Our friend Geof is doing Blogathon this year. Go check his site and leave him snarky comments so he’ll stay awake.

Seriously, he’s blogging for Blood:Water Mission so after you’re finished pestering him leave some $$$ for a great cause.

I have previously talked about my grandmother’s illness here and here.

I haven’t given an update on my grandmother in a while simply because there hasn’t been much to tell. I visited her while we were in Arkansas both before and after our trip to Chicago but she didn’t seem know who I was. Whether that was due to the stroke or medication, I don’t know.

While we were there, I realized that she wouldn’t be the same again and consequently the structure of my mom’s family was bound to undergo some fairly drastic changes. This caused me to spend time in mourning and I wasn’t sure how to say some of the things I wanted to say although I knew that I would get around to it eventually.

I have good news to report, however. This afternoon I got a call from my mom. She was at the hospital with my grandmother and she put my grandmother on the phone and we talked for a very brief couple of minutes. She got tired very quickly and seemed depressed about the length of her still-to-come recovery process but those few words from her are nothing short of a miracle in my mind.

So rejoice with me tonight for both large steps and small ones. I again thank you for all your thoughts and prayers and comments here. Know that I have felt you out there and appreciated your support.

Wintergreen: When I Wake Up (2006)

They barely have a record, but Wintergreen already has a video. The song features guitarwork reminiscent of The Smiths. However, rather than having mopey-looking kids wandering around London, this video features E.T. and the Atari 2600. The video takes the real story of Atari dumping E.T. cartridges in a landfill and adds a codicil of the band going to the landfill and digging them up. Pity it couldn’t actually happen, but it makes for an entertaining video.

Junior Senior: Move Your Feet (2003)

While we’re on the subject of old-school pixelated computer games, here’s the Junior Senior video that looks like it came from a drug-addled Atari 2600. Coupled with the frenetic beat of the song, the video makes for fascinating watching.

Misty’s and my parenting style can best be summarized as, “Enh, let’s not go to too much trouble.” For instance, Eli has a habit of dropping his pacifiers between the crib and the wall, so that they’re incredibly hard to reach. Fortunately, he has many binkies, but after a few days I start running out of pacifiers to give him at night. So the other morning, after I freed him from his crib, I told him, “Eli! Go under your bed and get your binkies!” Quick as a flash, he crawled under his bed and liberated all of the lost pacifiers. He dropped them in my hands and said, “You put my binkies up and you go get me orange juice.” It’s a fair trade, and far below minimum wage. Do minimum wage laws apply to child labor?

Through no planning on our part we’ve trained him to play happily in his crib until we come in to get him. He often talks to himself while we doze. We’ll hear him over the monitor, but as long as he sounds okay, we’ll sleep in. The monitor is old and muffled, with the kind of sound quality associated with cheap Radio Shack walkie-talkies. This morning we lay in bed listening to him, unable to understand a word over the monitor. It was as if we were receiving a radio talk show from outer space, and it was strangely soothing.

I like this approach of letting him fend for himself and making him help out around the house. Next summer I’ll put wooden blocks on his feet like those Short Round wore in that Indiana Jones movie and see how he does with the mower.

It’s clear that you come to this blog in order to substitute my own tastes and opinions for yours. (Well, that and cute Eli movies.) So I want to point you towards Jonathan Coulton. He’s a musician and songwriter who’s seeing if he can make a living as a fully independent musician. There’s no label, there’s just him and his website. He writes one new song a week, a forced-march experiment in having deadlines.

I like his approach of licensing all of his music under the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike Creative Commons license, which means you can take it and share it as long as you give him the credit for writing it. What’s far more important, I love love love his music. It is crazy mad awesome. I find myself hard-pressed to pick just one favorite, or even ten favorites, but I have restrained myself because I know you all are busy people with lives who just happen to like taking a break from those lives to read blogs. Some suggested tunes:

Skullcrusher Mountain
A lot of Jonathan’s songs are about messed-up people looking for love. In this case the messed-up person is a mad scientist in his lair on Skullcrusher Mountain. How can you not love a song whose lyrics include, “Isn’t it enough to know I ruined a pony making a gift for you?”

Re Your Brains
The lead zombie who wants to eat your brains is your annoying co-worker who is still talking about F.Y.I.s and tabling discussions.

Soft Rocked By Me
It’s a love song by a guy who likes to rock out to Bread.

Not About You
Several of Jonathan’s songs are sad ones about the loss of love (like When You Go and So Far So Good). This is a funny one involving complete and total denial.

