What I did today:

1. Get up and tell youngest son to take a shower (why do I still have to tell him?)
2. Son reports that shower has no hot water. This is a known problem that I thought was fixed. Wake up my husband. He tells me he unfixed it. Huh? He climbs out of bed and goes to basement to make adjustment. Hot water returns. Shower commences.
3. I crawl back under the covers and hope that husband offers to take son to school. He doesn’t.
4. Get up, make breakfast, pack lunch, and throw on some clothes.
5. Take son to school. Grow impatient with car in front of me in drop-off line whose kid can’t seem to get it together.
6. See kids with flowers. Damn, I forgot it’s teacher appreciation day and was supposed to send flowers.
7. Return home. Eat breakfast.
8. Check and respond to a few emails.
9. Check Facebook ad results. Try to determine why it reports a $26 conversion, but no sales have occurred. Research to try to understand why Facebook lies.
10. Turn off ad, make modifications, and relaunch.
11. Realize 2nd son is still asleep. It’s 10am. Try to wake him up but he is in deep sleep. Turn on his light, open window blinds, but leave him to wake-up naturally.
12. Waste time on Facebook.
13. 2nd son finally wakes up. I make him breakfast.
14. Sign up for Shipstation trial. Test rates for actual shipments. Woah! $1.50-$2.50 more than Pirate Ship. Poke around to see if I’m missing some setting. Nope. Search through discussion boards re: Shipstation. Cancel Shipstation trial.
15. Write to Boxology to ask when they will integrate with Pirate Ship. They are the reason I was considering Shipstation.
16. Tell 2nd son to take shower.
17. Try to convince son to let me take him to Supercuts for long overdue haircut. He says no, but agrees to let me cut it so long as I leave it longer in back.
18. Cut sons hair. Now he has a mullet. Face palm. Cleanup lots of hair.
19. Friend calls. While talking I realize there’s an ant infestation in living room. They have found my water bottle. Ugh!
20. Finish cleaning up up ants and make plans to get together tomorrow.
21. Take shower and get dressed. Ants make me feel dirty.
22. Ow, knee is hurting a lot. Contemplate how many years before I will need knee surgery (seems to run in my family).
23. Order groceries online for late afternoon pickup. I don’t want to walk around grocery store.
24. Make and eat lunch.
25. Pack up and herd kid out the door to my office/studio.
26. Get kid started on Kahn Academy math.
27. Finally drink my coffee.
28. Check bank account balances and transfer money to cover rent check.
29. Try to find subscriptions in PayPal. Takes a long time to find. Need to make sure that Elegant Themes is not going to renew. It says that I already cancelled it. I thought so, so why are they still sending me a renewal notice?
30. Print shipping labels for today’s orders. Marvel at how much simpler Pirate Ship is than Shipstation.
31. Print out instructions and inserts for dragon kits and dream catcher kits.
32. Pack and prep boxes for shipping.
33. Finish breaking down several dozen boxes.
34. Water plants.
35. Take out trash and recycling.
36. Load some flattened boxes in my car to use for Goodwill stuff at home.
37. Son is frustrated with fractions and on the brink of tears. Sit down to walk him through several problems.
38. Look through selection of book report templates and pick out one.
39. Explain to son how to do his book report.
40. Look through Outschool classes and find the next writing class for son to start tomorrow.
41. Write out rent check.
42. Go pick up 1st son from school.
43. Go to post office to drop off packages and rent check.
44. Come home. Relax for a little bit and waste time on Facebook.
45. Go pickup groceries and return home.
46. Unpack and put away groceries.
47. Make and serve dinner.
48. Empty dishwasher and do dishes.
49. Empty the dryer and sort laundry without folding.
50. Darn it … just realized that store forgot to give me my rotisserie chicken! Also didn’t get receipt. Not surprised really. Store employee was frazzled. Probably crazy busy due to everyone panicking about Coronavirus.
51. Restart load of laundry that I forgot to put in dryer as it smells funky.
52. Put on pajamas, get a beverage, and sit down to watch The Good Doctor.
53. Feel odd urge to make list of today’s activities.
54. Login to blog that I haven’t used in years. A-ha, it’s the website that has been sending me so much spam lately.
55. Delete spam messages. Apply software updates.
56. Finally ready to write. What is this weird interface? Oh yeah … Gutenberg. I turned it off on all my other WordPress sites. Wait, how do I turn it off? Hunt around for settings, then remember that it’s a plugin. Install. All better.
57. Finally … writing.
58. Kids finally getting ready for bed. Fantasizing about sneaking in while son is asleep tonight and fixing the mullet.

My five year old son has a peanut allergy. That is known. And we didn’t find out through a scary near death experience like so many families. Actually, I suspected a milk allergy. With years of acid reflux, night-time coughs/congestion, and occasional asthma like symptoms, I took him to an allergist for skin testing at age 3. I’d had him tested by blood test as a baby during a particularly bad phase where he was vomiting every single night around midnight. It came back negative, and a two week challenge where we removed all dairy showed no change. Still, there’s a family history of dairy allergy (actual immune response, not just lactose intolerance). So not out of the realm of possibility.

