New Furniture!

Well, right before everyone got sick, our new living room furniture arrived. It was a ridiculously long wait; what we were originally told would be six weeks stretched into four months. I am, however, very happy with the end result. It was no easy feat to find a computer armoire that would hold our TV (which, happily, survived four days on the floor amongst the chaos). We've been married for going on six years now. We started out with pretty much nothing. He had a barracks room's worth of stuff, and I had what would fit into my KIA Spectra. That's it. Our goal was to not go broke making our place fancy, so we've picked things up slowly, most of it after we paid off the last of our debt a few years ago. The living room is the one room that has always driven me crazy. While we have a decent set of couches, this was the centerpiece people saw when they walked in. Today, this is our solution: We also bought this unit to give us a little more storage in the room: It makes me feel grown up to have real furniture in the living room. The hodge podge we had before reminded me too much of my lean college days when the biggest concern was if it was free or not. Here's my question though: is it time to change out the curtains? I'm thinking yes. While I'm glad we went with the burgundy instead of something more traditional, the curtains seem like overkill now (we also have a burgundy and beige rug on the floor, and the couches are beige). The above picture, because of the flash, make them look kind of pink, put that's because there is a bit of a sheen on them that is reflecting the light. They are very close in color to the furniture. I'm thinking chocolate. My goals while Oliver is out to sea are to finish transforming the living room into something a little more put presentable, shed more stuff in preparation for our move this fall, and spend as little money as possible in the process. I always have to have some kind of goal or project when he leaves. It makes the time go by a lot faster, and I like having something to show him when he comes home.

Sudden Revelation

Oliver has duty tonight. He normally gives us a call in the evening, when things are quiet on the boat. He called a few minutes ago, and Wyatt took a turn talking. After I hung up the phone, he looked up at me, and I could see a light go off in his head. "Mama!" he exclaimed, "Daddy called from the submarine!" He sounded so excited; I don't think it's ever occurred to him before that that was possible.

Decoding HTML

Ok, I'm not really going to tell you how or anything, but I'm proud of myself tonight. I spent some time mucking around in my blog's template, and it was pretty fun. I ran across this blog, called the Blogger Buster, awhile ago that helped a whole lot. It's kind of nice not to have to depend on trying to find a premade template that fits my style. As for the sickos in the house, there is much improvement. Oliver and I seem to have escaped it for the most part, and the baby only puked once. He's still having trouble sleeping, but I can tell we're over the hump. Good thing, because the boat is leaving the pier before much longer. Not that we've seen much of the man of the house the last three weeks, but it's always nice thinking we could possibly get him home if there was a real emergency. Ah, well, such is the Navy life.

I Could Use a Little Sleep

I'm not sure if I'll get any tonight, though. Wyatt is doing a lot better, but whatever he had has leapfrogged to Oscar. Poor little tyke is completely miserable. It's awful to watch your child ache and be unable to do much to help. I just put him to bed again, and I hope he'll be able to sleep this time. I have a lot of other stuff to write, but I'm tired and need to go to bed. Three nights of up and down take a toll. The one thing I'm happy about is that, so far, Oscar hasn't puked. That's one thing I haven't really had to deal with: baby vomit. Wyatt didn't have a puking sickness until he was almost two and a half (I'm not counting his reflux as a baby; totally different kind of thing). Oscar has also been spared thus far, which means so have I. Let's hope it stays that way.

Update

My neighbor is coming to the rescue with some Pedialyte. I've never had to use any before, but I'm hoping if we take it slow, it will help him. At the very least, I'll feel better knowing he is taking in more than just water.

Sick Day, Continued

Ugh. Wyatt is running a nasty fever and still puking. My boys don't get sick very often, so when they do, I kind of freak out about it. I don't think I've ever seen him so sick. Oliver is convinced a doctor won't do anything for him, and with how hard it is to get an acute care appointment at the hospital, I tend to agree; the Emergency Room is probably our only option, unless we want to wait a couple days to see someone. I'm not sitting in the Emergency Room for hours with a puking four year old and his scooting baby brother. I have a feeling that would be worse for him than anything they gave us there. The only thing he's keeping down is water. I wish we had some Pedialyte, but there's no way I want to leave the house with him right now. So, all I can do is sit around worrying, and I hate it. I'm so glad this sort of thing is a rare event around here!

It All Makes Sense Now

Today has been a sick day around here. Or at least it was for Wyatt, who was sitting on the couch at 0530 puking this morning (not on the couch, thank heavens; I gave him a bowl). So, while I ran around taking care of him and trying to keep the baby from catching whatever it is, he spent most of his time watching tv. For Wyatt, this was a pretty nice arrangement. He just looked up at me, smiled, and said, "I get sick so I can watch tv, Mama!" Uh, huh, I'm on to him now.

