While overall I am very happy with my life and the way it is structured, there are some things that I find very difficult about solo parenting.

My daughter does spend some time with her Dad but almost all of her care and most of the financial responsibility is mine.

Here is a list of the things I find most difficult doing on my own.

What’s Hard

1. When I Am Sick – While I feel terrible for my daughter when she is sick and I wish I could take the illness away from her and place it on myself, it is much harder when I am the one is sick. Just getting up to take her to school or pick her up can be a real trial. A couple of weeks ago I had a terrible stomach bug and I was stumbling around trying to get her where she needed to be. Of course, if I am really really super sick (like when I had a tooth infection) I ask her Dad for help or ask a neighbor to take her to school. But what’s difficult is no back-up – there isn’t a 2nd person around to arrange things so I can simply stay in bed and get better. Fortunately, I am fairly healthy and don’t get sick often. Although I do have a weak stomach, which is a problem because I love spicy food so much ;-)
2. Always being the bad guy – I am the one that deals with all discipline issues and the one that determines that buying school clothes is more important than buying toys. Dad gets to be the fun one who takes her to the toy store and doesn’t have to deal with the day to day behavior problems. Just this week we had an issue with my daughter flat out lying to me and me trying to figure out the best way to deal with it and an appropriate punishment. As far as I know, Dad isn’t dealing with any of these problems. My guess is that when my daughter gets older she will start telling me that she would rather be with Dad.
3. Paperwork, Schedules and Appointments – I’d say that most of us despise paperwork and children seem to increase it exponentially, especially once they start school with permission slips, health assessments, etc. While I am very organized, sometimes I get frustrated being the one to take care all of these details. I get even more annoyed when I make up a schedule, arrange things with her Dad, he agrees, and then he still asks me “what day is that?” “when am I picking her up?” like it is my responsibility to keep track of what he needs to do as well as what my daughter and I need to do. There are certain things that he does take care of, such as the dentist, but I still have to remind him to make appointments so frequently that I would just as soon take care of it myself.
4. Regular Meals – This one relates to parenting in general and is not specific to solo parenting. And, actually, it may relate to my own personal quirks. I lived alone for 16 years before getting married and having a daughter and as I was never super into food I got used to eating whenever I felt like it; breakfast at 2pm, dinner at 10pm, etc. While I enjoy cooking, I get frustrated having to provide meals at regular times. And my kid is a grazer – she is always hungry and wants to eat ALL the time. She says “I’m hungry” so often that we joke that we should have named her Hungry ;-)

As I look over the list I realize that my Mom was responsible for all of these things even though she wasn’t a single parent. Of course, when I was a kid Dads weren’t as involved as they are now. When I was a kid you never saw a Dad pushing a baby carriage and I don’t think my Dad ever went to a Parent Teacher Conference, arranged a birthday party, or any of those kinds of things.

And now that I review these things, nothing on it is so difficult except for being sick. I guess like any other grown-up I just don’t want to be responsible all of the time. ;-)

What do you find difficult about solo parenting or parenting in general?

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

4 Things I Find Difficult About Solo Parenting

I was surprised to discover that I hadn’t posted anything in over 10 days. That has never happened before unless I have been on vacation and usually I schedule posts in advance so there isn’t a long gap without any new articles.

But, I didn’t have any posts scheduled and real life became so busy that I wasn’t able to get caught up. Well, it’s actually been a combination of busy / lazy / lack of inspiration.

Family

My father came for an unexpected visit two weekends ago and I’ve been thrown off ever since. Well, mostly unexpected. Over a month ago he mentioned that he was doing a cross-country trip and might stop in Philadelphia (my father lives in Texas). Since he didn’t say anything about it again, the possible visit slipped my mind and I was really surprised when he called on a Friday and asked if it was better if he came on Saturday or Sunday.

Of course I was really glad my Dad was coming but I like to have everything scheduled and planned. It took me half a day to adjust myself for a different weekend. And, then realized I would need to clean up a little and get some groceries.

