Inherent Passion

Do you have a Josh to fix your media uploader for Wordpress? You should…

Thanks Josh! I am a happy blogger again!

Dear Michelle Obama,

We love you!

~Amy, Chris, Ciaran and Liam

Dear Wordpress,

I cannot upload files with your file uploader on the 2.6 and above installments of Wordpress. I love Wordpress and I have read all the forums and tried all the fixes and upgraded to all the latest versions. I have resorted to generating my photos into HTML on Pixxy Fix until you work out your bugs. For this I am saddened but at least I have a work around. And doesn’t Liam look cute in HTML?

Sincerely,

Amy

I was reading (admiring, loving) Jen Lemen tonight and found Wordle on one of her posts. So I Wordled my blog and this is what came about. My life seems pretty funny when viewed through this lens. I love seeing something so “me” in such a new context. I love also how “ChaCha” and “Good” are so big and “Life” is next biggest. It’s a sign. If I can handle making $3 per hour for another week, I may just have to stick with it.

I recently embarked on a new career. Well, it’s not really a career. It’s a side gig to go along with all my other side gigs and hopefully bring in a bit of extra cash. I am a ChaCha guide. The catch is, I don’t dance. I sit at home using the internetz to look up all your fascinating questions that for some reason you are incapable of looking up. The questions come in through texts mostly, so you either don’t have internet where you are at or you have no patience with your browsing capabilities on your mobile device. You are curious about something so you ask me (or others like me) to help you get your information.

When I first heard of this opportunity through Twitter I was beyond excited. Thing of all the cool things I’ll learn, I told Chris. Think of all I will know. In the olden days before the children I used to scrape my living out of a job where I recorded books and magazines on tape for the blind and otherwise unable to read for the Library of Congress. I didn’t make much money but I was a veritable fountain of knowledge and trivia. I may have been annoying to be around. I am not one to hold knowledge in my head. I prefer to spew it forth onto those around me, because what good is my knowledge if I do not share it with you against your will?

ChaCha has all the makings of recreating a time in my life where I felt informed. I felt I had the ability to hold conversations with adults. I had a good feeling about ChaCha.

The very first question I answered on ChaCha on the very first night I logged on was, “What is the most pleasurable part of the penis?” It wasn’t what I was expecting but there is a part in the training that seemed longer than other parts where they teach you how to handle these questions should they come up (pun intended). And boy do they come up. In my first three hours of work I learned more about the penis than I ever thought I would need to know.

And in those 3 hours I solved all of the relationship problems in the whole universe. The penis is the single most interesting thing to the people that possess them. In fact, even though they’ve had them their entire life, they still need someone else to tell them the “most pleasurable part.” There is a bit of leniency in the job for answering these questions. Tongue in cheek comes to mind as a nice way to explain it. (Emphasis added solely for my sheer enjoyment.) If you boys, men, personages would stop fixating so fervently on your man-ness, you might get to actually put it to the use you think it deserves.

I recommend the next time you ChaCha because you’re bored and you can’t prank call the pizza place or the radio station because of that nasty caller ID business, broaden your circle of interest to include the vagina. Because what good is your penis really, if you have no idea what it’s truly capable of?

Thanks for all the lovin’s that everyone sent my way yesterday. Today was a much better day, not that I’m manic depressive or anything. My life just seems to fluctuate between dismal despair and jubilant happiness. I’m also not in denial.

There could be chance, however, that the synapses in my right and left hemispheres of my brain don’t always strike on the chord when I wave my mighty conductor wand. Case in point: I was stung by either a wasp or a bee today. I’m thinking wasp because the fucker was in and out in a millisecond and didn’t hang around for me to watch him die like a good bee would. Also, he stung me twice for good measure and still escaped. Anyway, my left ankle (where I was stung) is still stingy feeling but my right butt cheek is totally numb and asleep.

