2) After the kid’s talent show on Friday evening, we all went over to my mom’s house for pizza. I burned the roof of mouth because I absolutely could not wait two minutes for the pizza to get to a reasonable temperature. The injury received new life last night when we went to Dormont Dogs and I was similarly impatient to get food into my facehole. I don’t know what this says about me.

3) The other night, the kid said, “I think I have a splinter.” He showed me his finger, which basically had a 2 x 4 embedded under his nail. “Ooh, yeah you do. Let’s get that out,” I said, trying to hide my sadistic glee because I LOVE extracting splinters. It’s up there with removing ingrown hairs and peeling sunburned skin. I started to work on the splinter with the tweezers and realized that we needed to clip his nail a bit first. Anything that requires two steps is elevated to “procedure” status and pretty much makes me a doctor. With the extra nail out of the way, I really got down to business, which meant that my kid starting shouting, “OWWWWWWW!” really loud. This upset our older cat, who came into the bathroom to yowl along because he gets upset any time anyone raises their voice. The kid and the cat then began the most obnoxious call and response ever, which was really messing with my concentration.

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Everybody be quiet.”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Shh! Dammit, I can’t do this if you’re moving around and yelling.”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Shut up, Greedo!”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“EVERYBODY SHUT UP!”

It’s important to note that the window was open, so we were broadcasting our demented choir to the whole neighborhood.

Anyway, today while I was running some errands, I saw the kids from the day care center on a patch of grass playing with one of those multi-colored parachutes.

I really had to restrain myself from running over and joining them because a) I had stuff to do and b) I would probably get arrested. I remember being so thoroughly thrilled when it would be gym class during elementary school and the parachute would appear because that shit was the most fun ever. We had a couple of different routines that we would do with the parachute. Sometimes we would hold it up in the air and kids would take turns letting go and running across to tag the next person to let go. We would also let one person sit on the parachute in the middle of it while the rest of us wildly shook it up and down. I always liked this because the silky parachute would always brush against my face and it felt and looked so pretty. But the best would be when the teachers would lift the parachute high in the air, all the kids would run under, and then the teachers would hold the parachute on the ground so that we could be encapsulated in it for a few precious minutes. Once under, we would all shriek and run around, because we were inside something, which was always so thrilling for some reason. And for a few wonderful seconds the world was just big enough for us to run all over it and was as colorful as it was in our dreams.

But we had a nice Mother’s Day and Monday morning I was able to putz a little bit after getting the baby off to school. Packed my lunch, made smoothies, put a load of laundry in. It gave me a chance to at least do some stuff that made me feel like I was making up for falling apart parentally. Or something.

By the way, the dermatologist said that my clown lips were most likely dermatitis caused by a contact allergy. I couldn’t think of anything weird that I had eaten, but he mentioned toothpaste. The husband said that we had been using a different variety of the brand that we usually buy when that started. In my compulsive Googling, I found that many toothpastes contain sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a foaming agent that some people are sensitive to. Probably the variety of toothpaste we got was SUPER EXTRA WHITENING POWER! which probably meant that it just had extra SLS in it. He gave me some topical steroids (YAY MORE ‘ROIDS) so hopefully this long, annoying circus will soon be over.

My kid has a big week this week. Today he has his first track meet for the little track team that they’ve cobbled together at school. Later in the day he has his band concert in which he’ll be squeaking out some notes on the saxophone. On Thursday, he has a baseball game. And on Friday he has his after school program’s talent show, in which he’ll be playing some songs on the piano. I’m not going to today’s events because I have a big work event coming up, so I’m kind of in head-down-tunnel-vision mode until Saturday

When I was going down this list of events this morning, I joked, “I can’t wait for him to burn out when he’s like 12.” But in all honesty I inserted myself into some half-assed Time article about overscheduled children and lack of unstructured play and WaldorfAttachmentWhatToExpectWhenYou’reMomEnoughCryingItOutSuzukiMethodKumonHookedOnPhonics. I think, more than most people, I understand the importance of doing nothing from time to time. If I don’t get at least a few minutes of nothing a day I get all out of wack. But it started me down this indignant path of, “The old ways of doing things really weren’t always that great,” mutterings. Like when people complain about how they didn’t have any xPads or Nintendo phones, they just had dirt and sticks and their obviously superior imaginations. Yeah, right. Then they thought up games like King of the Mountain, which is some microcosmic version of capitalist assholery or Torture the Stray Cat or Throw Rocks at the Windows of the Abandoned House or Taunt the Neighborhood Crazy Guy.

