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.

At 00:28, someone asked President Eisenhower about Nixon’s contributions while he, Eisenhower, has been The Decider.

“But…I thought…there was only one Decider,” our heroine whispered to herself.

This changes everything!

You will please forgive our heroine’s goofiness. She had a rough week, physically, and now her uterus is trying to start some shit.

I have had enough of:

• Statements about Whitney Houston and addiction. I know her death was untimely. I know addiction is serious. I’m just so, “Oh…bummer,” about her death. People lead messed up lives, they’re taken advantage of, and then they die in the tub. Alone. Just like all the rest of us.
• Chris Brown and the cloud of bullshit that comes with him. I don’t know what the answer is when it comes to talented people who are also piece-of-shit human beings. I do know that responding to the women who tweeted appalling requests after his Grammy appearance with, “They get what’s coming to them,” or “Someone should beat them so they know better,” is pretty vile.
• “Kids these days” whining. They wear their pants too low. They listen to terrible music. They don’t know who Paul McCartney is. Yeah, you know what that makes you? A cranky old person set in their ways and the reason why no substantive changes ever happen. Shut up.
• Valentine’s Day hype. “Wah, I’m single and this day is so hard for me,” or “Please validate my relationship by gushing over the gifts that my significant other gave to me.” It’s just a day. Do it or don’t.
• Communities on the internet and, obviously, the internet in general. I think at some point I may have been concerned about the dynamics of any given group of people on the internet, but that’s not the case anymore. It’s just one facet of life. If people are being jerks to you, disengage.
• This dress is a little too small on me at the moment. I’m wearing it today and the buttons are working kind of hard. I’m really ready to get back to a normal level of activity. Speaking of which…

Cheers:

• My neck is definitely getting better. This morning I was able to put my left ear close(r) to my shoulder, which I wasn’t able to do even yesterday! (Note: I started writing this post yesterday, so that fact might be relevant when considering the jeers section.) And I thinkthe numbness in my fingers is pretty much gone. I definitely still have issues with stiffness and tightness and pain, but measurable signs of recovery are so exciting. Check out this exciting physical therapy action shot!
  

  No, that's not a booger. That's my nosering.

• The husband and the baby. I really do just love the crap out of both of those guys. Despite my aforementioned annoyed indifference toward Valentine’s Day, we had a sweet time last night getting ready for the baby’s festivities at school. He signed his Valentines while I worked my crafty magic into a Valentines box in a swirl of Spongebob wrapping paper, box cutters, pipe cleaner, and ribbon.
  

  Hold on a sec, Martha's calling me.

• The husband had another Pittsburgh Track Authority performance at Belvedere’s on Saturday and it went really, really well. Again, about 300 people showed up to hear them and the headliner, Kirk DeGeorgio, and it was really cool to see so many people dancing for them. I’m so proud of him and them. I think something big might be brewing for them.
  

  Mine's on the left. Aren't they cute? All squished together and wondering what the hell they're doing? *

• Once again, I done brought the bake sale vibe to this performance and made brownies, which everyone assumed had drugs in them. (They did not.) Both were recipes from blogs that I read that I had pinned to Pinterest. They were Peanut Butter and Fleur de Sel Brownies and Mexican Hot Chocolate Brownies.
• Along those lines, I’m finding that Pinterest is much more useful than I thought it would be when I first started using it. I do, however, need to start a board called, “Stuff I Tried from Pinterest that SUCKED,” because there have been a few duds.
• Completely unrelated, the phrase, “Where’s Wallace?” has been a common refrain in our house and circle of friends, even though the scene from The Wire that it originated from first aired like 10 years ago.

It’s all very serious and intense, but then we got a Steeler named Mike Wallace. Whenever he does something good, the refrain, “WHERE’S WALLACE?” or “WHERE WALLACE AT?” goes flying. Imagine my glee when I came across this children’s book the other day:I have now redefined my life goals and am going to become a preschool teacher so I can read this to my young charges. What could be more adorable than a bunch of 4-year-olds saying, “STRING?!?! STRING! LOOK AT ME!?”

*PTA image source

“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?

Nothing looks amiss about this picture until you crop his face (and more importantly, his mid-sentence facial expression) and put it right next to the word concussion. Let me illustrate.

CONCUSSION

I also took issue with this product, which was being sold as a Tailgate Toss.

This game, my friends, is not called tailgate toss. It’s called cornholing. I don’t know where it got its name, though I imagine it was thought up by a bunch of Beavises not unlike yours truly. Point is, if you’re going to go cornholing with your buddies before the big game, call it what it is.

Then I went in the store and bought a yoga mat and some soccer stuff, tied my cardigan around my shoulders, and flounced off in a cloud of Soccer Mom.

Friday night, I polished off the last bottle of wine from the absurd number that we consumed at the beach. I spent the rest of the night trying to act like I wasn’t completely sloshed. I don’t think I succeeded.

Saturday, we went to Idlewild to fulfill our quota of Family Fun, Dammit for the season. It was actually a really nice time. I guess since it was 90-some degrees out and a “limited operations” day, people stayed home so we were able to gallivant about without ridiculous crowds. It was some church’s picnic day and I only saw one creepy “purity” shirt on a 9-year-old girl, so that was cool. (Seriously, Jesus fans, it’s great that you’re all about abstinence, but I find the omnipresent discussion about the sexuality of little girls kind of weird.) Limited operations didn’t affect us too much. The ferris wheel and a few other rides weren’t up and running. But what did cramp our style was the lack of lollipops on the Good Ship Lollipop. You know how you pace around the tiny boat on that swampy water and then a junior from St. Vincent’s deadpans. “Yarr. Thanks for visiting me ship. Have a sucker?” Our visit ended with, “Yarr. Thanks for visiting me ship.” And then…nothing. No lollipop. It was really awkward because I was standing there looking at this kid like, “Soooo….?”

I only took one picture because I only had my phone. It’s this:

That’s the husband in the green shirt. He’s in the process of putting his hands up as he and the baby ride the Whip. But I know at some point I’m going to forget what this is and wonder, “Why do I have a picture of the husband being held at gunpoint by an idyllic white picket fence?”

When we got home that night we popped over to my mother-in-law’s house for one final session of nightswimming. R.E.M., would you mind providing us with a brief musical interlude?

Yesterday, we had some vague plans of doing stuff around the house, but when it turned out to be cool and rainy all day, we just laid around and napped. It was nice. I did all of the laundry and put some summer clothes away, so if the cool temperatures upset you, don’t worry. My act of putting the sundresses in the bins in the attic have ensured us three weeks of sweltering heat at some point soon.

The baby took a three-hour nap, which was nice because he was being a humongous jerk prior to that. When he started crying because he couldn’t do something in a Wii game and I couldn’t help but laugh, he told me he hated me. So, yeah, no more Wii for him for awhile.

On a more serious, commie note, I want to acknowledge Labor Day and thank the National Postal Mail Handler’s Union and the Communication Workers of America and all of the laborers who came before them. Because of the NPMHU and the CWA, the husband and I grew up with health insurance and parents who weren’t so overworked that they couldn’t be in our lives. Despite only having high school diplomas, our parents were able to raise children who would go on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Thank you for fighting for a better life for yourselves, for me, and for my son.

labor
baby’s behavior
putting clothes away/cool weather