I’ve moved.

To my own domain. Find me at www.la-florecita.com

Learning.

Last week I got all excited that I was going to transfer my blog from wordpress.com to my own hosting thingamajig. And I was nervous and scared. And so I did it! I transferred the domain “la-florecita.com” to a non-wordpress place and I bought a year of hosting after researching various hosting sites.

YAY!

I was ready!

Okay, install wordpress with one-click install. Done!

Going to check my new blog and see if it all went well! What do you mean, page is not found? Why is wordpress still taking me to my old blog? Stop it!

[Insert lots of research, reading various things, digging deep into parts of wordpress I'd never before ventured.]

And it turns out that because I paid to have domain-mapping through wordpress.com, when you type in the domain I “transferred,” it takes you straight to my wordpress.com site.

[More research.]

What do you mean, I don’t have permission to transfer the ownership?

So I do some things to get it transferred. And then I have to log in to some other account and give it permission to transfer. And then I had to wait 5 days!! I couldn’t just approve it! I had to either cancel it or wait 5 days for it to go through.

And this morning I got the emails. All was successful. Except for the part where wordpress.com will continue to domain-map my “transferred” domain name until March 13th, when that expires.

So I can figure out how to get around that, if there is a way, or keep blogging here for a month and cross that bridge when I get to it. Stay tuned.

Please hold.

On my life list, I have “one day take control of my blog, not let a website do it all for me.”

I’m am in the middle of figuring out how to move this blog from WordPress.com to my own domain and host and I am TER. RI. FIED. I’ve bought the domain and signed up for hosting service, now I just have to figure out how to make it all work together.

Apologies if this blog disappears into the internet and never gets reposted because to fix it would involve me EDITING CODE.

Typical Austin in February

8am: Read (past tense) the New York Times. (instead of setting it next to my bed with the intention of reading it later that day or that week or just the NYT Magazine, and then just recycling it without opening it. I may as well just throw $7 out the window every week.)

10am: Listened to This American Life and ate breakfast then folded laundry.

11am: Grabbed a Belgian Beer and went out to wash car by hand in a tank top. This seems SO LONG AGO. (Have super awesome neighbors that loaned me their hose since our hose is attached at the front of the house and won’t reach my car in the back alley.) Also waxed the car and vacuumed out/wiped down the interior.

3pm: Went to the dog park where IKE held his own with bigger aggressive dogs. Until he didn’t and they were circling him like bait and so we left.

4pm: Late lunch/early dinner at Snackbar which has yummy food with lots of vegan options and a dog-friendly patio. Ike curled up under my jacket and slept the whole time. I’m sure having kids will be this easy.

6pm: Naptime.

7pm: Holy shit, I’m sunburned. Off to Whole Foods during Superbowl for a pleasant shopping experience. Included tumbleweeds and aisles to ourselves.

9pm: Worked on a few projects.

midnight: Still up because even though said projects are finished, my stupid ass split an iced coffee with Dave at Whole Foods. Maybe I’ll go watch all the Superbowl commercials.

SNOW DAY!

Oh, rest of the country, how jealous of you I have been. With your snow days, and your… snow. That’s about it. I’m not really jealous of negative degree wind chills or having to scrape windshields or shovel ANYTHING.

And I got my dream! Last night it finally started to sleet around 10pm and snowed overnight. I woke up to a very quiet neighborhood and 1-1.5″ of winter wonderland. As soon as the sun came up, I put on my galoshes and went for a walk, avoiding the hills in our neighborhood. There wasn’t enough snow to make me willing to do anything to fall into it.

Here are some iPhone pix I took.

Hopefully those thin sheets will save my broccoli...

Cold Civic in the back alley.

Neighborhood park/rec center

And, of course, IKE. Wearing the “coat” Dave made him out of an old cycling knee warmer.

What is going on here?

All of that snow is gone now, of course. It’s Austin, after all.

 

I’m Certain We Have This All Figured Out

I’d wanted to reach certain milestones before we discussed starting a family. Okay, two milestones: pay off credit card debt and buy a house. And then I was 32. And you know what the great thing about buying a house is? You’re not putting yourself or others at physical risk if you try to do it after age 35. Ditto for paying off debt.

So here we are. Talking about it. I’d thought about keeping it private and not saying anything until, like, I was showing. And then I had a better idea: blog every grisly detail. See? Better idea, right?

