kindness and karma week- WINNER WINNER CHICKEN DINNER!

let's skip straight to what you really care about and save the rambling for later:

congratulations to Sarah from Ten Pennies

and

Penelope from Single Mom Adventures

that's right, i picked TWO winners.  because i can do that if i want to.  i'll be contacting you via email to get some information from you.

now now, before you get all up in arms, the winners were chosen by random.org and not by me.  and i promise i'll give you another chance in the near future.

i want to thank everyone for your participation in kindness and karma week.  it was a random idea, a shot in the dark, and i'm thrilled that you all got in on the action.  it might have been a little weird to be sitting around telling myself how awesome i am without you there.  several times already in the past week i've felt a bad mood coming on and stopped, literally stopped, and thought about everything we talked about.  taking control, changing your mood.  it's hard, but i think it's working.  things are better.

i loved hearing what you love about yourselves.  sometimes i was like, "YES, i love that about you TOO!" and sometimes i was like, "WHOA! i had no idea!  that's awesome!" ...because i can't see if you have nice butts or hands.  the computer is tricky like that.

remember, you are loved and cherished by someone else.  you are important.

and most importantly, of course, you are loved by me.

... i know that's what you were really worried about.

formspringer- telling a joke.

couplemorehours asked on formspring:  Tell me a joke!

well, i only know one joke.  ...are you sure you're ready for this?

three hookers were sitting in a bar.  they were passing the time, having some drinks and talking shop as ladies of the night are wont to do when the hours pass between the men in and out of their, uh, lives.  in between discussing their many creams and pills and rates and techniques, they started to argue about who was the loosest.

"oh, i'm definitely the loosest," said the first hooker, "i can fit my entire fist up my dingo." and she beamed with pride.  the other ladies snorted over their respective drinks.

the second hooker opened her gap-toothed maw into a hideous grin. "you're not the loosest!  you see i can fit my whole arm up into my cavern of sorrows!"  and she slammed down her mad dog.  the first hooker looked nonplussed.  she had been bested.

the third hooker had been watching their exchange quietly, biding her time.

she said nothing, and slipped over her stool.



....bad dum, dum.


formspring- ask me anything

hot hot hot

the night before last jude was extra tired.  we scooped him up and sent him to bed in his honeybear onesie and sat around watching true blood.  (which- true blood- another topic for another day, but seriously, isn't it just twilight for non-mormon grown ups? why are we not discussing this??)

at eleven, per our routine, we headed upstairs to get ready for bed and jon brought jude in to our room for his evening nightcap.  we all hung out on the bed, jude nursing and jon and i talking by the light of the pink lamp that i so desperately love.  and i kept thinking, man, jude feels awfully hot.  like, burning hot to the touch.  so i asked jon to run downstairs and get the thermometer and he grudgingly agreed.  jude's temperature read 101°!  panic.  so i took my temperature: 95.6°.  well that doesn't sound right.  so i take jon's temperature: 96°.  i take jude's temperature again: 100.6°.  basically, fuck you internet-recommended thermometer.  the thing is as temperamental as an old lady at a hair salon.  so without official numbers confirmation we could assume that jude had a fever and was hot, at least much hotter than us.

after a shout out to twitter we got him set up with a quick dose of infant motrin (not the recalled version) and a cool compress for his head and shuttled him back off to bed with the fan on and the windows open.  cut to yesterday morning- cool as a cucumber, as happy as ever, and fine all day.

we went to a scooter club cookout last night (an entirely different story about jon being missing for several hours) and when i cruised home with the jude around 7:30 we nursed and i got him ready for bed.  except- he felt hot.  again.  so i grabbed all the gear, took his temperature with that finicky thermometer 20 times again, and again, with the fever.

what's up guys? just learning how to drink some cool water out of this weird

cup with a cold rag on my head.

another round of motrin and some cool compresses and off to bed.  when he woke up for his nightcap at eleven he was back down to normal temperature.

it's not a high enough fever to worry about and it seems to go away quite easily so we're not too concerned.  the number one theory right now?  teeth.  he still doesn't have any... yet.  which brought up a great question- i've read several places that a low grade fever can accompany teething.  BUT i've also read that the fever theory is a myth.  it's sparked some interesting discussion and i've enjoyed hearing from other parents about it.  so, what has your experience been?  is the teething/fever relationship myth or reality?

Does/can teething cause a fever? (you may select more than one answer)
	yes
	no
	it's possible, but i'm suspicious
	it did for MY kid
	unsure
Free polls from Pollhost.com

leave details in the comments, please!

(reminder- today is the last day to enter the kindness and karma contest- DO IT, and tell your friends! tomorrow, the winner!)

