Call For Topics

I have had fun writing poems about motherhood lately.

Send me your suggestions for topics. I had one on Twitter last week that suggested diapers and dishes...both from the same person, but separate suggestions...so naturally I combined them.

What other topics should I make "pretty" through poetry?

Etsy Greetings Carnival Giveaway

I'm participating in the Etsy Greetings Team Carnival this week! For those who have never heard of Etsy, or Etsy Greetings, Etsy is a site similar to Ebay where people like me can sell handmade and vintage items. Etsy Greetings is a group of people who have shops on Etsy that sell greeting cards.

So this week you can enter to win some handmade goodies at participating Etsy Greetings Team member blogs or directly in their shops.


What can you win here?


Sentimental Journey is more than just greeting cards, although cards make up the majority of the inventory, so I'm giving away something new that I haven't even offered in my shop yet!



This is an upcycled composition notebook. It's my first one, so there was a little bit of a learning curve, but I think it turned out pretty good. I'll be making more and they'll debut in my shop in a few days/weeks (whenever I get around to it!).


I'm also giving away 3 of my cards, type and style to be determined. Maybe I'll let the winner influence my choice.


Here's how you win and the rules/regulations and such:


1. For one entry, please leave a comment. You can comment anything except just "enter me." Tell me a joke, tell me how cute my kids are, tell me how much you love my blog, link to your favorite YouTube video or suggest songs for my iPod. I don't care what you comment, but make it a real comment and not just "I'd love to win."


2. For another entry (and to see examples of the cards you could win) visit my etsy shop (http://sentimentaljourney.etsy.com/) pick at least one item and mark it as a favorite. Then come back here and leave another comment with your etsy username and the item that you marked.


3. You can earn a third entry by subscribing to my blog, and leaving another comment letting me know you've subscribed. If you're already a subscriber, that counts. Leave another comment to let me know.


4. This giveaway is open to those with US and Canadian addresses. Please make sure that you leave an email address that I can contact you at if you win, or if you have a blog that your email address is easily found.


5. I will stop taking entries on Friday November 21st at noon CST.


Good luck!

Now head to the Etsy Greetings blog and enter the rest of the giveaways!

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P.S. I noticed since I bought my new domain that my Technorati ranking tanked. If you've linked to me, could you please, pretty please update your links? I'd appreciate it immensely.

Things

There are people who find no value in holding on to items and trinkets as remembrances. They toss greeting cards as soon as they're read. They donate their kids' clothes as soon as they're outgrown. They know that the thing; the memento; is not the memory or the person.

I am not one of those people. This has been cause for much consternation for my husband over the years. He's learned to ask about everything before he throws it away. Really? You want to keep the empty butter tub? He'll usually shrug and put it back where he found the thing, muttering as he goes about his business of trying to keep the house from becoming one of those places where people have things piled to the ceiling.

Okay, it's not that bad. But I do like to keep things. You never know when you're going to need an empty plastic tub for the kids to mix paint in, or to fill with water for them to clean their brushes. No, I don't have any empty butter tubs laying around right now. I'm using that as a hypothetical example.

But these are just the things that I think I might have a use for in the future. Those things, once I see there really isn't any need to keep them, I am able to part with pretty easily.

It's the mementos that really get me. And everything can become a memento it seems. I'm cleaning and reorganizing our basement and I came across some white paper streamers that I had stuck on a shelf. Really, it's just paper but I picked it up on the way out from the Blue Man Group concert so I kept it. I don't know what I'm planning to do with it. I imagine I'll just move it from place to place in our basement over the years until my kids find it when I'm gone. They'll shake their heads at each other and chuckle. Mom saved everything didn't she? they'll say as they toss it in the overflowing garbage can.

I keep some things simply because they were given to me by family members. I no longer use or display the thing, but I can't bring myself to get rid of it.