When I was single and a friend would announce she was pregnant, I wanted to know EVERYTHING. Was she “trying?” And if not, was she on the pill? Did she miss a day? Did the condom tear? Was she part of the 1% that condoms didn’t work for? Why the fuck did she get pregnant? (pun intended) I HAD to know so it wouldn’t happen to me!

But these are things you can’t ask in polite company. And sometimes you aren’t close enough to the person to say anything other than, “Omigod, congratulations!” However, from the people I WAS close enough with to ask, I’ve learned that skipping birth control pills 5 days in a row is a bad anti-pregnancy method and taking antibiotics renders birth control pills useless. Got it.

On the whole, no one talks about this stuff. But then we totally have TV shows like I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant or 16 and Pregnant (I haven’t seen either of them, I’m just stating) and I really feel like people SHOULD be talking about it. Maybe if society was more open about the female body and its so called “mysteries” we wouldn’t get our panties in a wad over Janet Jackson’s nipple.

Too grandiose? Okay, back to me, then.

So I went off the pill 2.5 years ago. I describe that fiasco here. I got the book I mentioned in that post. I began taking my temperature first thing every morning. Before I rolled over, before I got up to pee, before I fed IKE. And you know what? There’s a damn pattern. WHO. KNEW. My cycle runs about 32 days, and if I’m stressed near my ovulating time, it’s been known to run 38 to 42 days. My post-ovulating temperature is about .4 or .5° above my pre-ovulation temperature. Except if I drank a lot the night before, then my temperature could be a whole degree above “normal.” My temperature ALWAYS goes down about .8° the day I get my period. So it might be day 33 but if my temperature is 97.9 that morning, I know I’m not getting my period and don’t need to pack the 4 bottles of Aleve.

So armed with that knowledge, we use condoms between Day 6 and a few days after my temperature spikes (usually 4-5 days to be safe). That’s it. That’s our entire birth control method. So when I told a coworker that we were talking about trying but I wanted to wait a few months, and he laughed and said, “Good luck,” I was confused. Um, it’s worked for 2.5 years, or in other words, DUDE I GOT THIS.

And what about all the Catholics who thought THEY knew what they were doing for all 9 kids? I don’t know, I’d need to see their charts.

[Stay tuned for the next birth control related post, wherein I'm all, "Just kidding! We're totally pregnant! No idea what happened!"]

[Also, HI, new BlogathonATX friends! Yes, I'm talking about my uterus!]

BlogathonATX: Part Deux summary

So as thing starts to wrap up, I’ve got a few closing thoughts.

I didn’t attend any of the forums, but I’m sitting in the room that opens to the “talking room” so I overheard lots of discussions, everything from time management and multitasking to finding out who your audience is and focusing on it (guess I’m supposed to focus on you, you Marfa-visiting Boondocks fan who is interested in my 20-something self and likes to play Gossip Girl Bingo).

I sat with strangers and felt embarrassed when they asked what my blog is about. The girl next to me is blogging about, I don’t know, superconductors and Boeing engines and lesbian events and the other girl at our table is blogging for her indoor cycling and rowing company, the guy at our table blogs about physical therapy… and I’m all, “Um, my dog? How I don’t run? Gossip Girl?” People would also ask about what I tweet about and I’m all, “Traffic? Things that piss me off?” I just eventually explained them as being personal, where I write about whatever tickles my fancy.

And the more people talked about how to get readers, how to find your audience and how to schedule your blogging time, the more self-conscious I felt about blogging about how much I love Taylor Swift’s new album.

I was chatting with the superconductor girl and she asked, “What’s the goal of your blog?” I thought for a moment, and said, “To make people laugh.” Not that I’m a comedian (enne?) and not that I want to only be funny and not taken seriously. I think I want to be interesting OR funny and occasionally both. It was good to say that out loud, I’ve never thought of the goal of my blog before, outside of not being disowned by my family. (Which I’m not super worried about anymore.)

And after a few hours of “working” together and making people laugh occasionally, superconductor girl said, “I can see why you’d blog about ‘whatever.’” Which I took as a compliment as it is much better than having her say, “Oh my GOD will you please stop talking?”

I also played Qrank for the first time, ate veggie tacos, ate a guinness chocolate cupcake, snacked on wasabi ranch popcorn, ate yummy handmade truffles and got advice on how to host my own blog. And dare I say, made new friends.

A success.

