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...the life, trials and smiles of CamiKaos and family...

for the love of my laptop

July 1st, 2009
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07/08 The day I got my Mac

I was thinking moments ago as I picked up my laptop in one hand and wandered into the next room with it, about the time before the laptop.  Not so much historically before the laptop but more personally.  I recall having only one computer in the house as a teenager.  We didn’t have a computer at all when I was a kid, unless you count our Atari or that “computer” that my brother played Robin Hood on until he spilled Grape Soda on it.

I remember when I got my first laptop, it wasn’t too long ago.  I’d laid my hands on laptops hundreds of times, but until I was married, with a kid and had moved into this house I did not have one of my own.  Mike had one that I used while I was pregnant.  It was enormous and weighed like 20 pounds.  The fan was loud and always on and it would get hot to the touch within 20 minutes of use… but since I spent the better part of those 8 months in bed, even that laptop was a luxury.

When I picked up my laptop this morning though, as I was writing something and referencing 3 other things, my mind went back to writing reports and having to move my work location long ago… before the laptop.  Even if I had to move 10 feet away it was a huge struggle to pack up books and notebooks, pens and whatever else I was using.  If I was using a computer it wasn’t a pain in the ass it was just impossible.

Sometimes I’m a little sad that we never caught up to the Jetsons, that we don’t have transporters or holodecks, but then I think about just how recently the light bulb was invented in the grand scheme of things and I clutch my laptop and iPhone to my breast and sing them sweet praises…

I mean it… I really love my laptop.

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I may have eaten a bug

June 27th, 2009

I may have eaten a bug… maybe… possibly… but probably not.

I made a lovely dinner tonight, one of the house favorites.  Rice, zucchini, mushrooms and tofu.  They all get cooked up separately and then we pile them on our plate in any configuration we want.  Plus I make a ginger sauce that’s pretty much the end all be all of ginger sauce.  Actually I usually make that meal as an excuse to have the ginger sauce so in the future I should list the ginger sauce first.

Now that we’ve gotten that over with I’ll move on.  It’s been an exceptionally long kind of day.  One of those days that’s supposed to be a lazy family day and somehow turns into a crazy family day where no one feels quite right about anything and the Tricaster isn’t doing what it’s supposed to and the cats are acting like there’s a squirrel in the house but you know there isn’t.  Is just my family that this happens to?

It’s also been one of those parenting fail days.  Every time I try to work on something K does something in an attempt to defeat me.  Add whining, grunting, running and jumping like a mad jungle child that’s never seen a Kleenex, socks or cold water from the fridge.  I may have snapped a time or 4.  Or 7.  Fine maybe 10 times… but she’s gone really off the wall today.

So towards the end of it all, after we worked and laughed and played and worked and snapped and moaned and maybe possibly screamed, but into a pillow to muffle those screams of frustration, I made dinner.  That dinner that I mentioned at the very beginning of this post.  There was much rejoicing, everyone loves that dinner except for the cats who could care less because there’s no meat or dairy products involved… and that’s all the better for us because the cats aren’t congregating at K’s feet waiting for her to drop something.

So as I said the dinner has been made and it smells terrific and I can’t wait to eat it.  We let K decide where to eat thinking that would keep her from complaining that we were stuck inside on a lovely day or outside when she’d rather be inside… she chose to eat on our little patio outside.  Lovely.  I love to hang out on my little front patio.  It makes me happy to look out on the neighborhood I love so much.  So we’re sitting out there and she’s complaining about being outside because “OH MY GAW THERE ARE BUGS!!!” and I’m trying to find that calm center.  I know it’s in there somewhere.  Maybe between the lungs and stomach and kidneys… that soft gooey calm center I have, somewhere.

Suddenly the bugs aren’t a minor nuisance… suddenly she declares loudly that there is a BUG a DEAD bug on her plate and she is not going to eat it.  Any of it.  Ever.  She goes completely ape shit bananas and cries and screams and hollers about this bug, this DEAD BUG on her tofu.