My Dad and I love each other but we aren’t super close – I mean we don’t see each other that often (I’m not that inclined to go to Texas). We hadn’t seen each other in 7 years – the kid was only 2 the last time she saw him and didn’t really remember him. She was a little nervous but took to him right away, thought he was really funny and didn’t want him to leave. And I remembered how easy my Dad is compared to other relatives – he’s happy doing anything – you can take him to a museum, out to eat, a comic book convention or the roller derby. My Mom was not that easy to entertain.

We went to the Da Vinci exhibit at the Franklin Institute – the kid has wanted to go so having a guest increased my motivation. It was wonderful and I learned that Da Vinci had the same birthday as my Dad. I also saw a Planetarium show about Black Holes, which I thought was really interesting but the kid was a little scared and my Dad was dozing ;-)

Lazy

I’ve also been a lazier than I usually am. When I’m not working or doing family stuff, I haven’t felt like writing posts – I’ve mostly been reading and am actually way ahead of my goal of a book per week for this year. I think I’ve been a little worn out and have bit of spring fever, which I don’t remember really having since high school. Lazy probably isn’t the right work – I’ve just been working a little less and doing non computer related activities in my down time.

Uninspired

Normally, I have SO many ideas for posts that I don’t even manage to write them all. Lately, I haven’t been. I think that means it’s time to take a bit of break and recharge a little. Even this post is one about why I haven’t posted anything.

Thanks for sticking with me and for your support. I’ll leave you with the kid enjoying Fatboy Slim. ;-) I think I need some of that energy.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Busy With My (Anti) Social Life

I had double the number of entries than I did last December when I ran a similar contest for the release of WordPress 2.7. It could be that more people want assistance, more people are using WordPress or that more people know about and trust me. Maybe it’s my ego talking but I think it’s that more people know about me.

The winner will be notified by email as will as entrants with information about their 10% discount. But I am please to announce that the winner is …

Rick Castellini from Help Me Rick!!!

Congratulations to Rick. And thanks so much to everyone who entered the contest.!!

If you haven’t already upgraded to 2.8, please wait for the release of 2.8.1, which will happen any day (if it hasn’t already). There is a known issue with the auto-upgrade for a number of users and 2.8.1 will correct this problem.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

And The Winner of the WordPress 2.8 Release Contest Is …

Yesterday I listed the 5 most popular articles that I’ve written this year based on pageviews from google analytics. Today I’m going to list my 5 favorite articles of the one’s I’ve written this year. I don’t think there is going to be any overlap (I haven’t actually selected them yet – it’s going to all be real time while I’m writing).

1. In Memoriam – Obviously, I hated the fact that this article even needed to be written but it helped me get back into real life again. Until that point I was living in a fog of grief and numbed myself by watching the first three seasons of Battlestar Galactica, which I loved, in a little over a week. I realized after I wrote and published it though that it wasn’t a proper Memoriam. I talked about the illness and what I experienced over the holidays but that I really didn’t talk about her – about how she was a social worker for the mentally ill, how she worked with mentally retarded children when I was a kid, or how she learned sign language to help the deaf kid in our rural town have a better chance in school – that would have been a better remembrance of her.
2. How Twitter Can Assist You With Your Job Search – Quite a bit of research went into this article and I thought it could help people looking for work and help prove that twitter isn’t a waste of time. I’ve said many times that I find a lot of my freelance work through twitter. Maybe highlighting it here will bring attention to it for people who missed it the first time.
3. 8 WordPress Spring Cleaning Tips: Backups and More – This article seemed to motivate my readers to take care of upgrades, plugins, and database backups that were being neglected. It also had the side-effect of motivating me as well. Two weeks later I wrote about the spring cleaning I did on this site.
4. I Loved My Grandmother – As I mentioned in this article my grandmother passed away 20 years ago and I still think about her almost every day. I loved her very much and I loved writing this article about her.
5. Using Thumbnails for Excerpts With Query Posts to Make a Custom Sidebar Block in WordPress – This article has a clunky title and isn’t written very well (I’d like to redo it) but it’s one of my favorites because I’m still so excited about using the plugin in this way to create a dynamic sidebar box. And anytime Jeff from Perishable Press stops by to say good job I know I’ve done something right.

