bookerdog.com

I promise that I’m working on getting all of our pictures up, it’s just that since Tim redesigned the site, he has had all kinds of problems with the nifty little program he designed to upload the jpgs. So, the short story is that I’ve got nearly 200 photos waiting around for your viewing pleasure. Occasionally, I’ll make some small progress, so make sure you check the pictures page often to see if there’s some new ones.

It’s great to have all of these digital pictures of Auggie, but I must admit that it makes me a little nervous that the only “real” photos we have of him are the ones taken by other people. I mean, our regular camera still has the same roll of film in it that has been there since Auggie was born. (Note to self: Finish the damn roll!)

I badger Tim fortnightly about backing up our files, so that Auggie’s babyhood won’t be lost in one well-placed lightning flash. I guess I’m still a little hurt that all of the

pictures of me as a wee lass are purported to be “on slides,” although I’ve yet to see any of them. Ah, the secret pain of the second child…

Anyway, another weekend, another four inches of snow. This is starting to feel like a pattern. Auggie and I walked around outside this evening just as it began to snow, and he pointed to the sky and said, ”Know!’ Aren’t kids who don’t make “s” sounds at the beginning of words just the best?

A surprising number of people want the Internet to tell them how to make swords. On an average day, we here at “Bookerdogs Make Perfect Swords” get about three or four referrals from search engines where people are looking for sword-making information.

Just for the record, the bizarre title came about from my pregnancy-addled mind after listening to the Built to Spill Live record and then deciding to start a blog.

So, in conclusion, forget Saddam, we need to be on the lookout for these homemade-sword-weilding types with an

Internet connection. Not that there’s anything wrong with that (in case you’re a homemade-sword-weilding type with a tendency towards grudges).

Oh, the shame! Mimi Smartypants has linked to us after my last post! And I sound like such a dork! I kinda feel like that time when this cute honors classics professor back in college asked the class, ‘What’s epistemology?’ and I said, ‘Writing that uses a letter as its narrative device,’ or something snotty like that, and the entire class snickered.

It was late, I swear!

Normally, I’m much more clever and, ah, who am I kidding? I’m a dork.

It was so funny though, because I knew that something was up instantly when I was going through my nightly routine of checking our daily hits on Site Meter, then coming to the site to check our referral logs (can’t spoil the hit count by going there first, of course).

I couldn’t get on the site. The error message said that there were too many people on the site.

Needless to say, that has never happened before.

So, anyway, let’s just move on with our lives, shall we? And hello to all of you people visiting us for the first time!

Just to give you a little primer on what bookerdog.com is all about: I’m Beth. Tim is my husband, August is our year-and-a-half-old son and we have 4 dogs (don’t ask), one of which is Booker. If you’re a late-twenties, early-thirties type who is feeling increasingly out of touch with pop culture and more interested in really comfortable mattresses and rereading all your old Douglas Coupland books, we’re probably a lot like you.

We also go to the Kentucky Derby every year.

I think that’s about it.

So I totally teased you the other day with my cliffhanger question, ‘Is Mimi Smartypants pregnant?’ and you’ve been checking back every single day trying to figure out what in the heck I meant, right?

You probably don’t even know who I’m talking about, right?

Well, as you will note (at right), Mimi Smartypants is my favorite blogger of all time. I even get all excited and call Tim at work when my tracking logs show that she visited us via her referral logs. (Yes, my life is that small.)

Anyway, I’ve been growing increasingly suspicious lately, because she’s been mentioning some pretty strange episodes of nausea, vomiting, irrational anger (dead giveaway for me, at least), feeling rundown, strangely emotional, etc. I won’t frighten everyone by directly quoting her site, but I think it’s time Mimi broke out the EPT…

I briefly considered starting an “IsMimiSmartypantsPregnant” site at Blogspot, but, after conferencing with Tim, I decided against it. I mean, it would just end up getting a 1,000 times more hits than here and I would get all depressed and feel guilty about being a bottom-feeding blogger trying to scam some of her Google referral scraps. I remember all too well my feeling of shame and bewilderment when our referral logs showed that someone ended up here by searching for “Mimi+Smartypants+pictures.” We have no pictures of her, I swear!

Am I making any sense?

If not, I apologize. It’s late, my throat is scratchy, and we’ve been wrapping up the final installment of furniture moving. Sure, it’s only been a little over four months since the Great Floor Refinishing of 2002, and one could make a strong case that if we’ve lived without these particular furnishings for this long, we probably don’t need them, but one wouldn’t want to be kicked sharply in the shin, would one?

Good night.

Auggie is going through this super-fun stage where he nods his head that, yes, he wants to eat that particular item you’re pointing to, but when you offer it to him, he only nibbles, licks at or generally man-handles enough to make it gross to put it back. So then I’ve got to eat it. (Suppose I could just throw it away, but let’s not get too rational here.) Repeat through each of the contents of our snack cabinet. This is not good for my lifestyle program.

Although I did lose two pounds last week… But Auggie wasn’t eating/digesting anything then.

I had to chuckle when one of my friends wrote about being sucked into Joe Millionaire the other day. I too once fell prey to the reality dating shows, I must admit, with the first season of The Bachelor. I was so totally into it.

This is incredibly embarrassing to admit.

Tim openly scoffed at me, though, you’ll be happy to know. I was so convinced that the guy (jeez, can’t even remember his name. Someone needs to fire their publicist…) and the girl he picked (Amanda?) were so right for one another! And I was completely indignant when he told the other girl (the current Bachelorette — this is all so complicated) that he was going to pick her. ‘She doesn’t love you!’ I would scream at our poor, beleaguered television. ‘Pick Amanda! Sure, she’s young and inexperienced and a little slutty, but what 30-something Harvard-grad doesn’t want that??’

But now I am wise to these network puppeteers. I will not be sucked in by any more of these reality dating shows. Hell, I didn’t even watch Survivor the past couple of seasons. ‘Oh, they’re eating bugs again? Wow.’

So when Letterman did this hilarious spoof of Osama bin Laden putting out a harsh statement about those misleading sweeps-blinded jerks at Fox stretching out the big finale of Joe Millionaire, I knew it was time to speak the truth: These people do not love each other. I know it is hard to accept. But when I heard that Alex (that’s his name) and Amanda were never really together at all once the show was over, I knew that the whole business was fake.

I mean, if Alex and the girl he chose from 25 other women that he kissed couldn’t make it, who could?

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Tomorrow: Is anybody else thinking that Mimi Smartypants is pregnant?

Long day today, friends. Here are some quick Auggie stats to tide you over:

At 18 months, he weighs 25 pounds even, is 32 inches tall and has a noggin the size of something 49 cm around.

Yippee!

Well, so far, he’s only thrown up once today, and that was this morning. He hasn’t been as interested in food today (maybe he’s starting to make the connection), so I’ve just given him clear fluids and a little bit

of applesauce. Here’s hoping that he might be up for a little yogurt tonight!

Who ever envisions that her life is going to end up like this?

Today’s countdown:

Number of outfits Auggie has worn: 6

Number of puking incidents: 5

Number of loads of laundry: 4

Number of times I almost puked: 3

Number of dogs I had for the majority of the day: 2 (2 were at the vet getting their teeth cleaned)

Number of meals Auggie digested: 1

Number of days I want to have exactly like this one: 0

Wow, is the stomach flu not fun. Sure, it sucks when you have it, but being a spectator is nothing to write home about either.

Poor Auggie.

I shouldn’t say this without knocking about four different kinds of wood first, but lunch has been in his tummy now for about an hour and a half. This has been the crucial time over the past 24 hours, as everything he’s eaten in that time has come back to meet Mr. Hardwood Floor within two hours.

I should flag this entry, in case I ever get a crazy whim to put in wall-to-wall carpeting or a crazy-expensive rug. Cleaning partially-digested Pasta Bake off of the hardwood is disgusting enough, but trying to lift those teeny noodle pieces out of carpeting? I shudder to think.

Everyone keeps telling me that I shouldn’t give him any solid food, but the poor little guy was begging me for something to eat at lunchtime. The chicken broth just wasn’t doing it for him. So I gave him a few noodles from the soup, which he scarfed with glee. Considering that that is one of the only things he has done with glee today, it will be worth it if I have to clean them out of his crib here in a little while.

Poor little guy.

He even feels lighter.