Oh calm center… please come to me.  I need you now more than ever.

“It’s not a bug!” I snap after looking at her plate, digging around in her rice and tofu trying to find it… I find NOTHING.

She insists that it is, that it’s there.  And that it’s a little black and white spider, and she knows that for a fact because it had 8 legs.

EIGHT LEGS DEAD BUG OMG I’M GOING TO DIE!!!

I told her to go get ready for bed.  She said maybe I could look one more time.  She wanted another plate of food…  so I looked and I looked and finally on the back of a piece of tofu I found something that I’m pretty sure was garlic frayed out with tentacle looking things clinging to the tofu.  I gave her the briefest glimpse of it and said “Is this it”

“YES!!!” she cried.

I popped the tofu in my mouth, chewed once and swallowed before telling her that I do not eat bugs.

“Now go finish your dinner” I said giving her back her plate.

Let’s be clear on something… the thing on that tofu?  Well I say there’s a 50-50 shot it was garlic…

I may have eaten a bug… maybe… possibly… but it doesn’t really matter because it bought me about 30 seconds of peace as she started at me with a mix of awe and wonder.

Those 30 seconds were golden.

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all fun all day… and it’ll all end in tears

June 25th, 2009

Today is all about the fun.  About the good times.  How much awesome stuff can K and I pack into one afternoon without leaving the house.  Those are the two most important parts of the day… FUN and NOT LEAVING THE HOUSE.

In a little over an hour I’ll take her to Music Camp for a couple of hours where she will play, sing and dance with friends and the music teacher from her school.  That’s the only outing there will be today, and with good reason.

When I pick her up at noon she and I will giggle and sing and hurry home through the lovely tree lined streets of our neighborhood.  We’ll come inside and make fresh pizza because that is awesome fun.  We’ll watch a movie of our choosing and when that’s over we’ll read books, sing songs, play puzzles and probably play dress up (which will result in me looking like a gypsy fortune teller… it always does).

And then at some point the carefully constructed veil will be shredded and her tears will flow hot and heavy down her face, soaking my chest and shoulder as her tiny frame sobs with abandon.

Today, Nana flew home.

As I type this she’s probably in Denver waiting for her next flight.  K got up at 4:40 AM to say goodbye to her.  We sat with her at the dining table and laughed and talked and then there were hugs and kisses goodbye.  Mike drove her to the airport and then I took K in my room to curl up.  We read a couple of chapters of a book (just like bedtime) and then snuggled into my huge bed with fluffy blankets and pillows and tried to go to sleep.

Every time I started to drift away to the land of dreams she had something to say.  She couldn’t sleep. Her stomach hurt.  Could she have a drink of water?  Was it time to get up?

Before I knew it Mike was home from the airport and my mom’s flight was in the air.  When K asked me if she could go watch TV I said yeah, sure, of course you can.  Mike got ready for work and I went back to sleep.  The first thing I remembered when I woke up was K’s question last night.  A favor she asked me right before she went to sleep…

“Mama, can we just play tomorrow and not talk about it?  That Nana went home?”

Of course.  We don’t have to talk about it…  until she starts to cry and tell me how unfair the world is.  But until that happens it’s going to be all fun all day.

My bet is it happens before dinner.

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Posted in family, k, love, mommified

grand ideas are just that…

June 23rd, 2009

I had a grand idea of sitting down in my quiet place sipping an ice tea and writing a long lovely blog post that would bring great joy (or possibly sorrow or total apathy) to the masses.  That post?  Is totally not in the cards for today.  It started out alright, I woke up to Mike kissing me goodbye on his way to work, got K up and ready for music camp, had a lovely walk in the beautiful weather and then a longer walk to the grocery store for Chicken & Dumpling supplies (yes I know it’s going to be hot today but who cares… I can make chicken and dumplings any time I want to…) and some salami for my mom to take home to my dad (yes they can get salami in the Midwest but not my dad’s favorite brand of salami).

