kdiddy.org

I went to the doctor yesterday for a physical. I’m making yet another feeble attempt to get my driver’s license and need to renew my permit, so I needed to get the doc’s signature on the form. I’ve also been getting pressure to get regular check ups from my parents now that I have cancer in my immediate family history.

I had to wait in the waiting room for about an hour and a half, which kind of pissed me off because a) at least three drug reps came in and out b) I took the day off of work because I had to do some training downtown in the morning for my internship and after my appointment, the dudes and I were going to do something fun, like go to the zoo or something and c) my iPhone’s battery was running low and they only had one old copy of Redbook and a bunch of AARP and WebMD magazines. With nothing to keep my attention, I listened to a lady talk about something on her foot that needed to be “ground down” and tried to keep from dry-heaving.

All is well in Corpus Kdiddy. I have to get some blood work to check on my anemia and in just five years I get to start having colonoscopies! Oh joy!

Thinking about such things coming up on the medical horizon made me feel weird. I know that it’s not uncommon to find yourself reeling at aging. Not that I consider myself “aged.” But I’m firmly an adult with adult concerns and I seriously think there was a mistake in someone’s math. I feel SO young. I mean, physically, I think I feel about 30, but mentally I feel about 12, tops.

Since it was later in the day, the husband and the baby and I tried to salvage what was left. We grabbed a quick bite to eat in Oakland, then scuffed our feet for a few minutes trying to figure out where to go. We were going to hang out in the park but it started to rain and with our options quickly dwindling as the hour crept past four and our clothes quickly dampening, we ran into the museum.

By the way, I think doing the museum in small chunks is the way to see it. There’s SO much housed there and it really deserves more than a speedy walk-through once a year.

We ran up those huge stairs and started at the Digital to Daguerreotype exhibit. We strolled through, taking our time and really took in each photo.

One in particular caught me. It was by Garry Winogrand from his Women Are Beautiful series and was from New York City in 1969.

Two women, both with very dark hair, stood on the corner with a little boy in between them. One woman was heavily pregnant, her belly low, forcing her back to sickle. She was patiently hailing a taxi and though she appeared calm, I could sense how uncomfortable she was, how much she probably just wanted to get home and put on comfortable clothes, eat something weird even though she knew she would just barf it up later.

Behind the two women, two little girls who had the same dark hair played pat-a-cake. They were small, light, unaffected. Even though they had been walking around as much as their moms, they had far more energy, so much so that they had to keep physically moving to keep from getting bored while waiting for the taxi.

The more I looked at the picture, the more the little girls didn’t seem real. It was like they were the shadows of the little girls that the mothers once were. And the mothers probably felt their little girl selves back there, gleefully following them around, unaware of the heavy belly and the swollen breasts and the hot New York City afternoon that was in their future.

Occasionally my little girl self bumps into my reality when I’m trying to figure out how to make it financially, how to raise a good man, how to take care of my body. She boggles at my life and then goes back to playing pat-a-cake.

When we were at my mother-in-law’s house last weekend, her friend brought over her puppy, Zeke. Zeke is a big baby and loves giving my kid puppy kisses.

Also note my kid’s chompers. Considering that the husband and I both had to get our teeth jackhammered into something resembling straight, I’m thinking that the local orthodontists are salivating in anticipation of my kid’s date with the Train Tracks of Doom and OMFG My Mouth Hurts.

But anyway PUPPY!

I want to smoosh both of their faces.

Also, my kid finished up a few weeks of ice skating lessons yesterday. I’m fairly certain that the recent pwnage that the Penguins handed out had something to do with this. He’s pretty good at it, though.

I’ve been ice skating twice, I think, and each time was a total disaster. I mean, a disaster if we’re measuring ice skating success by being able to move about the rink upright and not lying on the ice, crying. Ahem.

The baby often accompanies me to the nail shop and has come to develop an appreciation for good manicures. He recently asked me if he could pick out a color and/or airbrush design the next time we went. I agreed, but quickly realized I needed to have some veto power when, while standing at “Nail Polish Station,” the words “sparkles” and “bright yellow” got tossed around.

We compromised. I picked a relatively neutral shade for my fingers and he got to pick the color for my toes, since I decided yesterday that I was in desperate need of a pedicure.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still not very much of a girly girl and my patronage to the nail shop has raised more than a few eyebrows. I feel weird saying this but in my…circle of culture (?), fake nails and the like just aren’t done. They’re too corny and brash. And the hipsters stay far away because they’re too ostentatious to be ironic.

But I like them. I don’t know why. I’ve come to find a little piece of delight in the ritual of my biweekly fill-ins and smiling politely when I’m not included in the Vietnamese conversations. And chuckling when the co-owner, while holding my ballet-abused feet in his hands, tells me that he really doesn’t like doing pedicures.

*Tip of the wide-brimmed hat to Truvy Jones

Ignore the pile of shirts in the background (hey, they’re folded, right?) and feast your eyes on my kick ass tshirt. I came across BelieveMerch a few weeks ago and ordered two of these shirts, one for me and one for the husband as a graduation/anniversary/Father’s Day gift. Then I had to wait because only someone of brilliance orders something from a small, local merchant who peddles Pittsburgh sports stuff two days before the Penguins win the Stanley Cup. I waited as long as I could before sending them nagging emails (by the way, if you happen to read this, BelieveMerch folks, sorry I put my mom voice on in that last email). But the shirts finally arrived today and I’m so so excited.

