kdiddy.org

I never really thought about it until I started writing about advertising a lot on MamaPop, but I guess I’m rather grossly interested in the stuff and how it drives and marks our culture. Finding old commercials on YouTube shocks me back to childhood just the same way that a familiar sound or smell does. It’s an instant memory of a simpler period in life, when everything was kind of magical and I still felt…safe.

There are three Christmas-themed commercials that I’ve seen nearly every year for as long as I can remember. It’s kind of embarrassing to be so warmed by something as silly as a television ad but, heh, I have no shame.

Anyway, they are the Corona “O Tannenbaum” ad, the Folgers “Peter Comes Home for Christmas,” ad and Eat n Park’s “Christmas Star” ad.

Oh my god, I had a waitressing nightmare last night. I haven’t had a waitressing nightmare since…well, since I was a waitress. When I was slinging baskets of bread and water with lemon slices and panko-encrusted salmon, I used to have such nightmares all the time. They were always pretty terrific, too. Classic scenarios included suddenly becoming paralyzed from the neck down and crumpling into a pile in the doorway of the kitchen and getting bitched at by the fellow waitstaff for not getting the fuck out of the way, or forgetting about a table so long that when I finally remembered them, I would find the patrons had starved to death and that would come out of my tips somehow.

Last night’s horror was that I had to get a waitressing job because we were just SO broke (not exactly unrealistic, unfortunately) and my first table was an 8-top. Of course, I was kind of a shitty waitress even after I had been doing it awhile, but after 10 years of retirement I was a disaster. And, of course, the people were snooty assholes with bad kids. After I totally screwed up in every conceivable way, the man at the table made some remark about women not being able to do anything correctly because they don’t ever take on any responsibility…or some similarly vague sexist and condescending remark that was the culmination of all the little pieces of bullshit that I put up with from assholes on a fairly regular basis. I didn’t hold back though and told the guy that I was a fucking badass and listed all of the shit that I do well on a daily basis when all I had seen him do in the time we’d known each other was sit on his ass, complain, and judge.

It felt good, even if it was a dream. I’m all about having cathartic outbursts however I can get them.

Anyway, how’ve you been? I’ve been feeling pretty bad lately that I haven’t been writing here. I’m still constipated in a bloggy way. I can’t think of anything that I want to write about so in a way I guess it’s good that I had that ridiculous nightmare. I’ve generally been not very “here” when I’m on the internet. I can’t tell if it’s a cyclical thing or if I’m growing apart from this…place altogether. I used to spend an additional hour or two online at home in the evenings and now I barely touch my computer.

It’s been nice, though. I guess I’ve been kind of needing a break and surprisingly spending time away from here has been good for my head. I’m feeling generally very calm and able to handle things, or at the very least okay with NOT handling things. I have mental…stuff. I know this. And I can handle it most of the time. When I can’t, I won’t and it’ll be alright. It’s a very new thing in my world and I don’t know how I got here. I’ll take it, though.

I started this post the other day. Go ahead and read through and then I’ll meet you down at the bottom.

As I mentioned the other day, my semester is finally over. It’s a relief, sure, but I find myself uneasy about my final grade. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, so let’s discuss parties.

The baby had his birthday party this past Saturday and it was rather awesome. The Oaks Theater is available for parties so we booked that and showed one of the baby’s favorite Godzilla movies for him and his buddies. It was especially fun for the kids since they got to talk and giggle and wander around the theater during the movie. A taste of the forbidden! The guy at the Oaks also wrote a happy birthday message to the baby on the marquee, which was really cool for him to see.

It was a small group. The kids in the baby’s class don’t seem too big on birthday parties. But that was fine. Less noise, less stress, etc.

So, I highly recommend the Oaks for special events. I will note that it was a tad pricey (not surprising, really) and I’m thinking this will be our last big birthday party for awhile.

Of course, the baby started feeling crappy right as the party was ending and spent the rest of the weekend fighting off a nasty head cold.

I made cupcakes for the party, continuing in my deranged domesticity. Amber requested a picture of a cake wreck and I’m happy to deliver.

Those are chocolate cupcakes with mint icing, as per the baby’s request. I bought this pastry bag set the other day and it’s one of those crappy home baker sets, not a professional one. I don’t harbor any delusions that I am hiding a cake decorating superstar, but the pastry bag experience was rather frustrating. This is as far as I got the other day.

Anyway, yes, cupcakes. I went at them with the pastry bag set not really looking to make them fancy, but it just seemed easier to ice them with that than a butter knife or whatever I normally use. Not so much. But they tasted awesome.