Yes We Can

Or so they chant. And now we get to find out what they will actually do. I can't say as I'm excited about it, but at least it's finally happening. I was getting tired of people talking about Obama as if he was already functioning as the President when he wasn't. We didn't really watch much of the inauguration. I know I'll probably get some flames for this, but I'm having a hard time feeling the historic sense of it. I know there is this sense that we elected a black president for the first time (isn't Obama actually half-white?), but I don't really see it as the fulfillment of Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech. Didn't he say he longed for the day his children would be judged by the "content of their character and not the color of their skin"? Doesn't this mean we will someday be talking about something other than skin color? I do think that was accomplished in some sense, as I know many, many people, myself included, weren't thinking skin color when we voted. Maybe it's because I was born after the civil rights movement that I'm not really clued in on this. I didn't grow up being taught one skin color was better than another. I also, thankfully, didn't witness segregation or the intense prejudice that was once the norm. So maybe this is an historic day, but I still didn't watch the inauguration, just as I have never watched one in the past. To me, it's just the final campaign speech and an excuse to hold a big party. It's what happens after all that hoopla that will have my attention.

MovieMaker Tutorial, Part Six

6. Editing the Length of Your Video clips

This is a fairly simple step to learn, but it will prove invaluable as you slog your way through all the video of your cute kid or adorable puppy to find the parts you really want to save for all posterity.

In order to start, click on the video track you want to shorten. It should look something like this:

All right, you have a couple options here. You can trim either the front or the end of it (or both), or you can chop something out of the middle of it, stitch it with a transition, and call it good.

First, I’ll show you how to trim it, as it’s the easier of the two. Run your mouse over the side you want to trim. You will see a little red arrow appear. (I tried to screenshot this for you and it isn’t allowing me to do so.) When you click on the arrow, you will be able to adjust the size of it.

For example, I chose the end of my video clip. I clicked on the arrow, then shifted my mouse to the left. The video clip shrunk accordingly. Play the clip in the preview box to see if you’ve cut it enough, or went too far. The good thing about doing it this way is that you aren’t making a permanent change. If you cut off too much, just go back, click on the arrow, and move it back.

Deleting something in the middle is a bit more of a challenge. First, you need to figure out where you want to clip your video. Stop the video, and make sure the blue selection line is at the point you want. I have mine set here:

Ok, now that I’ve done that, I’ll move up to the preview box where there is a button you can click that will clip your video segment.

Ok, now your video should look something like this:

Now, instead of one you have two video segments. You can adjust these just like you did before, or you can make another cut and delete the middle segment. Stitch in a transition like so:

and you have a shorter, cleaner video piece!

Next up: Part 7, Working With the Audio Track

You Know You've Been a Military Wife For Awhile When...

...you read someone else's blog recounting their husband's two month absence (an absence marked by a couple weekend visits and plenty of Skype), and you think, wow, that's all? To be fair, he's never gone away before, or so I gather. It's always a shock the first time it happens, and no matter how long your spouse is gone, it's hard and I recognize that. But, yeah, I totally know I've been doing this for over five years now just from my own "piece of cake!" reaction to it. To all you first timers, it gets better. You figure it out (or you beg him to get out if you never do). Also, I can't get over how much easier it is to have your spouse out to sea when you are no longer under the influence of hormonal mood swings gifted liberally from your IUD. Seriously, I'd rather risk another pregnancy than ever do birth control again. Ick. On an unrelated note, does anyone want to remind me where I'm living again? Because, looking out my window, I have a suspicion I've been warped back to Rhode Island as I look at the white stuff, once again, blanketing our front lawn. As I have an eye appointment in the morning, I very much hope life doesn't come to a standstill again. On a brighter note, Seattle has come to its senses and has decided that salt is going to be allowed on a limited basis to combat all the cars sliding down the hills. Here's hoping our county will wake up as well. I'm really not sad it snowed, of course, and Wyatt is completely excited. His grandmother sent him this via UPS (a package that didn't make it until after Christmas because of the aforementioned snow shutdown, at which point in time the rain had commenced and washed most of it away): This is the first thing he ran for when he noticed the snow this evening. Luckily for me, he didn't want to pick up the toys all over the living room floor, so we didn't have to go outside and test it out. Hopefully, it doesn't rain tomorrow before we can go out and make use of it, assuming the snow is sticky enough to build a snowman.