On Notice

or… “March is On Notice”

Today is March 1st. It might have escaped my notice if the day hadn’t already gotten off to an “interesting” start. And by interesting I mean crappy. Quite literally, unfortunately as the two major incidents that have made today stand out in suck-dom have had to do with poop. Normally, I leave blogging about poop to Dooce, but today I’m going to have to mention it. Bear with me.

First, Kile took the puppy out first thing this morning for her morning “constitutional”. He reported that she did, in fact, go poop. So we let her run around and terrorize Beetoe at will. A short while later, however, Kile cursed as he caught her pooping on the floor. She must REALLY had to go. He cleaned it up (or did he?) and then took her out again. Fast forward about 45 minutes to me getting the boys out the door so I could drop Harry at school. In the garage, I notice I’ve left tracks. Yes, I stepped in poop and proceeded to track it out into the garage. I don’t worry about the garage so much, but it was also tracked somewhat in the kitchen and poop that’s been stepped in is much more difficult to clean up. Not to mention having to clean my shoe. GRR. So either Kile didn’t quite clean up the whole mess from before or that puppy had a serious amount of poop going on. Either way, FEAR.

Shortly before this happened, however, Liam had a diaper blowout of epic proportions. Of course, right? He was in the exersaucer, which we all know magnifies the blowout. What might have been a normal “filling of the diaper” was elevated to blowout status simply because of the saucer. But I love the saucer so I refuse to speak too harshly about it in its presence. Anyhow, I got all the cleaned up and had to keep Liam from grabbing at the dirty diaper while I finished the change. Why didn’t I just put the offending diaper in the Diaper Champ, you ask? Well, when Kile (finally) took out the diaper trash yesterday, he hadn’t put a bag in it. And I hadn’t put a bag in it. And you can’t put diapers in the Diaper Champ without there being a bag in it. Damn me and my laziness. I do it to myself half the time, don’t I?

So I’m kinda sick of poop over here. And it’s March. I hate March. I kind of have this tacit agreement with March that if it doesn’t bug me, I won’t bug it. But it’s bugged me today so I’m putting March officially “On Notice”. Not that there’s much I can do if March doesn’t shape up it’s act. It’s not like I can just not do March anymore. Like it or not, March comes every year. All thirty-freakin-one days of it. I’m thinking I might need some more alcohol in the house if I’m gonna make it through.

I hate to have to write this post. I’ve been slacking off (again, reminding you all of the title of this blog so you shouldn’t be surprised) on my “on notice” posts, but last week was wicked awful so I think that’s a good excuse, don’t you? Anyhow, this week, we have “Lost” on notice. Most specifically, the producers and writers. I can’t hold it against the show itself because I’ve got nothing but love for the show. I can’t hold it against the actors or the characters they portray (as much as Charlie and Jack bug me) because they all rock too. But the show? Needs to change some fundamental things if they want to keep my love. Hence, why I’m putting it on notice, because I want to see these changes happen. I want to love “Lost.”

But last night’s show sucked. I’m sorry, but it did. I gave it a shot, of course. I loved Sawyer singing that song from “Jaws” and making Kate all pissy, telling him to stop. Because, hello, the song is from “Jaws” and here they are rowing a not-too-sturdy boat out there in open waters. That was inspired, right there. The rest of the show sucked though. I don’t really care for Jack much and it felt like the billionth Jack-centric episode we’ve had this season. And we had to watch Bai Ling, which NO ONE wants. I knew the ep was doomed the moment I saw her lounging there on the beach. They told us we’d learn three things. The three things I learned were:

1. I hate Jack AND his tattoos and care not to learn any more about either.
2. Bai Ling makes me feel the need to go take about fifty showers.
3. I actually kinda miss Charlie, which is saying something.

I don’t think that’s exactly what they had in mind, but that’s what I walked away with. Next week it does look as if we’ll get back to the Lostaways (holy GOD I hope so). Last week was so good, with the Desmond-centric episode and the conspicuous absence of Jack, Kate and Sawyer. It felt like a breath of fresh air, a saunter in the park, soaring in the clouds. And I thought, hey, we’re getting back to what makes this show good. At long, long last, “Lost” is back. And then this week’s episode happened.

So, you’re on notice, “Lost”. Don’t make me have to mention it again. This hurts me as much as it hurts you.