It could be that my brain is a bit confused and is so tired its decided to randomly put things to sleep to help me get a whole body rest worthy of a full night’s sleep. Or it could be that I started my new part-time gig as a ChaCha guide tonight and I sat still in a nervously propped up position as the ChaCha doorbell rang repeatedly with queries for me to answer. It was mostly fun. I think I did a good job. It didn’t help my productivity that my husband called from Virginia to say hi ( I nearly hung up on him) and a mom friend called with the good news her daughter got accepted at our school. Those 2 calls I had to take, but next time I am not answering for anyone. Unless I feel otherwise at that time (see brain disorders above).

The boys are back in school today. Can I just say that this has been one freakishly long summer for me. I had wicked flashbacks to when they were little and I was unemployed and we all hung out together, 24 hours a day. I don’t know if I was ever post-partumly depressed when they were babies, but I was definitely depressed when they were toddlers. Well, Liam was officially a baby I guess, but seeing as he was 9 pounds at birth, he pretty much skipped a lot of that baby stuff and went quickly into toddler-hood.

Back in those days finances were tighter than normal and the boys, there were always there. Wanting to be fed, entertained, learned up on stuff like walking and talking and pottying. You know, those life skills that come in handy, say like now, in 1st and 3rd grade. So I took care of these training programs, but took extended breaks to let the Telly Tubbies and Big Bird carry some of the weight while I played Yahoo Dominoes. I mentioned I was depressed right?

I eventually got on some anti-depressants for a little while and then our family did a drastic thing and moved to a rural part of Iowa and away from everything that was bringing us down. We had new challenges, but were able to shake ourselves out of our rut. I got off the antidepressants and turned to oreos and cheetos to compensate. It was great. Oh yeah and we watched Lord of the Rings extended version DVDs every single day. I was basically checking out of life for a while and really enjoyed it. I still consider all of the characters in those movies as well as their real life counterparts to be my personal friends.

Skip ahead to this summer. The boys were with me all summer and I’m trying to keep the good green business going along and also to take care of the boys’ needs for nourishment as well as physical and mental stimulation. I’m not gonna lie and tell you they watched no TV. I’m pretty sure they watched every single episode of the Suite Life of Zach and Cody. But they also did a lot of swimming and even read a few books. They both played baseball and socialized with their buddies. In that regard it was successful.

What wasn’t successful was how my summer went. I started slipping back into my old depressive ways. I ate WAY too much and supplemented the eating with alcohol consumption. I exercised almost not at all. My garden is thriving, but my business and blog are struggling and things are a bit too reminiscent of when financial times were tough. So I’ve slipped a bit.

School started today and I am so thrilled. My PTA responsibilities made it impossible for me to work today. I have laundry in the washer and dryer since yesterday and right now pretty hungry. I have a good friend who really needs help at her house with a big move she did this weekend and I have under three hours now until school gets out.

It’s funny that my one major goal in life was to have a family and while externally it may look like I’m doing a pretty darn good job at that, it’s also the hardest thing for me to maintain. This is my priority but I can’t help but imagine where my life would be right now if I had set different goals. I love my boys and wouldn’t trade them for the world. I just never conceived how tough of a job this whole mom thing would be. Throw on top of that wife, daughter, friend, volunteer and colleague and it feels a bit heavy. Nothing a good work out and a pedicure wouldn’t alleviate I’m sure. But where do I find the time?

Well, hot diggity dog! August has come and gone and I have not posted all month. How the hizzy did that happen? The lack of rain the first half of the month had me out watering every single available second. Luckily the rains started and it’s a darn good thing, because the water bill for the last 2 months? A whopping $363. This weather is not conducive the the type of yard we like to have. Nor the type of pocket books we are currently rocking.

But things, they are a lookin’ up! I officially became a ChaCha guide! So along with the good green business I will now be filling my time answering text sized questions of all those inquiring minds out there. I found out about ChaCha thanks to Twitter. Seriously if y’all aren’t twittering, you are missing out. Amy loves Twitter. It is true. I am smitten. Wish me luck at ChaCha.

The biggest news right now? School starts Monday. I can’t wait! Summer has flown by and also dragged at a snail’s pace. Good grief. Next summer? The children? Sports camps. All. Summer. Long. No exceptions. I don’t care if I have to whore myself on a dark and shady corner of Colfax Avenue to pay their way. Well, I may not go that far. Maybe I can just whore myself out on the internet. If ChaCha doesn’t pan out, look for me on a porn site near you.