So, this list is very different than what google analytics reports as my most visited articles. It might just show that what I like differs from the masses but I’ve known for a long time that I’m not like most people. Most of these, however, have received quite a few comments.

How about you? Are your favorite articles the most popular ones on your site? Or are your favorites different than the ones getting the most visits?

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

My 5 Favorite Articles That I’ve Written This Year

Two weeks I encouraged you to spring clean WordPress by making backups, upgrading, removing unused plugins and more. I have finally decided to take my own advice and have done some (Anti) Social Spring Cleaning.

I hate to admit it but I often give advice before I actually follow it myself. But there, I’ve admitted it. Between writing articles and working on other’s sites, maintenance on my own site often falls to the bottom of my todo list.

So, here’s a list of the the spring cleaning I did here at (Anti) Social Development.

1. Upgrade to 2.7.1 – I was still on 2.7. I wanted to upgrade but the auto-upgrade doesn’t work with my host and I didn’t have a block of time to do a manual upgrade until recently. It’s really nice to not be looking at the upgrade notice at the top of my WordPress screen.
2. Removed Unused Plugins – I had a couple of plugins installed that I wasn’t using. I kept them around because I thought that I might need them again but finally decided to delete them.
3. Upgraded All Plugins – I had 5 or 6 plugins that needed to be upgraded. One of them was cforms – I always put that one off because it just seems like too much work. I had two plugins that didn’t want to be upgraded through WordPress so I upgraded them manually. Well, cforms was also upgraded manually – it’s the best contact form but it’s fussy.
4. Updated my contact page – I added a little bit of text above the contact form and social networking icons and links. I think it’s more user-friendly now and prettier.
5. Updated sidebar on blog – I have different sidebars on my blog and on my services/about/portfolio pages. I updated the blog sidebar to include social networking links and icons in the Get (Anti) Social area. I also added a Facebook badge, which I’m not sure I’m going to keep. I still want to do more to this sidebar but, again, can’t decide on what exactly that is.
6. Updated other sidebar – I updated the sidebar on the services/about/portfolio pages. I added 2 new reviews of my work and changed the colors of the review block. I’m still not happy with it but can’t seem to make a decision.
7. Bookmarking Links – I removed the Sociable plugin and added the Tweet This plugin to the bottom of my posts. I decided to use the buttons for Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious because those are the networks I am most active on. Feel free to use them ;-) I’m thinking about adding Facebook Connect but am still mad at the new facebook.
8. Portfolio – I added two sites and testimonials to my Portfolio page. (I also removed one because the link to the site was bad). I’ve been doing work for Manshu at OneMint since last fall. He wrote an awesome review for me so I added him to the site. I also completed one of my biggest projects to date at Socialize Mobilize. Lisa also wrote a really great review so I just had to add it.
9. LinkedIn – I did a little bit of work in my LinkedIn profile, added new contacts, and got three new recommendations! Feel free to connect with me.

This reduced my site todo list considerably. There is still a lot I would like to do but I am pleased with what I’ve accomplished so far.

I also found solutions to some annoying WordPress problems that I’ve been having. But those are just SO special you’ll have to wait for the individual articles.

So, what about you? What WordPress spring cleaning did you do on your sites?

photo credit: sidewalk_story

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

(Anti) Social WordPress Spring Cleaning

February is the month for love (and slush and being really tired of winter), so I have decided to take 15% off ALL my services for the entire 28 days!