I’m thinking of making this a regular feature on this blog. Last week I put WordPress 2.1 on notice, and this week it’s Wal-Mart’s lingerie department. Apparently, there are many things ticking me off lately. The trouble might not be coming up with something to bitch about every week, but with only finding ONE THING to bitch about.

To give credit where credit is due, this is Wal-Mart, and they never have had that great a lingerie/sleepwear department. Although it was at Wal-Mart that I found my most favorite of favorite ultra-soft terry plush robe (with POCKETS for pity’s sake!). I also got those totally cute capri-cut sleeveless jammies that I wore in the hospital after I had Liam and they made me feel oh-so girlie. It was also there that I discovered the totally fabulous Fruit of the Loom ultra-soft cotton bikini cut underwear that I love so very, very much. So it’s not like I’ve been let down by them that much before. This department usually comes through for me.

But this is now, and now I need nursing bras.

A year or so ago, I went looking for nursing bras and while they were difficult to locate, I did eventually find them. Not the greatest of selections, but definitely doable. I wasn’t expecting anything grand anyhow. But, since Liam’s birth, I’ve lost some weight and have dropped a band-size or two. I could use a new bra or two (or three). But every time I look at Wal-Mart (because I’m far too cheap to look anywhere else, apparently), I cannot for the life of me FIND THE STINKIN’ NURSING BRAS. A couple months ago they rearranged all the clothing departments and everything in the lingerie department got switched around. I think they thought they were better organizing things, which I guess they were. But ever since I cannot seem to find the freakin’ nursing bras. I think I found them once, only to have them disappear into the void ever since. Yesterday, I wandered around the racks and racks of bras for a good 20 minutes just looking. Because I thought for SURE they’d be there somewhere. After all, a good portion of child-bearing women out there nurse and will need nursing bras so of COURSE Wal-Mart would have them somewhere, wouldn’t they? Apparently not. I did find, interestingly enough, various jewlery. I can only imagine what one is supposed to do with THAT. I also found all the fancy stick ons and whatnot. There was plenty of the “why even bother” type bras. No nursing bras. BAH!

So that’s it, Wal-Mart, your lingerie department is totally on notice. Be advised.

I’m going to try to keep the snarling to a bare minimum but it’s going to be tough.

*snarl*

Whoops. See?

So yesterday, I thought I’d be real clever and try the newly released WordPress 2.1 “Ella”. I’ve been looking for this release for a while now and when I read the feature list, I got a little excited. It sounded just too good to be true. And? It was. At least as far as this blog is concerned. Because I AM a plugin junkie, I think the plugins and the new version just didn’t want to play nicely with one another. Here’s a short list of things I noticed during the whole ten minutes I was running WordPress 2.1 on this blog:

• I love and depend on the upload widget on the “Write Post” screen. I upload pictures there all the time. And, since I’ve become more flickr dependent, there’s a plugin I’ve been using that lets me easily access my flickr photos right from that widget. Sweet! Except in 2.1 it was gone. Poof. No uploading or flickr’ing or anything. That was a deal-breaker right there.
• Also? There were like three things on the WYSIWYG editor. I think the bold, italics and underline buttons and that was it. Another deal-breaker.
• It tried to display ALL of my posts on the front page. Okay, do you know how long that would take to load? I don’t either. But I was scared.
• My links disappeared? Uh, hello? I finally just got them back up, thankfully they were still there, but the tag I was using no longer worked. And unfortunately, reverting back to 2.0.5 didn’t solve it. I can’t seem to separate them by category any longer like I did before without some serious tinkering, but at least they show for now. I’ll have to fix the rest later.
• My pages. Oh, my pages. This one actually causes me literal grief. My pages are gone. Not just off the front page, which they definitely are, but off the database. They vanished like a fart in the wind and I didn’t notice it until this very afternoon. Another thing that reverting back to 2.0.5 didn’t solve and now they’re probably gone forever and ever, amen. That means my about page, my contact page, all those videos I uploaded of Liam.. and my page for Jackson. GONE. *weeps*

So, yeah. A lot of this was partially my fault. I know the rules, I know I should have backed everything up before I upgraded but I’m a slacker (see blogtitle) and didn’t do it. I just didn’t think my PAGES WOULD DISAPPEAR. I didn’t think to check the plugin compatibility page, but I don’t know what good that would have done because there are several plugins that are listed on there as okay with 2.1 that I know for a fact aren’t. Or, at least they aren’t as far as my blog is concerned. So, I’m back at 2.0.5 until everything gets sorted out, new versions of plugins are released and until I feel brave enough to attempt it again.