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It began to snow.

– Blankets

One night, a few weeks ago, when the snow was still above my knees, I walked to the corner store to get something to drink.

On the short walk home, I became so sad that when I got to my house, I had to stop at our front steps. Something was gnawing at me.

I walked around to our backyard and stared, marveling at how alien the landscape looked, white and soft but dead. I spooked the neighbor’s dog who was out for his constitutional in his yard and he began to bark frantically. His mistress popped open the screen door and squinted at me.

“I think I startled him. I’m sorry. I was just taking a look out here.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” she said, apparently mostly sure that I was who she thought I was. I walked back to the front of the house since I figured continuing to just stand in the back yard late at night might concern her.

It was so quiet. The only sound was the whir of a dryer vent somewhere near by, shooting Bounce-scented fumes into the night.

I turned around and looked down toward the main street and decided to lie down. The snow was high enough that I could easily sit without having to go very far. I plopped down and back and spread my arms out.

The sky was too cloudy to see the snowflakes falling from it. Instead, they appeared to materialize out of nothing a few inches above my face, narrowly dodging the steam from my nose.

I closed my eyes and listened and could hear the tinkling of the flakes crashing into one another as they landed, discharging static.

After a few minutes, I got up and went inside, back to my boys.

Perhaps I had felt it coming that night. A few days later, we got the news that the husband’s job, the one that was so perfect, the one that was going to allow us to march forward in life, had fallen through.

This little corner of mine has been quiet because I’ve been so sad. And my sadness has a way of rotting and becoming so ugly. I’ve been so nasty and doing what I can to make anyone who has the audacity to come in contact with me feel at least a little bit as bad as I do.

I know it’s not the end of the world and I know that things will get better someday. But we were right there and we were so cautious to get excited about it until we were sure that it was going to happen. And then when we were sure, or so we thought, we started making plans and getting ideas. Now we’re back where we’ve been. Static. And there’s a lot of sighing going on.

Hello, from the paralyzed tundra formerly known as Pittsburgh. I won’t bore you with yet another series of pictures of people standing waist-deep in snow, because, really, there’s no new ground to break there. It’s snow. It’s white. There’s a lot of it. I will insert a little slideshow that you can view or not at your leisure. No pressure.

So, my big emotional post the other day about how our new life was starting today? Yeah, it’s been put on hold a bit. Not from the snow, but from some…I don’t know…HR matter that pushed back the husband’s start date a week. No biggie. And because I am paranoid, I verified with the husband that this was not some passive move. And it worked out well, because my work is closed today (unheard of) and the baby is off of school at least today and tomorrow. Aside from slight cabin fever, it’s been pretty nice to stay holed up the past few days, cuddling and watching TV and whatnot.

Really, I don’t know when things are going to be normal around here, especially since there is more snow coming down the pike. I’ve never seen anything like this.

On the upside, it was kind of fun exploring everything on Saturday. A lot of people went out for walks, taking advantage of the fact that you could just march down the middle of the mostly useless streets. We saw a few ATVs, a snowmobile, and one guy on a snowboard. We stopped into the new coffee shop on Brookline Boulevard, Cannon Coffee, and I nearly died from happiness. I’ve been moaning since we moved here that we needed a good coffee shop and now we have one. With pastries and sandwiches and excellent beans and cozy places to sit and wireless internet. I see myself spending some serious time there.

I’ve heard from various sources that you’re supposed to get your hair trimmed every six weeks. This sounds nice and all, but I’ve always fancied it to be excessive, both in terms of maintenance and cost. Granted, I tend to let things go longer than I should, but usually get my hair cut maybe twice a year.

My most recent trim was back in September and I went to another salon on the main boulevard in my neighborhood. The one that I first went to last summer, the one that the husband feared would give me poofy bangs, was fine, but they seemed slightly put out that I was messing with the age curve.

So, in September I went to another place that served a slightly younger clientele and got a haircut that I wasn’t sure about at first, but turned out to be just fine. And it got me parting my hair slightly off-center, which, when I look back on 2009, will stand out as one of life’s big events. What Master’s degree? DID YOU SEE MY PART?!?!?

So, with my ends looking mighty unhealthy, I headed down to the same place on Saturday. I wanted to keep the little side bang, take off a few inches, and get some layers.

The haircut portion of my visit was fine and I addressed the de rigeur pitching of Redken products with aplomb.