The reasons for the awesomeness of this shirt are threefold:

- It looks fucking badass
- It’s about Pittsburgh
- It’s a Weeds reference (Shane, a young character on the show, goes through a period of obsession with Pittsburgh, convinced that it’s the Promised Land and obviously art imitates life so he’s absolutely correct.)

We were leaving my mom’s house after spending the afternoon with my dad and grandparents and similar folks. My dad said something faux-exasperated to the husband like, “Gah. You made me a grandfather.”

“It wasn’t just me, Grampy,” chuckled the husband.

“Yeah, but you had a hand in it,” my dad replied.

The husband paused, smirking, deliberating whether or not to complete the joke my dad had unwittingly set up for him. He decided to go for it.

“Ah, it wasn’t a hand, Grampy.”

Precious.

Happy Father’s Day to all the dad-types…and all of their body parts.

Unrelated to any anniversary activities, last night I made some strawberry honey butter because some strawberries that we got in our CSA box last week were on their last legs. When it was done, I shoved the rubber spatula into the husband’s face and said, “Taste.” He wrinkled up his nose and pushed his head back. “What is it?” I told him and he tentatively stuck his tongue out. “Ugh. It’s good but it’s like eating butter,” he said, like that was a bad thing. I don’t understand his logic.

We had some pretty impressive storms last night. The husband called me from this meeting he was attending in Squirrel Hill and said that things were teetering on apocalyptic over there and that there were reports of tornadoes in the area. Because I have awesome survival skills, I crossed my fingers that the power would stay on long enough for me to Google “what the fuck the do I do during a tornado?” then started furiously searching for a compass app on my iPhone so that I could determine which walls in my basement I needed to avoid. Don’t you want me around for your next natural disaster?

However, the clouds and activity, while notable, didn’t seem tornado-level. So I did the sensible thing and left my child alone in the house with any number of short-circuitable things and went outside and took pictures.

Video, because I like to provide a multimedia experience whenever possible:

Please note that I did not take this picture in black and white. That’s just how ominous it was.

Eeek!

On the upside, I won’t need to water my plants for a few days.

June 17, 2006

The husband and I were married three years ago today.

I’m determined not to make this a sappy post, so I’ll just say this: Happy Anniversary. I love you, dude.

Just a quick heads up that I switched back to partial feeds because of some weirdness that I don’t feel like going into. Nothing serious, I just feel more comfortable with this arrangement. And I would apologize to you feed readers for having to flex your index finger to get to my titillating commentary but I think you can handle it. Kisses.

Jesus. On the left is my kid on Friday, his last day of first grade. On the right is the same kid, back in late August on his first day of first grade. A couple of things about this picture:

- Yes, I know that I need to find one spot for both him and I to stand when taking these pictures since the perspective is all kooky.

- You can see the growth in his legs. There used to be 3 or so inches between the tops of his socks and the bottoms of his shorts and now there’s like 12 feet.

- His expression on the left freaks me out. He reminds me a little bit of the boy from Deliverance during the dueling banjo scene where he gets all into it and grins maniacally.

Note: I’ve never actually seen Deliverance, just that scene, which I don’t think is weird. There are a few movies that I’ve never actually seen but know the famous scenes from. The husband thinks this is nonsense. Like, how I’ve never actually seen all of Risky Business, but I had seen the “Old Time Rock n Roll” scene. Or how I didn’t see Wall Street until last summer, but I had seen the “greed is good” scene. Related confession: I’ve never seen Carlito’s Way. I’m sorry.

- He gets his sock wearing style from his dad.

- How about those crumbling front steps? Aren’t those hot?

I think I was actually more excited about him being done with school for the summer than he was. I think mostly it’s because it’s one less thing that I have to worry about for a few months. It’s a break from fighting over homework and packing lunches and making sure that his uniforms are clean.

On a semi-related note, there were some misunderstandings about some of the outcry regarding the “working mom” episode of Momversation. If I wasn’t clear in my original post, I have no interest in putting out a call to arms for some bullshit sub-genre of the *gag* Mommy Wars. My issue was only that WOHMs were not represented when, I would assume, most working mothers are WOHMs. Dig?

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t totally sure that the Penguins could pull it off. Having to go back to Detroit for Game 7 after every appearance there in these playoffs was a total disaster had me thinking that last night could be another heartbreaking loss. But the team that played last night was a totally different team that played there a couple of nights ago, when we lost 5-0. Everything came together. They played well, they were focused, and, yes, we had some luck on our side.

And they won. They won. It was thrilling. Getting to see Sidney Crosby hoist the cup was awesome and watching him hand it off later to Mario Lemieux was almost too much. I only have vague memories of the last time that the Penguins won and Mario was the first to lift that beast over his head, mostly of hugging my parents in our living room and banging pots and pans outside. Last night was nice and clear, though.

As I’ve said before, I don’t care that it’s “silly” to be emotionally invested in my sports teams. There’s happiness and joy there. That’s a good thing.

We walked to our main drag last night and watched some of the celebrating. We left when the cops showed up in case things took a turn, since we had the baby with us and I would really like him to wait until he’s older to get teargassed for the first time. But things remained rowdy but peaceful. I could hear the cheering from all over the city for hours. It practically became my lullaby as I drifted off to sleep, so happy to call this goofy city my home.