Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

Well, you may have noticed my blog looks different now.  This is an interim design.  Just me noodling around again, this time with the help of the lovely folks at Shabby Blogs who have provided many elements for this transformation.  And for free.

At some point, hopefully in the near future, this will all change again.   So, for the sake of clarity and posterity, here is a screen-shot of how the blog looks today:

The post-modernist in me loves this: a picture of my blog on my blog.

I am also in the middle of talking/tweeting/e-mailing with a few blog designers right now.  And if you are one of them, you have my deepest apologies (and sincerest condolences).   I am not trying to be flaky, diva-like or difficult;  I know last month I said I would be back in touch with you in a few days, and then wasn't.

I am just not quite ready to commit to a design or designer yet.  I don't know for sure what I want, am still churning it all through my brain and don't want to waste your energy & time and my money before I'm more settled.  So I'm asking for patience. The busy, busy season is upon us, with lots of (how am I ever going to get through it) school vacation days.  And so I am pushing off this blog project onto the new year.

So until then: welcome, everyone, to a work in progress.

I'm even tinkering around with the HTML a little, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing.  I'm not a real computer person, though I find them to be intriguing little beasties.  I've figured a few things out myself, and can do a bit of code cut and pasting, some basic HTML tagging without doing too much harm.  Yet.

If you ever show up and my blog is utterly broken, please have patience, it will be fixed soon. It just means my beginners luck has run out and I've done something heinous to my code and will be working to rapidly undo it, once I've figured out what that should be.

Also the other breaking news is that I have finally gotten so tired of Blogger's non-interactive comment system that I've gone and installed the IntenseDebate system for comments.  This will be my first post with it up and running, so let's hope its functional.  And also?  Now with CommentLuv.  Because I can.

Leave me a comment, and I'll ANSWER you!  Whoo hoo!  (Unless it's broken, then let me go cry in the corner for a minute before I pick myself up off the floor and fix it.)

The only other option was to switch to Wordpress, as many of you have done and have urged me to do. But I'm just not ready for that much change, so bear with me, OK?  Maybe some time in the future.

So for now, I've just gone all rosy.

Ethan hates this new design, by the way.  It's "way too girly" says he.

"I'm a girl" I told him, "I like it." 

"But you have two boys.  We're boys and you write about us!"

True, true.  But?  Too bad.  It's my blog.

I don't get to buy pink and purple dresses and sparkly glittery things for my kids.  No bold Marimeko  fuchsia flower sheets for their room.  It's all blues and greens (Ethan); reds and oranges (Jacob); solids, stripes  or superheros (thank you, XY chromosome combo).

I'm not much of a girly girl in life.  But on my blog right now?  A little dusty pink feels nice.

Let's just say I am wanting to view the world through rose colored glasses right now.  I have been viewing it through shit colored glasses on too many occasions lately, and am working consciously to up the amperage on my inner optimist.

And also?  I didn't see the fine details 'til after the fact, so this is pure serendipity, but I'm pretty sure those sketchy sepia flowers are wild roses.  And my name, in Hebrew?  Means "wild rose."

I was named after my mother's dear Aunt Rose, who had been a very important person in her life.  Rose had been a tennis player, a proto-feminist, and my mother looked up to her.  It is in the Jewish tradition to name children after beloved family members, but only those that have passed on.  This has the unintended effect that we are often named for those that have died untimely young, as was the case with Rose.   So obviously I never knew her, but still proudly carry her name, am glad to be named for someone who loved my mother so very much, and was in turn loved by her.  As do I, as am I.

And to have a hint of that here in my blog design?  A nice bit of serendipity, indeed.

So for now this is cyber-me.  And, yes, I still need a banner and buttons, and (God help me) am thinking of trying my hand at making them myself.  I downloaded a free trial copy of Photoshop Elements, so I have 30 days to figure it out.

I'll let you know how *that* turns out.

UPDATE: so far so good, except that by adding Intense Debate as my comment system, the Comment Links on posts as they appear on my home page have disappeared.  This is true for this post and all future posts until I get this solved.  I'm working on that, but for now, if you are on my home page and want to comment (or read comments)?  Click on the TITLE of the post and go to the specific post's page. Voila!  Comments will magically appear for your reading and posting pleasure...

It may not be beautiful, but it’s mine, all mine!

Hey, look up at the URL (for those of you who are techno-weenies like me: yes, that's the little thing in the window at the top of the web page that starts with "http:")

Notice anything different?

Yeah, I got my own domain now, baby.

www.squashedmom.com

No more .blogspot.com for me!