I get similarly cranky when people complain about iPhones ruining the fine art of conversation. I don’t know about you, but prior to having the ability to stick my nose in my phone to look at absolutely anything, I wasn’t sitting on the bus, for example, thinking, “This conversation about illegal immigrants that I’m having with this entitled a-hole is so great. I’m so glad I have no way of obviously signaling that I’m not listening or interested in engaging with him whatsoever.” Also, it’s not like reading and more or less ignoring the people around you was invented with the iPhone. What did people say when printed materials and literacy became common? “‘Tis a shame that the unwashed masses can now read the newspaper on their way to their 18-hour shift in unsafe conditions at the meat plant, which they might not survive. I remember the good old days when they would say to each other, ‘Hey. Do you have any idea what’s going on at all?’ and, ‘No. But I will see you at the virgin sacrifice later and hopefully the angry god living in the mountain yonder won’t eat us.’”

I have a typically long wait for an appointment (May 14th) and am bracing myself for the hours of my life that I will waste in the waiting room. In the meantime, I did some Googling and figured that the condition was due to either rosacea (which I have), a fungal infection (Christ, I hope not), or a food allergy (dear God, no). So I refilled a prescription for a roasacea medication that I let lapse a few months ago in the hopes that that would help. The flakiness has subsided, and the area feels better, but the redness is still there and it’s really embarrassing. I feel like I look like a clown, which sucks because a) I’m not a clown and b) I really, really hate clowns.

I also can't juggle for shit, so this situation is untenable.

Anyway, yesterday was kind of brutal. I greeted the day on basically no sleep because of an hours-long thunderstorm that kept me up all night. Normally, I sleep through those but for whatever reason this storm demanded a bleary-eyed audience.

As I stumbled into work, my phone rang. It was the principal of my son’s school. I realized that if my son was sick, she wouldn’t be calling me, so that meant that someone was in trouble.

He had gotten into an argument on the school bus with his friend and had decided to kick his friend in the shins. Only he missed somehow and managed to kick his friend in the neck. I’m still not clear on the physics of this situation, but whatever.

My face turned as red as my clown lips as I realized, “My kid is a terrible bully and I am the worst mother ever.” The principal, however, didn’t seem too annoyed since the baby had already apologized to everyone ever and started crying because he felt so bad. And his friend, thankfully, was not hurt and had accepted the baby’s apologies. I silently thanked myself for never having enough time to sign him up for karate lessons. I was able to talk to him on the phone for a second. He sobbed as I reminded him that it’s not okay to get physical, especially not with your friend, and told him we would discuss it later.

Now, I understand that this was just a disagreement between friends that went to an immature and irrational place, and I don’t actually think that my kid is a bully. It’s just weird for me because when I was a kid, I was always the one to shrink away from conflict and, as a result, was often the target of teasing.* So I don’t really understand his perspective. On the one hand, I’m glad (?) that he seems ready to stick up for himself, which I never did, but on the other hand, I really don’t want him picking on anyone.

Later, when we finally got a chance to talk about it, I asked him if his friend was okay and if he was upset with him. “Yeah, I told him I was sorry,” he said. “We’re still broskis.” So, that was comforting. I would hate to see two broskis torn apart by a lapse in judgment.

* I’m happy to report, however, that I’m not bitter about all that stuff and finally stopped dwelling over it years ago since I know the people who teased me probably don’t remember it at all.

Hot. Literally.

I’ve signed up for the zombie 5k and the Great Race 10k, both in September. And I’d honestly been getting pretty nervous about them, even though they’re still months away. But I think I’ll actually be able to do them. My body is feeling stronger and more capable and like it’s getting back to where it was before my neck had that big failure. If nothing else, the neck injury has really taught me not to take my health for granted.

Anyway, everything else is good. We’ve been enriching the baby’s life through the classic works of American cinema.

We also took him to see Cabin in the Woods the other night, which is hilarious because I had just seen several indignant tweets from parents about people bringing their 9 and 10-year-olds to that very movie and what terrible people they were for doing that. So, hi! Worst parents ever! Right here! We’re a family of horror movie buffs, what can I say? And no, he did not have nightmares, and he’s only eaten three puppies, which is a significant drop.

Speaking of the baby, his baseball season started on Saturday. They had their annual parade at 10, then their first game at 2:15. It’s worth noting that it was 40 degrees and rainy all day Saturday, so that was pretty miserable, though cute.

