First, a clarification on my “Tough Job” post.  There were a few comments that said, “Hey, I get all happy and bake cookies sometimes!”  So yeah, I didn’t mean to cast dispersions on cookie baking.  We all do that from time to time.  Yes, even ME.  There are days that you feel all warm and snugly and content and domestic.  For sure!  No way would any of us stick with this if we didn’t, right?  What I was talking about were the people who pretend like they never have a negative thought about being a stay at home mom (perish the thought and a pox upon you for feeling that way!).  These are the ones who, regardless if they honestly feel that way all the time or not, make those of us who definitely do NOT feel that way all the time like a pile of crap.  And it’s not to say that they want to make other mom’s feel like a pile of crap.  That could be the furthest thing from their minds.   As for those who DO want to make other moms feel like a pile of crap?  There’s a special spot in Hell for them.

Basically the way I feel is: staying at home with children is back breaking, soul crushing, mind numbing work.  There is no vacation, no break, no weekend and no sick days.  There’s just more of the same, day in and day out.  And all the trays of cookies in the world couldn’t change that.  We all look for the positive in things because we have to.  We don’t dwell on the awfulness because if we did, we’d go crazy.  But it’s there.  It’s always there.

Of course, warm hugs from snuggly children sure help too.

It’s also quite possible that people who are overly perky all the time make me want to slam my head in the door.   You know that old saying where if you don’t have anything nice to say, you best say nothing at all?  I think the opposite can be true.  If all you want to do is spout happiness and unicorns, then maybe just try to limit it a touch for those of us who didn’t get our daily rationing of coffee that morning.

Just sayin’.

In other news: I’m watching “Cars” for perhaps the 38th time this month.  It makes Liam mellow, which this morning was a neccesity.  He was starting to go thermonuclear.  I just want to pause for a moment and praise the dudes at Pixar for making visual crack for our children that DOESN’T make my brain bleed.

And in other, other news: Facebook is freakin’ addictive.  And I don’t even play games on there because most of the games are lame-o.  Yes, even that game that you love.  TRUST ME.  But I am addicted (just a little bit) to some of the quizzes and such.  And I love checking my friends’ and family’s statuses.  Facebook is FUN.  It is also a TIME SUCK.

In other, other, other news:  I love my iPhone.  I know you’re all sick to death of hearing me say that but I just saw those of you out there in the audience who have one too nod your heads knowingly.  It is quite simply the best thing I’ve ever owned.  I am forever amazed and thrilled with all the things it can do.  There’s a lot of stuff in my life that I would give up before I ever gave up my iPhone.

Okay.  I think I’m done.  With all that off my chest now, I’m going to share a cute little video of my girl discovering just how bouncy the couch is when it is removed of it’s cushions.

You know, this isn’t the first time that I’ve gone back to read something I posted from my iPhone and gone, “WTF??”  Because really.   That post makes it all seem very sturm and drang and BLAH BLAH BLAH, boring and STUPID!  I think my eyes rolled reading my own post so I can only imagine how the two of you out there who are reading this reacted.

For that?  I apologize.

Yes, last week was very had.  Yes, I had a lot of crabbyness.  Yes, I let my feelings get hurt over stupid stuff that isn’t supposed to hurt my feelings.  Yes, there are times I want to high-tail it to the border just so I can have a break.  But holy cow, doesn’t everyone?  I hardly think I’m unique in that respect.  So please know that the pity party thrown in my post last night wasn’t QUITE as dramatic and pitiful as it came across.

I may be a loser, but even I have standards.

I honestly think maybe it’s the teeny screen of the iPhone that you have to type out a blog post on that makes all the stuff I post from there come out all weird and un-evenly toned.  Yep.  That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Thankfully, I don’t think the heat will get the better of me this week (yes, I do think that the heat contributed to 90% of my crabbiness… y’all need to believe me when I say I HATE THE HEAT).  Kile put our window a/c unit in the living room today and I’m currently enjoying some machine-generated coolness and am loving it more than I can express in words.

It’s not ALL bad.  Yes, I am mildly depressed.  I’m pretty much used to it by now and I think most of you are used to it too (you know, all two of you).  But like I said, BIG DEAL.  Who cares?  I don’t care.  You don’t care.  NO ONE cares.  Moving on…

It’s Sunday!  And I had a fabulous breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe this morning that may have made my toes curl.  And Evie almost choked on a honeydew melon!  It was good times, all around. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go decide whether or not I need to have something to eat right now.  This is going to require a lot of thought.