Do you need an upgrade, template customizations, or WordPress 2.7 features added to your theme? How about a custom design, social networking advice, or training so you can do it all yourself? You can contact me via any of the methods listed to the right or use my contact form.

Yep, absolutely everything is 15% off for the entire month of February. You don’t have to have the work done in February but it must be scheduled during February.

And you never know, my prices might be going up in March.

photo credit: Always Be CoOL

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

February Special: 15% off All Services (I Love My Clients)

My Mom hadn’t been feeling well since last summer. She had no energy, was tired all of the time, and couldn’t eat. She was terrible about going to the doctor so she didn’t go for a long time. She finally went and had a ton of tests but they couldn’t pinpoint what was wrong with her. About 7 weeks ago, she was unable to breathe and was hospitalized. At that point they found a mass in her lung and she was diagnosed with lung cancer. After she got out of the hospital she was placed on medical leave from work and my brother John took care of her.

For almost all of November I was waiting for a call to tell me to come immediately. But Mom started to do better and John said I should just plan on coming for Christmas as I originally intended.

On Monday December 22nd my Mom was readmitted to the hospital after a very difficult weekend at home. This was the day before I was scheduled to arrive. I traveled up on the 23rd, spoke to my Mother on the phone at the hospital and went to bed.

On December 24th, me, my two brothers, John and Dylan, and my daughter spent the afternoon at the hospital with my Mother. I was shocked at the change in her from the last time I had seen her 9 months earlier. John had mentally prepared me but it was very difficult to not break down, which I did not want to do in front of my Mom or my daughter.

We met with the Doctor, who explained the severity of my Mother’s condition. They were planning on releasing her on Friday the 26th and my brothers and I needed to discuss how we were going to care for her because we did not want her to be in a nursing home. She didn’t have a long time left because she was not strong enough for chemo but we thought at least a couple of months. I was upset about my Mom spending Christmas in the hospital but knew we just needed to make the best of it.

We left the hospital and planned to return the next morning to spend Christmas with her. Instead we received a phone call from the Doctor at 3:30am Christmas morning telling us that my Mother had passed away…

I am not a very religious person and don’t really care for many holidays but I do like Christmas – it just seems like this was the worst day this could have possibly happened. Christmas is also my brother Dylan’s birthday – he turned 22.

We went back to bed and had my daughter open her gifts like any other Christmas morning. But later we had to talk to the funeral home, call relatives (it’s not much fun to call Aunts and cousins that you never talk to on Christmas to tell them someone has died) and make the arrangements. My brothers and I had never done this before and muddled through the best that we could.

I had planned on making my Mom’s last Christmas as special as possible. I did not prepare myself for planning and attending her funeral.

The funeral was on Monday December 29th. Originally, I was going to come home that day but came home the 31st instead.

I think I am still in a state of shock. I knew my Mother only had months left but it was so sudden. I am grateful, however, that I got to spend a day with her before it happened. It’s almost as if she were waiting to see my daughter and me before she let go.

My Mother was only 62 years old. If you’re young, that might seem old but believe me it isn’t. My grandfather, my mother’s father, lived 30 years longer than that.

I don’t feel ready to not have a Mom. I loved her very very much.

Here is her obituary from the Caledonian-Record in St. Johnsbury, Vermont.

I am leaving comments open but please don’t feel obligated to write anything. I am not even sure if I should have posted this but I needed to write it. If you think this is inappropriate, I apologize in advance.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

In Memoriam

Earlier this week The Blog Herald published an article about strange blogging habits. The article discusses writing out html rather than using the visual text editor, typing out full url’s rather than using shortcuts, and writing posts in a text editor rather than in the WordPress Write Post area. There is also a lengthy intro about a journalist who continued to use a typewriter even after the advent of word processing and laptops and had someone in his office transcribe his work.

None of these habits seemed that strange to me. It seems that they are instead learned behaviors. For example, I use the html editor and type in almost all of the code because that is how I learned how to do it 13 years ago. Perhaps using a visual editor with all of the buttons would be faster but this is how I prefer to work. (I also have an issue with the code produced with visual editors).