When it came time to dry my hair, the stylist said, “Now, last time, we dried your hair straight. Could we try playing up your curl this time?” Eh, sure, go for it. I always have stylists dry it straight because it always looks so smooth and pretty, but change is good, right?

Well, 5 curl-defining products, a diffuser, and a curling iron later, I found myself staring at this:

The stylist, bless her heart, was so excited about the Bon Jovi masterpiece atop my head that when she asked me, “Do you like it?” I had to reply, “Yes, of course!” I normally wouldn’t endorse lying, but like I said, the cut was fine and this style would go away just fine. In the meantime, I just tried to stifle my laughter and wondered if I could find neon spandex pants at the thrift store.

When I walked into my house, the look on the husband’s face was one of horror mixed with whatever contortion happens when you try to stifle laughter. I couldn’t contain myself and cracked up.

It’s calmed down considerably since I washed it, but if you’re in need of a groupie for your 80s revival band, I’m available.

I’m trying to power through this writer’s block, especially since the husband resurrected our home computer and we purchased a new router, so my technology hermitage has ended. Fucking finally. And because I am so SO tired of the FML nature of my more recent posts, I want to share with you some tidbits about the fruit of my loins abdominal incision.

He’s getting really tall and so cute…like, in the way that I just know is already making girls giggle. Relatedly, he has a girlfriend. Or had. Apparently she was a little flighty. Whatever.

One day, a few weeks ago, he wore a bow tie to school. And joined the chess club. In the same day. Despite such nerdery, he’s pretty cranky about school and doesn’t want to do homework at all ever. I’m not disturbed by this (homework does indeed suck), but would really like to not have to have the, “JUST DO IT ALREADY, GAWD!” conversation again. I am pleased to say that these conversations have become less heated since I finished school. They no longer contain tirades of, “Write your spelling words three times??!?! Do you know what I would give to have to do that right now? Have you ever attempted to redesign the instructional text of an authoritative book on coherent topical progression? Or had to schedule user testing? HUH? HAVE YOU?” Although, at least that would usually stun him into a puzzled silence. Now he remains cognizant enough to talk back to me and I hate that.

We took him with us to see The Imaginarium of Dr. ParnAssus the other night. He’s developed a taste for Monty Python stuff and when we told him that the director of Imaginarium also directed Time Bandits and was Patsy, the King’s coconut-clacker in The Holy Grail, he was all about it. He liked it. We all did. Depending on your opinion of 8-year-olds, that might make total sense or be totally bizarre.

The movie ended up having some really interesting statements about…not so much celebrity, specifically, but devoting your life to bullshit and whatnot and death. They were especially interesting in light of the fact that Heath Ledger died in the middle of making the movie. Johnny Depp and Jude Law stepped in to act as alternate versions of Ledger’s character in the Imaginarium and seeing them say insightful things about fame and ambition and death knowing that they were kind of talking about the late Ledger was pretty wild.

Speaking of movies, our friend burned Paranormal Activity and Moon for us. The only problem was that the movies were .avis. We watched them on my laptop but my laptop’s speakers aren’t very loud and our furnace makes a huge racket. Whenever it would kick on, we couldn’t hear a thing of the movie. The husband acted as the crack A/V guy and tried several things to remedy the situation. At one point, we had the laptop hooked up to his clock radio, the short power cord necessitating it to be five feet away from us and ultimately useless. We finally wrestled the computer speakers off of the desk and hooked those up, and of course that power cord was too short so we had to get the big, green extension cord off of the porch. It was a total sight. I think it could have only been klassier if we had just extended the power cord with the string of Christmas lights that are half burnt-out and only display green and orange, which appeals to my Irish heritage but looks like a St. Patrick’s Day decoration gone awry.

But, whatever, he MacGuyvered that shit to within an inch of its life and fortunately the movies both turned out to be pretty good. (If they’d sucked, we’d have been pissed.) Moon was especially good, especially after I got over the rapid comparisons that I was making to 2001, Alien, Solaris, Multiplicity (um, yeah), and Los cronocrimenes. It eventually stood on its own two feet and was rather beautiful.

When I was 16, I used to smoke cigarettes out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night.

My relatively brief stint (6 years) as a smoker started at my 16th birthday party and didn’t pick up as a true habit until I lived on my own when I was 17. In the meantime, I had one pack of cigarettes that I kept hidden and sometimes, after my parents were asleep, I would crack open the window and smoke.

