kdiddy.org » plop culture

everyone has lost their minds

kdiddy — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:51:32 +0000

I don’t know if you’ve heard but it’s been crazy hot here this week. As such, everyone is becoming a little…punchy.

For example, me taking a picture of myself first thing in the morning just so I can show you how my hair has been acting.

We don’t have air conditioning in our house and this is one of the few days out of the summer where that just sucks. So there’s lots of ice water being consumed and cold showers being taken. Last night, I climbed into bed and realized that there was no way I was going to fall asleep without cooling myself down somehow and de-stickifying my neck and cleavage. So, I hit the shower and then got back into bed. That meant that I was putting my wavy hair to bed wet and then waking up in the humidity. The results were some kind of science experiment.

If it wasn’t so messy, I would have just rocked this Shirley Temple ‘do, but it was obvious that my pillow had styled my hair so I clawed a brush through it.

Downstairs, I set about getting my coffee, breakfast, and lunch together for the day and I was supervised by my cat, who I had forgotten to feed yesterday. Today, he made sure that I wouldn’t make the same mistake.

That’s his food bin that he’s sitting on top of. And he meowed at me in a very direct tone. He’s very subtle.

After I got myself and my hair out the door, we rode in to work. Close to my office, we gaped at a man who was easily over 6 feet tall riding along on a Razor scooter.

Like this, but completely absurd.

The image of him hunched over and kick-pushing his way to, presumably, educate the youth of America has now burned itself into my brain. Imagining him kissing the wife goodbye, all, “Off to bring home the bacon, honey! Hey, son, I’m taking the Razor today,” makes my head hurt. Zombies can’t be far behind.

* * *

We went to see Harry Potter last night and the baby got all dressed up for the occasion.

He is currently devouring the books and while I don’t share his enthusiasm for the franchise, I’ve found almost all of the movies to be pretty enjoyable. I didn’t sob through the last hour of the movie like the grown women in front of me, though. I mean, I get being attached to characters that way, but histrionics in public are a little unnerving.

get yourself cultured at bricolage

kdiddy — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:05:01 +0000

One of my favoritest people on the internet is Gayle. As she so hilariously puts it in her bio on MoxieBird, “she works as an actor and writer to support her passion for secretarial work.” A few weeks ago, she told me that the Bricolage Production Company was going to be having a blogger night to celebrate the opening of their newest play Hunter Gatherers. It had been awhile since Gayle and I had hung out, and there were going to be some free drinks, so I agreed.

I had never been to Bricolage, but it’s a very cool space downtown with an intimate stage, plus a resident dog, Odie. There was a quiz before the show started to find out if you were a hunter or a gatherer. I am an Ultra Gatherer, which they didn’t have an explicit sticker for. So I hacked mine with a ballpoint pen, hence the horrific scrawling.

So, the play…

Two couples have been friends since high school and have continue their annual dinner through their 30s. On this particular night, all four people are at a crossroads in their lives and none are satisfied with keeping things the way they are, no matter how badly they want to believe that they’re living the lives that they’re supposed to. Over the course of the evening, they each strip away their middle class veneers and get down to their base human natures. They’re shocked at how primal they really are as they allow themselves to indulge in carnivorous urges of all kinds: sex, procreation, alpha male posturing, and actually eating meat.

Yuppies breaking down might not sound particularly funny but the writing was quick-witted and hilarious. And the actors were inspirationally good. As in, I wanted to become an actor SO BAD watching them on the stage, fully engrossed and kicking ass.

Hunter Gatherers will run at Bricolage now through May 7th and I highly recommend that you take in a performance. As we emerge from that excessively long winter, it’s wonderful to be reminded of what an amazing cultural community we have here in Pittsburgh.

To get you started on your spring/summer activities, I would like to offer you the chance to win two tickets to a performance of Hunter Gatherers. All you have to do is leave a comment here and I’ll pick a winner at random next Friday, April 22nd. Good luck!

non-sequential narrative

kdiddy — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 19:45:27 +0000

If you are a cashier at a coffee shop/cafe and you suddenly resume your conversation about meatloaf with a co-worker who is invisible to customers behind a stack of boxes, some confusion may occur. You see, the frazzled secretary waiting to pay for the somewhat dodgy sushi lunch will assume that your question, “So, you don’t like it with gravy?” is regarding her impending meal. And she may be overly polite and will produce an answer, despite the terrifying nonsensical context, and reply, “Um…no, I don’t think I’ve ever put gravy on sushi.” And you and your co-worker, who has suddenly peered from behind the boxes to study this odd creature who allows words to just tumble out of her mouth about meatloaf and gravy and sushi, will suddenly become just as confused as the now thoroughly embarrassed secretary. And eye contact will no longer be bearable.

