kdiddy.org

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.

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 slightly pathetic how excited I am to be back at work. However, I have good reasons: a functional computer (well, sorta, my work computer is OLD), functional internet, one more quiet week to hunker down and get stuff done, and for the first time in years, I can work without having to stop and go to class.

Plus, the baby is back at school today and as fun as our winter break was, he was exhibiting signs of extreme cabin fever. After a day or so of non-stop (literally NON. STOP.) talking, we realized he needed to expend some energy. He went skiing with the father-in-law and played in the snow. We also went roller skating the other night and I am happy to report that our relatively frequent skating sessions have restored my long-dormant skills. Like, I can actually move both feet now instead of dragging along my paralytic left foot and making up for its dead weight by pumping my arms. This skating method is neither effective nor graceful and I do not recommend it.

When we were inside, I showed the baby this montage of Harrison Ford forcefully saying, “my WIFE,” or “my FAMILY” in at least 40 movies and he is now obsessed with it.

I hear him muttering, “my WIFE” every now and then and it’s a little disarming. It is now my favorite pop culture tic of his, with his impersonation of Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight crying, “RACHEL! RACHEL!” a very close second.

Also, and I’m going to abruptly end this post after this because…I don’t know, the engagement photos channel of Awkward Family Photos is absolutely mesmerizing. The pictures of people who look they were caught mid-dry-hump are the best. The husband and I never did engagement photos because a) we didn’t care and b) we’re REALLY not the type. In our wedding pictures, the ones that are posed you can tell that we’re stifling laughter and any other pictures that we have taken together end up looking like this:

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.

If you travel in the same circles of the internet that I do, then you doubtless ran across this fantastic compilation of the 100 greatest quotes from The Wire.

But, of course, all definitive lists are made to be analyzed, picked apart, and perhaps dismissed. This list was pretty good, but I thought that there were a few glaring omissions.

Omar’s explanation of his profession: “I rip n run…I robs drug dealers.”

Bunk and McNulty’s verbose investigation of a murder scene:

Snoop’s last words and just this scene in general:

This scene always kills me and the lieutenant’s eulogy is gorgeous, particularly his line about Baltimore being a dark corner of the American experiment.

You know what you should definitely not do if you’re fighting some sadness? You should definitely not read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The husband saw me starting to read it the other night and said, “Uh, didn’t you say that you were feeling depressed? Then you really shouldn’t read that book.”

“Yeah, I know. I kind of feel like wallowing in it, though.”

“I’m just saying, I started reading that right around the same time that I started reading a book about the troubles in Belfast and I chose to stop reading The Road because it was so much more depressing than the Belfast book.”

I didn’t listen, though. It was a fairly quick read, but the past couple of nights, I would put the book down and try to go to sleep and think, “Well, yes, this may have been a terrible idea.”

I finished it last night and freaked the baby out a little by bursting into tears after closing it. Interestingly, I feel a little bit better today. Even if I could kind of relate to some of the panic that the father feels about taking care of a child in a broken world, I’m obviously not facing the horrific bleakness that they were.

I’m actually in between coats of polyurethaning the stain in the baby’s bedroom-to-be (which we’ve been working on, on and off, for four years). So, you know, I’m just sitting here, waiting for the pink elephants and the birdies and stars to dissipate. Fumes are fun!

We had to be at the soccer field at 7:30 this morning for pictures, which sucked, but the game that was supposed to be at 8 was called for rain. We headed back home and piled onto the couch with orange juice and maple links, then grabbed some blankets, turned on some cartoons and passed out.

It’s nice and dreary here today and after the turmoil of the past couple of days, it’s a relief to know that life will sink into somewhat familiar rhythms.

The rainy Sunday got me feeling nostalgic, but watching The Clone Wars doesn’t help with that. I started poking around on YouTube and quickly came across some compilations of 80s commercials. For whatever reason, they’re like comfort food. Though I’m slightly disconcerted that I remember nearly all of these, indicating that I watched way too much TV as a kid and absorbed way too many sales pitches.

I call this postpourri. Get it? Potpourri but in blog post form? And, yes, Tyler Durden, being clever is working out for me just fine.

Anyway, I wrote on MamaPop yesterday about the Sundance Channel’s mini-documentary-series Brick City. Part 3 of 5 aired last night. I think I’m a little too cynical to be really inspired by the efforts of Mayor Cory Booker. I mean, good on him for giving a shit and all. I think I’ve just lost faith in politicians having any higher callings than their own professional ambitions to propel them to action. And even then their “actions” are lukewarm and tentative and serve bullshit. *coughcoughObamacough* But I’m really, really drawn in by Jayda and Creep. I guess it’s the parenting aspect. Seeing those two just in it and trying so hard to be good people and struggling with the fact that they’re bringing new people into this questionable world hits me pretty hard.