There was a spot underneath my windowsill that sounded kind of hollow when you tapped on it and when I was little, I imagined that it was a secret passageway. I had heard of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and in my naivete didn’t understand that “underground” was a socio-cultural adjective, not a location, and that the railroad was mostly a figurative noun.

I imagined that I could squeeze through what would have been an impossibly narrow passage between the exterior and interior walls of my house and climb down into a portion of the trail that African-Americans followed out of slavery.

I recognize that this is completely bonkers and back when I was 16 and practicing the perfectly cool exhale, I would tap on the hollow spot through the floral wallpaper and shake my head at my 6-year-old self. Then I would go back to thinking about how badly I wanted a boyfriend, about ballet, and about who I was going to be.

During the winter, this was an especially risky activity. The cold air would pour into my room, not only putting me at risk for frostbite, but could cause a shift in the house’s temperature that my parents might notice. I would open the window only as wide as my face and work very hard to keep the smoke going out. Mostly, it just made my nose and cheeks numb.

I spent this past weekend alone, as the husband and the baby went to Blue Knob to ski, and I had the urge to go outside Saturday night. I had had a drink and was lonely and my living room was starting to depress me. I tugged on my big, winter coat and stepped out onto the front porch. It was pretty quiet outside, which was unusual. There were no signs of the revelers celebrating the end of another week on the main street below us.

Feeling the cool air on my face made me remember the illicit beginnings of my nicotine addiction and the embarrassment that I felt at how silly I was as a little girl.

I thought for a long time about an argument that the husband and I had had before they left. It was an ugly argument, one in which some of the more hurtful things that we’ve ever said to each other sailed through the air and hung there, following our thoughts around. Is that how we really feel? Is this who I’m going to be? How big are my mistakes?

My face started to sting as the low temperature became uncomfortable. 15 years stood between me and those moments by my bedroom window. And yet somehow the air felt the same.

I just groaned imagining all of the times that that headline has been used for promoting or reviewing The Chief. But I’m unimaginative and I recognize this.

I bought the husband tickets to see the aforementioned one-man play about Art Rooney for Christmas. Because I am awesome, about two days after I purchased them, he spotted a billboard for the play and mused, “I’d kinda like to go see that.”

Our interest in the play went beyond the fact that it was about Rooney. The guy who was performing in the title role was Tom Atkins, a Pittsburgh native who has starred in a couple cult-ish horror movies, in particular Halloween III, Escape from New York, and The Fog, which are favorites in our house.

As we were heading to the theater last night, I realized that, despite the Steelers’ season ending in a whimper, there would probably be plenty of people wearing their jerseys. Well…not only were people wearing jerseys, but they were selling Terrible Towels in the lobby. (Sadly, no one twirled one during the performance.)

We sat in our seats and waited for the lights to go down and the theater piped in every popular song that was about or referenced or was even remotely related Pittsburgh, including Mister Rogers’ “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which made me tear up because I’m a sap.

Atkins is a fantastic actor, capturing minute mannerisms and rambling on with stories about Rooney’s upbringing in the North Side.

The play itself wasn’t the most staggering work of genius. And it seemed safe to assume that many audience members were drawn to the theater simply for the fact that the play was about Rooney. And the play was obviously written with a very specific audience in mind, designed and timed to hit certain pressure points. There was nothing universal about it. For a second, I thought that maybe this should bother me, but, as the husband so eloquently put it, “It’s Pittsburgh shit for people from Pittsburgh. Who gives a fuck about anyone else?”

At one point, Rooney shows the film of the Immaculate Reception. I whispered to the husband, “That’s kind of cheating.” For Steelers fans and for most native Pittsburghers, that catch is legendary, part of the lore handed down from generation to generation. It’s almost not fair to show it during a play, as it’s guaranteed to stir emotions in the audience. But watching it was just as thrilling as any other time and hearing “Rooney” describe how he fatefully missed the whole thing and how it sounded like a tornado had hit when the elevator doors opened and he realized that the tide of the game had turned was simply magical.

Near the end, Rooney’s emotions swell and he describes what the Steelers have meant to their fans. I’ve rambled about it myself many times. He described circumstances that were just as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. People out of work, clear skies but dark outlooks. But the Steelers, there, reminding us with every hard-earned victory and every crushing defeat, that Winning. Is. Possible.

Tears stung my eyes as I sat there, in the dark, next to my husband. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve made some mistakes and we’ve landed ungracefully. But it’s possible we can win. Still.