So, you know, don’t do that.

* * *

The husband whisked me away for a restorative weekend of food and walks and TV because I’ve been really sad lately. We watched many episodes of Food Network’s offerings to the reality TV gods, including Chopped, Cupcake Wars, and…I don’t know…manufactured drama over fondant. Much like the tic of reality stars of other competition-based shows to say, “I’m not here to make friends,” competitive chefs have a tendency to say, “Go big or go home.” This makes sense when you’re talking about cupcakes, as they’re known for their gigantic size. The husband, who doesn’t absorb bumper sticker folk wisdom or cliches very readily, which is odd since one of the first gifts he ever gave me was a book of cliches, took note of this repetitive boast: “They keep saying…like, ‘If you’re gonna go, go big.’”

We took great delight in reconstructing cliches in this manner over the rest of the weekend.

There’s a box and you’re outside it. Thinking.

That’s evil but less so than this other evil.

If there’s something that you can do now, you should do it and not wait because procrastinating is doing stuff later.

Mi casa es mi casa but you can come over whenever.

* * *

We watched most of Sex and the City 2 last night. It was offensive. And terrible. And offensively terrible. And two and half hours long. The husband and I have a really unhealthy habit of watching particularly bad movies for the sheer delight of giving them the Mystery Science Theatre 3000 treatment.

“What happened in the first one?”

“Uhhhh…you know, honestly, I think I blacked out in the middle of it. But it was also two and a half hours long and I remember the realization that I had been watching it for hours depressing the hell out of me.”

Upon seeing Carrie, Charlotte, and Miranda peek around a corner wearing burqas:

“I know that it is not in any way okay to say this, but I’m pretty sure this is why planes get flown into buildings.”

“Maybe the 9/11 terrorists saw this movie and traveled back in time to try to stop it.”

“Like Terminator?”

“Yeah…I think.”

“Maybe John Connor wrote Sex and the City 2?”

Upon watching Carrie, insecure in her marriage after confessing to kissing her old flame in Abu Dhabi, come home to a Big-less apartment and the TV missing:

“I bet he’s just out buying a new TV.”

“I hope she goes totally Angela Bassett in Waiting to Exhale and is halfway through burning all of his clothes when he comes home.”

Pondering the last five minutes of the movie, in which all plot development abruptly stopped and the writers just threw all of the characters back together happily with their spouses:

“Huh. They must have been two hours and 25 minutes into the movie when they realized that it was going absolutely fucking nowhere and were like, ‘Okay, let’s just end.’”

“Orphan is coming on. That movie was also terrible. Come to think of it, Orphan was similar to Sex and the City 2. This girl is being weird and killing people for over two hours and you’re supposed to be thinking, ‘What could possibly cause this little girl to go on this rampage with this ridiculous accent?’” And the big reveal is that it’s because she’s actually 35 and you’re like, ‘Uh…’ That’s not even a twist. Someone being 35 is not a twist. That’s just starting a whole other movie.”

she’s such a good catholic, father. she loves the taste of communion wafers.

kdiddy — Wed, 09 Feb 2011 20:35:07 +0000

Who else do you know that watches shit like this and starts thinking Deep Thoughts about sexuality, gender, and religion?

I posted to MamaPop last week about a UK show called Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding according to some sites) and wailed about how it wasn’t available to watch in the US. I forgot, of course, that this is the internet and anything can be had if you know the right people. I won’t reveal my sources, but a few discs with some episodes arrived in my mailbox last week and I spent Saturday afternoon devouring them.

It’s pretty wild. The gypsies and travelers regard themselves as very strict and traditional. Gender roles are severely defined and haven’t changed much in the face of several waves of feminism and a sexual revolution. Girls marry young and move immediately into their roles as homemakers. They do this in their mid-to-late teens, which is around the time that many girls begin exploring their sexuality. So they’re able to say with some degree of authority that there is no pre-marital sex.

Because of the young marital age, gypsies and travelers seem to be far more tolerant about outward displays of sexuality extremely early in life. I watched, slack-jawed, as a group of 8-year-old girls celebrated their cousin’s First Holy Communion by grinding in high heels and tiny skirts and tops. Their parents and grandparents sat and watched and beamed with joy, the same expressions that they might have if they were watching the kids play Duck, Duck, Goose. They’re not concerned about the early sexualization of the girls because a) they’re only a few years out from being married anyway and b) they’re merely imitating the behavior of presumably chaste adolescents. The boys display a sense of territoriality by participating in “grabbing,” a courtship ritual that sounds a lot like accepted assault to me.