I remembered that a friend was supposed to come over for lunch to say farewell to my mom and realized that my house is still a totally wreck from all the insanity that was last week.  Then my brother called and said he was coming over and I said “Hey why don’t you guys join us for dinner” and they said yes and then I said:

“OH SHIT!!!  I have to go pick K up in like, 20 minutes!!”  and the sound of the pizza dough mixing in the bread maker whirred behind me as I rushed to try to do things and then I found myself here in front of the computer trying to pound out that awesome post that is never going to happen when I have summer vacation to contend with.

Oh for the lazy days of summer….  are they just a myth?  We’ll try again next week when the house is quiet and it’s just K and I… unless there’s a holiday to get ready for next weekend or something… but that’s highly unlikely.  Right?

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thank goodness CamiKaos isn’t a movie critic…

June 21st, 2009

For Fathers Day today we decided, as a family, to go see Night At The Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.  If I were a movie critic I would tell you what I thought of the movie -that it was a fun romp through a world that my family enjoyed visiting in the past and we were happy to visit it again… but it’s a sequel so even though we really enjoyed it and will certainly see it again… it’s plot is thinner than the last and they just tried to give us more of what we enjoyed in the last one… monkey business- but since I’m not a movie critic I’m going to tell you that.  What I am inclined to tell you is about the rest of our movie going experience.

But first I should tell you that in our house Fathers day is actually called #CrankyDadDay and as such Mike bitched (and loudly) about each and everything that occurred until we got home at the end of the trip with a lovely bottle Nebbiolo and pizza fixings.

When we decided to go to the movie it was with the knowledge that the one movie theater we actually like (The Moreland Theater, an independently owned theater on SE Milwaukie) was not playing the movie we wanted to see.  And that the other movie theater that Mike is WILLING to SOMETIMES OCCASIONALLY go to was playing it at 10:05 on the regular screen or in the IMAX theater.  IMAX equals big bucks but there was no way we were getting there by 10 so…  It was nearly $60  for the 4 of us (Mike, My mom, K and I) to get in.  And my mom’s ticket and K’s ticket were both discounted due to age.   And we had to wait in line for more than 10 minutes just to buy the fricken tickets.

Did I mention we got there early?  We got there early.

When we got inside we had to stand in the concession line (because we are not lawbreakers who smuggle in our own snacks and drinks) for 20 mother fricken minutes.  20 minutes for hugely overpriced stuff, but we were already going to the damned movie so WTF?  We got overpriced crap to snack on.  2 sodas, 1 icee, a popcorn, a pretzel and nachos.  For 4 people?  That’s not that much?  I had a pretzle & a drink, Nana had nachos & a drink and K and Mike shared popcorn and a drink.  I think it was more than 30 fuckin dollars but I can’t be sure because even though we asked the increcibly slow moving girl working the counter for a receipt we realized she never gave us one.  FRICK.

But it was time for the movie to start so by the time we had our food we had to RUSH to the theater even though we got there early.  RUSH.  and I had to go to the bathroom…

We’d sent my mom in to secure seats and she got us some nice ones way up high in back but in the 20+ minutes she was sitting there people started sitting on either side of her so we would have had to file Mike, K and I past a ton of people.  I found some seats just as good on an isle and made her come out and join us so I could run to the bathroom and pee…

At this point my bitching ceases to be the fault of the theater except for the incredibly poor and slow service setting us way back on time.  The previews were playing, as my mom was going to sit down she knocked my soda (which I am not supposed to be drinking but that I got as a special treat) out of the cup holder and onto the floor spilling it everywhere.  I said FUCK under my breath and she apologized and I said no problem.  Then I turned to K and said “I”m going to the bathroom, do you need to go?”  She said no.  “No I don’t need to go!”  She was pissed that I asked, she was indignant at the accusation she might need to pee… so I bolted to the bathroom, went into the first stall, pissed like a race horse,  washed my hands and ran back to the theater.  As I walked up to our seats and tried to maneuver around the sticky wet soda spill to get in my seat the movie was just about to start… Mike looked at me and said “K needs to go to the bathroom.”

