butterflylike network

I got the following ad in gmail today:

Drive a Lamborghini - www.LongIslandLamborghini.com - All models, new or preowned Aggressive pricing, best selection

Apparently google’s contextual ads aren’t working so great today. Because how could this possibly apply to me? Not that I’d reject a Lamborghini if someone were to give me one. But I don’t foresee buying either a used or new one anytime soon.

In other news - there isn’t much other news, which is why I’m noticing google ads at all, which is a very good thing indeed. One wants life with a baby to be as uneventful as possible, it seems to me.

The first theme for this blog, I mean. Somehow it failed to grow on me. I might just have a few days on my hand to play with different themes, and maybe even devise a new banner. Maybe.

UPDATE: still playing with themes. Will continue to do so for some time, I think - surely through the rest of my pregnancy…

I rather loved the dooce interview on the Today show this Wednesday. Not because it was good. It was awful: Kathie Lee Gifford ought to be ashamed of herself. But Heather Armstrong (dooce) handled Kathie Lee’s stupidity SO elegantly. The woman is a gem, and she is also right: what she’s doing is important, it is something that makes public and visible a huge part of women’s lives that has, up to now, mostly happened in the isolation of the home, in secret, without anyone bearing witness. For the most part, mothering has thus far disappeared into silence. And all Kathie Lee could think of saying was, won’t your daughter resent you for blogging about her? Well, I don’t think Kathie Lee is really one to talk… if her children don’t already resent her for just existing, they will surely resent her for ever having asked that question.

This is currently my heart’s desire:

Small, light-weight, Linux (the one I want, that is). I have this fantasy of going to internet cafes with my little bitty baby and my little bitty computer. Reviewed very favorably here; becomes available in the U.S. on May 12. I’m tempted to preorder but maybe I’ll just wait a week or two. The previous version of this same machine (with a smaller screen and less memory) also came in pink… and I kind of wish this one did too. One could get very ironic with a Linux computer in pink.

Wordpress, I am sorry I cheated on you. It won’t happen again (or at least, not until the next time…?).

I don’t know whether the theme I’ve got now for this blog is permanent or not. I think not. I think I’ll test it out for the rest of this month, then choose another in June. It is transitional, and I’m transitional at the moment, so it all seems appropriate.

I won’t be restoring the comments I’d lost, nor the archives prior to November of last year. That month I became a U.S. citizen and made my pregnancy public. That’s when I knew I’d say goodbye to academia for good, and not give the academic job market another go-round. Once was quite enough. That November is the month a new me was born, so it seems as good a beginning as any for this blog.

Have you ever had one of those mornings when you wake up and suddenly you know what to do? That’s the kind of morning I had today. I’ve been struggling with a largish long-term project that kept refusing to become coherent. This morning I woke up, and suddenly, hey presto-ish, its parameters were clearly there.

I am also well aware that I won’t be getting much further with it for the next few months, not unless I turn out to be Supermom. Doubtful, that. It’s probably best to just let things go along their merry way. My mom told me, when I worried to her that I don’t know how I’ll handle having a newborn - what with the sleeplessness and all - to just relax because my body will take over. If I let it happen, it’ll be easier
than I think.

I worry about what will happen after but giving birth? It really scares me. My body and its needs will have full control of that one. That’s not to say I believe in natural childbirth. It’d be lovely to have one but… childbirth is dangerous business: before much research and experience developed the methods of medical intervention we know so well today, it was a huge killer of women. If you were a woman living in colonial America, chances were 1 in 8 that childbirth would be the cause of your death. So I think I’d like that medical intervention right there at the ready, thank you very much, even if I hope none of it will have to be enacted upon me. No birthplan for me!

When I manage to think of childbirth in these terms, I feel a bit less frightened. I can focus on the bigger picture, and know that what’s important will begin afterwards, on the other side of that great divide. And somehow that also lets me muster the certainty that my own life, too, will go on, and I’ll even get my project done, it’ll just have to happen in a way that I can’t quite imagine yet.

It was a failed experiment: trying to renew my relationship with Movable Type. I’ve no doubt it’s a wonderful platform.

But if it does not talk to the server I’m using and makes it impossible for anyone to leave comments… Well, what’s the purpose of having a wonderful blogging platform that doesn’t do one of the main things that blogs are supposed to do?

So we are back to Wordpress. I rather like the interface of version 2.5., much more streamlined than its predecessors.

The bad part: at this point, all comments are kind of gone, at least for now, and I haven’t been able to get all posts to show up properly. Which is okay: I can indulge my nesting urge (the one that’s supposed to hit before giving birth) by cleaning things up here instead of in the house. It’s much more restful to clean up a blog while sitting on one’s little (or, well, currently not so little) butt than running around with cleaning supplies and all the time grunting under my pregnant weight. You see? One can rationalize pretty much anything.

Please excuse the hiccups while this blog migrates fully to Movable Type. Why? I just wanted something webby and shiny and new to play with. That, and that I need something a bit more robust than Wordpress, something that makes it easy to run some personal sites and several blogs off one installation. Or perhaps it’s just that I finally couldn’t resist my MT nostalgia… so here we are.

There is much design work to be done, and organizational work - I didn’t realize ’till now how redundant my categorizations are. Cleaning that up will likely take loads of time. Also? The blogroll, it did not port over from Wordpress. I hated the Wordpress blogroll but still, I wish I didn’t have to redo it. Should have thought of this before and used a third-party blogroller!

Perhaps this will be the sort of thing to do while I am listless and awake between night feedings once the baby arrives?

One could, however, also call it procrastination, albeit of the more productive kind. I think I’m getting back together with Movable Type. I’ve used it before for work & an old personal blog & it feels familiar, even if version 4.1’s interface is rather different from the versions I used before. Right now, I run my web stuff on multiple instances of Wordpress and I want to work with something more comprehensive that lets me access several blogs from one interface. I did not plan for these blogs to proliferate in such a way, it just happened. And now my sites need updating, and (re-)unification, and just thinking of doing it in the convoluted way I have been makes me tired. Which means I don’t update or even use them much, which entirely defeats the purpose of having a web presence at all. Therefore, in the spirit of life changes, it is time for a change here too.