A picture from the drive-in.  Just cuz I can.

A napping girl.  Cuz she’s cute.

Do you have an iPhone yet?  Why not?  You’ve seen me prattle on about mine ever since I got it back at the end of the summer/beginning of the fall.  Surely my gushing has led you to purchase your own, right?

Actually, the iPhone is one of those things that you almost have to experience for yourself to fully appreciate.  This could be why the Apple Stores have about a bazillion on display in their store for you to fiddle with to your heart’s content.  Best Buy has one or two as well, last time I checked.  There’s a reason for this, people.  Once you play with an iPhone, a spell is cast.  It’s only a matter of time until you have on of your very own in your pocket to love and cherish.

Of course, I’m probably just making all that up since I got mine because I WON IT (god, that was awesome) and had I needed to actually pay for one, I may have been far more reluctant to try it out.

Anyhow.

That’s all beside the point because what I want to talk about today is “iPhone Applications”.  Anyone who has an iPhone knows about these applications and all the wonderous and magical things they can do.  Shoot, even if you don’t have an iPhone chances are you’ve seen one of those commercials where they pimp a particular application like the racing game where you just tilt the whole phone to steer or you shake the phone to find out where to eat lunch or somesuch silliness. The point here is: iPhone Applications are Awesome.  And you want to know which applications I cannot function on a daily basis without, right?  Right.

Well, since you asked so nicely, I’ll tell you.

• Air Sharing – I got on in on this one when it was new and free and I think you have to pay for it now.  It lets you upload files to your iPhone that you might not normally be able to store on the iPhone (such as text files, pdfs, etc and so forth).  This is useful to me because a lot of my knitting patterns are pdf files and when I’m on the road, it’s nice to be able to cue up the pattern on my phone to see what the next step is rather than having to either a) memorize which I suck at or b) print it out which uses a lot of evil paper.
• Easy Relax - a sound generator that spits out soothing sounds for you to play while you’re trying to fall asleep.  I have several of these, including White Noise AND White Noise Storm.  I like the beach sounds on Easy Relax though so I tend to use that every night when falling asleep.  Though I just got the word on aSleep today from Sarah at The Anvil Tree and I rather like the beach noises on that one so I think it may be my new favorite.  Anyhow.  Gotta have a sound generator.  I’m addicted to these frigging things.
• Facebook - I swear, I use the Facebook application more than I use the actual Facebook webpage.  There are a few things I wish the app did (such as allow access to the games), but for the most part?  Handy as hell.  Love it.
• Evernote - a versatile notepad application that lets you not just enter in text notes but audio and picture notes too.  You might not believe how handy this is.  I use the text note to keep track of what diapers I currently own.  I know, but it really helps to have it written down so I don’t let myself get nuts with the diapers, yo.
• StitchMinder - This is what it says.  It is a stitch counter.  Handy for casting on or keeping track of how many rows I have done/need to do, etc.  There’s also a handy KnitGauge application but I’m far too lazy a knitter to actually knit a guage swatch. Shyeah.  Right.
• The Weather Channel - My favorite weather application (I have three because I’m thorough like that).  I love the hourly weather info, the 3 day forcast, the week long forcast and the radar.  Very nice.  I refer to this often, and many times in the middle of the night when we’re having a wind storm to see WHEN the heck they expect it to stop blowing so damn hard out there.  Then I turn on my beach sounds extra loud to drown it out.
• Movie Star – a decieving name for this application.  What it is is basically IMDB on your iPhone.  If you’re an OCD IMDB looker-upper like me, then this is handy to have so you can access movie information on the fly.  Trust me, this gets used more than you would think.
• Kindle – It’s basically an Amazon Kindle for your phone.  I haven’t really had the chance to use it yet as I have no Kindle books but I love that it means I won’t need to buy a whole Kindle for $300 or whatever it costs.  Cuz it’s free.  Bonus!
• WordPress - I love this application but it could be a LOT better.  There isn’t much support for anything terribly fancy and there are some features that I would sorely like to see integrated and it hasn’t been updated in like FOREVER.  But whatever. I use it a lot when I need to post from my phone.  I just wish they would allow landscape typing because that would be a lot nicer.
• Flickit - If you need a Flickr application (and who doesn’t, really?), this is the one you want.  I have tried many.  Believe me.  This not only lets you upload in full resolution (not as common as you might hope), but allows for easy name, descriptions, tags, visibility, set support… you name it.  FOR FREE.  FREE, people.  FREE.
• PayPal - Handy for checking balances on the go, which I often need to do.  You can also send money though I’d like it if they allowed you to pick if it was a goods or services or whatever transaction.
• I Can Has Cheezburger – Who doesn’t want access to lolcats on the go?  You also get all the other great lolz, like loldogs, lolpolitics, lolcelebrities, etc and so forth.  Good for a chuckle when you need it the most.