WhatthemotherfuckinghellomgImgoingtofuckinghaveatantrum!!!

Fine.  I took K to the bathroom but I gave her the evil glare and then told her in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that when I ask her if she needs to go to the bathroom she will tell me YES if she has to go and not wait 2 FUCKING MINUTES (no I did not actually say FUCKING to her but I thought it very loudly) to ask to go to the bathroom.

We got back into the movie just as the beginning credits were done and then snuggled and happily watched the movie that we paid 90 dollars for the 4 of us to see.

*Big Deep Breath*

This is why we almost exclusively see movies at the Moreland Theater by our house or at another independent theater… or we get movies from Netflix.  I love movies. I do.  I love them.

WE LOVE MOVIES

But we hate going to the movies unless we can go to a cool little independent place without crazy flashing screens all over the lobby and all the other insanity that goes along with the big chain experience.

Every time we choose to go to a big theater we draw closer to the moment we say “Never again”.  Today.  This day.  It may have been the line in the sand because between spending nearly $100 to go to the movies and the shitty service and the commercials all over the lobby…  we could barely make it to the movie part of the movie.

Here’s hoping the Moreland has Harry Potter next month because I don’t think I can handle the stress of a big chain theater and I don’t think I can handle the stress of waiting until The Half Blood Prince comes out on DVD.

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Posted in Uncategorized, babble, mommified, movie, movies

for as long as it takes my iPhone to update…

June 20th, 2009

This little piece of blogging gold is going to be written in the time it takes my iPhone to update.  I’m starting about a minute late so I figure that when it’s done I’ll have a minute to close up shop and if need be make a stunning summation of the post and my daily activities as of late.

Daily activities that have been largely out of the ordinary for me.

Seriously, as bad of a housekeeper as I claim to be, as much as I put off laundry and scrubbing floors…  I think in general I do a bang up job of keeping this house from falling apart.  I’m basing this on the fact that I spent Tuesday getting ready for 3 days of out of the house podcasting, running errands and clinging to my freshly on summer vacation child.  Wednesday morning I got up at the ass crack of painfully early, which for those in need of a tangible measure of time means 5:20 AM.  To be fair my alarm started going off at 5 on the nose but I was lucky that Mike chose to grab the first shower and I got a few minutes of snooze time.  From there it was go go go as we…

Oh shit that was a lot quicker than I thought!!!  My iPhone is updated and now restarting… quick let me tell you what I did.  Two full days podcasting at a conference, plus attending a wonderful story telling event, then a podcast show at an afterparty plus beer&blog and then I had to go to Whiffies and get a pie at 1 AM because that’s what you do in Portland at 1 AM when you’re hungry and you’ve just done a podcast on the top floor of the Hilton downtown (phone hasn’t started back up yet I still totally have a moment).

Today I am going to try to jam all the domestic stuff that never got done in, plus tacos which no doubt means margaritas.  Mike has to get all the editing he can into today because tomorrow is Father’s day and there’s no way he’s going to get away with that tomorrow and now my time is up.

I’ll let you know how the update is next week…  oh and pictures… xoxo

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Posted in babble, family, k, mommified, tech

bring out your dead! bring out your dead!

June 16th, 2009

I’m not dead yet…

This is going to be a long week, but one I’ll be getting a lot of satisfaction from.  Tomorrow morning I’ll wake at the ass crack of dawn and then I’ll just keep going and going and going.  Want to see what I’m up to during the day you can head over to my Tech Love Live site or if you’re an open source kind of person (and in Portland) go to the Open Source Bridge conference.

Want to see me be entertained?  Head out to Back Fence PDX.

Want to see me sleep?  That’s just creepy, and besides I’m not likely to get more than a few hours in the next few days.