I was too cold to even make sure I could see my kid in the picture I was taking but I'm pretty sure he's there.

Also on Saturday, we went to Art All Night with the sister-in-law and her friend who were in town from D.C. because they had submitted works. It was also too cold for this and I sped through the entire thing like, “Yeah, great. Art. Whatever. Can we go somewhere warm now?” So we went to Primanti’s and it was amazing.

Last Thursday was the Big Freedia show. I had not adequately prepared myself for all of azz that I ended up seeing. Be sure to watch the dancer on the right.

I mean, I expected it from the dancers, but watching a bunch of Pittsburgh girls grind on the stage was a little weird. Very fun, though. I’m glad we went.

So, yes. New York. Just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything. This was my third time there and this was definitely my best visit. The reasons for this are threefold:

One: we had excellent hosts with good insight into interesting places to go. The first time I went there, we stayed with some very nice and gracious friends who were there for only a year and who had not ventured very far from their Manhattan apartment building. As such, when we asked them to give us some ideas for places to go, we ended up at The Hard Rock Cafe (museum that only sorta serves frozen food), Planet Hollywood (I don’t remember anything about this except for some facsimile of Sylvester Stallone hanging from the ceiling, watching me eat), and Fashion Cafe (filthy and really who goes to a restaurant owned by anorexic supermodels and expects a decent meal?).

Two: the weather was excellent. The first time I went was at the end of October/beginning of November and it was already freezing, a point that was driven home by the naked, shivering woman who had wrapped herself in a trash bag in Times Square. The second time was during BlogHer in August, at which point the city had become a festering asshole of humidity and garbage juice.

Three: I had nothing to do but be in the city. BlogHer ate up almost all of my time last time, leaving me with only one day to explore, which I spent at MoMA. That was great, don’t get me wrong, but this meant that I really hadn’t had a chance to experience the city as an adult.

Naturally, our trip was rather food-centric. Saturday, we spent most of the day in Flushing, which has to have some of the weirdest, hard-to-find delicious nosh on the planet. We first went to the Flushing Mall, which is a mall, but slightly off somehow.

This statue had a really weird effect on me. The optical trick was enough to make me want to cry. So weird.

We didn’t go there to shop, however. We were there to go to the noodle shop in the food court. It’s one of those places where the noodles are handmade and stretched, you know?

Apparently the noodles or the grease from them had an adverse effect on a few members of our party, but I was fine and ready to move on to the next carb stop: the Ganesh Temple Canteen. I had heard about this place on an episode of Anthony Bourdain, which I think is uncool to admit? Whatever, dude and/or his staff can sniff out some good stuff. The temple itself was really cool because you’re just walking along a residential area when suddenly:

Quoi?

The canteen provided us with some of the best dosas and vadas that we’d ever had while we enjoyed a Hindu religious movie depicting some ancient epic battle.

Huge dosa commands your respect

The baby wanted to visit the actual temple, but I declined since I had no clue as to what the etiquette for something like that is. We did check out the entrance, which was beautiful, but then the husband panicked because we had shoes on and we weren’t sure if that was offensive and we rushed out of there so that we could be clueless white people in the safety of the bodega next door.

Frank, one of our hosts, then led us into another part of Flushing and scurried down the stairs of a non-descript storefront. At the bottom of those stairs was another “mall,” where mall is defined as “a haphazard collection of eateries and businesses arranged in an underground location that may have been burrowed out by those infamous New York City rats.” It was, uh, weird. And there wasn’t a drop of English to be found there, which really makes me want to take a gaggle of those, “Why do I gotta press 1 for English this is ‘Murrica!” toads there and watch their heads explode. But it contained an eatery that had done some really interesting things with duck heads and whipped up some of the tastiest dumplings I’ve ever put in my face.

We headed into Manhattan so that we could get some quality Central Park time in. The husband, baby, and Frank threw the frisbee around while I stripped my shoes and socks off and laid in the grass.

After a few minutes, I heard a loud THUNK. What was that noise? I wondered for a second before the pain set in and I realized that the noise was the sound of the frisbee hitting me in the head. The baby swore it was an accident, but I made sure to keep an eye on him the rest of the time. Matricide is no joke.

He ended up playing soccer with a bunch of kids which was one of those parenting moments that makes you really, really happy for no specific reason. “He’s playing soccer! In Central Park! With some kids he just met! That’s so awesome! Buildings! Grass! Yay!”

