"Los Liiiiiiinks!!!" or, Choosing a New Blog Theme

Since discovering my younger sister's blog, I have watched her change her blog theme about a bajillion times. (So like, five.) I decided I wanted to change my theme, too. This split-second decision? Resulted in hours of Internet surfing and tinkering for me. Hours.

I scanned lists of "the best" downloadable blog themes. I spent a lot of time going, "Ooooh, pretty!" If "pretty" had been my only criteria? I would have been done with the whole thing in five minutes. Sometimes being superficial is an asset, y'all.

1. Your Theme Should "Match" Your Blog Content

This is kind of a biggie. It's what caused me the most grief when deciding which theme I wanted. The themes with simple color blocking and lots of white space seemed best suited for business or news blogs. The ones with lots of color and edgy designs seemed like they were for fashion or music blogs. The ones with lots of pink and swirls and stars seemed too cutesy for a blog that includes swearing.

Which led me to the bigger question - what is my blog really about? It definitely isn't business-like or newsworthy. It isn't just about parenting. It isn't a humor blog despite my sporadic success at being humorous. What kind of blog is this? What am I doing? Why am I here?

Existential crises are not pretty at two in the morning.

2. Black Background and White Writing? No. Just, No.

Yes, those themes look cool. Way cool. But they can get really tedious to read. Eyestrain is a problem, y'all. I feel your hipster pain, though. I totally fell in love with this theme when I first saw it.

But unless you are an actual vampire? Blogging about how hard it is to find quality blood? No. Just, no.

3. Does It Have All of the Features You Need?

How I wish that Future Me had gone back in time to warn me about this. Sigh.

You don't want to download a theme, download an archiver, unzip your theme file, upload it to your site, and then find out that the theme doesn't have all the stuff you want. Sure you can add widgets and tweak the HTML, but unless you're programming-savvy? You'll be doing lots of Googling and lots of sighing. Or groaning. Or whining. Or growling. Or shaking your fist in the air and screaming, "Los liiiinks!" like that guy in the "Yo tengo Bing" commercials. Or all of the above.

In short, take some things into consideration before you go all willy-nilly changing your blog. Unless, you know, you're my sister. Ha!

Thumbsucker

I am pretty sure Sosie is teething.

How do I know, you ask? Because she keeps gnawing on my hands like a new puppy. Every time I am holding her, she chews and chews and chews on my hand - fingers, sidepalm, knuckles, whatever - and makes little dissatisfied growly noises when her gums aren't gnawing to her satisfaction and she has to readjust. After about five seconds of this my hand is dripping with slobber. Awesome.

We have teethers. But Sosie is so not interested. I don't think Scarlett ever was either. She would much rather chew her fists, her blankets, or Mommy's hands. I was holding Sosie the other night, giggling at her hand-gnawing growliness, when I said to Michael, "Hey. They should make a fake hand teether. So babies can gnaw on hands without it being your actual hand."

Michael gave me that smirk and nod, the one that is supposed to convey to me that I am an adorable genius while he is really thinking I am such a moron that I must be humored or I might fly into a rage. I am all pleased at my adorable geniosity. I think about my... Finger-Teether? Hand-Gnawer? GnawPalm? Whatever, that's what people hire marketing firms for.

I imagine little babies clutching their teethers happily. They will look like they have their very own Thing from The Addams Family. Goth parents will go wild. I'll win over the masses with a glowing review in Parents magazine.

Only one thing is left to do on my path to inventive greatness: Google it and make sure it doesn't already exist.

Damn.

Why?

Why am I always the one who has to "pull ahead" and wait for my fries? I know all those people behind me ordered fries. Why do they get their fries on time? That is not how "first come, first served" works.

Why would I rather run the same dish through the dishwasher five times than put in the five seconds of actual work it would take for me to scrub off the dried-on food by hand?

Why when I decide to get up earlier to get things done without the kids do the kids magically wake up earlier too?

