool new hosting company that actually responds to my problems promptly and seems to give a damn about my user experience? It kind of makes me feel like one of these dancers.

(If you haven’t seen that yet, you’re welcome. I’ve watched it about four times already and I smile like a moron at my computer and get all misty-eyed every time. What can I say, I’m a sucker for “The Sound of Music.”)

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Random blog note: Since I always type Cate’s name on this blog as Cate, but I almost never actually call her that in real life, henceforth I’ll be typing her name as Catie, since that’s the name she responds to, and how she refers to herself. Really, the only time I ever call her Cate is when it’s prefaced by Baby – because Baby Cate sounds like “babycakes,” and I think that’s sort of a cute nickname.
[/end random blog note]

Today, Catie and I went to the grocery store to get a few things. This particular store has free balloons for kids in the floral department, and they are a huge hit with my child. And you know, anything that makes shopping with a toddler easier is just fine with me. So we grab a balloon – or as Catie calls it, “a boon!” – and happily went about our grocery shopping.

We head out to the parking lot, and I held onto the balloon because it was windy outside. They typically anchor the balloons by tying them to a lollipop, but whoever was working there today must’ve been a moron who thought that a tiny piece of scotch tape would be enough to secure the balloon’s string to the lollipop. Bet you can tell where this story is going, huh?

I opened the driver’s side car door and pushed the balloon through to put it in the back seat, so Catie could play with it when I put her in the car. (She was still sitting in the shopping cart while I did this.) I accidentally left my (front seat! driver’s side! NOT rear passenger!) car door open, and went to start putting groceries in the trunk.

Catie suddenly started screaming and crying, “Boon! A boon!! MY BOOOOONN!!!!” She just went totally apesh*t shrieking about her balloon. I was like, what the hell, child, you just saw me put it in the car, you know it’ll be there when you get in the back seat, just like it always is, every time we get a balloon from the store. Then I finally turned around to look at her and I realized she was pointing up, and… yeah. Her pretty purple balloon was floating away into the clear blue autumn sky.

Apparently a gust of wind came through that was strong enough to rip off the Scotch tape, because the lollipop was still in the back seat, and the balloon went floating away through my open car door. By the time I saw it, it was higher than the grocery store’s rooftop and halfway across the parking lot, so there was no way I could catch it.

I calmed her down, and told her I was sorry, but that balloon had to go bye-bye, but we’d go get her another one that could come home with us. I told her to wave goodbye to the balloon, and she very sadly waved and said, “bye-bye, boon.” It was quite possibly the most pitifully sad, mournful “bye-bye” you have ever heard in your life.

As soon as I got the groceries loaded into the car, we went straight back in and got her another balloon, exactly the same color as the previous one. She was happy, and held a death grip on her balloon’s string the whole way home.

The whole incident reminded me of the comedian Brian Regan – and of course I can’t find a clip of this on YouTube. He has a joke about how kids lose their minds when they lose a balloon, and adults can’t understand their distress because there’s nothing comparable for an adult. He said to imagine if you took out your wallet and it started to float away. “Calm down, it’s just a wallet, we’ll get you another one.” “I don’t want another one, I want that one! That one was mine!” Yeah. It’s sorta just like that.

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* Linda’s getting married tomorrow! And can I just say, I am so glad she’s a July bride and not August, because this is going to be one of the last times I get to see most of my favorite Seattle people in one place.

* Guess who’s pregnant? Woo-hoo, more baby cousins!

* Lizardbreath’s baby girl won’t sleep. Moms of toddlers (or former toddlers): head over and give whatever advice you’ve got.

Oh, and thank you Angie for telling me about FailBlog. This made me laugh so hard last night that I snarfed milk out of my nose while I was eating a bowl of cereal.

see more pwn and owned pictures

(Apparently my blog columns are too narrow because the whole picture won’t fit there – same problem I have with embedded YouTube videos. Oh well, you get the idea.)

Happy weekend, everybody.

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I try not to write about my dreams too often, because I figure it’s probably really boring for other people to read. And honestly, I have no idea if anyone is going to think that this is funny other than me. But here goes.

Sunday afternoon, Cate and I took a nap together in my bed. (Dave is totally going to call me out for saying “my bed” instead of “our bed,” because I say “my” in reference to lots of things that technically belong to both of us. But he wasn’t there, so in this case, use of the word “our” makes it sound like the bed belongs to Cate and me, and it’s just confusing. Whatever. We were in the king-size bed in the master bedroom. Sufficiently overexplained? I thought so.)

In the dream, we lived in this enormous old mansion. It was at least four stories tall, and had all sorts of weird hidden staircases and rooms in strange places. Sort of like the Winchester Mystery House, I guess. I knew it was haunted, but I knew where the haunted areas were, so we just stayed out of those parts of the house, and figured we were ok.

Oh, random aside: Dave wasn’t Dave in the dream. The guy playing the role of my husband looked familiar, and I knew his voice, but I couldn’t place him. Finally it clicked and I said (in the dream), “Oh hey, look, I’m married to movie star Keanu Reeves!” Not just Keanu Reeves, but Movie Star Keanu Reeves. Like his middle name is Keanu. It was just kinda funny, is all I’m saying.

Anyway, at some point I had to go into one of the haunted parts of the house. No reason why, just dream logic, I guess. I left Cate with my brother and sister because my husband Keanu was off doing lord-knows-what. I walked into the haunted room, and suddenly I felt something pressing against my back and I felt a hand grab ahold of my hair. I had a split-second of absolute terror, where I was convinced that the ghosts had gotten me…

Then I woke up. And I realized that what I felt in my back were Cate’s feet, and she was the one pulling my hair, trying to wake me up. Yeah, it’s weird, I know. It was just funny/strange to go from feeling completely petrified to waking up and realizing that, in fact, the “ghost” is your 11 month-old child who has declared that naptime is officially over.

Oh, and while we’re talking about dreams, I also keep having lots of childbirth dreams lately, but I think that’s because Cate’s first birthday is coming up later this month. You know, big milestone thing, the brain starts thinking about what was going on this time last year, etc. Still, I wish that my subconscious would knock it off, because they’re kinda freaking me out.

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Time for a little vote.

What do you think, does she look more like Pebbles from the Flintstones or a Yorkshire terrier?

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