That night, Andrea made us Pioneer Woman lasagna (more noodles!). After the baby had been put to bed (er, put to couch as the case may be) under Andrea’s ad hoc babysitting services, we headed to Williamsburg to see some friends of ours, Beautiful Swimmers, play at a party in a warehouse. And it was all:

I know Williamsburg is supposed to be this hipster hell hole, and maybe it was the particular crowd we were amongst, but it didn’t really seem that bad. No worse than an average night out in Pittsburgh for us. I did take note of the apparent revival of the tiny backpack trend of the mid 90s, which is just so so dumb.

Sunday we got a late start and headed out to a record store in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn then took a long walk (stopped at a candy store, natch) to our dinner destination, Lucali in the Carroll Gardens section. We had over an hour wait for our table, during which three fire trucks responded to an apartment that turned out not to be on fire. The sister-in-law, Frank, and I walked to a nearby wine store and when we came back, that same apartment was getting a grocery delivery, so I guess all was well?

Our pizza was so, SO good. And our bill, $100ish for 5 people, was our most expensive all weekend, which isn’t bad at all. The baby had stated his desire to try cheesecake, so we decided to make the trek to Junior’s. This kicked off the low point of the weekend. The baby informed us that his seasonal allergy/lung funkiness was kicking his ass. The sister-in-law offered to let him piggy back most of the way there. She gave me her sweater to carry, which I dropped at some point. She and the husband hated me for this and I hated them for whatever so I went into the restaurant and tried to buy cheesecake. The cashier gave me some kind of lecture on saving money and long story short, I bought a whole cheesecake. Hilariously, the baby tried a bite and decided that he definitely does not like cheesecake. WHATEVER DUDE. We were obviously all way too tired, which the cab driver who had the misfortune of taking us back to Woodside had to discover. In other words, he got screamed at because nobody was escaping that evening without getting berated. On the upside, the cheesecake provided me with breakfast the next two days.

Monday, we went to Chinatown for dim sum and bubble tea where we got to see a vendor scream at some obnoxious girls. We then headed to MoMA because I wanted to see the Cindy Sherman retrospective and the husband and the baby needed to be there for the Kraftwerk show later that evening. Cindy Sherman was amazing and we took a quick peek at Starry Night and stuff.

At some point, the husband started running toward some guy and it took me a minute to understand that he had spotted Ralf Hutter, aka the Main Dude from Kraftwerk. He and the baby introduced themselves and I tried to take a non-obnoxious picture of the encounter.

That's Ralf on the right, looking a little scared.

For dinner, we went to the burger place that is hidden in the lobby of the Parker Meridien and then went to Momofuku Milk Bar to get some tasty things, like pretzel milk milkshakes, compost cookies, and crack pie. The husband, baby, and Frank headed back to MoMA for the show and the sister-in-law, Andrea, and I went to the restaurant in Momofuku, Ma Peche, to get drinks.

Frank texted me that people actually recognized the baby from the video of him finding out that we had gotten Kraftwerk tickets and a few even asked to have their picture taken with him. How adorable is that?

Tuesday we got another late start and didn’t get to pack in any last minute things before having to go to the bus stop, but I left feeling like I had really been there. There’s a lot that I don’t like about that city. It freaks me out to be confronted with how many resources it takes to run a city and I don’t know what drugs the mosquitoes take up there but I got a bite on my leg that is just ridiculous. But it was cool to be just one person amongst millions for a few days and to have the “problem” of too many wonderful things to do and see and not nearly enough time to do a tiny fraction of them. I got the sense a few times that New York is wasted on New Yorkers, who spend too much time immersed in it to realize all that they have (not that it’s awesome for everyone). But I felt welcomed and a part of it, the noise and the heat and the pulse. It really is one of the best places in the world.

He's an old pro at the MTA.

I didn’t really start listening to them until college, when I had been enmeshed in the dance music scene in Pittsburgh for a few years and started to research the music, as I tend to do with everything. I found that listening to Trans-Europe Express while doing my homework seemed to help me to concentrate. When the baby came along, the husband began testing his nascent theory that Kraftwerk’s music tapped into some primal area of kids’ brains by playing The Mix for him. Consequently, the baby was a huge fan from an early age, loving the crisp beats and rhythms, weird sounds, and whole songs devoted to such wonderful things as robots and calculators.

And then we named our kitten after Florian Schneider, one of the original members. In case you needed a reminder, our other cat is named Greedo, after the Star Wars character. Yes, we are nerds. No, we are not ashamed.

