We’re back from our first vacation with Alex and, well what can I say about vacationing with a little kid…….uh…….hmmm……..it’s different. Technically, it’s not that much fun a lot of the time and the travelling part totally blows, I used to think it blew before but I was wrong, now it blows. I must say, never going out for dinner while you’re on vacation stinks (ok, we went out one night) and being housebound trying to get an overstimulated toddler to try and take a much needed nap is exasperating especially when you desperately need to take a nap yourself. I can’t blame him for being so excited, my mother provided him with a wonderland of toys and fun, it was very cute.
Perhaps the naplessness was the hardest as the days passed because his disposition became less and less stable as his exhaustion grew. We usually went to the pool a couple times a day because that was essentially all we could do and he loved it so much, but even that was cut short the last couple days as his fits became too frequent. It was a retirement community after all, the oldsters weren’t too psyched to have a screaming kid in their serene pool.
One morning we made it out to the botanical garden that my mother volunteers at, I finally had a chance to use my camera and took a pile of photos of plants and flowers. I have no real interest in shooting plants and flowers for the most part but it was better than nothing and I wasn’t sitting in the house listening to Alex scream in his crib. He seemed to enjoy running around the garden too so it was a pretty good day.
I’m happy that Alex and his grandparents got to enjoy each other’s company and have some fun together, that was great.
I’m so much more exhausted than when I left and I have no idea how or when I’m going to catch up. I guess I’m a little bitter, sorry, I haven’t had a vacation in three years. I’m just so tired.
We’re going away for a week to visit my parents in Florida. I’d love to call it a vacation, but that is yet to be determined.Earlier this week with preparing to leave and getting all my clients to a happy place, I managed to get myself to such a stressed out level, that by Wednesday I was practically paralyzed. I woke up and couldn’t move, the pain was excruciating. Zillions of ibuprofen and trips to the chiropractor and massage therapist have made it tolerable. I need a real vacation, but alas, no dice.
I finally take two minutes to waste some time on the internet and I choose to write this stupid post, I should be packing but I’m thinking if I really wait until the very last minute maybe I can give myself an ulcer too.
So it’s intermission time, well it’s always intermission time on this blog it seems, but this one is official, not just lack of time to write anything.
Seems I’m spending a lot more time with my new video recorder than with my camera these days. My photos have been getting boring and I’ve been lacking inspiration so on to my new hobby I guess.
Too bad I’m not showing any real talent for video making, but to be fair I’ve only been doing it for a couple weeks there’s still a chance I’ll make some magic.
I’m sure poor Alex is going to be the unfortunate recipient of more videos like this one shot for our own amusement:
I was uploading another batch of boring videos that I took of Alex and his grandfather when I stumbled upon a treasure trove of some of the most entertaining videos I’ve seen in awhile. They are of the train wreck variety and I just can’t stop watching them.
The first video I saw was just plain crazy:
And then I found that she also likes to dance for the camera. Now it was very hard to choose which of her wonderful dances I should post, I’ll start with “I Think I Love You.”
Next up, “Boogie Woogie Country Girl,” you can see why it was so hard for me to choose just one:
Seriously, if my phone rings one more bloody time I’m going to lose my mind. Why would a phone call convince someone to vote for your loser candidate anyway? Just because the governor leaves a 10 minute message on my voicemail letting me know that Hillary is in fact the second coming of Christ, it will have no impact on me one way or the other. I take that back, it has a negative impact on me. I now loathe even the sound of the word Hillary and I get dry heaves at the mention of Obama.
If I see one more skinny, old, grey, straggly ponytail wearing hippie with a clipboard climbing my stairs extolling the virtues of Obama, I’m buying a gun and joining the NRA immediately. Aren’t you missing an important heart-warming story on NPR or something? Go home, get off my porch, go compost something. Hey, isn’t it your turn to stock the shelves at the co-op? There’s a folk singer down at the coffee shop, it’s his last set, if you hurry you can catch him.
Alex has gotten very used to me taking his picture constantly. It took awhile because my camera is pretty big and once I slap the giant flash on it and stick the Fong on top it looks like the most wonderful, irresistible toy. He seems to have fun now and will often even smile on cue which is good since we spend a lot of time taking photos together.
For today’s photo session I wheeled out one of my twin lens reflex cameras which is housed in a home-made contraption to make taking ttv photos possible. This gizmo was impossible for Alex to resist especially because while I’m looking at him through the top, he can see me in the lens on the front. We had a very good time and it was more fun than usual for me because I didn’t care if he put his hands, face, tongue or whatever all over the lens. Normally I have to flail around trying to avoid him gumming up my SLR’s lens, so this was great.
Anyhoo… here’s one of our super close-up ttv portraits from today:
Over the last few months, the themes for the Self-Portrait Challenge, for the most part, haven’t inspired me to participate. This month’s theme is “Absurdities” and again I was left with little enthusiasm for the topic. But then I went to the basement carrying a load of dirty laundry, turned on the light and saw that there was already a freakin’ mountain of laundry waiting for me. The first thing I thought was “oh this is absurd,” well, not exactly, it was peppered with expletives but nevertheless, I realized I had found something I could take a picture of.
What’s worse was that I knew there were two more baskets of dirty laundry upstairs waiting to join in the fun. How two and a half people can generate this much laundry is also absurd. Where is it coming from for Pete’s sake? How does it accumulate so fast? It seems I wash and wash and wash, but nothing goes away - ever.
This photo is more boring/average than I usually like to use for a self-portrait and it doesn’t do the pile justice either. My tripod is broken so I could only shoot resting the camera on a box from this point of view. If I’d been able to get a better angle it could have looked so much more imposing. Eh, excuses excuses, whatever.
Over the last several days I have been receiving an unbelievable amount of spam on this blog. Each day the number increases dramatically to the point where today alone my email inbox had over 5,500, yes I said 5,500 comment notifications which were spam (so far anyway, I haven’t checked in the last couple hours, I guarantee there’s about 400-500 more in there already).
In the hopes of slowing this attack down, I just installed James McKay’s Comment Timeout plugin which will supposedly close all old posts to comments. As of 11:50 pm, it’s not working and comments are still being allowed in. I also need to figure out how to delete zillions of unwanted B.S. comments from just about every post I’ve written, not that it actually matters in the grand scheme of things but they bother me, a lot.
Frankly, I’m ready to just delete the whole f’n blog entirely and call it a day. It serves no actual purpose, so why bother.
