Granted, I realize we’ve conditioned him to do this since we have repeatedly followed the same routine of blindly stumbling into his room in the dark and then stumbling back to our room with a squalling Oliver in tow and tossing him into bed with us.

It had been working – kind of – and being awakened in the wee hours of the morning – repeatedly – can do strange, strange things to you.

You know you shouldn’t but you don’t have the fight left in you to do what you should.

This morning was no different from the rest of the mornings of this month. Oliver woke up, he bitched rather loudly about the fact no one had gotten him yet and I put him into bed with us…and went back to sleep. Sometime around 4:00, Oliver woke back up and demanded boob.

Here’s the thing: Oliver was born on Sept. 12, 2006. That makes him just over 18 months old – assuming I can count but I don’t hold out much hope when it comes to my math abilities. So, to be safe, let’s say Oliver is between 17 and 19 months old. There. Now I should be safe…I hope.

At any rate, he is far past that point where he must nurse at night so he doesn’t die. He’s past that point where his tiny little baby belly should be growling. In fact, he resembles a two year old much more than he resembles a baby and by all accounts should be sleeping through the night in his own bed not in our bed and COME ON ALREADY, DUDE JUST SLEEP IN YOUR OWN BED!

Oh, my tangent.

4:00. Boob demanding. I told him “No, go back to sleep”. What I really meant was “Go back to sleep you loud, needy boy. I’m trying to sleep here.”

And you would have thought I slapped the child – though I didn’t.

It was at that point – that 4:00 point – I was very, very thankful our bedroom does not share a wall with any of the other residents of our apartment building since man child screamed at the top of his lungs from 4:00 until 5:30 at which point I gave up the goat ghost and started cooking scrambled eggs for Oliver.

That hour and a half spent in hell bed included Oliver going “stiff as a board” – reminiscent of pre-teen slumber parties – along with several inadvertent kicks to my head and Tucker’s head along with much protestation and bitching.

Needless to say, that is not my favorite way to start my day.

We were doing well there for a while.

Oliver would go to sleep around 19:30 or 20:00 and wake around 5:00 or 5:30. If I didn’t get enough sleep, it was my own damn fault for staying up too late. And to be 100% honest, if I would go to bed before 23:00, I would feel much less tired the next day.

I’m not going to go back through my blog and see how many times I’ve said “do what works until it stops working” – you can if you want – but I know I’ve said or written it often and I still hold by that statement.

And this shit? It ain’t working.

I would love to say I’m going to go to bed by 21:00 tonight but that would probably be a lie if I said it. Instead, I’ll just hope Oliver decides to sleep longer that 4:00.

Cause that sucks.

Image/Flickr

It’s also Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m not Irish and I know next to nothing about the sainted Patrick other than he was Irish…and a saint. And something about wearing green and drinking green beer. Oh. And making rivers green.

Sounds like my kind of holiday.

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These weren’t sequential stoplights like someone had extra shoes in their car that just had to be thrown out at each red light they hit. Random stoplights and random shoes – each shoe was of a different style and each obviously of a different size.

So. Tell me. Where are the other shoes?

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We also value things like bacon, really good coffee and hours and hours of sleep but believe that last one is kind of like a leprechaun – mythical.

Sunday morning was a lazy morning.

We had planned on getting random groceries and then going to the creek/park that’s behind our apartment but the weather seemed to have other ideas since the day was dark, grey and cold with the occasional raindrop.

The TV had been turned to some random cartoon and right before we went to get a shower, I made the mistake of switching the channel to some random news station.

I don’t remember what the show was or who the woman was who was speaking since I was trying to herd two kids into the bathroom. The important part is what she was talking about: broad sweeping changes to the federal education system. I heard a couple of snippets and most of them involved pouring a lot of money into the system but I don’t remember enough to share here and those snippets aren’t what’s important anyway.

What’s important is it got Tucker and me talking about education and what we think’s wrong with the educational system. The funny/absurd part about this is we were discussing the woes of our country whilst showering.

I’ll take adult conversation whenever and wherever I can get it.

A couple of moments in the conversation stand out to me and be glad I’m writing this the day after since the conversation stretched on for about an hour and I was all riled up and stuff.

1. We spend more money on education per child as a country than any other country but our kids are far from the highest performing kids.
2. We, on a whole, appear to value celebrity and sports stars more than we value smart folks.
3. Throwing more money and creating more “mandates” isn’t going to fix an already broken system.
4. You can’t fix education until you change what the kids get at home and what the kids’ parents value.
5. In order to change what kids’ parents value, you have to dramatically change what Americans put a premium on – from entertainment and frivolity to intelligence and hard work.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that if you place high – attainable – expectations on your children, they will strive to reach those goals. When you set the bar too low – or don’t set it at all – what do you think you’re going to get?