A Talk With George
A touching song about the ghost of George Plimpton visiting and giving you advice.

That’s five (or seven, depending on how uncharitable you’re being with your counting), and I haven’t yet gotten to Code Monkey (the one song you may have heard about before since it was on Slashdot), Chiron Beta Prime (a Christmas song from humans imprisoned by robots), The Presidents (a single fact about every US President), or Mandelbrot Set (the happiest math song I know next to Math Prof Rock Star). So go! Go listen! And if you like, give the man some money.

We are bravely leaping into the world of YouTube and Google Video with this, our first Flash movie of Eli reading a book.

The book he’s reading is “Snappy Sounds Vroom!” which, indeed, makes many snappy sounds. You can hear Eli identifying the bus and the scooter in the book.

A few weeks ago, Rachel and I got the bright idea to go to a few thrift stores to find some new-to-her furnishings for her new apartment. So at our last stop I found a box that said, “Giant House of Cards.” It looked cool so I bought it for 54¢. Turns out it is a reprint of a set designed by Charles Eames. It was made by Neenah Paper, one of my favorite paper companies that I can’t afford to buy paper from. Also, turns out that Stephen’s dad played with a set just like it when he was a kid.

I don’t gush here much about motherhood because usually Stephen says all the things I would say but in much finer words and people think it’s sweet to hear these things from a dad. Also, I can hear the giant inhalation of breath from the internet at large and then the disgustedly voiced, “Mommy Blogger!”

However, this week I can’t hold it in.

I’ve been going through a bit of a down spell. I wouldn’t call it depression exactly. It’s been more of a time of stupid busyness that I haven’t been able to control. And it’s caused me to be short with Eli and often to sit him in front of the tv so that I can get just one more thing done.

How sad is that? To get the privilege to stay at home with your kids and then not take advantage of seeing all the interesting transformations that happen along the way. Last week I decided to do something about it, so each day since I have dedicated a chunk of time to doing whatever Eli wants to do. This is good for several reasons: it makes me feel less guilty (not the main reason but a pleasant one anyway), he doesn’t think that Sesame Street is on 24/7 and, amazingly, he is better behaved when I dedicate some time to his designs. Oh, and yeah, I get to spend time with my amazingly clever child.

***
Yesterday, I was looking at some video footage from November. Eli is a baby in these few frames I’ve collected. In one he scrubs around on the kitchen floor with his blanky and points at the camera and says in his baby voice, “Circle, Mama, Circle!”
***

I’ve tried so hard to make him be independent. Since I quit nursing Eli, I have insisted that Stephen be able to put him to bed and care for him in other ways. I will never forget overhearing someone from our former church say that she could never leave her kids with her husband because the husband wouldn’t know what to do for the kids. I vowed that day (some six years before we even thought about kids) that our family would never work that way. But I think I may have given up some things along the way. Eli would just as well be comforted by any number of people when he is upset, sick or hurt. I am not Queen Mommy because he’s learned that we have a community of people around us that care for us. Don’t get me wrong, I love that community and wouldn’t trade it for anything but I do still occasionally wish I ranked highest in his world.

I hope though that this independence is good. Maybe it will be easier to send him to kindergarden. Maybe I won’t hurt so much giving him up because I’ve already started the process. And everyday when he gets home from school he’ll be excited to tell me about what he learned. And then when he goes to college, I’ll be ready to have some peace in my house and spend some time with Stephen that doesn’t include toys on the floor. And then one day he’ll call me and say that he’s getting married and I will gain another person into my family.

Give them secure roots and they will develop strong wings.

Do you know that saying? The trite roots and wings thing? Before I was a parent, I thought it was cheesy (actually I still think it’s a cheesy saying) but I get the sentiment better now than every before. I know I’m working on both roots and wings at the same time and it’s so hard to be present in every moment of every day and not feel like I am lost to myself. It’s something I have talked about here before and I still don’t have any answers. I guess it’s hard to come out on the other side with any sort of personality that’s not 98% Mother. I guess really I want it both ways. I want to be Queen Mommy but only when I want it and still get to have “me” time.

***
Today, we visited Chrissy, Will and Baby Luke. I was outside pushing Will and Eli in the swings while Chrissy made lunch. Will clutched his daisy (this boy is a horticulturist in training) and pointed out clouds and airplanes while Eli made up rhymes.

“Car rhymes with star! What rhymes with star?”

“Far?” I say, “Tar? Bar? Bizarre?”

“Noooo!” Eli says.