 

Enjoying

I was planning to write a post about the cool stuff I got for my birthday, but some of them required searching and/or ordering online and by the time I got them it was Thanksgiving and as my long Thanksgiving weekend was ending, I got the news that my aunt had been killed in a car wreck and so we spent a few days in Louisiana and then it was December. And then we had houseguests and then it was now. So here are a list of things I’ve been meaning to blog about, some birthday presents, some not.

Taylor Swift’s Speak Now

This was released about a week or 2 before my birthday and I bought it for myself as an early present and there’s really no logical explanation for the amount of joy it brings me. Also, I got the Target version because I wanted the extras. As much as I hate karaoke, when I sing along in the car, I picture myself on stage singing my heart out very, very terribly.

Harry Potter: Adult Version, Paperback boxed set

My brother asked what I wanted for my birthday and I sent him a link to this. Which is the same answer I gave when he asked what I wanted for Christmas 2 years ago. In spite of my love for HP, I don’t own any of the books. I borrowed the first 4, read them, then bought the first 4 for my sister. As each book was released, I read it, then gave it to my sister so she’d have the complete set. I do have all of the audiobooks, but nobody wants to curl up with an audiobook when they’re feeling under the weather. And I didn’t want the American version (what the fuck is a Sorcerer’s Stone? I read The Alchemist! You don’t need to dumb shit down for me, publishing company!) and I wanted the adult version (it’s the same content, people, minds out of the gutter) because it’s designed better. So yes, fancy-pants UK-only design. Worth it!!

White squares on fabrics

When Dave and I got married, our bath towel collections also got married. I went from having assorted colors that match my shower curtain to having just… assorted colors. As we have lost towels to bike cleaning and dog teeth, I’ve decided to slowly replace them with these spa-looking white towels. And for Christmas, I asked my dad to get me the waffle knit Elizabeth Arden spa robe from Bed Bath and Beyond. White squares! AND! We also bought a comforter cover from Ikea that is kind of waffleknitty (hard to tell in the picture). As if I needed another reason to want to curl up in my bed. I never go to the spa so these things make me stupidly happy.

OTBT Petaluma riding boot

For my birthday, I picked Dave up from work and he had a wad of cash and said, “Let’s go get Apple TV for your birthday!” I was like, “Pffftt, whatever. We are not getting something for US for MY birthday. We’re doing that for Christmas. Mama needs boots.” We went to several stores and I didn’t see anything I wanted (or at least not anything I could afford). So I went to Nordstrom the next day over my lunch break. I fell in love with the OTBT Petaluma in black, but I knew I wanted brown and they were fresh out. With the cash burning a hole in my wallet and the word Sale next to a pair of Cole Haan suede riding boots, I snatched them up. And I went home and couldn’t get the OTBTs out of my mind. I found them online, returned the Cole Haans, and bought my petalumas in new brown and have worn them 3x a week since.

Pantone USB Key

For Christmas, Dave got me this, possibly because I asked for it.

Cube Alarm Clock

Dave also got me this for Christmas. We finally have a clock in our bedroom that isn’t our phones! The only flaw in it, I think, is that it doesn’t dim as much as I like. It has 2 settings: So Bright It Wakes You While You Sleep, and Slightly Dimmer Than That. But we’ve gotten used to it and I love it anyway.

TSS

[post that I started a few weeks ago and finished today.]

I’m in our room, doing some light internet surfing, relaxing since I just got my period and you sure as hell won’t find me doing any jumping jacks or anything else that requires movement. I’m about 5 minutes away from some Harry Potter and a heating pad. Just as soon as Dave gets out of the bathroom.

When he walks out, he says, “OH MY GOD.”

“What?”

He walks in the bedroom, holding the little warning brochure about Toxic Shock Syndrome tampon companies include. “Babe, this sounds TERRIBLE.”

I crack up laughing. I haven’t been scared of TSS in, oh, about 17 years.

“Babe, I’m serious. Let me know if you start to feel feverish, or get a sunburn looking thing.”

Poor guy. He couldn’t believe I put myself at risk of dying every month.

That’s because he’s never worn a maxipad.

Behind the scenes

On thing on my life list is to get off of wordpress.com and use the wordpress, um, other stuff to write my blog. I would have more control over my blog, be able to have ads (so that when all 5 of you come to my blog, I could earn a penny), etc. It seems like I am in the right place to get help with that.

My wordpress usage of “la-florecita.com” expires in March, so look for it around then.