The bottom line is if I can make it through this week in one piece I can do just about anything… right?  Right.

love and kisses - Cami

PS:  I haven’t gone through my google reader in a week… I worry I will never see the end of it again.  Help me?  Ahhhh.

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I am the master of that one tiny kitchen area…

June 10th, 2009

Today my friends, is the last day of school.  Oh  yes.  It is.

For the whole summer.

Because I miss sleeping in and cuddly time with my brilliant beautiful child I am really looking forward to summer break.  And I’m going to enjoy it…  For about 3 weeks.  Then I may weep for the beauty of a few moments alone in my own house.

But until then I am really going to enjoy it.  Every moment of a few weeks of it.  After tomorrow at 2ish that is.

Because tomorrow I will have girl scouts running helter skelter all over my back yard (please lend me all your good anti rain thoughts… I don’t want them INSIDE my house when the back yard is clearly a better place to be).  Don’t get me wrong, I love our merry little rag tag band of Girl Scouts.  They’re wonderful.  Glorious.  Amazing.  Girls to be proud of.  They’ve accomplished so very much this year, which is why I’m throwing them this end of year celebration the day after school gets out (even though I am wicked tired and would rather just be mellow for a week).

But instead?  WE MAKE PARTY!!!

And set up a treasure hunt for them.

And will teach them to BBQ hot dogs.

And I made them Oreo Cookie Ice Cream.

Oh yeah… that’s what this post is about babies… me in the kitchen with some milk and some sugar and some vanilla an a big ol bag of cookies that I beat to a pulp and then let it all whir whir whir in the ice cream maker that I got for christmas… It’s the first time I used it.  It’s the first time that I’ve ever made ice cream.  ever. in the history of time.

And I pretty much kick ass at it right from the start.  Now lets hope I can keep myself from eating it before the girls get here.

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if only I had a mini tape recorder…

June 9th, 2009

Last night right before I went to sleep I thought of a brilliant blog post.  I had it half written out in my head.  It wasn’t the meaning of the universe or anything, I wasn’t solving the worlds problems but I’m pretty sure it was witty, snarky and highly observational.  Also funny.  Let’s not forget how funny it was.

Sadly, I was too tired to write anything.  If I’d hand written it I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t have been able to read my own writing, and my computer was shut down and I didn’t feel like typing out an entire post on my iPhone…  So I willed myself to recall.  I forced myself to remember this clever post.

All I remember is that it was 1. Clever 2. Witty 3. Observational 4. Funny as all hell and 5. Had something to do with something related to bedtime.

I’m planning to work on remembering what it is before I go to bed tonight but I’m sure once I do I’ll be far too tired to write it down. Maybe I should consider getting one of those little tape recorders.

Nah, I’d probaly just leave myself horrible renditions of my favorite Tom Waits songs… Nobody needs to hear that.

I’ll just keep thinking on it, but if you ever read the best post ever here that’s clever-witty-observational-funny as hell-and-bed time related… well I thought of it last night.

Cami’s 5:06 pm Edit:  There are SOOOO many voice recorder aps for the iPhone, can anyone recommend one they like?

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I suspect the end is near…

June 8th, 2009

I picked K up early from school so she could get some rest and a nice lunch and snack before the impending ballet performance Friday night.  Quiet time is key before a big ballet event.  Not only is there the whole thing about getting on stage, but there’s also makeup, hair product and a tutu.  In this case there were also ears to consider… chipmunk ears.  So like I said quiet time is key.

And how does my girl take her quiet time?  These days she takes it black, with a spoonful of Land Of The Lost.

She’s obsessed with the show.  She adores it.  At the rate of one episode a day (which is the current allowance) we’ll be out of episodes in no time.  If, once school gets out, I up her LOTL dosage to 2 episodes a day we’ll be through the series before you can say “Holy Claymation Holly”.

I don’t see that going well.  At all…

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Posted in babble, k, kaos, mommified
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