So it’s been raining a solid downpouring rain the last 2 days straight. It’s an amazing thing. 60 degrees in August in Denver. Pretty much unheard of. I’ll take it. Plus we’ve committed to not watering anymore so this really helps. Today we are watching Olympics, listening to music, playing games and drinking wine. If we don’t eat cereal, dinner may be take out. That’s where my energy level is right now. Tapped out.

I put highlights in the boys’ hairs this morning. It’s not very drastic, but hella cute.

Life is good. I have a new celebrity boy crush. Ryan Lochte. He’s like a young Viggo Mortensen, if Viggo were taller, more muscley and not so artsy. More swimmy. Anyway, they remind me of each other.

So there’s this contest going on over at Blissfully Domestic that entails these overly gracious personages swooping in on somebody’s blog all Ty Pennington style and bringing some goodness and light and mortgage relief a fresh new face to this a very deserving person.

*Special thanks to the fantabulous Imaginary Binky Sarah for tracking the contest down through the wonderment that is Twitter and sending me the linkage. Apparently she was tired of trying to advise me on how I could accomplish this task on my own and thought winning a contest would probably be the better way to go. Ahem…*

Then I sat down with my box of tissue and thought about how I would possibly tell the internet the story of my daughter who is allergic to air and must remain in a bubble of CO2 (we’re actually rooting for global warming to finish the job so she can go outside and play bubble free) and how I really needed a new blog design to better express the hardship I face with her special needs each and every day.

But then I figured you might see through that lie when I tooted the horn for global warming. I don’t even have a daughter. Busted!

I have no sob story really, except the fact that I have acquired a new domain name, and a lot of effort (one night of lattes and bloggers in meeting) on the part of dear friends has gone into encouraging me to pursue the new domain with a gusto.

You see, this here blog, (oh how I loves it) is a beautiful place of sunshine and butterflies. It is a placid recap of life’s events, where everything is closely edited and monitored by moi, in the unfortunate event that I inadvertently say something controversial about any one of my close friends, relatives, or parents of children with whom my children go to school. (There is a inner-circle reference there especially for the Greeblemonkey known as Aimee and the oh so wonderfulness of Kids Art Auction for Earth Day and the extreme editing MY BLOG POST edition when I was email attacked because of my love of the earth - but I digress).

Imaginary Binky herself commented on my stifledness. I need a place to wag my tongue and exercise my mad typing skills and the wonderment of spell check. And that place, sadly, is not here. This place will remain in it’s current state, giving wonderful recounts of which flowers are blooming in my garden and what my children did on their birthdays. But the NEW blog. “The Blog That Must Not Be Named” in this sanctified land, will be a place of raunch. Perhaps even gardening raunch. All types of raunch. And rancor. With the occasional appearance of sunshine and butterflies. I’m just not going to tell any of my “real life” friends about it. Nor my family. And especially not the parents of the children with whom my children go to school. Except maybe one. But she’s also and “imaginary” internet friend and I do not count her in the list of “Those Who Must Be Excluded.”

So please, friends (real-life and imaginary), family, and enemies from the dark side of Comment Land, PLEASE cast your vote for me here and then August 1st through 4th over THERE! Tell them how much you love me and the idea of me having a safe happy raunchy place to wag my tongue. OH PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE! Thank you!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am lagging behind on the vacation posts. Here is the rundown for days 4 & 5.

It rained. We drank. We swam in the rain. We drank some more. We napped. We drank. We watched movies. It was lovely.

The thing we drank was a concoction of tequila, orange juice and a splash of Malibu. It was fabulous. I became very drunk. I swam. The only day I really swam. Unfortunately Ciaran missed it. He was feeling bad. Headache. Probably due to dehydration and allergies. He took his allergies pills and sprayed his nose. But played much harder than he drank. So he suffered; and slept.

I think we ate some stuff too. Steaks and portabello mushrooms. They were delicious. From what I recall. I was drunk.