Ruminating Slav

Infestation

infestation, originally uploaded by *Karo*.

What you see before you is a sampling of the hundreds of carpenter ant corpses that were littering our guest bathroom until I vacuumed them up a moment ago. Seemingly within the span of 12 hours, these little bastards invaded our house like one of the motherfucking biblical plagues. The exterminator has come and gone, but I'm still expecting frogs to come raining down from the heavens at any moment.

Poop of the non-baby variety

So! Here's some things. Last night BK and I went on our first date since Baxter was born. I know, right? Shameful. Everything was hunky-dork* until we set off for the restaurant and realized that all of the exits off the highway were closed because the service road was a lake for miles on accounta the 40 days and 40 nights-style rain Dallas experienced this weekend. Because having a baby has mellowed me out considerably, according to BK anyway, I responded to this change in plans with a "meh," as opposed to my usual barrage of cursing, huffing, and moaning. I remembered reading something good many, many moons ago about a Cuban restaurant in Dallas, so I called my friend C. to telegoogle (thanks, C!) and we soon found ourselves at the Samba Room which surprised the hell outta me by being really frickin' good despite both barbacoa and sushi being on the menu (WTF?). Mojitos? Good! Ceviche? Good! Sea bass? Good! Blue crab California roll? Good! Really! Oh, and wee little key lime pie in a shot glass? Also good. We then went to see V for Vendetta which I was resigned to simply providing company for, but turned out to be also good! We rolled on in after midnight, so I guess that should do me another 6 months until the next time the in-laws come visitin'.

Speaking of the in-laws, I have never met people who poop more often in my life. My mother-in-law, in particular, poops three to five times a day. This results in many poop-themed anecdotes from the weekend, like that time I was in our bedroom and my mother-in-law didn't know it so she closed the bathroom door that leads to the hall but not the one that opens to the bedroom and proceeded to have violent diarrhea 10 feet away from me OR the time BK and I were in the nursery changing Baxter's diaper and were conversing very loudly about why does it smell like shit in here when his diaper wasn't poopy and is it coming from over here, no, is it coming from over there, no, oh it's coming from the bathroom and then cue long, uncomfortable silence. But seriously, people. Constant pooping.

My smiley little baby has been a McCrankster Supreme the past couple of weeks, which has the effect of slowly beating me down over the course of the day so that when precious, precious free time rolls around the last thing I want to do is try to assemble a coherent blog post and instead slump in the armchair watching multiple Buffy episodes back-to-back with a thin rivulet of drool trickling from the corner of my mouth. C. and K., Baxter thanks you for his Longhorn gear which he looks quite smashing in.

* This was some sort of freudian typo that made me softly cackle when I previewed so I left it.

Do you know who I hate?

I hate those "helpful" people at the store who admonish you, a perfect stranger, to "Watch your purse!" when it's in the shopping cart and you step three feet away to pick an item up off the shelf. Lady, I AM STANDING RIGHT HERE. No one is going to abscond with my goddamn diaper bag. And even if they do, it's still none of your your fucking business. Aight?

My router brings all the boys to the yard

So I got this new laptop, right? It's supposed to be all fast and shit, right? It pains me to tell you that the joy of the Intel speed demon has been somewhat mitigated by the stellar crapitude that is our current wireless signal. I'm not kidding when I say that sometimes it takes 15 seconds for the front page of cnn.com to render completely. I've bought new routers, upgraded our DSL to "pro," bought a 5.8 Mhz cordless phone, but still, the crapitude. So the other day in a fit of rage I tore the Airport Express from its home at the stereo and shoved it into the outlet by the router, and plugged it in. I have no idea why I did this. I have vague memories of reading something somewhere that claims the Airport Express can be used as a repeater to boost your wireless signal, but I assume that is a more complicated process than simply plugging it into your 3rd-party router. But the internet fairies must have sprinkled some kilobyte dust on me, because it worked! In the sense that now CNN renders in a reasonable two seconds and the signal is relatively strong throughout the house, it works! I have no idea, though, what it was I actually did besides render iTunes unplayable through our speaker system, so if you're all smart and techy and shit, please let me know.

I have been poking around online for a bag for my MacBook Pro, since my existing Crumpler McBain's Lovechild is too small. I finally decided on the STM Medium Loft, although I was very much tempted to buy one of these laptop sleeves. In the end, though, cheapness won out -- I couldn't pony up the 78 bucks, so off to Microcenter I went yesterday to buy the STM. I took my laptop with me so I could make sure it fit. It fit, I bought, and on the way home Baxter fell asleep in his car seat. We've been a little lacking in the nap department around here of late, what with the newly-found ability to roll roll roll; he rolls himself into a corner on his belly and gets stuck and pissed off. If I pulled into the garage I'd have to take him out of the car because it was so hot here yesterday, and if I move him, he wakes up, and if he wakes up, my self-composure held together with spit and Elmer's Glue cracks just a teensy bit more. Are you putting the numbers together, my furry little lemurs? Sleeping baby + laptop + newly enhanced wireless signal = Karo sitting in an idling car in front of her house for 20 minutes surfing the internets. NICE ONE.