I usuallt try to avoid cliches, but sometimes it’s an idea that’s just engrained and there are no better words for it.

pinterest just went to a “new look” and for me, it probably heralds the end of my using it (pretty much what happened with polyvore).  I can handle learning the new layout.  It looks fine to me (not that there was anything wrong with it before IMO) but I no longer have the ability to right click and “open in new tab” from any board (including my “home” which is basically the “board” of all the new pins from those whom I follow).   I’ve always gone through my new pins daily (or more than daily ), opening likely looking pins in new tabs.  I absolutely WILL NOT re-pin something until I verify that the pin is actually linked to an appropriate source.  Sometimes what I thought looked interesting is less so once I look more closely.  Either way, I’ll browse through my new pins, opening tabs as I go to look at once I have scanned through all my new pins.  Not anymore.  This loss of functionality is crippling to me.

I also can’t right click and open up the board that a pin came from (linked at the bottom of the pin).  When I am doing a search and get a screenful of pins, I frequently want to open the whole board (in a new tab!), not just the pin.  Can’t do it.  I have to click into the board in my main browsing screen.  Then if I want more details on a pin, I have to click into that as well.  Now I am 3 deep from my initial search result.  When I finally get to hit back, back, back, about half the time the search has reset to the top of the screen and I have to scroll back through to find my place.

I generally dislike the whiny complainers who post on game / company forums and think so much of themselves that they think thier ”This sux and I will no longer be a customer” comments carry any weight with said company, so I have refrained from whining to pinterest, other than filling out a polite feedback form.  So that’s why you got to listen to me now

R.I.P Pinterest?

Is it really *that* hard to click on the individual blog entry when linking from a blog to pinterest?  It’s quite annoying to click a pinterest link that looks so very interesting to discover you are at the blog home page, or on an archive page, in either case, no idea where the original post is located.  (or to a tumblr feed, or a google search page, etc).  Almost as useful — linking to an embedded picture, so the pinterest link pulls up some bp1.blogspot.com address, instead of the actual blog where you might find information about the picture.

You really gotta wonder if people are actually trying to access the links they are re-pinning.

Only pin / re-pin to an original source!

What’s new?

Kidlet officially has Asperger’s with major sensory processing issues (not that we didn’t already know that for months).  I will leave it at that un-emotionally changred sentence for now.  I assure you, reality is far from un-emotional.

Kidlet informed me some time ago that cute bento lunches were not appropriate for his age (whatever!).  I still pack his meals in laptop lunchboxes or bento boxes, but they aren’t worth photographing.

Baby L is no baby!  Not quite 3, but way “too” bright.  I have struggled with tot school because her knowledge exceeds her age. Far exceeds it.  She has known her alphabet (and not just singing it, but being able to identify letters at random, upper and lower) for a year and knows the sounds of most letters, counts to 30 on her own (and rocognizes, in random order written numbers to 20, plus the 10′s to 100), can tell you how many objects are in a group without actually counting them, up to 5 easily, knows all her colors, all the basic shapes, can expand on patterns, sorts by at least 2 different criteria (round & blue for instance), and on and on.

Her motor skills are age 2, so much writing isn’t possible (although we have been doing various pre-writing activities and fine motor activities with tweezers and eyedroppers, etc to prepare her), and she certainly isn’t holding writing utensils correctly, or able to use scissors.  And emotionally she is 2.  She isn’t ready for more advanced “work”, and it’s been VERY challenging for mom to find activities that will interest the 2 year old who has the”academic” knowledge of a 4 year old and are actually doable by said 2 year old.

Emotionally, I am a wreck, and physically, there hasn’t been a lot of change.  I’ve lost maybe 15 pounds since Baby L was born.

We’re alive and kicking. 

Mostly been packing regular laptop lunches or having hot lunch.  I’m quite sad about that, because I’m missing opportunities for Halloween bento, which are by far my favorite to do!

Tot school goes on, but Baby L and I have been sick for 4 out of the last 5 weeks.  We’re really sick for a few days, then just a little sick, then it lingers on a few more — and then we get sick all over again.  L is getting tot school time, but I’m not planning ahead very well, and I’ve not been documenting what we do, so no posts there.