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reader fatigue

i read an article recently that introduced me to the idea of reader fatigue- that you could actually be blogging too much and it might annoy your readers and they can never catch up, or that your posts might not be as meaningful if you post often.

first of all, i have a bone to pick with it's author, @unmarketing.  scott seems like a lovely fellow and is friends with many of the same ladies i am on the twitter.  however this blog post on blogging frequency is the first one he has written in six weeks.  honey.  sweetie.  i'm a busy girl.  if i don't see you for six weeks?  i don't really remember who you are unless you made quite an impression.  so i might be frequently futile but you are occasionally overlooked or sporadically soporific.  i know his main media tends to be the twitter and that he writes several other places as well.  truly it has nothing to do with him personally.  his post just really got all up in my hind parts and stuck a foot up my ass.  because i am that person who reads articles like "ten blogging mistakes" and "effective SEO titles (which i purposely ignore)" and "best time of the day to blog".  his article seems to be mostly targeted towards business, topical, and money-making bloggers and i'm a "personal blogger", so i know technically it's different.  but still.  it's been a few weeks now and i'm still thinking about it.  clearly it struck a chord.

i write here four to five times a week.  according loose definitions that would probably be "too much".  readers, I HOLD BACK.  you think you have reader fatigue now?  you don't know NOTHIN' on what it could be.  some days i feel like i could post multiple posts a day and i don't for fear of overwhelming you.  i write posts and save them for days when i don't have that creative itch.  i backlog posts for busy days at work and at home.

part of me wants to ask you, do i post too much?  but the other part of me doesn't care what your answer is.

dearest readers, i like to try to make this place about you- about us, together.  but it's also very much about me.  and i like to post this much.  about whatever i want.  so suck it.

xoxoxoxxoxoxoxooooo,
your grumblies

(and i'm posting this at 9am because the internet says lunch-time posts get more traffic.  YOU DON'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO, INTERNET.  YOU GET 9AM.  AND YOU'LL LIKE IT.)

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return to normalcy

after last week's events i'm more than a little glad to return to my plain ol' blogging life.  not that i didn't love love love kindness and karma week (contest! go enter!), but i was feeling all kinds of pressure to actually have, you know excellent content or something.  whereas when i write about jude and movies and dogs and taking pictures of flowers, you know, the personal stuff, i get to write whatever i want.  no pressure, no worries.  so i'm ready for a return to blogging about boring things.  sorry to you.  i pass the torch of superhuman mommyblogging on to someone else.  i'm not cut out for it.  every time i look at my feedburner and dream of fame feel free to remind me of that horrible aching pressure and i'll run back to you, my quiet little friends, with open arms and a big pile of brownies.

over the weekend my parents came to visit the dear littlest jude and we went over to the krohn conservatory and gardens.  let's be honest here: it's a plant museum.  i get this whole crazy-camera-taking-photos thing straight from my dad so he brought his camera too and we look lots of lovely pictures of flowers that will now sit inside my external hard drive doing absolutely nothing.  ready?

learning about plants and "gentle touch"

like father like daughter.

if you care to look at lovely but boring pictures of flowers and butterflies, you can check out the full set here.
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defining mama moments

in the morning last monday i drove over to jude's babysitter like i do every workday.  i parallel parked in between two cars.  i tossed my phone into the change dish and hopped out the driver's side.  i pressed the unlock button a thousand times on my way around the back to the passenger's side.  i climbed in the back of our little hatchback and unhooked the jude from his seat.

and then.  and THEN.  the tables turned.

i hefted the (large) wee jude up into my arms and ducked to step out of the back of the car when my ankle got caught on the seat belt.  time stopped.  i could see immediately that we were going to fall face first onto the pavement.  and i'm yelling in my head, "SHIT CRAP FUCK NO RAAAAAAAAAAAA!" and in the blink of an eye that felt like an eternity we were sprawled out on the concrete sidewalk, dazed and battered.

in my desperation i mostly managed to shield jude with my body.  i took the brunt of the impact and by the time he got to the ground it was more of a tiny ...thump.  he cried and screamed, more from being scared than anything else, and i laid on my back in the middle of the wet wet sidewalk and held him.

everything's ok jude, i'm here.  everything's just fine.  it was a little scary, wasn't it?

and then we went on with our day, jude no more the wiser and me, much more the band-aidier.  i was actually bleeding from quite a few places which i casually noticed much later at my desk while i was icing my elbow.

this is exactly what it means to be a mother, isn't it?  to do everything in our power to keep them from harm.  to have that flash moment before your eyes where everything doesn't turn out ok and to turn around and be the human shield.

so i guess i'm doing this right then.

(reminder! don't forget to go enter the kindness and karma surprise giveaway this week!)