You will have the occasional child who accomplishes amazing things in spite of their parents. And, conversely, you will have kids who, no matter what their parents do, are still going to do poorly in school. But expecting nothing but the minimum requirements, praising athletic achievement over grades and expecting your government to fix an issue that can only be fixed at home aren’t the expectations I’m talking about.

What sucks is I don’t have any real solutions and a lot complaints and a lot of people would say I’m part of the problem with all my complaining and finger pointing. But ultimately, Tucker and I are only responsible for our two kids and the standards we set for them.

Will we encourage our kids to participate in sports if they want? You bet but they also will participate in non-sport activities. If I have it my way, both of them will take music lessons and if grades start to fall then all things not directly relating to classwork will be killed.

Cause that’s how we roll.

I’m curious what your thoughts are about US public education.

What would fix it? Is American “culture” really to blame or is it something that’s easier to fix? Do you think the need for more money is the issue or should we be spending those dollars smarter?

Links for further reading. If they’re old, that’s because that was the best I could find.

• Public Schools Spent $9,138 Per Student in 2006 [US Census Bureau published in 2008]
• Per-pupil public school spending 2001-2002 with map
• U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores [USA Today published in 2003]
• Education at a Glance 2009: OECD Indicators

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Remember that part?

Cara has her own version. And it sounds like she’s asking “Who’s the weirdest one of all?”

Though it would be a tough contest in this household, I’m going to have to go with Tucker.

Image/Flickr

That happened to me last night.

And here’s the email exchange between Tucker and me…because I can’t really improve upon it.

Me: I had a dream about you last night that you asked if I was still losing weight and you were all nasty with me about it. We were arguing about you buying me some new jeans or something. It was special. And by special I mean I woke up mad at you.

Tucker: Funny, I had a dream about you. I dreamt that you were crazy.  Oh, wait…

Since I am not only the Editor-In-Chief [anyone else always thing that was Editor-AND-Chief] but also the web designer on the site, my job has been more on the web design side and less on the writing side at the moment.

I had certain things I wanted to accomplish:

• Background image ✔
• Style the footer ✔
• Make a staff page ✔
• Add an Amazon “store” page ✔
• Header ✔

Now that I’m typing the list, I realize I accomplished a good deal today if you consider each element took me anywhere from five minutes to an hour. And I guess I should be patting myself on my back since I did get a lot accomplished.

One thing that had me hung – still has me hung – is this little bastard:

He’s hot – he’s got a torch…get it? – and stuff but I hate him right now.

He’s supposed to be hanging out at the bottom of Sims3Gamer.com, peaking around at you and I can’t get him to behave. I’ve worked on his bastard ass all day and if you happen to be a major code monkey who can explain how to implement custom divs in Thesis then I want to talk to you.

You can reach me on the “Contact” page.

What’s funny is I distinctly remember thinking this morning that I would have nothing to write about on this site. Hell, I even considered closing it.

I know, right?!

Then I discovered this list of Sims 3 related websites/blogs and if there was one, there were 100. I’m not joking.

And I was hit with this heavy, heavy wave of hopelessness.

Why even keep on with Sims 3 Gamer? There were already so many sites out there. And granted, I had 50k viewers on Sims Gamer before I got canned but I just kept thinking about how long it would take me to build those readers back up and they don’t know I’ve been canned and anyone who is given the blog will pick right up where I did and what’s the point?

I emailed Tucker – because that’s what I do when I’m feeling like shit.

This was my email:

I feel very, very hopeless right now. I saw a site that does just custom content – the chick goes and finds downloads and then puts them up on her site…kind of like what I did on Sims Gamer.

Anyway, she has links for all of these Sims 3 sites and there are TONS of them.

Kind of don’t see the point in trying.

His response:

There are a lot of clothing stores. Why? It is not just the subject, if you present it in a way that people enjoy then they will keep coming back.

Damn short response but Tucker has a knack for getting down to the brass tacks of things. I would have taken about 200 words to express that.

He’s right and I know part of this is just how I’m feeling right now. Must push through. Must keep going.

It’s the keep going and pushing through part that blows.

Push Image/Flickr Torch Dude/Ea

Today on Taste Like Crazy, you shall read about Tucker finally coming home, Sims3Gamer.com, Digital Girlfriends and on why being your own boss is awesome and it royally sucks.