We're also reorganizing our bedroom to try to make room for D's crib. While dusting I found proof that I haven't dusted in there in a loooooong time. I found a prescription bottle with 7 pills in it. It was oxycodone from when K was born. Yes, more than four years ago.

What is wrong with me? Is there a pill I can take that will make me stop saving things? Gah!

Thanks!

Well, I don't know what I did (or didn't do) but it seems that Technorati has decided that my blog has some authority after all, and I've heard from some people that my blog is loading better than it was. All I took off was the blog roll, and the blogger chicks blog roll. I have a hunch it might have been the blogger chicks thing that was causing problems, but who knows.

Anyway, thanks to Bikini (I feel weird calling you that, but I don't want to out your name if you don't want it "outed!") for looking at my template and declaring it to look okay. And thanks for the other offers to look at this little blog. Mwah!

I'm satisfied for now that it's working okay I guess. It still does some funky things on loading, but I don't know if it's my site specifically, or Blogger that has the issues.

I also got my blogroll (or Zebra Roll) page all updated...so check it out and make sure I have you on there! (It's over there under the contact me section because I didn't know where to put it!)

Help? Please?

I know I asked for help on this before but I heard crickets for all the response I got.

Perhaps if I take it up a notch to begging and pleading someone will take pity on me.

My blog is f'ed up. Blogger won't even let me edit my template layout anymore except on every 300th try.

A few people have told me that my blog crashes their computers. Others have said it takes forever to load. Now, it is even taking forever for it to load for me ON BROADBAND.

I took some of the stuff off of my sidebar in a weak attempt to make it load faster. Yeah. Useless. Didn't help a bit.

There's errors. Lots of them I suspect, since Technorati hasn't listed me with any authority since I started looking at Technorati...and I know that at least 3 people have linked to me over the almost 2 years of blogging.

I don't know xml or whatever the "F" it is called that you're supposed to use, so I have no idea how to fix these errors. And how did they get there anyway? It's not like I'm in there playing html roulette.

If I don't get the errors fixed somehow I'm thinking that I'll need to just scrap this blog and start over.

So. Help? Anyone?

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Oh and please read the post below this one. I kind of liked how it turned out and it's not as whiny and blathering as this one.

K and the potty are not friends

So here it is, the post I told myself I would not write. The post where I confess that I’m stressing about that-which-I-told-myself-I-would-not-stress-about.

You see, I stressed about my daughter learning to use the potty. It seemed like all of her peers had mastered the use of the potty. I knew that my daughter was just as brilliant as the other kids and wondered what I was doing wrong that she wasn’t “trained” yet. The moment I stopped stressing, she used the potty consistently to pee.

It’s the poop. Poop is another story altogether.

M wouldn’t poop in the potty. She finds the whole process distasteful.

Even as an infant she was a home-pooper. No matter how long we were out of the house on errands, fun, whatever, she would wait and poop the moment we got home. More than once, in anticipation of leaving the house, she would have an explosive, outfit-changing, poop just to get the business done quickly before we left for the day.

However, when it came time to poop in the potty, she refused completely. She simply didn’t poop for days. Then, when the pressure got to be too much, she’d poop a baseball. Not even kidding. It was amazing that she could get something that size out of her little butt.

I’m certain that I contributed to her poop anxiety. As I said, I was stressed about her learning to use the potty. I know that I put pressure on her. With her independent spirit, it should have come as no surprise to me that she showed me that I had no control over her toileting.

So here I am. Wanting K to use the potty, trying to be encouraging and not pressuring him, but getting slightly sick each time I have to change his pull-up. Let’s face it, preschooler poop is not the same as baby poop.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if he were a once-a-day pooper. K is a three-to-five time a day pooper. Of course as an infant it was sometimes up to 8 times a day so he’s really cut back.

Honestly, I’d like a month or two off from changing poopie pants.

I have had the talk with him:

K, it’s time. You’re a big boy and it’s time to use the potty for pee pee AND for pooping.