We exited the theater and scurried to the parking garage in the bitter cold, soggy snowflakes covering us. We needed to eat and tossed several options around before settling on Fiori’s, the pizza place near our house that feeds us at least five meals a month.

We sat and ate our cuts and our wings and talked about the play, laughing at some of the anecdotes that we remembered. Soon enough, we had to head back out into the cold to pick up our son.

I grabbed the husband’s hand as I teetered across the slippery cobblestone street that had been around since smoke from steel mills darkened the sky and the Steelers were still a punchline in the world of professional football.

Earlier in the day, I had been sad after hearing about a fantastic career opportunity in California. But I can’t go to California. I must stay here, where the job prospects are much dimmer, because this is my home.

Forget New York. If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.

Dinner and a show, Pittsburgh-style, with football and pizza. When we pulled up to our, big, old, drafty house, I felt like Pittsburgh royalty.

It’s been 10 days since I posted here! That ain’t right.

I’ve mostly just been busy at work and then busy getting ready for Christmas. I was getting ready to do some work just now, since our office luncheon ate up most of the day, but then I looked and saw that it was almost 4:30 and decided blogging would be a better way to spend the last half hour of work.

Plus, the husband tells me that our desktop has up and died and our wireless router died weeks ago so our only internet access at home is through our phones. It’s like we’re living in the mid 90s or the 80s or something prehistoric.

It’s particularly tragic because I want to spend my winter break staring at BeTaMaXMas. Really, I’ve had this weird craving to spend a day in my 8-year-old life. I guess it’s because the baby is at the age where Christmas (and Halloween and whatnot) really is just one of the greatest ideas ever. And he still hardcore believes in Santa so that’s pretty fun (and useful for bribes/threats). I want a taste of that, I guess. I want be in my living room, watching crap like this:

I remember that commercial so vividly. It’s kind of pathetic. Consumerism’s bitch: I am it. My mom and I always thought that the tree in that commercial was so beautiful. When we would decorate our tree, we would always get excited about turning off the lights and seeing it in all of its glory for the first time.

Just for a day, I kind of want to be in the moment of being a kid, and ogle our tree, and hope that I got the Barbie crap that I wanted. Before my parents’ marriage really went to shit, before I realized that inexplicable sadness was just something that I would have contend with the rest of my life, before I questioned my strength.

The other night we put up our tree and what will probably be the extent of our decorations. I don’t like to go overboard with decorations because, while they look rad, you have to take them down. In late December or early January. When you’re bloated and sluggish from eating 24/7 for two weeks. I anticipate my laziness, dig?

Anyway, after we got everything set up, I turned on one of those silly fireplace screensavers that they have on OnDemand now. We got some eggnog, turned on some Bing Crosby Christmas music, and turned off all the lights so that we could admire our tree. It was gorgeous and smelled amazing.

I glanced over at the husband and the baby and suddenly realized, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Hi. I’ve just returned from the ridiculously overpriced on-campus convenience store where I procured Pepto Bismol because things have gone all wrong in my stomach. I’ve been grappling with what I can only describe as extreme hunger since early this morning and the only explanation that I can come up with is that since I’ve spent the last four days eating (and doing little else), I’m on some weird new digestive schedule. If the Pepto doesn’t help, I may have to call my HMO to see if they will cover an IV of liquefied mashed potatoes.

I could tell that this mini-vacation was going to be rad when my son came downstairs Tuesday night looking like this:

And said, “Take my picture in this outfit and put it on Facebook!” Um, no. But I will put it on my blog. This is why I don’t really let him on the internet and as far as he is concerned, the series of tubes begins and ends at cartoonnetwork.com.

Wednesday, I got out of work early and the dudes and I went to the museum to see the whale exhibit, which features a replica of a blue whale’s heart and apparently blue whales are really big because the heart was the size of a Volkswagen. Kids were able to crawl around in it and the baby invited me in. Because I possess the ability to identify Spaces In Which I Will Get Stuck, I declined but stuck my head in to take a look. From what I could smell, someone in the recent past had not made it out of there in time to make it to the bathroom, which is probably the only instance in life where you could close your eyes and be unsure of whether you were on the bus or a plastic blue whale’s heart.

After that, we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was pretty great and then rushed home because I had pie-making and potato-mashing duties to tend to.