A few weeks ago, the Museum of Modern Art announced that as part of a Kraftwerk retrospective, the band, now only containing one original member, would be performing each of their albums there over the course of about a week. When the husband told him about the shows, the baby actually teared up. (Read: Shit, now we REALLY HAVE to get tickets.) Each show would only have about 300 tickets, which would be $25 each. This was huge news, and music nerds all over the world counted down the days to February 22nd, when tickets would go on sale at noon. (Pittsburgh plug: Pittsburgh-based company ShowClix snagged the ticketing rights for the event.)

Yesterday, after a lot of fevered coordination, we had a team of people at the ready to purchase the two tickets allotted to each person. I had to be on my computer at work, which meant that I had to actively ignore anyone who stopped by to talk to me. (By the way, sorry everyone who came to my office and was greeted by my icy stare.)

Over 50,000 people tried to buy about 2,500 total tickets. I was not one of the lucky buyers. But my husband was. We decided that he and the baby would attend the Monday night performance of The Mix. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be attending, but the baby getting to go was the most important thing. Besides, we decided that we would all go up and have a long weekend in New York City. Nothing wrong with that, right?

The best part was telling the baby the news. Prepare to have your day made:

“Well, you didn’t lay out any clothes for me…”

“So…that meant that you just weren’t going to need to get dressed today?”

“I don’t know.”

SIGH. Is there such a thing as the Terrible Tens? Because he seems to be in the midst. Oh, and the first person who says anything in the neighborhood of “pre-teen” gets punched.

But all of that nonsense aside, we’ve been doing a lot of our traditional fall stuff, including going to Trax Farm this past Sunday. Because October is always so busy for us, we always end up squeezing our farm trip in at around the last minute. And we always have to go with everyone else in the tri-county area who is working their annual trip in around the Steeler game. So there’s always a tense hour in the market part where you come face to face with how horrible the general population is at functioning in crowded spaces and steering grocery carts. Really, there ought to be a license for carts and things like, “Leaving your cart in the middle of the aisle while you gawk at the apple butter display instead of pushing it out of the way,” will be fineable offenses. (This, by the way, is the main thing that I hate about the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. The customers’ idiotic navigation, especially in the horribly arranged produce section. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost hurt people’s feelings in that store. And, yeah, I take grocery shopping a little too seriously. I don’t have time for foolishness.) But we had a really good time, got our pumpkins and about 300 other precious autumn things. I had the presence of mind to be thankful that the baby didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to take his picture next to the huge wooden pumpkin, because I know in the next year or so he’s going to refuse and that will be when I become that woman who gets drunk and cries at the farm. But you guys. Look:

That’s from Sunday. And this? This is from 2005:

I can’t even. I’m doing this to myself a lot lately, which is admittedly kind of masochistic, because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that he’s turning 10 soon. It’s just so…big. And I’m warning you now that I’m going to go all mommyblogger on your asses and put together a montage.

The other kids in our house, the furry ones, are doing pretty well, too. Florian the kitten is getting bigger everyday and is still a bit of a mad man. Greedo the cat is so chilled out by nature that this is kind of exhausting for them. I was getting concerned, but then went and spent an absurd amount of money on a cat tree. I think because there were no existing territorial issues for it, and it gave something for the kitten to attack, it seems to have made them much happier. They even hang out in it together sometimes!

Florian is quite the love bug and usually sleeps next to or on me, which is fine, except for when he gets the itch to gallivant in the middle of the night at the expense of my slumber. Last night, I became momentarily aware that he had scrambled across my forehead and had some bleary thought of, “Kitten. Scratch. Face. Ow. Register pain in morning.” I had completely forgotten about it until I saw myself in the mirror and noticed the little spot of dried blood. At this rate, I’m going to start looking like Omar from The Wire. Or, perhaps, Michael K. Williams dressed up as Omar dressed up as King Richard for Halloween or something equally ridiculous.

I have no idea why that picture exists, by the way. I just know that I’m eternally thankful that it does because the mere thought of it makes me giggle. This morning, for some reason, that scene from Forrest Gump where Jenny is throwing rocks at her molesting dad’s house came to my mind, because I’m such a naturally cheery individual. I thought about how the line, “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks,” would make a great caption for a picture of, say, Whitney Houston smoking crack. But then I pushed it out of my head, figuring if I could dream it, then someone on the internet has already made it exist and I’m not breaking any new ground there. This is both sad on many levels and one of the reasons that the internet is so great.

Anyway. How are you doing?