I'm a grown up now.

OK, maybe that's pushing it.  So let's just say my blog is growing up.  And right now it's still going through a few growing pains.

I know, the name of my blog and the name of my domain are now NOT the same.

Because "The Squashed Bologna"?  Is a mouthful.  And everyone spells "bologna" differently.

Personally I just don't get it, because "baloney" is just wrong. Oscar Mayer hammered that into me at a young age.  For all you young things reading this who were not kids in the '60s & early '70s, and are head scratching at that reference, watch THIS. Now imagine seeing THAT nearly every day for years. You'll never spell it wrong again.

And while "The Squashed Bologna: a slice of life in the sandwich generation" is going to remain the name of my blog -- since I so clearly AM still quite stuck smack dab in the middle of the sandwich, and since "squashed" doesn't even begin to describe how I'm feeling most days, what with my Mother-in-Law's passing, and Jake's new school, and all my Mother's neediness -- I wanted something... catchier for my domain name.

And since I'm squashedmom on Twitter, I figured why not go for it.  So I'm rocking the mom.com rhyme thing, now.

And it may help make clear that I'm a MOM blog, not a food blog (or an Italian travel blog, if you try to pronounce "Bologna" that way.)

But now that other part: My blog is fugly, I know that.

Here is what my blog looked like as I was writing this post.  Hopefully soon you will be viewing this post in the archives on my lovely, newly designed blog and need this visual reference for the fugly.

I need to get a real design, not just me noodling around the Blogger design system in an momsomniac haze at 3 AM.

I need a banner and a logo and a cute little button.  And a kick ass background. You know: a DESIGN.

Problem is I have no idea what I want to do with it.

Or rather I have too many ideas, and none of them quite right.  I'm not cutesy and girly, but I do love flowers.  I'm not the stark and modern minimalist type either, although I love abstract imagery and design elements.  I admire the simplicity of black words on white and bold black & white graphics but I am a lover of color, and generally, the more saturated the better (or hadn't you noticed the lurid purple of my current "design"?)

And then I need to somehow have the design match up at least somewhat with the content and/or tone of my blog. But not at all literally.  Because visuals for squashed?  Bologna?  The whole sandwich thing, as a metaphoric image?  Yuk.  Not a food blogger, remember?

So I'm a bit stumped.

And I know I need to get a designer to do everything right, as I'm not really a techie (though I love to dabble in a little HTML tampering occasionally.)  And once again, the problem here is that I don't have the $$$ to lay out for what is currently a hobby (although of course I have dreams of "the more".)  Also I am finding I have a fierce and stubborn DIY streak emerging around this, have caught myself nursing delusions of teaching myself HTML in order to do it all on my own. Overnight. Not. bloody. likely.

So bear with me for now, while I work this all out; visit a thousand blog designers' sites; ponder why I love the designs I love and brood over if they would work for me.  There may even be an intermediate step on the way to fabulous.  Because the more I have been looking at other blogs to get a feel for what I do and don't want on mine?  The more dissatisfied I am every time I go back to look at mine own.  In fact, it's driving me a bit crazy.

My only excuse for the current look? My favorite color is purple. Has been since I was six.  And not wanting a literal image, I went for an abstract purpley light burst.  It could be worse.  I think.

So, let me leave you with the family story I borrowed this blog post title from:

newborn me

When I was born I was tiny.  My mother had been eating and gaining weight like a normal pregnant woman, but in "know-nothing" 1960 they wanted women to stay svelte, you know, for their husbands?  So Mom was told she was much too fat and the doctor advised her to SMOKE MORE to help suppress her appetite.  I kid you not.  Doctor's orders.  The result was me weighing in at 5 lbs. 3 oz. and looking like a plucked chicken.  A scrawny, wrinkly, underweight baby.  That they had to plop in a warmer. Idiots.

It is one of the mythic stories of my childhood, that when they finally brought me to my mother, (after she hollered and yelled and refused to do anything unless they. brought. me. to. her. NOW!) my mom scooped me up and cooed at me: "You may not be the most beautiful baby in the world, but you're mine, all mine!"

And, yes, I fattened up and a few weeks later was supposedly a knock-out (and Dad even used me as a model for his advertising photography portfolio.)

Mother and child, 1960  by Jim Steinhardt

So just bear with me while I get through this awkward phase.  The ugly duckling will turn swan.  Eventually.  Give me just a little more time.  Thanks!

P.S. If anyone out there is or has a great and reasonably affordable blog designer, please let me know!