Thursday morning I made the executive decision to make 5 more pounds of mashed potatoes and this made the husband very nervous. But I don’t have time for girly-men when it comes to Thanksgiving, so I shushed him and we piled into the car and headed to my mom’s.

YES.

My dad and his cancer-free ass showed up to bring the appropriate level of cheer to the event.

If you ever wondered where I get my sunny disposition, look no further.

This portion of Thanksgiving went off relatively without a hitch, and I couldn’t help but think of one Thanksgiving in 2003ish, during which we got into a huge fight about I don’t even remember what and all of the pictures feature my red eyes and puffy nose because I don’t understand why you have to be such a bitch MOM. Anyway, the only tense moment was when I realized that my grandmother and I had both made pumpkin pies and my grandmother said something about passing the torch and I detected a note of bitterness.

Look at her giving me the stinkeye. Your applique sweater fools no one!

After we were adequately stuffed, we rolled out to my mother-in-law’s house for the second shift. That culminated in lying on the couch, groaning and farting, while watching The Godfather on AMC. This is a torturous activity because The Godfather is several hundred hours long as it is. When you add 300 commercial breaks, you begin to have the urge to shoot Vito and blow up Appollonia yourself just to get on with life.

I am pleased to say that spending time with my family and getting to visit with Frank over the past couple of days has greatly improved my mood. I’m still sad about stuff a lot of the time (which has had the fortunate side effect of a clean entryway), but our people really do rally around me and my little family and they’re not going to let us smack the bottom. They’ll at least help us to land softly.

The next week and a half is going to be an exciting one. The baby turns 8 (EIGHT!?!?!) on Sunday and then next Tuesday I give my final presentation as a graduate student. Effectively, I will be done with my MA a little over a week from now.

Also, I made the executive decision that the husband and I needed to re-watch The Wire from the beginning. I think he was a little surprised, especially since we just started watching Deadwood (a couple of years after the fact, but whatever), but he didn’t really resist. Being able to watch the whole thing over again is so fun. I highly recommend it.

My mom likes to tell the story of the time her mom left her in the care of her Uncle Franny one day. When my grandmother came home, she couldn’t find my mom or Uncle Franny. Panicked, she searched all over their neighborhood, and finally came upon them in what used to be Sufak’s Round Corner Hotel. My very young mom was sitting on the bar while Uncle Franny enjoyed some beers.

Tonight, fifty-some years later, the husband was DJing at a club in that same neighborhood. The baby is fascinated with the husband’s DJing career and already has his own record player and a vinyl collection of his own. He can’t wait until he’s old enough to go to gigs with the husband and embark on his own DJing career.

Whenever the husband has a gig, the baby asks if he can come. The answer, of course, is always no because said gigs are always at bars and nightclubs.

Tonight, since my sister-in-law and her boyfriend are in town, we all went out to dinner before he had to be at the club. He suggested swinging past on our way home and letting the baby in for a few minutes just to see what it was like. The baby was thrilled.

After we had finished eating and paid our bill, we made the short drive down to Butler Street. The baby got apprehensive right outside, so I had to kind of push him in. Inside, he spotted his dad at the turntables and walked up to him, much to the bewilderment of the bar’s patrons.

We were only there for maybe five minutes. But the baby could hardly contain how thrilled he was to be there and to see what his dad does when he leaves the house with huge crates of records.

When we left and got in the car, the baby announced, “I’m going to tell all of my friends at school that I went to a night club last night!”

Mom of the Year.

I still have 3.5 hours left on this day to make my daily NaBloPoMo deadline!

I haven’t written until now and don’t have much to report because I was crazily busy at work today.

However, two items of note for this particular date:

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down.

I remember at the time not totally understanding what that meant, but I remember my mom calling me into the living room, telling me that I needed to come watch what was happening. I’ve never forgotten the collective expression of joy on the faces of the people. It’s really weird to think that my kid will never know of such a thing as West Germany and East Germany.

Also, 9 years ago, a handsome young man appeared at my door with a VHS copy of Pi rented from the Blockbuster across the street. Our plan was to watch the movie and hang out. We watched the movie. And hung out. And eventually made out. A lot.

The husband whined that I needed to pick either our relationship anniversary or our wedding anniversary because it’s hard for his man-brain to remember both. I picked the wedding anniversary, but didn’t realize that I was agreeing to not ever mention this anniversary. So I violate some terms. Any time I’ve mentioned it today, he’s barked, “Stop being celebratory!”

No.