Part One: Where The Heck Have I Been?
It’s been four days since I blogged, read blogs, commented on blogs, or even answered any email. I’ve dropped off the grid. I’ve gone deep underground. ROGUE BLOGGER.
What happened is this. A friend of mine who is a writer — let’s call her JellyAnn — just updated her website and asked me for any thoughts or feedback I might have. At first I just had a few suggestions about formatting and layout, and pointed out a few broken links. Then I noticed that her menuing system and navigation were all messed up and not working right, so I offered to go in there and make a few HTML fixes. Then I started to get frustrated because she was not using a style sheet or Javascript to generate her menu. Plus, her layout and graphics were dated.
So I got a little overexcited and started on a complete redesign. That was about five days ago, and I have thought of nothing else since. I have spent almost every waking hour either feeding my kids, or sending them upstairs to play so Mommy Can Code. And my oh my, have I ever enjoyed myself.
Plus, the new site looks AMAZING. It should be ready to go in a few days — I’ll post a link when it’s up so you can all oooh and aaah.
It’s been a very informative few days, personally speaking. When the Little Miss starts school in a year and a half, I feel like I should maybe start doing some work again. Like all stay-at-home moms, I dream of a job where I can work from home, work for myself, and have completely flexible hours.
I had thought of trying to do some freelance writing — magazine articles and the like — and I’ll probably still pursue that. But apparently, my mind is really cut out for website design. I loved working on the site, and I’m so proud of the results. It was actually fun, while writing anything other than blog posts feels like work.
Food for thought, anyway.
Part Two: You People Are Nuts
I cannot believe the number of people who responded to my last post about the thermostat, saying that they kept their houses at insane temperatures like 16 or 18 degrees. You people are crazy, but I really admire you. I resolve to find some footie pyjamas and turn down the thermostat at night, at the very least.
The fact that so many people seem to live quite happily with their houses at 18 degrees makes me wonder if we have some sort of insulation problem here. Our house is not very old, but I still find it drafty. Are all houses like that in Ottawa in the winter? Or should we do something about it? Our kitchen hood fan, in particular, is always freezing cold and I’ve always thought that maybe it isn’t hooked up properly.
I’m off to google kitchen hood fan installation. Saving the world, one google at a time!
As for our green bin, for those who asked, it’s full of food, paper products like tissues (allowed in Ottawa, at least, I double checked) and some food-contaminated cardboard, and a few layers of crushed up newspaper (recommended in Ottawa to prevent wet foods from freezing to the bin and preventing it from being emptied properly). I’m very interested in using newspaper to line our little bin, but I couldn’t make the origami thing work with the free papers (they’re smaller than the Citizen, which, by the way, I hear is in financial jeopardy, so we may all be out bin liners in the near future). Right now I’m using simple brown paper lunch bags to line the bin — I like this solution because the bags are smaller and I can fill one for emptying every day.
Don’t you think it’s so weird now to look at your garbage and see nothing in there but plastic? It makes me shudder now to throw away a great big bag of nothing but plastic, stuff that is going to live in the landfill for a million zillion years. Ugh. I’m wondering, does anyone have any tips on how to cut down on plastic garbage? In particular, does anyone have any creative uses for milk bags, both the little ones and the big ones? My mother used to save the little clear milk bags to use as cake decorating bags, but I don’t decorate that many cakes.
Or maybe, I could. New business idea: Turtlehead’s Website Design and Cake Decorating! It’s a winner.
Part Three: Kid Update
They’re still alive! That’s good, right?
Since school started up again, the Captain has been cranky and whiny and complains constantly that he is not getting enough to eat. Gal Smiley has been cranky and sulky and complains constantly that she hates food and never wants to eat anything ever again, ever. Little Miss Sunshine has been cranky and screamy as she is finally cutting her bottom incisors (heaven help us when she finally decides to cut a molar). So it’s the usual mayhem.
Speaking of the Little Miss…it seems we have our first sleepwalker! Just when you think you know all there is to know about parenting, the kids throw something new at you. She’s skipping her afternoon nap about half the time now. On nights when she hasn’t napped, she goes to bed and falls asleep instantly, but then an hour or two later we find her asleep on the landing, or on the floor of our room. We move her back to the bed and an hour or so later, she’s back sleeping on the floor of the landing. Often in the middle of the night, she’ll come wandering into our room — not responding to us at all when we talk to her — and she’ll lie down on our floor and go right back to sleep. Or she’ll get up and completely empty her toy bin, crying that she “can’t find it, can’t find it” and then when we put her back in the bed, she’s completely asleep again.
FREAKY.
For now we are just making sure we always have the gate closed at the top of the stairs, and keep putting her back in her bed when we find her on her travels. Hopefully this phase passes soon, because it’s weirding me out.
Part Four: Magical Mystery Project
I really hate it when bloggers are all, "Oh, I have big news, but I can't share it! So I'm just going to blog about how excited I am about this thing I can't tell you about!" However, I am totally going to go and BE THAT BLOGGER and say, we have a big project on the go around here, but Sir Monkeypants has asked that I don't blog about it right now for privacy reasons. It's filling up every free second I have, thought, that isn't devoted to website design, or pie making, or planning for a bloggy guest speaker and social evening (haven't forgotten about you, XUP!), so I likely won't be around much for a couple of weeks. But after that, all the news that's fit to print, I promise!