I wish the show would explore these gender roles and sexuality conventions more thoroughly, but they spend a lot of time on the bridal attire, if for no other reason than how absurd it is. I’m really curious about the general attire of the young people, which is, again, sexually provocative but to the ends of securing a husband, and other outfits that almost look like stereotypical/racially offensive gypsy costumes that you might see around Halloween in the US.

Anyway, all that pondering aside, I suddenly found myself feeling a bit of a pang during the Communion scenes. It occurred to me that the baby is around the age, perhaps even a bit older, that he would be making his First Communion if we were raising him Catholic. I remember being extremely excited about mine and in the context of this show I began to wonder how much of that was because of the dress and the veil that I got to wear. We looked like mini-brides and were giddy about that. But the important thing about my Communion outfit was that it was my mom’s. I was the latest in a long of people who had made the same sacrament. It was presumed that I would continue the tradition…until I knew that I wouldn’t.

Parenting and life are so scary sometimes, that maybe traditions, even those surrounded by yucky things like inequity, are comforting because they give us some road map that was laid down by people who lived and took care of their families with what seems to be a degree of certainty. Of course, the old ways were once new and there’s nothing stopping us from forging new traditions that are more appropriate for how we feel about and experience life. But I can’t help but look at even the most ridiculous, competitive dress for a young gypsy girl and think there’s something at least a little nice about it, the sheer celebration of survival of it.

winning at parenting/the pestilence continueth

kdiddy — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 14:30:42 +0000

The baby has not had a full day of school in close to two weeks due to various things like holidays, school closings, doctor’s appointments, and Surprise! Your Strep Test Is Positive! parties. I’m not entirely convinced that he has retained the ability to read.

On Sunday, I started displaying symptoms of the husband’s Man Cold that he was just getting over.

This resulted in me doing things like NotLaundry and NotGrocery Shopping. The husband and I both ended up passed out on the couch for a good two hours in the afternoon. During that time, the baby turned on Adventure Time and helped himself to a bag of Cheetos (aka our AFC Championship buffet). I half-opened one eye about 1.5 hours into my nap and mumbled, “Yo. Take it easy on those Cheetos, dude,” and went back to sleep. It was a proud moment for me as I have long yearned to reach the same level of parental competence as Britney Spears.

After a night of sleep that could only be described as, “Really weird…and moist,” I went to work yesterday fueled entirely by DayQuil. Aside from being rather drippy and cycling in and out of sweating spells, I felt surprisingly okay. But last night, I started to feel kind of woozy. I told the husband this and he cackled and told me that I had not yet reached the zenith of my sickness. Yay.

Speaking of parenting, over the winter break, I started watching…nay, devouring episodes of Intervention on Netflix. The husband finds this habit of mine entirely absurd and even I reached a point about halfway through season three where I thought, “I can’t watch this anymore.” The situation was so disturbing and I had a pretty sick feeling that we only knew the half of it. Just to be clear, I’m not referring to the episode featuring Sylvia, the alcoholic Southern belle. Though that episode was disturbing because when they first showed her cracking open a mini-bottle of vodka while driving, I said, “Holy shit, is that Lucille from Arrested Development? Is this like the April Fool’s episode of Intervention?” The resemblance was that uncanny.

See what I mean?

But the whole thing has me freaked out about parenting. I mean, plenty of the people featured on the show had some really horrible experiences and I don’t think anyone can blame them for just checking out of life. But then there are some people who had relatively good existences and then blam. “My mom pushed me to get good grades so I started doing heroin. My dad criticized my cooking this one time so now I weigh 30 pounds. My mom was tired that one time and couldn’t devote her entire consciousness to me so now I’m 90% Jack Daniels.”

I’m not terrified of the baby trying alcohol or even some drugs when he’s older. But I am scared of him finding any number of my imperfect behaviors devastating and running with that to the crack house. Now, every time I shout, “DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK!” I panic and hide all of the liquor. But I know I’m oversimplifying and overreacting. If something as crazy as addiction could be simply boiled down to bad parenting, I doubt it would be so hard to overcome. I just…I just see a bunch of people who love ya like crazy and they feel like they’re losin’ ya.

(Sigh. Right after I finished writing this, I had to angrily reclaim my iPhone from the baby after I asked for it three times so now I’m wondering what in our house can be used to cook up a shot.)

what i learned from tv while convalescing

kdiddy — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 17:46:12 +0000

I spent most of yesterday on the couch, tooling around on the internet and watching TV, which is what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. I think the giddiness that I experience at the prospect of being able to partake in such activities without a smidgen of guilt is what jump-starts the recovery process.

