kdiddy.org

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you, the greatest name EVER.

With that out of the way, allow me to catch up on the past week.

The short version: it’s been kind of shitty.

The long version: A not-so-grim version of Murphy’s Law seemed to descend on our household. This was mostly to blame for the 500 different kinds of sick we all got. The baby was out of school Tuesday and Wednesday with a high fever and headachey/sniffley thing that was accented by a short barfing episode in Incredibly Strange Video and a nosebleed. I am now officially overwhelmed by the amount of paper that comes home with him from school every day and am now apparently delinquent in giving them whatever arbitrary version of his life history they have decided that they need this week.

A couple of times since the break-in, I’ve entertained the thought of dropping one of my classes simply because the reading load is much heavier than I thought it was going to be and with things thrown into upheaval with all of that unpleasantness, I’m not always sure that I’m going to do well in it. I’m staying in it for now, but was more than a little embarrassed yesterday when I tried to b.s. my way through a discussion of genre and made it horrendously clear to everyone that I had no idea what I was talking about.

As you can imagine, I’m looking forward to the upcoming weekend. I need to regroup.

The good news is that there is a suspect in our break-in and it was just some random person. Last weekend I had way too much time to think and conjure up all possible what-if scenarios and by Monday I was certain that a psycho internet stalker was coming to get us. Thankfully, that’s not the case. We were able to get a chunk of our DVDs back from a resale store downtown, which was exciting since there were a number of things that are hard-to-find. We got our Pi DVD back and while that’s not hard to find, we were upset that it was gone because that was the movie the husband and I watched on our first…whatever. It wasn’t a date, we were just hanging out at my house, but for whatever reason psychotic mathematicians bring out the romance for us.

Speaking of the husband, his 28th birthday was on Tuesday. The baby and I gave him some Borges books, the new Chuck Palahniuk book, and the Death Proof DVD. When the husband got to school that day he was treated to a birthday surprise: two pop quizzes.

So, you know, nothing catastrophic, just a lot of minor irritations that built up.

Oh, and I just got a humongous spider bite on my back. Sexy.

First of all, heartfelt thanks to everyone for the supportive comments the other day. Every single one made me feel a little bit better and I really needed that.

It’s been a weird couple of days. After I got to work on Friday, I promptly got my period which was exactly what I felt like dealing with at the time. Also, we later realized that the thief also stole our son’s piggy bank, which is just…I don’t know how shitty of a human being you have to be to steal from a kid. On Saturday, we went to the funeral service for our friend’s mother, who lost her battle with cancer a few days ago. I couldn’t tell you why it didn’t occur to me to grab some tissues on the way out the door, but it was a bad move on my part. I was still keyed up from the break-in and I still have a cold. Our friend got up to speak about his mother and the tears (and the snot) couldn’t be stopped. I only met his mom once, but I was really feeling sad for our friend. And I kept thinking about the fact that we’ve reached a point in our life where our parents are starting to die. Life just suddenly became way too overwhelming.

We went to the husband’s mom’s house for dinner on Saturday night, and after analyzing every aspect of the break-in, I started to feel pretty depressed about the whole thing. I’ve been so on-edge since it happened and while I certainly didn’t expect to be over it only three days after the fact, I didn’t anticipate how scared I would be all the time. Considering all of the what-ifs could easily drive me insane. And I don’t want to be like that, so I have move on. It’s tough, though. We lingered at my mother-in-law’s house. I was not really looking forward to going home and dreading what we might find, jumping at every little noise. I don’t honestly think that we’ll be burglarized again, but tell that to my instincts. I looked at the husband sitting next to his mom and couldn’t help but think that we’re just kids and we’re not ready to deal with people threatening our safety or with parents dying. I guess the big, bad world landed in my lap the other day and I really wasn’t expecting it to arrive so soon. I was telling Tracey the other day that I keep going back to the moment when I realized that someone had been in my house who shouldn’t have been and how I suddenly became aware of their presence, how I could practically feel them sitting on my couch and looking at my stuff, and tiptoeing around so as not to wake us up. Sick.

Somebody broke into our house early this morning. While we were upstairs. Sleeping.

When I was taking the baby downstairs this morning to get him some breakfast, I noticed that the light looked strange. Then I turned the corner and realized that the overhead light in the living room was on, which is odd because we normally just use a lamp in that room. When I finally got into the living room, I knew right away that something was wrong. The window was open. The ashtray from our front porch was sitting on the couch. The doors to our TV stand were open. It took me a second to figure out that my laptop and two big boxes of DVDs were gone.

I freaked out. Seriously. I’ve never been burglarized before, other than having my bike stolen when I lived in Richmond and was out of town. Oh and my tips were stolen from my waitressing apron once. Ugh, this is dredging up bad memories. But anyway, the thought that someone had been in our house, the house where my baby sleeps, just threw me over the edge. I screamed for the husband and we rushed around for a few minutes trying to get a handle on the situation. The baby was freaked out but mostly because we were and was most concerned that some of his DVDs were stolen. The trauma of the event did not have any effect on his verbal abilities as he continued to talk and talk and ask questions even in the midst of something like this. Heh.