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My neighboring town has already lit the town Christmas tree. It’s November 7th. This has really got to stop! Don’t get me wrong, I love Christmas – I decorate more than the average household, switch my iTunes playlists to my favorite holiday albums (John Denver and Peter, Paul, and Mary), and generally enjoy Christmas shopping and baking. But really, there is a time and a place for Christmas and that time is December. And that’s all!

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My six year old rarely sits still. It’s typical for him to be rocking in his seat, jumping on furniture, or just fidgeting. I didn’t believe in ADHD before he came along. I always believed it was just a label that society slapped on people who didn’t conform – people who learned and behaved differently. I thought of it more as a personality type than a disorder. I’m ADD too (without the H) according to a shrink I saw 15 years ago. She put me on meds for a time, but I didn’t notice any difference. I went off them and continued on with my life.

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I’m trying to remember when I first joined Meetup.com. I think it was around 2009, but not certain. For those of you who aren’t familiar, Meetup.com is a website where people with mutual interests join groups. But unlike other social networks, the intent is to arrange in person gatherings, rather than just chat or interact online. I do remember one of the first Meetups I attended was the Santa Cruz WordPress Meetup. I was so intimidated by the other participants who seemed to be so knowledgeable – I felt like a dork who didn’t belong, and would duck out at the end of the meeting, hoping nobody would talk to me.

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I just got back from a two day conference in San Francisco. As a freelancer, I don’t get to go to many conferences since my company (me) won’t pay for them. A typical tech conference runs $2k plus airfare, hotel, transportation, and meals – it could easily add up to $5k. No thanks. If I had that kind of extra money, I’d rather buy new living room furniture that doesn’t have milk stains and smell like dirty socks.

This one had a low price tag though, and was close enough to home that I could skip the airfare. And it would give me a good excuse to get away from the kids for a few days (though not sure why I feel that I need an excuse – every profession should get an occasional break, even parenting).

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Lately I’ve become painfully aware why so many new mom’s chop their long hair in favor of something more manageable. I’ve lost count of the number of times that Brennan has barfed in mine in recent weeks, or that his drool covered fingers have become tangled in my hair. I’ve had knots that I’ve almost had to cut out. Putting my hair back in a clip has been an exercise in futility as well. Ashton thinks it’s a very fun game to pull the clip from Mommy’s hair (and painfully, my hair along with it). Then he will either proceed to break the teeth off the clip, or hide it altogether. Sure I could just pull it back in a ponytail holder, but I stopped thinking that ponytails looked good around middle school.

So… yesterday for my birthday I decided to treat myself to a GOOD haircut and professional color. I’ve only had GOOD haircuts about 4 times in my life (when I say GOOD, I mean expensive), and never had my hair colored by a pro (though I’ve used the box stuff for years). The rest of the time it’s been Supercuts or something similar. In theory, the haircut quality should go up as the price goes up. Unfortunately, this has not been the case for any of my salon experiences.

I came prepared with some photos of a few styles I liked, that were realistic for my hair type and limited ability to style it (both lack of time and lack of abillity). I was looking for a compromise between the long hair I desired, and the short no-style dos that scream “mommy”. I was pleasantly optimistic at the start of my styling session, because I felt like the stylist really listened to what I wanted and asked good questions.

In the end I got a decent haircut. Unfortunately it looks nearly the same as  what I normally get at Supercuts, even though it was clear that the technique and skill of the stylist were of much higher caliper. My big complaint is the hair color. I told the stylist I wanted a strawberry blonde. Not red, not anything else. It seems that they didn’t really have the color in their collection that I wanted and she talked me into something else that made logical sense. She dyed the base color to almost match my natural color (a dirty blonde, almost light brown) except a little warmer. This way I wouldn’t be a slave to the six week touchups as my roots grow out, because they would blend. She then applied a highlight color that was as close to strawberry blonde is they had. I didn’t realize that she was also applying a third color.

The end result is that I have the almost strawberry blonde near my roots, which will not blend with my natural hair color as the roots grow out. This fades into the brownish color, that becomes darker as it reaches the tips of my hair, making my hair look burnt at the ends. Then there are some streaks of blonde framing my face, but I think it looks like white/grey hair.

So, the end result is that I now have hair that looks dirty even when it’s clean. And though it’s short enough to miss the flow of spit-up during over the shoulder burp sessions, there’s still plenty to be grabbed by gooey baby hands.

Looks like I’ll have to live with this for a while though. At $160 not counting tip, I’ve exhausted my normal hair budget for an entire year.

Ashton discovered his tongue and sticks it out at us. Sometimes unprovoked, and sometimes mimicing us. And he reaches out and tries to grab my tongue when I stick it out.

Daddy thinks he should be a baby model. This photo just might convince an agent.