AND I got my final grade for grammar and it’s an A minus. I’m not really sure how I pulled that off but I will so take it.

The title of this post refers to a story I was going to tell you about this yinzer baby shower I went to on Sunday and how I cleaned house during the loathed shower games. But it’s left me.

In fact, I am totally sapped of writing energy. I had an article due on Monday and I guess that and the usual end-of-semester meltdown have rendered me useless. I’ve been sparing you and subjecting the readers of MamaPop with my semi-coherent rambling. Lucky them.

Aaand I’m out of nothings to say. Instead, I’ll leave you with this clip from Sade’s Lovers Live DVD, which we started to watch last night and were stunned by it’s awesomeness.

You know what I LOVE? I love studying for an exam for hours and hours and trying to tell myself that it won’t be that bad in an attempt to calm my test-phobic self down and then sitting down to take the test and seeing that I have no fucking idea what the first question is talking about.

That’s what just happened in my grammar final. I eventually guessed and worked my bullshitting magic to justify my guess and, of course, when I finally left and checked my book I came to the totally shocking realization that I was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy off.

I have no real idea of how well I did on the rest of the test. I had such a panic over that first question that the rest is a blur and when I went through my answers I found a couple more that I had totally screwed up. I fixed them. But I have to wonder how many I missed in my glimpsing. Now I just have to wait and see what my grade is and hope that I did well enough that I don’t have to take the class again.

Ugh. I’m just so tired of this whole thing. I just want my fucking degree. I think about having to deal with this for another year and I want to cry. I want to quit so bad. I just want to have a job and to take care of my family. I don’t want to burn the candle at both ends, I don’t want to impress people with how much I’m able to juggle. I just want to actually finish more than one load of laundry per week. I want to actually go grocery shopping instead of grabbing two or three things (that I can’t afford anyway) after work. I want to spend time with my kid without worrying about all of the other stuff that I should be doing. And I want a drink, dammit.

Oh, I don’t have much time to chat here, but I think it would be a blogging crime of the highest order if I did not mark the significance of this date.

See this guy? You all know him as The Baby. Well, he turns 7 years old today. Can you believe that shit?

It’s hard for me to do comparison pictures since 2001 was quite a few years before we leapt into the 21st century and got a digital camera. I scanned a few pictures some time ago but never really dove into that project. So his baby pictures aren’t readily available to the online public. I mostly show this one, which is one of my favorite pictures ever, even though it’s more a picture of my armpit cleavage than anything else:

The baby wanted to look at his baby pictures the other night so we lugged the photo album out. He marveled at the size of my pregnant belly and couldn’t help but coo over how cute he was as a brand new kid. He also asked me, “Why did you look like that?”

See, I had an emergency c-section and it really wiped me out. I was completely dopey for the first few hours after the baby was born. There aren’t many pictures of me in that state and of course none are online but I can recreate it for you:

Later.

Did you hear? Since we elected a black president, all racism is now over!* There is no more white privilege! Get out your levels and plunk them down on that playing field. I guarantee that the bubble will be right in the middle. Read all about it at Racism is Over!

*Ahem, this post and the blog that is linked to within is sarcastic. If you seriously entertained these thoughts, please notify the authorities immediately because someone assaulted you with the Stupid Stick.

My pie was awesome. I got the recipe from Martha Stewart. I think it was a little rich for my family but I think the taste was undeniable. The husband really liked it. And yes, I realize my crust is a little wonky. It was kind of late at night and I was getting punchy. I spread the topping out because one part of the filling separated from the crust. All in all, not bad for a first attempt. I also made a mushroom pate to use up some mushrooms from my CSA box. I don’t really like mushrooms…it’s mostly a texture thing. But this pate was pretty yummy.

The baby finally lost his other front tooth. It hung in there, literally, for a couple of weeks. I kept trying to pull it but there was one little piece that wouldn’t let go, but a stray smack to the face in gym class today did the trick. (I am not a fan of the kid who delivered the dental blow but I’ll let it go this once.) It’s hard to see the nice big gap the way he’s smiling, but trust me. The cute. It’s ridiculous. And I totally hadn’t thought of the endless entertainment of making him say “s” words until he mentioned wanting to read a “Dr. Theuth” book. And since I’m such a nice mom:

I’m taking requests.

Anyway, I’ll probably be pretty scarce ’round these parts until next week. Classes end this week, then the baby’s birthday is on Saturday, I’m going to a baby shower on Sunday, then I have a final and an article due on Monday. Then I’ll probably collapse for a day or two.