Considering what they took, and the fact that they just grabbed light stuff that can be resold or pawned easily, we’re guessing it was just some desperate crackhead and that we’re not in any real danger. But we’re obviously still very upset and angry and freaked out. I mean, someone broke into our house while we were asleep upstairs. That shit’s not cool.

I took the baby to the bus stop and while we were waiting he said, “When we came downstairs and saw that someone broke in, I thought you were gonna barf.” “I did, too,” I told him.

jwan: How’s your cold coming along, I’ve had the exact same symptoms, last night was the worst of it all
Sent at 12:00 PM on Thursday
me: same
last night was hellish but i’m feeling slightly better today
at least, i feel like my brain is functioning and my shirt isn’t crusted with snot that i wasn’t quick enough to catch
Sent at 12:04 PM on Thursday

So, yes, doing relatively much better today. Thanks for all of the sympathy yesterday. I took some NyQuil last night, but it didn’t knock me out and then keep me knocked out like I had hoped. I did have some weird dreams involving characters from Knocked Up. That was kind of strange. And I woke up a couple of times with severe cottonmouth.

The more I think about it, the more I’m pretty sure that I heard about this awhile ago and just forgot about it: Steven Soderbergh is directing Benicio del Toro in a two-film epic about Che Guevara. I’m really, really looking forward to this. I know Guevara is demonized here in the U.S., but he was truly very fascinating and I don’t think there’s any black-and-white way to view him. Soderbergh kicks much ass and I love love love Benicio del Toro. It’s also being filmed entirely in Spanish, as it should be. Is it just me, or does this smack of the Medellin storyline in Entourage?

Completely unrelated to anything above, the baby and I had a pretty heavy conversation last night stemming from him asking me if Life will ever end. We’ve had the death conversation a lot, but this was on some next level shit. I’ve never been comfortable feeding him stuff about heaven, mostly because I don’t think I really believe in that. While it might be easier for him to take, I’d just feel like I was lying to him. But I have always given him the option of believing in stuff like that. I’m taking the same hands-off approach that I took with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, which is, “Do you think Santa/the Bunny is real?” And for right now, he does, so we’re going with that for now. Our conversation veered toward God for awhile. He’s really not sure about the whole thing. He wanted to know definitively if there is a God and I was honest with him: nobody knows though some people believe that there is and some people believe that there isn’t. In either case, I told him that, yes, Life will end someday but it will be a long, long time before that happens. I asked him if that scared him and he said yeah and I told him that it scares me, too. It’s funny because I feel like he and I are on the same existential wavelength. I mean, I must have pondered these things when I was his age, too, but I don’t feel like I’ve really thought about them until recently. It’s cool to have someone to talk about these things all wide-eyed. Especially since the husband, in all of his smug wisdom, has already thought about everything and has no time for these “Duuuuuuuuuuuude” conversations.

Angela and I are comparing cheesy Lifetime movies and it is easily the best conversation I’ve had yet today. Much like the titles of Friends episodes, we refer to all Lifetime movies as “That one where Tori Spelling gets stabbed,” or “That one with the Texas cheerleader murder plot with Lesley Ann Warren right when she started looking really crazy.”

I was sneezing all day yesterday but kept insisting that I was fine, that it was just allergies. Then around 4:30 p.m., I got that baseball-bat-to-the-head feeling. I am totally disgusting today and have completely surrendered any shred of dignity left by simply shoving a tissue up both nostrils and just letting it drip.

My brain has ceased functioning so this is all DayQuil. And my motor skills and capacity for critical reasoning is on par with that of a two-month-old. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t popped some liquicaps this morning, I’d be on the floor, drooling.

We had a little resume workshop in my class this morning and of course our prof came over and listened in on my group while we were looking at my resume and cover letter. After she left, there was an uncomfortable silence as we all wondered just how I managed to not kill myself getting out of the shower everyday, now that my utter stupidity has been displayed for all to see in the form of subject-verb disagreement. Simply put, I wrote my cover letter in lolcat. “I haz batchlurs. I will haz masturs. I can haz job now plz?”

In other words, I’ve been a little busy and my work, all areas of it, are suffering. I knew the cover letter was going to be a piece of shit, mostly because when I tried to recall when I wrote it, I simply could not remember. Luckily, the day job will ease up slightly in the next week or so and I might not flunk out of my grad program. Now I just need to remember where I left my kid…

In cooking news, I made Stovetop Cheddar Mac last night. It was certainly inferior to the homemade stuff that Jwan makes, but it was quick and easy and it hit the spot. I added a couple generous sprinkles of cayenne pepper to brighten the flavor a bit. The other night I made Apricot Poppy Chicken which was really REALLY good. The baby declared it “the best dinner I’ve ever eated.” So there. Also, the new issue of Everyday Food arrived at our house yesterday and there are so many awesome cool-weather recipes this month. They feature meat loaf and I curse any available deities that my husband hates meat loaf, cause I need a baked pile of ground beef with a Heinz ketchup glaze in my life, goddammit.