And I also write most of my posts in Notepad++. I do this because I think the workspace in WordPress is too small, although this should improve in 2.7, and because I don’t always work on the same computer. I attach the text file to a saved draft in gmail, work on it wherever I am and then paste it into WordPress when I am ready to publish.

Maybe these habits are strange to others but they aren’t too me.

I’ve been trying to think of other habits that I have that might seem bizarre to others. Here are a couple that I came up with.

1. I have to select an image before I start writing. I frequently get distracted while looking at the images and waste too much time.
2. I can’t write with music on or when my daughter is around (home or awake).
3. I like to have a cup of coffee on the desk next to me, no matter what time of day it is, but rarely drink any of it while I am writing.
4. As mentioned, I have to type out almost all of the html tags.

How about you? Do you think any of these habits are strange or just learned behaviors? Do you think it is worth changing to a more efficient system if we are comfortable with the way we write? Do YOU have any blogging habits that others might think are strange?

photo credit: jody_art

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Blogging: Do You Have Strange Habits

When is personal correspondence private?

Recently, I followed someone on Twitter who followed me back and then sent one of the auto-responders that said something like “thanks for following, please check out my site at …” This article isn’t going to be about auto-responders but I don’t like them. I think, “yeah, I checked out your site and your tweets and that’s why I decided to follow you.”

I then sent a direct message back. If you don’t know what that is (and I think most of my readers do) it is a private message on Twitter between two people. I told the person that I liked the design of his site and that it reminded me of an old video game. He replied, “lol, I think”.

I meant this as a compliment, although I supposed it was a strange one. But, the site really did remind me of an game from 10 years ago and it is one of my favorite games. And as I’ve said, I never promised to be normal, just nice.

Here are some screenshots to illustrate my point. I think they are similar.

Website that I complimented

Screenshot of the video game

All of this was written via private direct messages. There was nothing particularly personal about the message but they were direct messages.

The next day while casually monitoring the twitter stream I saw the following.

This upset me for a couple of reasons. First, it was publicly reporting information that was from a private direct message. Secondly, I was not mentioned anywhere in the this tweet. I don’t mind being teased. For example, if he has said “why is @kwbridge playing 10 year old video games?” or something like that. Teasing, however, is generally best when you “know” someone a little bit better. Finally, the WTF? is just plain mean. Especially when the earlier direct message to me was more of a laughing about my weirdo compliment.

I sent a direct message after seeing that saying I meant it as a compliment and that I thought his tweet was mean. He wrote back saying I didn’t mean to offend you – I thought it was funny. Needless to say, I stopped following him shortly after that. There is enough negativity in this world without having to purposefully subject myself to it. Not long after, Qwitter informed me that he had stopped following me as well.

What kills me about all of this is that this person is a programmer and web designer. How does he know that I didn’t want to hire him? If I liked his site design, then I may have wanted to pay him for his services. Not very smart to antagonize a potential customer.

I then asked my followers on twitter if they thought a direct message was personal.

And here are some of the responses.

So, the consensus was that direct messages are personal and should be treated like email.

Like I said, what was repeated from my direct message was in no way personal information. But repeating it in that manner was a betrayal of trust and was mean.

So, am I doing the same thing by writing this article? Maybe. The information, however, was already made public by the other user and while I have paraphrased some direct messages I have not repeated them exactly, nor have I included screenshots of them. I think, based on everything that transpired, that I have every right to write this article to illustrate my point.

And, if I really wanted to be mean, I would have listed the username and the url of the website belonging to the individual in question. ;-)

What do you think? Am I making too much out of this? Should a direct message be private even if the information isn’t personal? Should a direct message be treated like email? Has anything like this happened to you on Twitter?

photo credit: decadentyouphotography

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Twitter Direct Messages – Is this Personal and Private Information?