#1 Tucker’s Home

If you didn’t know, Tucker had Drill this weekend and that meant I was by myself with these things people call my kids for the weekend.

Normally it’s not that bad and I know I shouldn’t bitch about taking care of them by myself for one stinkin’ weekend when there are single mothers out there and people whose husbands or wives are deployed and blah, blah, blah. But my reality is that Tucker is home every night and he helps break up fights and helps put the kids to bed and is there to lend a [not very interested] ear when I just need to bitch for thirty minutes about what Ollie did to Cara and vice versa.

This weekend obviously wasn’t a “normal” weekend since Tucker wasn’t here and then Ollie decided to lob a ceramic mug at Cara’s face which ended with Cara having a black eye. Cara bit Ollie a couple of times over the course of the weekend and the dog hid in the bedroom.

Damn Sophie does nothing but mope when Tucker’s gone. She was supposed to be my dog but ever since she was a puppy, she’s preferred him…which is why I need another cat. Though the cat will probably like Tucker better too. Fuck.

Back on track…Tucker’s home and everyone was ecstatic about that very cool fact. The kids were fighting over who would get held first and the dog was jumping around like a loon – crazy person not the bird.

On a very positive note, we had thought Tucker would have to go out on boat for two weeks at the end of April but as it turns out, the Navy has frozen the funds for his [about to be dissolved] unit and they’re not paying for anyone to go anywhere. Which means Tucker isn’t leaving for two weeks.

Which means I’ll have someone to help me break up fights and put kids to bed…and I won’t have to watch the damn dog mope around.

#2 Sims 3 Gamer

The site thinks it’s live. And what I mean by that is I can connect to the site via FTP [file transfer protocol] and I can load stuff to the server but when I enter in the web address, nothing comes up. I got one stinkin’ post up and then the site said, “No, no. That’s enough for now, thanks.” and it quit working for me.

Since Laughing Squid [who I host through] doesn’t do weekend support, I have to wait until tomorrow 8am PST to get a tech to take a look and see what I broke and then fix it for me.

Because I have no doubt the issue was/is caused by me.

#3 Digital Girlfriends

If you didn’t know, I occasionally do website design/install and this week [and some of last week] I worked on Duong Sheahan’s new site: Digital Girlfriends.

I did the header/logo, set the thing up and cool things will be coming from the site, I’m sure.

That really cool image slider thing at the top, right below the header? Yeah. It can kiss my ass.

I set the exact same thing up on one of Duong’s other sites TheNewMediaMarket.com and had absolutely no issues.

I brought the thing over to Digital Girlfriends and the damn thing went all wonky on me and instead of sliding like a good slider should, the stupid thing expanded down into the body of the site. I fought with that stupid ass plugin for three days straight; I kid you not.

FINALLY, today, I wiped everything off of Digital Girlfriends and started selectively adding code and plugins back to the site and it worked.

I did a happy dance. Really. I got up and danced around and the kids gave me weird looks and everything.

I don’t ever want to look at that stupid slider again…except I’m going to use it on Sims 3 Gamer…but it’s working so I like it for right now.

#4 Being Your Own Boss is Awesome and Royally Sucks

Obviously I’m talking about owning websites and writing for a living but I’m sure this can apply to just about any instance where you are self employed.

Just about everyone says they want to be their own boss because how cool is that, right? You set your own hours, no one tells you what to do and hell, if you want to take a day off, take that day!

But here’s the nasty little secret. If you’re your own boss, you are working for yourself and if you slack, who do you think suffers? Yeah. You.

If you work for someone else and you are having an “off” day, you’ll still get paid. If you work for yourself and you don’t work that day, you ain’t getting shit. The emails keep coming, the work piles up and you don’t have anyone to blame but yourself.

And the “no boss” thing? You still have a boss…and usually more than one.

Each project you take on has an owner and they’re your temporary boss. Also, you now become your boss and if you plan on being successful at what you’re doing, you are a bitch of a boss who makes you work 12+ hour days – way past when you would have called it a day if you had been working for someone else.

On the flip side, most days I work in the clothes I slept in. I take conference calls when Oliver’s taking a nap and Cara’s playing. I’m able to stay home with my kids and they don’t have to go to daycare. All very cool things.

In the end, it comes down to how much do you want to rock? How much do you really want to be successful because you are your own worst enemy and your biggest advocate.

I guess that last part pretty much applies across the board, doesn’t it?

Image/Flickr

*snort*

So, yeah. I got canned from b5Media today.

Note: this will be a three part post. #1 is about me getting fired #2 is about how I’ve lost 15 lbs with no exercise #3a is about Ollie’s haircut and #3b is about being a single mom for the weekend.