There is at least one application that I would love to see that I haven’t found yet.  And that is a dedicated Google Reader application.  I’m tired of using Safari to read my feeds and it’d be real nice to have an application devoted to my reader.  There are feed reader applications, both free and pay but none that are Google Reader specific (as far as I can tell… correct me if I’m wrong!).  So that’d be nice.

I may have already done one of these “gotta have these applications” posts, but… I don’t care.  I’m too lazy to look it up at the moment and frankly, my needs have changed in the last several months so I’m sure there are many things on this list that wouldn’t have been on a previous one.

So if you have an iPhone… what are your favorite apps?  What can’t you live without?

Looking through my Camera Roll on the iPhone the other day, I was surprised by the pictures I had taken but had forgotten about.  Does anyone else do that?  Or is it just my own brain that is slowly (quickly?) turning to mush?  Anyhow, I thought I’d rescue them and do a little photo post.  I love doing photo posts.  I love pictures anyhow and it makes for a an easy and interesting post.  Well.  Interesting to ME, at least.

Taken on Christmas Eve when we went to dinner at Mimi’s.  Evie’s rocking her headband and bow and the gal at the table behind us STILL freaks me out a month later.

Evie chills at her 6 month pediatrician appointment.  Girl loves that tissue on the table.  (Am I the only one who wants to nom on her legs?)

I think this was January 2nd and the last time we had any sort of inclement weather.  SIGH.  I sorta miss it.

She has a tendancy to sleep with her eyes open.  FREAKS ME OUT.

You’d think she’d be happier to be hanging out at Whole Foods, wouldn’t you?

The sun sets over Target.  I love Nevada sunsets.

My current work in progress. The colors are a little wonky here (more blue and the waist is dark gray) but am VERY pleased with how these are turning out as I’m using a new and more complicated pattern.

Last night, I finished the baby hat I started knitting for Evie last Sunday night.  It’s not perfect, but it’s finished and it works and it fits and I love it so much.  Because I made it.  And if I can make this, maybe there are other things I can make.  

There were a couple of… ahem… mistakes made during the knitting process.  Some of them I know how the mistakes were made.  Some of them.. I don’t.  

But I guess mistakes are how you learn, right?  Though I’m pretty sure that only applies to mistakes where you know what you did to make the mistakes.  Like, down by the brim, there is some ribbing.  I pretty much know what I did there.  I didn’t realize that stockinette stich is different in when knitting in the round.  But I left the ribs in there because I thought it added some “interest” to the piece.  Whatever. 

This?  I don’t have a clue.  This was one of the “joins”.  The one on the other side came through pretty okay, but this one is all kinds of fuxed.  And I’m pretty sure I suck at joining purl stitches, though I improved on that towards the top of the hat.  Sorta.  But what the heck is with all the other funkiness there?  I don’t know what happened there, other than plain old fashioned “not paying close attention”.  

Hrm.  Yeah.  Not sure what happened here either.  This was in that ribbing that I wasn’t technically supposed to be doing anyhow.  But I think I fumbled a stitch or ten here.  

See up there where the hat starts getting smaller?  Those stitches that look all different.  Yeah.  NO IDEA.  I know those are purl stitches but I swear to you with every fiber of my being that I was KNITTING.  Not PURLING.  Somehow, the darned thing got turned around.  So when all my attempts to turn it back around failed, I made a few more rows of it and then purled the rest of the hat.  Why?  So it would look knitted.  Yes, I purled so it would look like knit.  WHATEVER. 

In the end, it all came out looking fine and almost as though I meant to do it on PURPOSE.  Which is sorta awesome.  I won’t tell anyone if you won’t.  Deal?  

The important thing is that Evie seems to not notice or care and that’s a good thing.  And it keeps her head warm in our cold-as-Christmas house in the morning.  

So what shall I knit next?? 

As a bonus, I’m including a screenshot of my iPhone wallpaper so you’ll all know what a monstrous nerd I am.  But admit it.  Some of you wish you had Edward smiling out at you from your cellphone too, don’t you?