Okay, he’ll answer. Usually he will poop in his pull-up approximately 5 minutes later.

I’ve put him in big boy underwear. He’s been able to keep it dry, but he will even poop on Lightening McQueen. I don’t particularly care to spend my days washing poop out of underwear again.

I’ve tried bribes, promises of new and exciting toys, swimming lessons. Nothing is worth the hassle of not pooping in his drawers.

I know everyone says that no one goes to college wearing diapers, but seriously, I’m starting to wonder.

I put him in the car to go somewhere and sniff something unpleasant.

Did you poop K?

No.

What’s that smell then?

So, I ask of you, oh wise Internet, what can I do? Am I destined to have 2 kids in diapers again?

Poop. You’re soooo not my friend.

Friends

About a year ago, I wrote a very whiny post about not having any friends. It was a lie of sorts, because I regularly had contact with women who could technically be considered friends. However, my "friend" standard hadn't really been met at the time.

I'm so lucky to be able to say that I have friends now. I'm not going to identify them online, but I'm sure they know who they are.

These women have saved my sanity more often than they know. Now, our kids will be off to Kindergarten (mine, already...others in September...others will be schooled at home). I fear that we will lose touch and that our parenting and friend bonds will fade.

I picked up the August 2007 issue of Better Homes and Gardens at the dollar store (Love getting magazines there!) and found and article about "healing friendships" that resonated with me.

The article has the statistics (we all know that you can find a statistic for almost anything can't we?) that made me so happy to be able to say I have friends.

One landmark study of nearly 7000 residents in Alameda County, California, found that women who spent time with friends five or more times a month were less likely to die over the nine-year-follow-up period of the study. A second study, conducted at Mercy Medical Center in Maryland, revealed that men and women who had at least 10 friends were half as likely to have health challenges and disabilities that interfered with their daily lives as those who had only two friends.

I'm not sure that I have 10 friends, but I'm infinitely grateful for the 5 (in real life) that I feel like I can call for anything, anytime, and if they can possibly help me they will.

The article in BHG also had a sidebar about The New Backyard Fence. It related the reality of the Internet as a new connection mechanism. It told of the number of people who felt "very close" (23) to someone online and the number who felt "somewhat close" (27) to someone online. Seriously, the blogosphere and miscellaneous bulletin boards really do become "friends" to many. I'd say that I have several online "friends" that I have never met in real life. The best part of this sidebar gave me hope. What's more, instead of the popular image of a lonely person hunkered down in front of a screen, the Pew study found that those who make contact online are 50 percent more likely to have in-person contacts as well, than those who never touch a computer. Computers, it seems, are simply another way to make even more friends.

I'm convinced that this is the phenomenon that is keeping Rachael at Life with Hannah and Lily going. She has hundreds of new online friends to join her real friends to help her through her nightmare.

My friends have helped me in ways that they don't know. I'm sure that they don't. I can only hope that I have helped in the same way.

From the article again: "Our biology likes positive relationships," says psychologist Teresa Seeman, Ph.D., associate chief of geriatric research at the UCLA School of Medicine. "We're still trying to unravel why this happens. Among younger adults, [younger is not quantified in the story] it's the spouse who seems to have the biggest effect. But as you age, that doesn't seem to be as true. It's your friends."

I think I'll try to maintain all relationships, just to be safe. And because I rather like my husband...and my friends.

I have to say thank you to my husband AND all my friends, whether in real life or online. You've added much color to my life, and it is much-appreciated.

I'm trying to update

So if things are "F'ed" up for a bit I apologize. Please overlook my inadequacies as a blogger. In some ways I wish I hadn't blogged until the Blogger upgrades but we'll see if I can figure it all out...

Help?

It turns out my Technorati "authority" is zero because my blog has multiple html, etc errors. I didn't think I'd done anything unusual, but apparently I have. Anyone know how to fix it?