07 May 2013

Trivia and Photos, in a Dog's Breakfast

Allow me to regale you with trivia, and attempt to accompany it with photos.

This has been no mean feat, as the move from PC to Mac has been nothing short of disastrous. I can now no longer get photos onto my computer without them getting lost and automatically renamed and duplicated and twisted up horribly in a ghastly photo black hole called iPhoto.

Uploading photos to my blog in the arrangement I want is absolutely impossible.   I used to be able to fiddle with the HTML code and put things exactly how I wanted them, but now everything is a complete nonsense on the Macbook, which has turned me from a blogger into a non-blogger. Observe the dog's breakfast which is this post, if you will. Follow along, if you can. (Postscript: I have un-dogs-breakfasted it as much as possible in between a large number of interruptions.)

I have emailed myself some dodgy photos from my phone, tried to save them in some sort of compressed format somewhere in my Documents folder and uploaded them here, then I've had to put a load of line break commands between my photos so they don't appear as a huge pile interspersed with snatches of text.  Whee, Macs are SO! EASY! TO! USE!


Little Rex at nine months.  I remember how full-on this age is, with the little person clutching my legs as I work in the kitchen, the constant crawling through dirt and mess, and the squishy expectorated food down the sides of the high chair. Oh, there he is, awake and crying.  See?  Blogging?  Huh.


My good friend Justamum has to put up with me texting these pictures from time to time.  Everytime I can make a rude, or snigger-worthy word on Scrabble, I share it with her.  I'm sure she really enjoys this.  This is true friendship, indeed.

Jessie started ballet this year - I wasn't sure we were a ballet type of family, but she's really enjoying it. Here she is, striking a pose.

So much help.  Which is great, because there is so much laundry.  Once the baby gets old enough to be unhappy with everything except being in his mother's arms, all chores become difficult.  Sometimes you just sit him in the washing trolley and get on with it.

This nasty weed has been growing in my front garden for a few weeks.  I let it go long enough to work out what it WAS, then I got rid of it.  I know this one from my grandparents' farm - those seed pods will burst and scatter seeds far and wide, so it had to go.  But before I got rid of it, I named it.  I bet you can guess what I named it.  Obvious really, isn't it?

I had a brainwave one night as I dropped off to sleep - this little Phonics Lunchbox.  I'm doing half a day of work a week, and I have collected enough little speech kids to explode my brain.  A few of them are really struggling with the task of learning the classroom spelling words given each week at school, and I was wondering about the best way to give them some phonics tasks to help them learn their list words.  This is what I came up with - a little snap-lock lunchbox with a strip of velcro on the top, with their weekly list of words inside, along with all the velcro letters they need to make all those words.  I have used the Spelfabet Movable Alphabet to make this little Phonics Box.

I tried to take a cute pic of Rex and his sick mother, but he kept grabbing the phone and this was the best I got.  It occurred to me that before I had children, there were times with a head cold called for a "Doona Day," but now the best I can hope for is a "Doona Hour" and a cup of tea uninterrupted.

Mr de Elba is away for a few days, so here is my challenge: have all children fed, clothed, homework done, extra phonics done, school readers done, lunches packed, cello, swimming and chess remembered on cello, swimming and chess days, dinner-bath-stories-bedtime negotiated with a minimum of hassle, while pondering on my current list of concerns which seems weighty at the moment.

Well this has been a joy, battling the HTML while a sad baby wonders why his mother won't let him type too.  I have missed all you lovely people, and I'd love to write more often.  Oh no!  School Pickup!  Baby crying! Afternoon Tea! Homework!  Darn you, real life, darn you.

9 comments:

The Accidental Housewife said...

I miss you too!

I've been sick for months, and when I'm not, the kids are. Peanut had started at a new school. Mr A has been away for 12 weeks, but he's back on Sunday. Blogging? Nope. Aint nobody got time for that!

gartcott aka Penny Hannah said...

Why did you change to a Mac? It seems thy are more trouble than they're worth, But hey! Good to hAve you back in blogging mode despite the Mac,and it was a very Un-dog's Breakfast of a post by the way. Rex looks great despite being ignored by his mother; Jessie is gorgeous as a ballerina and I'm VERY impressed with your lunchbox spelling aids! Good to have you back,

Hippomanic Jen said...

Good to hear from you. And see you. and yes, there are some changes going to Mac. Most I've found work 10x easier if I don't expect to have to do them the old way, but...

Good on you for soldiering on.

singlemumplusone said...

YAY YOU'RE BACK!!!! I have been waiting and waiting here for you to return with more stories. You have no idea how much I missed you. Don't ever leave me for that long again. While you were gone did you buy me a chocolate?

Tracy P. said...

Look at you! You did it! Twice! It's delightful to see you and your beautiful family. The great news is you are TAKING pictures, whether you are sharing them or not. :-)

It's such a good thing that blogging only came to me once both my kids were in school. God knows I'm too obsessive to know that the right thing to do is spend time with them. You are a mom with her priorities straight!

I hate that you and your macbook are non-compatible. Mine was an old friend from the first moment. But then, the first computers I ever learned on and owned were macs. In 1990. I am a dinosaur (or just ahead of my time????).

For what it's worth, I use flickr to upload my photos, and grab the html to put them into my posts and keep them in the right order. Afterwards, I go to compose mode, select the whole thing and center, add spaces, and then add my text. It's cumbersome, but I can do it pretty quickly now that I'm used to it.

Givinya De Elba said...

Are you lovely people just waiting faithfully in the undergrowth, sitting beside the relic that is my blog, waiting for me to return? That is far more than I deserve.

Mrs Accident: I hoe you're all well soon and th is some clarity for you so you can get back to your fabuoous blog soon! I've enjoyed seeing it grow an develop over the years.

Penny: Ah, the convoluted reasoning that leads us to our decisions, especially decisions as life-threatening as PC vs. Mac. If my intellect were slightly higher, my decision could well have been the right one, but alas.

Hip-Jen: I know you made the Mac transition easier than I did! Envy. Do you miss Publisher? How do you keep your photos? When you need to get up the Print/Scan window, how do you do it? I just click random things til I find I'm there, then promptly forget how I did it. Every single time!

Singlemumof1: I love you. You missed my drivel that much? You deserve a lot of chocolate! Do you like dark?

Tracy: I started Photo 52 with the resolution to keep it up. You see how awesome I'm not? I think my computer woes are because I've been a PC girl forever. I envy you and your relationship with your Mac. Good tips about photos, I've used that technique to make my blog layout so putting URLs into posts will be a piece of cake. If I keep this blogging thing up, that is!

Unknown said...

You're back! Yay!!! and yes, i think I've checked at least once a week and thought "no blog, gee i hope she's ok"

Givinya De Elba said...

My sister commented this:

"That sounds so similar to my life and concerns, but I only have half the children. How pathetic am I?"

But I was careless with clicking PUBLISH and it got deleted instead, so I have to publish it here manually.

And because she said that she was pathetic (completely in error, I must add - she is most definitely NOT pathetic at all!!) it seems childish and nasty to actually publish it.

What would you do? Risk looking nasty by NOT publishing her comment? Or risk looking nasty by publishing it?

Allegro ma non troppo said...

I would tell my sister to comment again. Maybe after she'd popped some happy pills... have you seen her latest post? She's one unhappy girl at the moment, poor sister.