I watched things that wouldn’t cause me any grief if I were to fall asleep during them. Daytime TV is made for that sort of thing, but that’s also what makes it kind of enthralling, leaving me napless. First was The Family Stone, the plot of which captured about 3% of my attention. The rest of them time I spent thinking, “God, I LOVE that house.”

Then I watched a particularly absurd episode of MTV’s True Life, which was about young psychics. One young woman was having trouble in her relationship with a guy whose name I believe was Squash because he didn’t believe in her abilities. There was also the not insignificant issue of her Christianity and her psychic gifts were not in line with the Bible. Squash went to Chattanooga to buy guns and then they broke up over the phone. She started dating a guy she met at a psychic expo and made out on camera, but then broke up two weeks later. (Insert joke here about why she didn’t see that coming.)

There’s a soap opera channel and they were showing an episode from the first season of Beverly Hills 90210. I realize now that the only reason that I ever liked that show was because I was 12 and a moron. I wanted to smack Brenda so badly and Jason Priestley does nothing but furrow his eyebrows the whole time.

At some point in all of this, I saw a commercial for Rent-a-Center starring Troy Aikman and Hulk Hogan. The, um, plot was that Troy talks up the great deals at Rent-a-Center for a few seconds and then Hulk Hogan wanders into the frame wearing an elf costume. He then utters the words, “I have an elf wedgie.” And that’s it. That’s their commercial. That’s how a company chose to sell themselves. I have an elf wedgie. If viewing this commercial caused you to consider patronizing a Rent-a-Center, please drop a bag of hammers on your foot.

Later on that night, the husband and I ended up watching Spies Like Us, which is way more hilarious than I remember. We were cracking up over the training sequence, particularly the Radical Vertical Impact Simulation exercise.

We then ceased being able to breathe when the husband read the comments for this video. Someone actually formed this thought and then typed it:

They watched the explosions, the bog of pig shit with machine gunfire, flamethrowers, g-force exercise, and an airplane smashing into the ground, and THAT was the detail that gave them trouble.

* * *

I’m taking this week off of 30 days of truth because the topics that I would tackle this week, my views on religion, politics, drugs, and alcohol, are way too long-winded to crank out during a lunch break blog post. Next time!

unsolicited endorsements

kdiddy — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 18:49:56 +0000

As I mentioned to an exhaustive degree during the Sonoma Grille/Seviche giveaways, this blog is not heavily marketed. So you know that if I’m touting a product it’s purely because I bought it and had a good experience.

Endorsement #1: Neutrogena skiniD. Around the time that I turned 27 or 28, I suddenly had an acne problem. I had pimples fairly regularly as a teenager, but after I had kicked puberty to the curb, my skin was pretty normal with maybe a pimple or two here or there. The adult acne wasn’t severe, but it bothered me. I was especially not fond of the dozens of small pimples that covered my now greasy forehead.

I thought about trying Proactiv, but honestly something about their commercials was unsettling to me. I’m highly perturbed by the caliber of celebrities that endorse their products, though I did get to hear Puff Daddy utter the sentence, “It really moisturizes my situation.” skiniD seemed less…Amway-ish, so I did the online quiz and within, I think, a day and a half the products arrived on my doorstep.

Full disclaimer, I have been drinking more water and eating a little bit better, so that could contribute, but my skin is pretty effing clear now. The only downside is that something in one of the products that I use has some kind of mild reaction with my sunscreen that causes a stinging sensation in my face. Not fun.

About my sunscreen: also Neutrogena. Ultra Sheer Dry Touch, spf 85 (yes, 85). Expensive, but feels awesome and I don’t get all grumpy about having to reapply it. A few weeks ago I wrote to Neutrogena gushing about how much I loved it, hoping that they’d send me some coupons. A few days later, they emailed me back with a hearty, “Thanks, glad you like it.”

So…yeah.

Endorsement #2: Blueberry Boy Bait. I made this once last summer and the husband nearly died of ecstasy. It’s so delicious. It’s called “boy bait” for, I imagine, purely alliterative reasons but I’m fairly certain that it would work on either gender. All I’m saying is that I made this sucker again last night and, well, it’s a testament to restraint that I don’t have a hickey or twelve today.

Endorsement #3: Louie. I know I mention how much I adore Louis CK a lot, but the dude is seriously one of the best comedians ever. Please watch this show. His first series, Lucky Louie, which was brilliant, was canceled after just one season and I informed him of my great disappointment over this in a rather frightening manner. Don’t make me scare him again. Watch the show. Get his ratings high. Please.

update on teh offspring

kdiddy — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 14:00:04 +0000

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.

hail to the chief

kdiddy — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 20:13:24 +0000

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.

my wife

kdiddy — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:59:30 +0000

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: