The Perpetual Witching Hour

The Witching Hour is a phrase often used in superstitious circles when demons, witches or evil spirits lurk about and are at the height of their malevolent power. Usually this is the time after 12:00am. Spooky right? Well, the Witching Hour can also mean something else. Something far more sinister, paralyzing and can leave YOU feeling like a demon, witch or a malevolent being. This witching hour is usually only contained within a short period of time and it can happen at any time day or night. But what brings on the Witching hour? Busyness!

Just “TRY” to concentrate and get something substantial and important done and along comes this creature, soft, warm, smirking and pint sized to make your life a living hell! I have been living in a perpetual witching hour for the last three days. It hasn’t stopped. I’ll explain a little of how the witching hour festers, then throbs and finally pops like a massive zit all oozy and bloody!

Here it goes:

For you parents, have you ever tried to take an important call and two minutes into your conversation little Festus Jr. comes over and starts pulling on your pants, crying, screaming and nothing you do can calm him down…EXCEPT get off the phone? You end the call, hang up and little Festus decides to smile and walk away? Did he want anything? NO! You go to see how he is, and he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you. He’s playing with his trucks, spinning around wildly and having fun. So you sneak back into the kitchen to get on the phone because of how urgent the call was. You pick up the phone and start to dial and guess who comes barreling into the room screaming like someone was trying to murder him? You guessed it, FESTUS! You scratch your head still being patient, end your second attempt to make that call and as soon as you put that phone on the hook, Festus doesn’t have a care in the world. This of course continues. There is no rhyme or reason for it because it makes no sense what so ever! Does Festus want attention? Hmm, it’s hard to say because when you give him attention he treats you like you don’t even exist.

Here are some other short examples of when the Witching Hour is administered by our power-packed half pints:

• Making a meal
• Balancing the checkbook
• Shopping for food
• Doing laundry
• Making love (just try that one, and it’s enough to turn you off right away!)
• When your friends or family are over
• During the child’s birthday party (”Its my party and I’ll cry if I want to)
• After they are in bed and you sit down to watch your favorite show
• TRYING TO WORK FROM HOME!

What is that? Why is it that children instinctively know when you need to get something important done and that’s when the world is coming to an end for them? They were fine just two seconds ago and now they are caught up in a panicky whirlwind of emotion that only stops when you do NOTHING!

This is what my life for the last three days has been like. I have both self-imposed deadlines as well as external deadlines to meet, and it seems like as soon as I think its quiet, my little cutie pie Simmi is off into a screaming session that only ends when I decide to do nothing at all. Its not a fluke either. When I was creating this child’s website, the screaming was incessant. I always work on articles or other things that are important for me to get done online at night and if I don’t get it finished, I save my work, check it during her nap time and publish. Easy right? But what happens when you have something pressing to do, like LEARN A NEW MANAGEMENT SYSTEM? Huh? HUH? Ever since I made a commitment to this new business venture and began the process of learning about Drupal this child has been hell on wheels!

She is intuitively tuned into me. Usually she has a nice long nap during the day and I can do a few things I need to do online. Uh…not lately. No nap. Just jumping in her crib and CHEWING the wood on her crib! Yes, she has totally macked up her beautiful crib. Last week she had a splinter in her gums because she was gnawing on the wood. She has been manic over the last three days, just running around in circles and running up and down the hall.

I didn’t start downloading the system and get to business until 10:00pm last night when she finally conked out. I was up till 3:30am jamming as much in as I could. Today I did nothing. But she was still manic. If I had hair, I’d be pulling it out right about now. My world is in this constant state of flux recently. I was hoping to be refreshed and ready to go, but instead I have a screaming child on my hands and some health problems again.

When Dom came home for those four days, he brought with him some of his clothing. This clothing smelled musty. I don’t think its a coincidence that now I am having a flare up again. The same thing happened when I received the package from Dom with the “Big Girl Panties.” My son and I became really sick. When we opened that box the smell of mold wafted through the air. I haven’t had pain in my joints like I have right now since I left Maryland. I refuse to go back on steroids or anti-inflammatory medication and the only thing that seems to shut off my auto-immune response is being on a raw diet.

Can you tell I have a lot on my plate right now?

I’m Traveling Into Uncharted Territories

I’m traveling into uncharted territories which has me scared shitless and at the same time thrilled as though I’m going on some sort of sky diving trip. So what is this adventure that I am going on? Well, it is the mysterious world of Drupal. Drupal has me intrigued, perplexed and it leaves me coming back like a junky strung out on heroin. I can not even effectively put into words what Drupal is, except that it is an extremely powerful management system for creating dynamic websites.

I have hung around the forum at www.drupal.org and watch a lot of their tutorials, but I feel like some sort of voyeur getting all turned on by the power of this system as they talk about different features and functions. Can you tell that I’m getting addicted, yet I haven’t even sampled the product yet! Why does the thought of this system intrigue me so? I have extremely limited amount of knowledge in computers and forget about knowing anything that has to do with html, PHP or any kind of code.

The reason I’m considering going this route is a few business opportunities I have cooking on the back burner. I need this kind of management system to handle the type of work I’m venturing into. But I feel like I’ll be opening a huge can of worms or get in over my head delving into this. What if I can’t do it? OOO, but I want to try! If anyone reading this post has knowledge or experience in Drupal, leave a comment for me and tell me what your experience has been. After I finish this post and a post over on Simmi’s site, I’m going to be downloading all the necessary stuff needed to run Drupal and start building a site. I don’t know what is going to happen, but I should at least give it a shot.

Four months ago I would have never imagined that I would enjoy the art of web design. I got this cool template maker and that is how I was introduced to Drupal. I created a Drupal template and really got hooked. I also created a Wordpress template as well. I fell in love with all the details and options…but I want more. I want to learn how to bend a template to my will and make it do things I want.

Here is a screen shot of a Wordpress template that I made:

And here is a Drupal template that I made:

Now mind you these two templates are only my first bash at creating something but I really like doing it. Maybe if I get good at it, I will consider doing some sort of work helping to create templates for other people. I have become a template whore. Should I be concerned?

Bald Beauty of the Day