This is C.C. (aka Captain Courageous). I’m using this photo because that is how I feel right now. I have no energy, I don’t feel like working and am unmotivated.

I’ve felt this way for a couple of days. I’m not sure why. Actually I’ve been out of sorts for about a week. Not exactly down but more irritable and annoyed.

I think, ironically enough, the start of it was Blog Action Day. I was excited about participating and in hopefully bringing more awareness to Train for Humanity. I also set aside time to read other posts about poverty. And a lot of what I read really disturbed me. It wasn’t the posts that disturbed me but rather the comments.

There seems to be an attitude that the homeless are “bums” and that being poor is a state of mind. (I want to make it clear that these comments do not necessarily reflect the point of views of the authors of the articles). I know that I live in a capitalistic nation but did not realize that there is an economic “survival of the fittest” mentality out there and that the economy is designed to serve the few rather than all the citizens of a nation. (thanks to Kelly from She-Power for some of those ideas).

But this isn’t a post about those attitudes. I’m still thinking about it and sorting it in my mind. It’s just an explanation for how my current mood started.

When I feel this way, I have a hard time coming up with new ideas, am unmotivated and not very productive. The things that I were excited about yesterday don’t seem all that interesting today. And little things really really grate on me.

People at working are talking TOO loud. It’s like I left my Mom filter at home. You know what that is, right? Mom filters are used to ignore all distractions and still be productive. I wouldn’t actually mind the loud talking if people were talking about anything interesting. Ok, maybe belly dancing is interesting but today I really don’t want to hear about it. Oh, and I am SO tired of the backpack wack. I’m short – not even 5’2″. When people are riding public transportation and it is really crowded. it’s best to take the backpack off and hold it by your feet. This will keep you from smacking the small people in the head. I carry a backpack too but I know enough to take it off on crowded trains. Are people that oblivious to others, to what is going on around them? Actually that happened yesterday. Today I decided to be proactive and walk home.

On another day, when I’m feeling more like myself, these things wouldn’t bother me. I probably wouldn’t hear the inane conversations and I would politely ask backpack dude to stop trying to give me a concussion.

Today I didn’t really do anything at work. Now before you think I’m lazy and not taking my job seriously you need to understand that I have a feast or famine type of job. It’s either really busy or not at all. I’m underemployed but have chosen that for the time being because I needed something easy when things were difficult earlier this year and now the job gives me the ability to be employed and have time to work on my freelancing endeavors. Most of my blog posts are researched and written while I am at work.

So, since I didn’t feel motivated to do my job I thought I would do some research to get new article ideas, discover some new blogs, comment on some sites. And this was successful. But why do I still feel unproductive; like I didn’t do anything today? I did a lot actually. Things that I don’t usually have time to do. Do I feel this way because I’m already in a mood and I won’t think anything is right today? Or do I think that when I actually have some downtime that I should be working rather than enjoying myself? Do I think because my finances aren’t so great that I should utilize that time to make money?

I think, ultimately, that I am too hard on myself. And that things will probably be better tomorrow. I’ve decided to go with this mood and not force myself to do any work tonight. Maybe I will play a video game or watch The Office or one of the soccer games that I’ve missed recently. My daughter stays at her father’s on Wednesday nights so the choice is really mine. I don’t have to work all of the time, right?

Or, maybe I’m just cranky because my jeans feel too tight ;-)

So, what do you do when you feel this way? Do you feel guilty? Do you try to find a way to change your mood? And please don’t tell me that exercise helps – I know that and even when I don’t exercise I walk 5 miles a day easy just going about my daily business.

I do know that when I get home I’m putting sweatpants on and am going to blast something like Aesop Rock.

And I will remember your name and face
On the day you are judged by The Funhouse cast
And I will rejoice in your fall from grace
With a cane to the sky like, None shall pass.

Post from: (Anti) Social Development

Unmotivated, Unproductive, and a Ramble