Now if you'll excuse me, I have a website to design. WHEE!
TurtleHead 
No worries! I’ve got quite a bit of stuff on the go, too. We might have to put the “idea” off until fall or something. March seems awfully close. I don’t know what else to comment on, except that if you can figure out a way to start your own web design business at home, you should totally do it! Sounds like a perfect solution.
Is ‘Sir Moneypants’ a Freudian slip? 🙂
I was thinking the EXACT SAME THING (OH MY GOD) about the regular garbage full of plastic. There’s too much f-ing plastic. Something has to be done about the plastic. Could somebody else please do it, because I am lazy and emotionally fragile.
(bowing at your feet) how can there NOT be a way to do website design at home? You’re doing it at home RIGHT NOW. Why do I keep shouting? Not sure. Your friend must be so happy you’re her friend.
Angus used to sleep walk, and sleep cry. It’s freaky. He doesn’t do it any more.
Your “mystery project” has my mind in overdrive!
As for milk bags, our kids’ school is collecting the outer bags – they get sent somewhere to make sleeping mats for people in third world countries. If your school isn’t collecting them you can save them for me and I’ll drop them off.
I wash out the inner bags and use them to pack sandwiches in and storage for cut up vegetables etc.
I save the inner milk bags because I have relatives who raise (and thus butcher) chickens (for themselves, not commercially). They use the milk bags to package the chickens for freezing. Admittedly, not a common use for the bags.
When I got a new furnace a couple of years ago, I started leaving the fan on all the time. (The new furnace uses a lot less electricity.) It has made a huge difference in keeping the house consistently warm. Before that, the master bedroom was the coldest place in the house all the time.
the out milk bags we use to colelct poop. no not form the jellybean but form the two cats and dog. the inner ones do find their way into the garbage unfortunately.
all of the graphic designers i work with, work from home. so i don’t see why you couldn’t do web design form home. just as allison said, you’re basically doing it now. you might need to be able to video conference if you can’t leave the house because of the kids, but it’s totally doable.
sleep walking freaks me out.
now i will have to check your blog everyday to make sure i don’t miss out on the big reveal!
take care
Well, one if you can start a business from home, then you should. It sounds ideal….
The Boy used to sit upright in the bed and laugh … it was the most freaky and bizarre thing.
Dude. If you’re having fun with that kind of thing, I totally have a website or two for you to design. I had the best of intentions to do my own site, but in the end I am a writer and not a web designer. I envy you that you can do both. So hey, a nice juicy site that’s aaaaaall yours. Think of the fun you can have playing with the “hand” theme. Alas, I can only pay in cookies, I’m afraid. They’re good cookies, though.
That’s so cool that you had so much fun with the web design! I definitely think you should look into doing more if you enjoyed it so much.
I’m awed that so many of your commenters are able to keep their houses so cool. I couldn’t do it. If I kept our house lower than 20 I would have to wear gloves inside the house to keep my hands from hurting. I know that sounds weird, but my hands get so cold so easily, even when it’s relatively warm out…everyone always comments on how freezing my hands are.
If you want to practice your web design I have a blog I have no idea how to do things to. All advice welcome.
Sleep walking freaks me out. My advice based on past experience, make sure the front door is hard to unlock.
1) I’ve been known to crank my house to 22 ( HATE being cold) – we let it drop to 18 at night. I suspect my husband tries to lower if more often.
2) My youngest sleep eats! She wakes me up, crying that she’s hungry, but she is still asleep. I’ve taken to leaving a piece of bread out for her….sometimes she takes it, sometimes not. It is freaky talking to her when she is like that.
3)I’m also exploring the work from home option. That would be ideal, wouldn’t it!
4)I don’t even know how to a blogroll – if I give you login/password, you could totes do it for me.
I’m dying to find out what the magical mystery project is!
I’m having the same reaction about the contents of my garbage these days. I use the outer milk bags to contain especially disgusting diapers, but end up throwing out the inner ones. My parents used to wash the inner bags out and use them to freeze vegetables from their garden. They’ve been reusing/recycling/composting for 40 years. I’ve felt guilty about not doing as much as they do, and the curbside composting is helping to alleviate some of that guilt.
Ask LittleSis about the milk bags. CanadiensFan#1 and his family does something to reuse them, which she just told me about last week, but I forget.
I love those types of figuring-out projects (at least when I have the time to do them!).
I’m not sure what ISFJ stands for, so I’m going to assume it’s International Shack of Flap Jacks.
– RG>
I think you would be able to do the work at home thing well. I obviously don’t know you in the real world but the fact that you’ve done so much volunteering at the school tells me enough.
Oh, I hate not knowing things! Come on … tell us! tell us! We won’t tell anyone, we promise!
Some day soon I may just have to hire you to vamp up my boring blog. You can give me a deal and use it as a portfolio piece 🙂
By the way, I never responded to the e-mail about the social evening/bloggy speaker but I would love to attend. Hopefully D2 will be agreeable to that sort of thing by the time you schedule it 🙂
On Twitter yesterday I saw #greenbinottawa mention that you can put paper coffee (Tims) cups in it! YAY.