“Yessss!” I say.

“OK. Car, bar, far…what rhymes with Camel, Mom?”

***

Yeah, I’m stumped. I don’t know what rhymes with Camel. I’m sure that something does, but without looking it up on the internet, I have no idea. (It’s YAML, by the way, like anyone who isn’t a programmer knows that.) I know that there isn’t an English word to rhyme with orange and it’s the only word that doesn’t have a rhyme but Camel has me stumped.

Maybe this conversation holds the answer. To keep learning with Eli instead of trying to keep myself so separate. To be challenged by what he talks about and learn new stuff to keep up with him. So we are challenged together at the same time. I’ll have to think about this. It’s only coming to me as I write it down.

***
Eli starts Mother’s Morning Out in three weeks. He’s going two days a week this year. Twice! twice, twice as much time as last year. Surely that will be enough “me” time. I’ll let you know. There’ll probably be some maudlin post here from me about how much I miss my kid while he’s at school.

These days Eli is all about saying, “No!” I got ready to go to work this morning and, as usual, told Eli, “I’m off to work! Come give me a hug and a kiss!”

“No!” he shouted, and ran off laughing.

I know, I know. This is normal; he’s being independent; this is a phase that will pass. But I am still seized with unreasoning anger. Why must he assert his independence by saying “no” all the time? Have we not done as parenting books and the Internet demand and given him choices? Sometimes even meaningful choices? “Do you want to stay with mom or go to the store with dad?” “Would you like to read a book or play with your cars?” “Paper or plastic?”

It doesn’t matter. These coping strategies are as snowflakes on the hot stove eye of his burgeoning independence. No, he doesn’t want to eat dinner. No, he doesn’t want to stop hitting the wall with that wooden spoon. Even when it’s something he has previously asked to do, like watching Sesame Street, sometimes he still says no.

I have a new coping strategy. Every time he says no, I now stick my fingers in my ears and shout “LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU.” I’ll let you know how well this works.

Web 2.0 is posited as a leap forward in how we waste time online. Applications like Flickr and Basecamp and Google Maps have introduced PC-application-like interfaces to the web. They’ve also taken a rapid-prototyping approach, with software being made widely available while still in a near-beta state.

While the three examples above are standard-bearers for Web 2.0, the single most ubiquitous Web 2.0 application is the online to-do list. Those to-do lists are everywhere.

That’s why I am pleased to announce FoneItIn, the world’s first Web 3.0 To-Do List Manager. While Web 2.0 introduced web applications that have rich non-web-like interfaces, my Web 3.0 application uses an interface that is instantly familiar to everyone: the telephone. Web 3.0 is no longer confined to the web at all. And best of all, FoneItIn is compatible with Getting Things Done, the productivity approach beloved by geeks because you can spend all of your time managing your Getting Things Done system rather than actually doing things.

Setting Up FoneItIn

To use FoneItIn Beta version 1 you need a home landline and a digital answering machine or a phone with a built-in digital answering machine. In Beta version 2 we will support cellphone voicemail systems. By Beta 3 we hope to support your voicemail at work.

Add the answering machine to your home’s landline. The answering machine should have an access code, a number that you’ll need to key in when you call the answering machine from outside the home. Set it to something memorable. And no, setting it to 69 isn’t funny.

Connecting to Your FoneItIn Server

Use your browser to dial your landline number. Because of cross-platform standards your browser can be any telephone-enabled device, though FoneItIn is optimized for use with cellphones. The answering machine will pick up.

Adding Tasks

Connect to your FoneItIn server. When it tells you to record a message, speak your new task clearly and distinctly into the phone. Hang up. Because FoneItIn uses AJAX technology, there is no need to press “submit”.

Reviewing Your To-Do List

Connect to your FoneItIn server. Key in the numeric code you chose while setting up FoneItIn. How you listen to old tasks will vary from machine to machine. Consult your manual to find out what to key in to review old tasks. Note: your answering machine manual may refer to tasks as “messages”.

Deleting Tasks From Your To-Do List

Connect to your FoneItIn server. Key in your machine’s numeric code. As with reviewing your old tasks, how you delete old tasks will vary from machine to machine. Consult your answering machine’s manual.

Publishing Your To-Do List

Web 3.0 is all about community. To let others view or edit your to-do list, give them your home phone number and your answering machine’s numeric code.

Miscellanea

You may ask: how will Granades.com make money on FoneItIn? We expect to sell branded FoneItIn machines and serve Google ads through speech synthesis. The rest we’ll make up for in volume.