I’m spending ridiculous hours a week on my volunteer jobs at Kidlet’s school (this is the last week of intense work for one of them thankfully).   I’ll still be spending about 4-6 hours a week volunteering in the classroom, and the Art Lit coordinator job I’m doing does take quite a bit of time in prepping the lessons, teaching the parent class and then presenting it to my son’s class, but we only do a new artist/culture every month or so, so it shouldn’t be as time consuming as the volunteer coordinator job has been in finding people to chair events, and filling holes for classroom helpers, etc.

This week is shaping up to be as crazy as last week.  I’m over 100 people short so far of our average volunteer pool with one week left for submissions (our school has about 300 students and usually around 150 parent volunteers).  While getting that many in the last week will absolutely swamp me, I hope it happens or a lot of programs won’t happen.  I put up reminder flyers today, and I need to send out an email to all the teachers asking for them to remind folks about our volunteer process during back to school night tomorrow.  I also have to prep a notice for the schools email “news notes” that gets sent out Friday.  Thursday is the day my mom comes into town so I can volunteer in the classroom, so I need to get everything finished up by tomorrow.

Baby L is also sick.  She uses a pacifier at sleep times (and only then) but she can’t keep it in her mouth because her nose alternates between plugged and runny and she can’t breathe and suck at the same time, so she isn’t sleeping well (or at all) and is doing a lot of heart wrenching crying.  That means mommy doesn’t get to sleep well or at all either.  Funtioning on so litle sleep makes me emotional and short tempered, so its a struggle to keep myself in check.

No bento so far this week.  Today was one of Kidlet’s 2 hot lunch picks for the month (he loves thier “brunch for Lunch” days). Yesterday I just sent a laptop lunchbox.  I know there are people that cute-ify those, but for us they are just the green equivilent of brown bagging it and I toss his food into the containers and go.  While I can usually get a bento done in 10-15 minutes, laptop lunches take under 5 minutes, and it’s where I turn when mornings are harried.  I suspect that will be the case every morning this week!

Not much posting going on this week, as you can see.  This has been the last full week before school starts and I’ve been so busy.  Not just prepping the kids with shopping, getting in doctor and dentist appointments and going through the closet and getting rid of everything too small, etc, but with my volunteer coordinator stuff. 

The last couple of weeks before school starts and the first month of school are the busiest time for that.  I’ve been updating documents for our web site and prepping my “lesson plan” for the training of new volunteers.  Creating welcome letters and decriptions of all the volunteer jobs.  I joined the rest of the PTA the other day for a few hours stuffing the back to school welcome packets for all the families.  Email has been flying fast and furious.

I think I am caught up now and am basically just waiting for volunteer forms to come in and for my training dates to arrive. 

I’ve been spending time with the kids when I’m not frantically busy, and I made fun foods for WFLW — I just haven’t had time to sit and post about it.  I do have a tot school post in the works.  We’ll see if things get a little less crazy now for a bit!

I picked up a few sets of plush food sets at Ikea and have them in a basket for tot school this week, but I find there are a couple in the vegetable set that I really don’t know what they are supposed to be.

I suppose my best guess on the lower one is cucumber. { Although I don’t think the center of a cucumber looks very star like.}  I am 100% at a loss on the one in the back.  If it wasn’t such a pain to get pictures off my camera (I’m having to have the hubby put them onto his machine, upload them to the internet, and then I can download them to my machine) I would get a better picture of that one in the back.  It’s got a bulbous bottom with garlic like stringy bits, a couple straight leek-like leaves, but only part way up, and the center is a cylindrical light green thing with a swirl on top.

Maybe they are some kind of foreign local Swedish vegetables.

Edit:

OK, here it is.  What is it?!

Busy, busy week so far.  Feels like I am constantly rushing from one thing to another.  I guess I feel it more too because DH isn’t really here to help at all this week.  His boss is visiting from Chicago and its been at least 3 years since they were able to get together face to face.  Where he ordinarily works from home a fair amount of time, and is done for the day by 4 and can help out with Baby L so I can clean a little and make dinner, and normally does kidlets night time routine, he is staying late, going to dinner with the boss, etc, so I am on my own for all the kids waking hours.