Onto the lighter stuff. If you’ve spent any time around me, you’ve probably heard me whine about my kitchen. It’s small, though that’s not the main problem. There are three doorways, plus two covered-up doorway things. One was the servants’ entrance and the other I think might have housed shelves at one point. Plus, there’s a covered-up fireplace. The result is the most inefficient use of space ever. The previous owner’s home improvement skills were lacking at best and so his solution when it came time to update the kitchen back in nineteen-seventy-hell or whenever this perversion of home improvement went down was this crap:

That little slab on the right is the extent of my counter space. I do nearly all prep work on the stove and it’s only by sheer luck that I haven’t cut off a finger while chopping on a rickety cutting board perched on one of the burners. If you stop by for dinner, it’s likely that you’ll hear, “Just gonna chop this carrot. *chopchopchop* AUUGHHH OH JESUS. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. Okay. Whew, they’re all still there. EVERYTHING’S FINE!”

Obviously, redoing the kitchen into something resembling reasonable, much less the gourmet pr0n version that I now want after working in this hell hole for 3 years, will require a LOT of money. And if there’s a perfect antonym to our personal finances, “a lot” would be it.

So, since I’m usually trying to make dinner here after a long work/school day, I’m often flustered and pissy and saying many disrespectful things about the kitchen’s mother. This results in some odd placements of items on my part and some questionable uses of space. Some are benign (“Why is the fucking muffin pan in the microwave?”) and some are more serious. The top of my stove houses the tea kettle, a lunch box or two, and my cast iron skillet and grill pan. (I was keeping those last two in the oven but always, without fail, forgot that they were in there and would preheat the motherfucker and in case you didn’t know, cast iron cookware gets hellaciously hot and even oven mitts are barely a match.)

Sometimes, the cast iron skillet becomes a temporary storage space. Like, for instance, about a month ago I needed some place to set a tomato and a new bag of brown sugar and a mixing bowl. Into the skillet went the tomato and the brown sugar and on top of them went the mixing bowl. And there they remained, forgotten, until last night.

I’m not sure what made me look in there, but I’m sure you won’t be surprised that I was confronted with rotten tomato ooze that was causing weird reactions in the skillet and coating the bag of brown sugar. And a smell that was somewhere between garbage juice and the Allegheny River that one time that my dad, the dog, and I went for an ill-advised swim and my mom wouldn’t let us near the house for the better part of a day.

I recoiled and in doing so knocked over a cup of chocolate milk and a cup of vegetable juice (that’s what goes for balanced nutrition in our house) that the baby had left on the stove. I then spent the next hour transferring the brown sugar to a new bag and attempting to rid the skillet of the smell so that we don’t have Cornbread with Garbage Juice the next time that we have chili. FML.

At the bus stop the other day, the baby hit me with yet another of his non-sequitur questions: “Are people in Antartica upside down?” Certainly, this a pretty typical question for someone his age and appropriately adorable. However, we sort of got into it.

“No. Well, there are only a few people in Antartica. They’re scientists doing research. But they’re not in Antartica hanging from the ceiling. They’re standing up just like we are. The earth is round and gravity keeps everything on the ground. There’s no real up or down or left or right in space, you know?”

“Yes, there is.”

“No, not really. Directions like up and down and left and right are things that people made up so that they can make sense of the world. But in space, where earth is, everything is going in every direction. Kind of.”

“What?”

“Well, scientists are pretty sure that that universe began because of a big bang, that there was this, like, ball of energy and matter and one day it exploded sending stuff in every possible direction and those bits and pieces sometimes bumped into each other and blended and became new planets and galaxies and stuff.”

“Like how Saturn’s moon exploded and formed its rings?”

“Yeah, kind of like that.”

“Do you think you could ice skate on Saturn’s rings?”

“Well, no. I mean, besides the fact that it’s, you know, Saturn, remember how on that show we watched they explained that even though Saturn’s rings look solid, they’re actually lots of bits and pieces of rock and dust?”

“Oh, yeah!”

“It’s like…there was this artist, Monet. And his paintings, if you’re far away, look like water lillies and people relaxing in the park. But if you get up close you can see all of the little dots and strokes and when you look at his paintings really closely they don’t make sense. And like the cells that make up your body, too.”

“Not my skin, though.”

“Your skin, too! Your skin is made up of tiny cells that clump together and cover your body. It’s called perspective.”

“I know about perspective!”

“You do?”

“Yeah!”

“Good.”

I swear to god we had this conversation and only stopped because the school bus came. It was especially timely because I really, really need some perspective right now. Not the “there are billions of people who have it way worse than me” kind. I have that in spades. I need the “I’m looking at my 30-year-old self from a few years in the future and laughing at her because why didn’t she realize that everything was going to be just fine?” I would like that perspective in bulk, please.

My identification with fictional characters is pretty strong. At least once a year, a movie or a book or a TV show or a song will hit so close to home that I become a little convinced that it was sent to me for a reason.