Sheesh! I’ve set the bar rather high today with regards to topics to cover.

#1 I Got Fired but It’s a Good Thing.

I don’t know if you can really say I’ve been “fired” since I was never really an “employee” of b5Media – I was a contractor. They could end the contract when they wanted and I could do the same. It’s not like I went into an office [other than my couch] everyday.

But, the money was nice to have and I paid some bills with it and bought the occasional girly thing with the money and it was just nice to have. Because, really, when is it not nice to have some extra money?

It was time for me to move on. I was ready but I was holding on like a scared little kid because I was used to b5 and I was comfortable with them. Did I like making less than I thought I was worth? No, but it was more than I would be making if I wasn’t working for them. At least, that was my thinking at the time.

Right after Valentine’s Day, 50 bloggers were let go by b5media with no notice and I could see the writing on the ole go-to wall and I bought Sims3Gamer.com. It’s not up yet [that's what I plan on doing this weekend] but I needed a new security blanket…something I could look to and see a future in. Expect much pimpage of that site here.

Tucker is freaking out about the money aspect of the whole firing thing and I’m just happy to be writing for myself again. It will all come out in the wash – at least that’s what I think.

#2 How I Lost 15 Pounds with No Exercise

I mentioned on Twitter that I had lost 15 pounds without exercising and I got a fair amount of tweets regarding that. So, to briefly answer everyones’ questions, I haven’t been starving myself. We’ve been eating from the Healthy Calendar Diabetic Cooking cookbook [affiliate link] and tracking my caloric intake on DailyPlate.com.

Basically, I’ve been taking responsibility for what I eat and I now eat 1,583 calories a day. But here’s the thing – I don’t feel deprived.

This is a diet [small d] not Diet [big d] where with the Big D Diet you have the expectation of restricting what you eat and hating life to lose ten pounds and then you go back to how you ate before. This is a lifestyle change for me.

This is what I ate on March 2nd:

Breakfast -

• 2 scrambled eggs
• 5 cups of coffee

Lunch -

• Bagel sandwich - 1 bagel Cinnamon Raisin Swirl bagel, 1 slice Singles American Pasteurized Prepared Cheese Product, 1/2 serving Light Mayonnaise, 5 slices Deli Fresh Meats Smoked Ham, 2 leaves Romaine Lettuce
• Campbell’s Select Harvest Chicken Tuscany soup – 1 cup

Dinner -

• Baked Tilapia
• Potato medley of my creation

Late-night “snack” -

• Vodka and orange juice

That day I ate 1397 calories and wasn’t hungry except when I ate and I hate a lot. That bagel sandwich was massive.

For me, it’s been realizing that I can’t eat McDonald’s every day and expect to lose weight. But I will tell you, during this period when I’ve lost this weight, we have eaten McDonald’s and you know what? It just didn’t feel worth it. I calculated the caloric value of the meal and realized I could have eaten a TON more healthy food than that burger and fries.

Good ole counting calories is how I’ve managed to lose weight. When I get some more weight off, I’ll add in some fitness stuff, but for right now, I’m cool with how things are going.

#3a Ollie Got a Haircut

#3b I’m a Single Mom

It’s that time of the month again when Tucker heads to Millington and I’m stuck taking care of Cara and Ollie by myself for the weekend. Granted Sophie is here to help but she’s a pit bull…all she helps with is eating food off of the floor. And that ends my post.

How’s that for abrupt?

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Actually, she’s a LPC [Licensed Professional Counselor] but “shrink” easier to say so I’m gonna stick with that.

The office [though it kind of resembled a really nice prison] was freakin’ huge and the staff was pleasant. A very nice change from some of the shrinks’ offices I’ve been to.

I met with the shrink and she did a basic “tell me about your crazy self” interview. We got more accomplished in that hour than I got accomplished in two visits with the Dr. Freud lookalike I went to last month. Also, this lady actually seemed to like me where Dr. Psuedo Freud acted like he was just tolerating me.

I’m not saying I want to be best friends with my shrink but I do expect to not feel like I’m bothering the person with my blatherings.

At any rate, we made a plan of what we’re going to work on, I got set up with a Psychiatrist appointment to talk about starting meds and I have another appointment scheduled with her in a month since that was the earliest Friday appointment she had.

All in all, I left feeling like the whole thing wasn’t a waste of time and that future visits will be equally productive.

Yay for good mental health professionals.

Other than that, I’ve farted around the house, done some dishes and worked so I don’t get behind.

What have you done today?

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