Kidlet has swim class every morning for the next two weeks.  Immediately afterwards yesterday I had to head to a meeting with the former volunteer coordinator for our PTA (I don’t remember if I posted that I was roped into elected to that position which apparently is a two year term I just discovered at a PTA board training last Saturday).  I figured it would take 30 minutes, maybe an hour tops, but I ended up being there over 2 hours, and if I hadn’t pushed to get out of there to get baby L home for a nap, I think it could have gone on much longer =0

Today after swimming we headed out to a park for one of the planned “incoming first graders park meets” from kidlets school.  We’ve been to 4 or 5 of them and they haven’t been well attended, but there were actually other families there this time.  I took some terribly cute picture of the kids, but for some reason my camera isn’t communicating with my computer — I suspect there is something going on with my USB stuff, because my iphone stopped connecting with the computer a few weeks back.  Sigh.

Tomorrow after class we are headed out to Ikea.  I had wanted to go on Sunday, but it just didn’t work out, and kidlet was disappointed because he loves thier play area, so I told him we could go a different day.  That’s a good 30-45 minute drive one way.  Whee. In the afternoon, kidlet has an appointment with his counsellor and although its a tremendous pain to deal with baby L and her rampant running around while trying to work with kidlet and his doctor, I don’t seem to have a lot of options since DH won’t be able to make it home to take care of the baby.

Thursday we have another park play date in the afternoon, and then I have my first official PTA officer board meeting.  Thankfully my SiL is able to come over and sit with the kids that evening, since I have no clue when DH will make it home.

Friday might actually be open.  knock wood.

I have to say, I really don’t understand the people that head out to crazy packed venues like children’s museums, amusement parks, and the zoo late in the day.  When we go to those places - like today, taking advantage of our Oregon Zoo membership – we go as soon as they are open, or as close to that as we can manage to talk people into when we are meeting others there.  At that time of day, parking is a breeze and we are only a few cars down from the entrance.  There are no (or very short) lines for tickets.  But as we leave a few hours later, it never fails — lines ticket lines are 20 to 30 people deep with twice the lines open, the parking lots are stacked with cars all holding up traffic trying to wait for a spot to open.  Geting *out* is almost as bad as the getting in must be for those johnny come latelys.  I truely don’t understand what makes a couple extra hours at home worth dealing with that mess, because even once you are inside, its gotta be just as crowded and nuts!

On the other hand, I guess its good for me since the kids are both early risers and I *like* getting them out and about so I feel like I still have so much day left afterwards.  I suppose if everyone went early to avoid the crowds, then the crowds would be early in the morning

I’ve taken that picnic bento box out with us several times so far, but I haven’t been motivated to document it since I haven’t really gone to much effort to make it kawaii.  It usually ends up looking something alot like this:

At best, I’ve cut the fruit and veggies into shapes.  I think his day camp next week provides lunch, so no bento opportunities there either.

If you have ever commented here, you might have noticed that it requires approval before posting (although once approved, you can then post automatically without waiting for approval in the future).  That works well to keep spam out of comments, but does require me to manually dispprove/delete all the spam posts that come in, and it’s tedious and somewhat tiresome clicking through a couple dozen posts daily.  I’ve been leaning towards installing one of those little fields where you have to type what you see or do a basic sum or something to post, but before I do that and make it more difficult for posting comments, I’m going to try a plugin called “WP Captcha-Free” which, in theory, should prevent bots from being able to post.

“WP Captcha-Free generates a hash (aka token) based on several parameters like time (with a some cushion), post id, IP address, and browser user-agent which should not change between requests (within a short period of say a few seconds). When the comment form is posted the plugin uses ajax to get a hash value and adds it to a hidden field. On the server side it verifies if the hash is valid or not. It uses adds random salt to the hash so that it cannot be guessed.

A combination of a time based hash and javascript (ajax) makes it almost impossible for any bot to bypass.”

I don’t entirely understand all that, so I hope that it isn’t so aggressive as to interfere with actual people!