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On the phone with my mom earlier:

Mom: “I think the store over here has tea lights” *

Me: “No, they don’t, I was over there this morning.”

Mom: “Oh yeah?”

Me: “Yeah, I had to go buy cranberry juice because I got a UTI for my birthday.”

Mom: “Augh!”

Me: “And a stiff neck. Again. It’s like I just woke up OLD.”

Mom: “Wait til next year.”

Me: “Can’t friggin’ WAIT. I think I’m just going to start drinking now.”

Mom: “Well, that won’t cure your neck or anything.”

Me: “No, but I’ll be too drunk to notice.”

I’ve actually had a very nice day so far, aside from the pain in the various polar regions of my body. The folks at work gave me bagels, some flowers and a nice card and I’ve received so many happy birthday wishes today I could burst.

Tomorrow begins NaBloPoMo. I’m not feeling too optimistic about my chances of success, but we’ll see. Regardless, I’ll be kicking things off in grand style as I tell you about my trip to city court to testify against the *#!@)$#)( that broke into our house. It’s a kicker.

*We, of course, are not currently in possession of jack-o-lantern illumination devices.

I turned 29 while riding in our car a little too fast just as the opening chords of Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life” came on the radio.

Not too bad.

Going to court.

BRB.

Our neighborhood had a Halloween parade on Saturday. A bunch of kids came out in their costumes and paraded down the main drag, cheered on by parents, grandparents, shopkeepers, and whatever patrons managed to stumble out of the bars. The baby is going as Godzilla this year, but we couldn’t find a Godzilla specific costume and I am not yet up to the job of constructing costumes, so we borrowed a dinosaur costume from my mom’s friend. It serves the purpose, kinda, but the baby was increasingly irritated with people assuming that he was some chump dinosaur. “I’m GODZILLA!” he would whine. Duh. Trampled Tokyo multiple times…ring any bells?

The baby actually once told me that Godzilla protects humanity from the tyranny of all monsters. Those were the words he used. Who is he?

Anyway, the parade was alright. I took a few pictures of the baby but mostly spent my time snapping shots of the boulevard, which is a good way to see how…odd the neighborhood is. It’s equal parts old world Pittsburgh and honestly-we-don’t-give-a-shit.

For instance:

There’s a drive-thru beer distributor. This is not unique to us, of course, but I think any place that has establishments that combine two things that aren’t supposed to go together (ie, drinking and driving) has a certain je ne sais quoi.

There were some miscreants about. These kids watched the parade with a certain amount of wistfulness in their eyes. I could tell they really wanted to still take part in all of the pageantry, but felt that they were too old now.

Or maybe they were just high.

Firehouse. Mediterranean grocery store containing the bomb pita, hummus, tabouleh, and grape leaves.

Luke Ravenstahl, Mayor of Pittsburgh, looking very…mayoral. I emailed this pic to the mayor’s office but have not yet heard back from Luke saying, “OMG thanks! I’m making it my default pic on MySpace right now.”

Me and Godzilla, who looks pretty gentle. Also, there is not a cheerleader growing out of his head, even though it looks that way. And, yes, I’m wearing a Sean John hoodie. My dad gave all three of us hoodies last year for Christmas and they were all brands that he had seen on drug dealers on The Wire. My dad’s weird. But that hoodie is huge and warm and I love it.

Anyway, speaking of Halloween, I’ve posted a very useful scary movie guide on MamaPop which you should peruse at your earliest convenience. To sum it up for you: Suspiria owns.

Maybe the lack of wholesome cinema in my diet can explain my attitude as of late, which is rather poor. I’ve definitely hit a slump and am viewing all of my duties with contempt. I did not do the readings for any of my classes over the weekend, I did not do laundry, I did not scrub poopy toilets (can’t imagine why not, I’ve been looking forward to it so), and am cranky at work. This morning, I realized, to my great annoyance, that I still needed to pack a lunch for the baby. As I told Angela, I have a very, “You need fed AGAIN? I just fed you yesterday!” approach to parenting at the moment and all this needs to stop because I need to make a living, get my master’s and keep my kid alive. God, adulthood is such a drag.

I guess I need to watch some Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or something.

Yes, it’s been a minute since I posted last. I’ve been busy and I feel like I say that waaaaaay too much. But, tis the truth.

The dudes* and I made our annual jaunt to Trax Farms on Sunday. It was a gorgeous day, though a little too warm and while we had the brilliant idea to go on that particular Sunday since the Steelers game didn’t start til 8, so did everyone else in the tri-county area.

I ran into a PhD student from my department there. We managed to chat for a full five minutes while we stood in line for the ladies’ room. During that time the dudes were in and out of the mens’ room and already standing outside getting irritated with me about the fact that women are built in such a way that it takes longer to go to the bathroom and that’s all my fault.

Anyway, I ran into the PhD student right after we had left the petting zoo and I had a fine coating of goat slobber all over me.

Yesterday I talked to her for a few minutes and she told me that two suburban moms got into it later in the afternoon. Something about a place in line. The velour sweatsuits were on fire and phrases like, “Bring it on, bitch!” ricocheted off the SUVs. The police showed up. I’m so bummed we missed it. Even though I’m pretty sure I fall squarely into the “city folk” category, I’m still so amused when urban and suburban people take a trip to the country and forget how to act. We think we’re so civilized and sophisticated compared to people in rural areas, but we’re so not.