You Tube: Louis CK’s stupid dog.

You Tube: Louis CK, the cartoon.

You Tube by way of retrojunk.com: I’m the only person I know who remembers Cough Whip. This bums me out.

Frisky Wife: I’m supporting my family while my husband completes his engineering degree. In 1960, this would have earned me a “Good Wife Certificate.”

I think the darling lolcats may have already completed their internet life cycle and have entered the realm of monotonous. However, they still have one or two nuggets of brilliance left in them.

College Humor by way of Tracey: Prank War. Apparently this is real, but it’s pretty wild. If it is, these guys have psychologically ruined each other.

The scene is early on a Saturday morning in a run-down house in the wannabe-suburbs section of the city. A husband and wife, reeking of garlic from last night’s salsa, are stinkily snoring away. Their child walks in and starts demanding breakfast and shocks his mother awake with icy cold hands, the first of the autumn. Their cat runs laps from room to room and when the wife pries her eyes open, she sees the cat dragging her cell phone out of the room by the wrist strap. She hisses at the cat to drop the phone and the cat snaps his head around to stare at her, wide-eyed, with her cell phone still dangling from his mouth. He is also whining at the wife for breakfast. The night before, after the child had been scolded for misbehaving and had responded by crumpling onto the couch and sobbed, the cat had rushed to the child’s side and sniffed his face. Concerned, the cat had grabbed the child’s head and playfully bit at it. What strange siblings.

Please tell me that I’m not the only parent who occasionally (like once a day) says to her child, “Buddy, please, PLEASE just stop talking for like five minutes.” I feel like I’m stifling him or just being a bitch, but he really never stops talking. And while I totally appreciate that he’s asking questions because he’s just so curious about everything, how the hell am I supposed to answer stuff like, “Why does Godzilla sound like that?” and “Why do they make popsicle sticks?” I don’t know, dude. It was like that when I got here.

Anyway, with the semester in full swing, I’ve been finding that cooking gives me something to focus on that is usually something I can accomplish and it gives the three of us a chance to sit down and relax for a little bit. I’ve said before that I’m not a natural in the kitchen. That is, I can’t just walk in and cook something. But I’m more than proficient at following a recipe and I’ve even gotten bold enough to deviate from time to time…or sometimes I just forget shit and am lucky enough that it turns out okay.

My main source for recipes is Everyday with Rachel Ray and Everyday Food. While not all of the recipes are budget-friendly or mindful of the fact that crappier grocery stores don’t carry stuff like arugula, I’m usually able to pull about a month’s worth of recipes to follow from the dozens of issues I’ve accumulated. So far this week, I’ve tried out two recipes that I can definitely recommend.

Harvest Creamy Corn “Choup”

I know, I know. Ms. Ray is highly irritating with all of her cutesy phrases and speedy personality, but her recipes are kind of the shit. And this was a perfect early autumn dish and the husband and baby both liked it. I also took some tips from Miss Smilex and used a “garbage bowl.” I also chopped everything up beforehand and put the various ingredients in those crappy plastic bowls that you get wonton soup in from Chinese restaurants. We have a billion of those. Normally I just chop stuff as I go along and I think that makes the whole process take a bit longer.

As an aside, this “choup” (ugh) is not Weight Watchers friendly. I calculated it to be 19 points a serving. But my tactic is to use minimal points during the day when my non-WW family members and I aren’t eating together so that I can cook something “normal” for dinner.

Last night, I made Whole Wheat Pasta Arrabbiata with Arugula.

Like I said before, some stores (coughcoughWalMartcough) don’t carry arugula, so I just used spinach. Not the same thing, but it wilts nicely and tastes good. This dish was a big hit. It was spicy and fresh, also a good early autumn dish. Oh, I forgot to add the reserved pasta water, which I guess would have made the sauce a little thicker, but it still tasted very good. I calculated this to be 12 points per serving.

Admittedly, I did think that this was a girl the first couple times I watched the video. But it’s a boy named Chris Cocker and he has more messages for Britney…from under his bedsheet.

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! pt.1

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I really like when he says “you” and points to himself. Of course, what needs to happen now is for someone to start making videos of themselves for Chris Cocker, sobbing and begging him not to off himself should Britney take that initiative. Just to spice it up, these videos should be made under an afghan.

You know he reminds me of? Avril Lavigne. It’s the eyes, I think. And the lack of a fucking clue.

A Live Journal buddy posted this but its awesomeness must be shared. Have you seen Falco’s grave?

If my grave doesn’t have an obelisk and contain the words “Der Kommissar,” I’ll know that no one truly loved me.