No Use Crying Over Spilled Lattes

Life’s been hard of late.  I won’t bore you with the details, but today I took a break from a demanding day to go out and get a badly needed double latte.  Ooooh it was so good.  So milky and delicious.

I was headed back to the office to do something harder than I wanted to do. Way harder than I wanted to.  I was walking slowly, trying desperately to avoid my future.

Going to the office and facing my problems was too hard. It was way easier to start sobbing and bemoan my life.  I sat down on the side of the road to really give my sob it’s due and call my mom. My mom’s great at both answering the phone and talking me off a cliff.

The phone’s ringing and then Mom’s there, listening to me sob and asking me what’s wrong.  At that exact same time some guy comes up and is like, “Oh no!  Are you okay?!!”

I try to get the guy to go away…”I’m fine.  I just called my mom. She’ll help me.”

But the guy won’t leave. It turns out he needs to give me a hug and send me “strong thoughts” and coincidentally ask me for money so he can get some gas and keep his car from being towed.  Well, I get him to quiet long enough so I can actually talk to mother, during which time he heads off to find me kleenex.  It wasn’t Kleenex as much as a paper towel, but it was sure nice of him to bring it back for me.

So there I am, on the side of a busy street, sobbing on the phone to my mom and here’s my guardian angel letting passers by known that I’m okay and he’s taking care of me.

Eventually it’s time to get off the phone.  I get off the phone.  My latte is there waiting for me to take it back to the office and face the music of my day.

I feel a little better. My guardian angel needs to make sure that I know he’s got my back and that also he needs me to have his.  His back costs two gallons of gas, roughly priced at $10.  I pull out $10, slowly, trying to give him less, but eventually obliging his needs.  I needed to get to work, after all.

Money in hand, he’s excited to go attend to his car. But not until after one last hug. It was a pretty good hug, to be honest. But the farewell embrace was not without disastrous consequences.  No, it wasn’t.

Somehow…in some way…that farewell embrace knocked my latte off the ledge. There was my liquid courage* spilled all over the sidewalk.  Just blocks away from work, I had no choice but to forge ahead, with no latte and no more tears.

*the daytime variety, that is

The Story of Clocky the Rolling Alarm Clock

I really don’t like getting out of bed.

I never have. Ever since I was a pre-pubescent, I’ve had this problem.

Lately, it’s gotten worse. Here I am, running my own business, with a staff of three to six to keep track of on any given day. And all I want to do is lay around in bed!

I’ve tried everything…it didn’t work to have the alarm clock across the room. I’d just get right back into bed, time and time again, even for as little as five minute snoozes.

An upbeat playlist backfired. It was too easy to shut off and go back to sweet slumber.

I even followed one blogger’s advice and practiced getting out of bed for a solid hour one night. I’d get set the alarm for two minutes later, get into bed, try to get into the sleeping rhythm and then — when the alarm went off — I’d practice jumping out of bed with energy and enthusiasm the way I dream I might. Time and time again I practiced. The next morning I went back to snoozing like nothing had happened.

Adorable Guster tucked into bed.

Can you blame me, when I have such an adorable feline beckoning me back to bed??

I’ve made the mornings incredibly easy for myself. The coffee pot goes off at 7:30 — the first thing I get to do is take a sip of nice, strong coffee. The boyfriend makes me breakfast. All I have to do is get my ass out of bed.

And I can’t do it.

One day I was shopping at fab.com and I found the answer: Clocky, the Rolling Alarm Clock.

This alarm clock is designed with people like me in mind. The alarm clock goes off and rolls away, so no matter how much I don’t want to, I have to go chase it.

Or so I thought.

Day 1

At long last, Clocky arrived in the mail. I was stoked. Tomorrow, I told myself, tomorrow will be the beginning of a new day!! I’ll get up early! I’ll exercise before work! I’ll come in so sun-shiney-happy that my team won’t know what hit them!

I set the alarm. I went to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. It was a glorious sleep.

The next morning, the alarm goes off and Clocky takes off from his perch on my nightstand. Onto the floor he goes and boom! He’s stuck next to a stool.

Sleepy me reaches down out of bed, picks him up, presses snooze and back to dreamland. Fail. Though Clocky did succeed in scaring the wits out of poor Gus. But even that hilarity wasn’t enough to keep me from dreamland.

Day 2

Determined to make this work, I moved the offensive stool to give Clocky a clear path to somewhere hard to find. Tomorrow, by God, I will have to hunt and hunt to find this beeping, rolly creature. I will be awake!!

Moving the stool helped. Clocky rolled off and away. And then under the bed. I spent a solid two minutes fishing it out and was, indeed, awake. It was a success! The beginning of the new me!

Day 3

I did my best to ensure that the previous day’s success would reoccur. I cleared all obstacles from Clocky’s way. I went to bed. Oh, did it feel good to be a new person! To be someone with a working method to ensure that I got up early!! Ooooh, yes, the sky was the limit from now on.

But I neglected one thing: my intellect. Over the past two days I’d learned that there was a slight delay between when Clocky goes off and when he rolls off my nightstand. The next morning, he went off.

I acted quickly. I wrestled my hand from the covers, and in one quick gesture, pulled the drawer of my nightstand out. There Clocky was, a rolling and a beeping away in the confines of my nightstand drawer.

Another quick gesture later, he was silenced and I was back to sleep, happily dreaming of a time when I might actually learn to get up early.

Day 4

I had spent a whopping $30 or something on Clocky, and I wasn’t going to give up yet. Perhaps…perhaps, if I combine Clocky with the alarm-clock-across-the-room-method, perhaps then I would have the magic recipe to my new life!