My plans for today included laundry, eating, maybe going to the nail shop, taking a nap, and whatever the female equivalent is of laying on the couch and scratching one’s balls.

Instead, the mail came. And in the mail there was a letter from PNC Bank’s collections department.

Oh, yes they did.

I haven’t blown up like that in awhile. I was shaking. I was screaming. I confessed to wanting to do very illegal things to every PNC branch in the city. I called several different numbers (because of course they kept bouncing me around) and bitched at every single customer service rep I talked to. I don’t normally do that, because I know that most people are just doing their jobs and trying to scrape by themselves. But I now have a pretty decent amount of contempt for all bank employees, since this is some divide and conquer bullshit. Give broke people a somewhat decent job screwing over other broke people, all the while gambling away their retirement funds…it all makes me sick.

But what I found out from one poor woman who had the shitty fate of talking to me was that when I settled my account once and for all (or so I thought) about a month ago, the money that I handed over never went through and I was once again responsible for $137.74. That amount includes a $29.95 fraudulent charge that I disputed, the investigation fee (since they somehow found in favor of the merchant, which is a whole other WTF), and a couple overdraft fees thrown in for good measure.

“So I give your institution money that I can’t afford to hand over and which your institution does not deserve, all in the name of just getting you out of my life, and you guys lost that money?”

“Well, ma’am…” she said WITH ATTITUDE.

“Oh, well, that’s a real crackerjack operation you guys are running over there. Seriously. Awesome fucking work. I’ll go to the branch AGAIN and settle this AGAIN.”

When I got to the bank, I sat down with a guy (let’s call him “Skippy”) I’d dealt with at least two other times in this debacle and who had been a douche to me before. I considered the possibility that I would leave that building in handcuffs and charged with assault and like, terroristic communist threats or something.

As Skippy explained to me, when I settled my account the last time, they sent the general ledger credit slip to their collections department and that department rejected the slip for some reason. Skippy insisted that I had done nothing wrong and could consider myself free and clear.

“Oh. So you guys made a mistake.”

“Eh, no, it’s not a mistake,” Skippy replied. The collections department rejects these slips for any number of reasons, like the teller didn’t sign her name clearly enough or didn’t list all of the information on the slip.

“So you guys made a mistake.”

“No,” Skippy insisted. They had done everything correctly with my payment, just in a way that resulted in me getting a threatening letter from the collections department.

“I’m sorry, Skippy. I may be a writer and not a financial whiz like you kids here, but that sounds like you guys made a mistake.”

Skippy, ever the optimist, maintained that they had fucked up in the correct manner, and that if I received any more letters detailing their stellar operations to let him know, so that he and I could again discuss the details of the awesome way that they continue taking money from me and being idiots.

What’s really fucked up is that there is no “closing” my account with them. If PNC insists that I arranged payment to a merchant through them, they will re-open my account to “honor their agreement,” once again putting me in arrears. And considering I already had one fraudulent charge to a business that I’d never heard of and never received anything from honored by PNC, it seems reasonable for me to worry that they have the power to conjure up any number of charges that they can honor and bleed me for money for who knows how long.

All in all, trying to close my account has cost me close to $2,000, mostly in fees and trying to clear the new and exciting negative balances that they keep dreaming up. I never did get my hands on my economic stimulus. All of that went to PNC.

Do you want to know why we’re in an economic crisis right now? Because the people who run our financial institutions and businesses are shitty business people. They are stupid. They don’t understand how economics work and think that their crafty methods of screwing people over are brilliant moves. We have a generation of failures running this country.

‘Twas the night before Thanksgiving, and all through the house…

Dudes were sleeping and drooling all over that heinous couch.

The pie crusts were baking, the mum without care…

…for she knew that wine would always be there.

I would totally translate the whole thing into “‘diddy” but I’m a tad too tired at the moment. But I will say that I am thankful for my family, for my opportunities, for writing, and for having time to think with a full belly. We saw Synecdoche, New York earlier and I’m thankful to know that I’m not the only one who thinks such weird things. I’m just glad that Charlie Kaufman puts them down on paper and has beautiful actors speak them for the screen. I’m thankful that art helps me to feel human. I’m thankful for my son, seeing the best pieces of me in him, knowing that I help people to experience him and all of his amazing thoughts and actions. I’m thankful for the husband and our life together.

And I’m thankful for Sidney Crosby and Yevgeny Malkin. 😉