Why does having a new haircut and starting to wear makeup make me more self-conscious about my looks than when I didn't make any effort?

Why does my car break down/a huge bill comes up/all hell breaks loose right before tax time?

Stylin'

The downside of having a cute new haircut? Not knowing how to friggin' style it.

I come from the hair school of Fuck-I-Have-Five-Minutes-to-Shower-and-Get-Dressed-How-About-Braided-Pigtails. Sometimes I liked to mix it up with a bun. When I envisioned having short hair? I thought, Hey. It will be shorter. It won't take so long to dry. I will have plenty of time to blow-dry it and it will look awesome!

But somehow I always forget that the "awesome" I leave the salon with? I will not be able to recreate. I will manage something that looks more like "probably a monkey did not style my hair today."

I remember several years ago, the last time that I got a cute, shorter haircut. I went to work fresh from the salon. My coworkers were in awe. "Look at her! She looks like a rock star! Doesn't she look like a rock star?" I was all aw-shucks-shrugs, but secretly I was way self-congratulatory. I do look like a rock star, I thought. I will have rock star hair every day! I am so money!

The next day, when I went to work? There was silence. See, I had woken up with all the product in my hair making it stick up like Goku from Dragonball Z. I'd had no choice but to wash it. I thought I had approximated my salon look pretty well, but I was soon corrected. A girl we'll call Serena took one look at my hair and snorted. "Jesus. You'd think when they gave you a new haircut they would have shown you how to fucking style it."

I burned with shame. The fact that Serena herself had hair like a meth head who'd just been busted on COPS only made me feel slightly better. Sigh.

So this time? I went as long as possible without washing my hair, so that I could keep that just-styled flavah. Then came the moment of truth. I had to style it myself. Even though I did not have the round brush and the two extra hands I really needed? It seemed to turn out okay.

By the end of the day, though, my hair had started to puff up like a Q-tip. My "side bangs" were not staying to the side. After sleeping on it? I looked like a hot mess. But as so often happens to a mother of multiple young children? I did not have time to wash and re-style before I had to leave the house to run errands. I spent my entire trip to Walmart furiously brushing my bangs to the side, smoothing my hair, and trying to avoid eye contact with anyone. I probably looked like I had OCD. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

So today, I knew I had to try again. I broke out the smoothing cream, the heat styling serum, the hair spray, the hair dryer, and the flat iron. And I have to say? I totally redeemed myself. I guess that's what I needed five years ago - four more styling products.

The Kitchen Sink, Vol. Five

After last week's Kitchen Sink? I told myself that I was going to start the next post and just keep adding to it as the week went on, whenever I thought of something funny, so that it wouldn't turn out all lame. Yeah. That didn't happen.

Things I Should Have Named My Blog But Wasn't Smart Enough to Come Up With:

1. Fuck yeah, motherhood!

2. Didn't I Feed You Yesterday?

3. MuffintopLess (Except that that would be a lie.)


StumbleUpon showed me Sketch Swap, where you draw a picture on the screen (just like MS Paint), and then you get a new picture drawn by someone else. My picture? Way lame. The picture I got? Awesome! (Sorry, Internet stranger. I draw like an elephant on crack... not very well.)

These new Geico commercials, where they compare the likelihood that their company can save you money to some other well-known certainty, are getting really clever. This one featuring Abraham Lincoln? So funny.


 I wish I had more, but as I said, I procrastinated yet again, and now I'm trying to hurry out the door to enjoy some Fourth of July fun with my friends. I'll miss y'all so much - but I hope you're having fun, too!

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Short Cuts

It's funny how much a woman's self-confidence is tied up in her hair. If you are having a good hair day? You feel awesome. Even just a t-shirt and jeans makes you feel sexy. You are gorgeois. If you are having a bad hair day? The cutest outfit in the world will not make you feel pretty. It's all about the hair.