Luckily for me, my boyfriend’s dresser was all way across the room and it had plenty of room for Clocky to live. That is until he woke up, and rolled away and I would finally get out of bed on time!

With a sense of dread, I placed him up there. Why dread, you ask? Well, I had an inkling that this method just might work, and, the truth of the matter was, I didn’t want to get out of bed on time. I wanted to lay around and cuddle until the last possible moment.

Well, I placed Clocky up there, and set the alarm. I went to bed, knowing that my slumber would be dramatically disturbed come 7:30 am. And come 7:30 am, it was. Clocky did his job, and did it well. It took me a solid five minutes to dig him out from under the chair he wound up under.

Reluctantly, I stayed awake.

The next few days continued to see Clocky doing his job and doing it well. But lucky for me, I had sabotaged the whole thing. You see, Clocky takes AAA batteries. And when he came, I couldn’t find my fresh AAA batteries. So I put in whatever ones I did find, and they just didn’t have much juice.

Day 16

Clocky is set atop the boyfriend’s dresser, waiting to do his job. But the sabotage finally worked its magic. By 7:30 am, Clocky was out of juice and unable to run around. I slept in unknowingly, yet happily. And I have yet to put new ones in.

What can I say? This damn rolly alarm clock just does too good a job. And I just plain don’t want to get out of bed.

Committed to getting out of bed? Get yourself a Clocky the Rolling Alarm Clock today!

The wp_postmeta Table is a Sexy Beast

The longer I work with WordPress, the more I love it. There’s something about knowing something so inside and out that makes you all the more fond of it.

The farther I dig into custom themes, post types, design…the more I have started having to get down and dirty with the actual MySQL database where all the content for a WordPress website is stored.

It gets super geeky, and there’s no need to go into any level of detail. But this sort of detail-oriented digging tends to make one punchy…which led to this:

I just imagined the two of us in a sordid love triangle…I’m calling my boyfriend, “oooh I have to stay late…I haven’t gotten this functionality to work.” Meanwhile the wp_postmeta table is kissing my neck and massaging my back. I’m digging in deeper to find the slug for the custom data I need displayed…he’s asking me on a ski weekend.

What did I tell you? Punchy.

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OMG Artsy Geek, Web Design, Growth, I wanna die

We have a new website up at Artsy Geek. You see, we’ve grown a lot over the past few months. We needed a new site to better showcase our many merits and, you know, turn visitors into loyal, happy customers.

That’s the goal anyway. If I had known what lay ahead when I had started this business with the intent to grow it, I don’t know that I would have ever taken the plunge. It is a constant adventure, emotional roller coaster and, always, a learning experience.

Despite the constant challenge and struggle of the present, I know I am so lucky to have the support and community of coworkers. Almost instantly I went from one and a half full-time workers to over four! And I work closely and well with people I not only admire but adore.

I’m noticing that with this new support, I feel like I can finally breathe. Maybe I can make it to pilates or the pool once a week (exercise!) and relax in the evenings. Maybe I can keep up with all the bursts of inspiration I’m itching to share on this site.

Maybe I can catch up on my personal email…sadly, sadly neglected for many months.

A bitter inner glance wonders, ‘What kind of person avoids responding to wonderful emails from the people in her life she loves??’

‘Shhh’ I try to remember to say. ‘You’re doing your best.’

As Morissey says, “It takes strength to be gentle and kind.”

This is my constant lesson. Today I am catching up. Last weekend I took some time and camped. Took some time for me. It was time.

I have high hopes of keeping up with everything better being the perfectionist that I am. Perhaps instead I will choose to have high hopes for accepting that I will fall down again…and to try to pick myself back up in a more understanding manner.

We live to dream, don’t we?
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Stuff On My Cat

The boyfriend is always piling stuff on poor Guster and then demanding that I take a photo.  What good are those photos if not for sharing with you?

Gus always turns to cough drops and lotion when he's feeling under the weather.

I took up wood carving earlier this year...the main thing that accomplished was piling wood shavings all over everything. Including the Gus-man.

We've all had to pitch in with the move. Here's the Guster doing his part to get the curtains in our bedroom up.

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Bravery is Rewarded — How I Finally won at Karaoke

If you know me (or follow this blog), you know I love karaoke. We go a few times a year to the Shattuck Down Low on Tuesday nights. It’s pretty much the highlight of my life.

I have tried to win their Valentine’s Day and Halloween Karaoke Contests for years. Awhile ago they started a contest every Tuesday where you could win a $50 bar tab by being awesome.

About a week ago I decided I was finally going to perform my favorite karaoke song of all, Pulp’s This is Hardcore.

I had performed it at Jenfest 2007 to much fanfare, but never for an audience of strangers. It’s one of my favorite karaoke songs because I love the song and it’s super long…which means more time with the microphone. #ilovemicrophones

There’s one major reason it’s not ideal: It’s basically about the making of a porno film. I love it for it’s drama and intrigue, but not necessarily the subject matter. Yet, I had decided that I was finally going to throw caution to the wind and sing it…

And then I chickened out, choosing my staple, Talking in Your Sleep by the Romantics, for my first song. It was a truly dissatisfying karaoke experience.

A gin and tonic later, and I was ready. I went for it. My love for the song took over any question that this was an inadvisable song to choose and pure joy overcame me.

No wonder they picked me to win. Though the emcee claimed I won to reward my courage to sing such a naughty song so well. Whatever it was, I sleep soundly now that one of my life goals has been achieved.

A good day, I’d say. Continue Reading