I’m an indifferent agnostic, but I guess if there’s one thing that keeps me wondering about the existence of God, it’s pop culture.

Well, I suppose that’s far too simple. A more poetic expansion of that theory would be that art is often the result of someone expressing their feelings and/or experiences into a medium and sharing that art with the world to be experienced, discussed, and hopefully related to.

More than once, I’ve suspected an artist of setting up surveillance in my home and brain because the emotions and words that they’ve captured on film or in music or whatever so poignantly echo my own.

Most recently, this happened with My So-Called Life.

Yes, I know that MSCL happened way back 1994, but that’s what makes this experience so great.

MSCL hit me pretty hard when it originally aired. I was 15, just like Angela Chase. I was a sophomore in high school, just like Angela. I was quiet and tentative, just like Angela. I was growing increasingly mopey about high school and its preamble to adulthood, just like Angela. And I was having a really hard time living in the same world as my mom, just like Angela.

Recently, hulu.com put all 19 episodes of MSCL up. Last night, I decided to watch the pilot for the first time in a few years, since the last time that I happened to catch a rerun on TV.

It was a really weird experience. I still felt so much like Angela. I still find myself wanting to hide under my sweater during whatever is the grown-up equivalent of yearbook meetings. I still have moments where I can’t look at my mother without wanting to stab her repeatedly. My scenery has changed, but I might as well be 15.

But for the first time ever, I saw a lot of myself in Patty, Angela’s mother, particularly last night.

The baby has become increasingly difficult to handle. In many ways, this is not surprising. He’s 7 and 1/2 and has been on vacation all summer without much structure to his days. And he doesn’t have access to many kids his age so he doesn’t have anyone to relate to his energy most of the time. I understand this.

At the same time, I can’t help but become furious at his increasingly shitty attitude. Yesterday in particular, everything that came out of his mouth had some sarcastic bite to it. Obviously, sarcasm is practically currency in our house and in this respect (and this respect only) we’re filthy rich. But beyond the sarcasm in his voice yesterday there was a distinct tinge of meanness. He was being mean to me.

In a more perfect life, I would have a heart and brain big enough to deal with him in a more emotionally intelligent manner. But I don’t.

Last night, while reading before bed, he snapped at me for not turning the pages quickly enough and indicated that the friction of the paper had some direct correlation to my lack of intelligence. This was at the end of an evening during which this attitude had clung to his every word, despite repeated warnings that if he kept it up, all joy would be removed from his life indefinitely.

I’d had enough. I reminded him of the warnings and how they were likely to become realities now. I also appealed to whatever sympathy he might have for me and asked him how he thought it made me feel when he talked to me that way, after I go to work and make him dinner and clean his clothes and whatever else I do in a day that is for him. He started to cry and said that he thought it made me feel sad and that he was sorry for making me sad.

I can’t be sure if the tears were more about the threat of having his Godzilla DVDs confiscated or if he genuinely felt bad for hurting my feelings. In any case, I was extremely grateful for some moment of clarity.

In the pilot of MSCL, which I watched right after putting the baby to bed, Patty and Angela’s dad have a number of disagreements. One in particular hinted at Patty’s frustration at being the mean one all the time. Someone has to be the adult and make sure that the kids aren’t being total assholes. While that isn’t exactly the transcript of the arguments that the husband and I have (mostly because our kid is younger and his bad behavior is still relatively simple deargodgetmeadrink), I often find myself trying to get my family to understand that I feel totally on my own sometimes. They don’t always get it, mostly because it’s hard to hear, “I’m very frustrated right now due to X, Y, and Z issues,” over my refrains of, “WHY THE FUCK AREN’T YOUR SHOES ON? I HAVE TO GO TO WORK RIGHT NOW! OH, SURE, JUST LEAVE THE DISHES PILED IN THE SINK THAT’S MY FAVORITE SHIT EVER!!!! NO, YOU CAN’T BUY THAT BECAUSE WE ARE BROKE MUCH LIKE WE’VE BEEN FOR THE PAST TEN YEARS!!!”

Near the end of the episode, Angela goes to her mom’s room, exhausted from her botched attempt to gain entry to Let’s Bolt. Suddenly, she starts to cry, and apologizes to her mom for having a shitty attitude. I think neither Patty nor Angela expected it, but Patty hugs Angela fiercely and Angela falls asleep in her mom’s arms. The turmoil is over, for the moment.

It was so weird to watch that moment, having just come from a nearly identical moment in the next room. Seeing someone who so typified my adolescence climb into the arms of someone who is starting to typify my adulthood/motherhood/wifehood was like getting a glimpse of my utter confusion that surrounds my identity and my decisions.

I think it really speaks to the craft and brilliance of MSCL that I can relate to it so well both as an adolescent (and perpetual kid) and an adult.