I've even noticed a difference in how customers respond to me at work based on how I have styled my hair. Ponytail? Meh. All down, like a blanket around my face? Meh. Half-up, half-down? More smiles, more small talk, more sales. Braided pigtails? They love me. "You look so cute with your hair like that," they'll say. "I just love your hair!" Braided pigtails it is, then! Besides, it means I can roll out of bed at the very last minute.

When I was little? Mom kept my hair short. Chin-length (or shorter) with blunt bangs. Possibly the worst haircut someone with a square face could have. And she would curl my bangs for special occasions, and my forehead would always get burned. Every. Time. The day Mom got married, when I was fiveish? I had a curling Iiron barrel-shaped burn so bad that it scabbed over. Thank goodness my fluff of hairsprayed bangs covered it for the pictures! To this day, I cannot see a curling iron without getting a little nervous.

As a teen and now adult [Yeah, I think you better put that in quotes.] okay, "adult," I have kept my hair long, no bangs, with a few, sometimes disastrous exceptions. I get bored, I get the urge to get it cut, I pore over hairstyle magazines, looking for one shortish cut that will look perfect on me. I usually got it wrong. I would leave the hair salon with a smile plastered on my face so the stylist wouldn't feel bad. After all, they had given me what I asked for. But I would hate it and feel ugly until it started to grow out.

Summers in the South? Will make you yearn for short hair no matter how bad it looks on you. Around the end of May, I was dying to get my hair cut. I made the appointment. I perused magazines. Glamour came to me in the mail with an article titled, "The Haircut That Will Change Your Life." Yessss. It was like an omen.

I chose my haircut, but I was nervous. It was a bit shorter than I wanted to go. It had bangs. There were opportunities for disaster. But when I showed my hairdresser? She gasped. "Megan, I love that! It is so cute!" Sold.

And she was right. It is cute. I love it. My history with short cuts? Rewritten. And I am so saving that magazine picture.

You Down With O.P.P.P.? (Other People's Pee-Pees)

Since Scarlett has shown so much interest in other people's pee-pees, I thought the time was right to give her her first lesson in Stranger Danger. The "No One But You and Mommy Are Allowed to Touch Your Pee-Pee" lesson.

She seemed to "get it" right away. When I question her, she proudly shouts out the answers.

Me: "What do you say if someone wants to touch your pee-pee?"

Scarlett: "Noooooooo!"

Me: "Right! And then what do you do?"

Scarlett: "I run and tell Mommy and Daddy."

Awesome! But I still wondered how much it was really sinking in. She just turned three. How much can she really understand? Would she really tell us if, God forbid, it happened? I worried. Until last night.

I was sitting on the living room floor, changing Sosie's diaper, and Scarlett was right next to me. She was talking, as she always is, and then she said, "Mommy, somebody touched my pee-pee."

I froze. "Who touched your pee-pee?" I held my breath. Was it really possible the worst had happened? Already?

"Um, baby sister."

Wait, what? Then I realized. Sosie had been windmilling her hands around, the way she always does, and her little baby hand must have brushed against Scarlett. "She didn't mean to, honey," I said, fighting back giggles. I looked up at Michael, that smirking, raised-eyebrow look we give each other when Scarlett has no idea how cute or funny something she's just said is.

"That's very good that you told us," Michael managed to say.

Oh. Right. Praise. "Yes, very good," I said. Inward giggles.

Recently, she has been asking to see Michael's pee-pee again. I finally did what I've been promising her, and got her a book that would show her the difference between boys and girls. I read it to her this afternoon, and it could not have been a bigger hit. She proudly pointed out the pee-pees and booties, and repeated new words, like "testicles." She wasn't too interested in the part about how babies are made, so we skipped over that part.

"Mommy, can you read my pee-pee story?"
"You have to read my pee-pee story!"
"Mommy, read me my pee-pee story!!!"

Apparently, I have to go now. Someone wants to learn about pee-pees.