Anyway, there are some pictures after ye olde jumpe…

(more…)

I’m slowly (sloooooowly) working on an essay and I have TLC on in the background so I can half-watch crap shows about weddings and babies and interior decorating. What? It helps me think. Plus, the dishwasher isn’t working so I got all aggro. I need to balance out the testosterone before I go out to the street and start picking fistfights with strangers.

Currently, there’s a show on called Moving Up. One of the couples featured consists of a barber from New Jersey and a seamtress from Honduras. The husband describes meeting his wife: “I could tell she was a good one. That’s why I picked her. Snapped her up real quick.” What? He goes on to say that she’s a wonderful homemaker. The wife grins and says, “I try to be good.”

My new favorite couple takes a walk through their new house and they discuss what changes they’re going to make. The husband says that his oldest son’s room will be decorated in a baseball motif. “We want to push him toward baseball.” The designer, sure that he’s at least partially kidding, says that they don’t want to push him too hard because what if the kid wants to do ballet. “I’ll break his ballerina legs.” Oookay.

Later on in the episode, the wife is “out of the country” to “deal with some family things.” Did she suddenly realize she married a total douche?

* * *

Kids learn cause and effect pretty early, but I guess the finer points of that phenomenon take a little bit longer to sink in. Earlier, I was upstairs doing laundry when the baby yelled to me that he was having a nosebleed. I came down and was helping him clean up, when he said, “I don’t know why this happened. I was just picking my nose when all of a sudden it started bleeding.”

“Wolfman’s got nards!”

This week’s trip to Incredibly Strange Video yielded this gem from my childhood. Note that it’s the 20th Anniversary Edition. Gulp.

Also, if you are in the Pittsburgh area, ISV will be hosting a zombie double feature at the restored Hollywood Theater in Dormont. They’ll be showing the original Night of the Living Dead and the new Dawn of the Dead (which actually isn’t that bad). Show starts at 7:30 and costs $10.

A detective called our house last night to get some more information on our break-in. I was on the phone with him trying to explain what an Aqua Teen Hunger Force is. The baby, of course, is never deterred by someone’s phone usage and continued talking to me despite the fact that I was waving my hand at him and scrunching up my face, which is obviously the international sign for “I’m on the phone. Shut up.”

The baby left the room for a few seconds and I was finally able to hear the detective, but he came back into the room, stark naked and holding a sock on his penis. “Look, Mum,” he said. “I’m going to pee in my sock!”

Later, I was playing with the cat and he accidentally clawed my arm. I heard the skin snap. It was most unpleasant.

Your WTF for the day: Hello Kitty Assault Rifle

Also, here’s a Friday Random Twenty:

1. “Second Chances” – Theo Parrish
2. “Finally” – Cece Peniston
3. Not sure, sounded like Justin Timberlake
4. “Declare Independence” – Bjork
5. “Shades of Jae” – Moodyman
6. “Wake Up Alone” – Amy Winehouse
7. “Beautiful” – Snoop Dogg
8. “Delicate” – Damien Rice
9. “Avril 14th” – Aphex Twin
10. “New Partner” – Palace Bros
11. “Say It Ain’t So” – Weezer
12. “Waves” – J Dilla
13. “Until the End of Time” – Justin Timberlake (channeling Prince)
14. “Wanderlust” – Bjork
15. “The Fake Anti Waltz” – The Slapped Eyeballers
16. “In the Garage” – Weezer
17. “What You Got” – Justin Timberlake
18. “From the Morning” – Nick Drake
19. “The Rink” – Theo Parrish
20. “Edit” – Regina Spektor

Over the summer, I ventured to Baltimore to visit Tracey and Angela (and their husbands and kids and dogs and shit). The whole weekend, I kept making fun of myself because I had managed to have a neck spasm during sex. “Christ, I’m old,” I would say and then slowly drink tequila while trying to not move my head.

Well.

Last night, I was having some restless sleep. The husband reported having to wake me up at one point due to some nightmare noises I was making. I don’t remember having any bad dreams, but I do remember making some kind of sudden movement and then being in an enormous amount of pain. I don’t know if I had a neck spasm and then jerked awake or if I was thrashing in a nightmare and then pulled something. In any case…ow. I’m now so old that I injure myself sleeping.

It took me a minute to figure out what was going on, but when I finally woke up enough, I tried to get up which was a bad, bad idea. I managed to roll out of bed and to the bathroom to take some Tylenol but the rest of the night was restless to say the least.

I was worried that I had done something worse, like pinched a nerve or bulged a disk or something, but this morning after I had been moving around for a minute, the pain felt kind of normal for a spasm. And I guess the fact that I’m able to walk and kinda function is a good sign.

But when we were in the car, I went to look down at my thermos, the thermos that I had painstakingly filled with my coffee that I groaned through making this morning only to realize that the damn thing wasn’t in the car. “I forgot my coffee!” I whined. “Why don’t you cry about it?” said the husband.

So I did.

It’s Blog Action Day. My action item for the day was emailing Turner’s Dairy Farm, home to ubiquitous Pittsburgh milk (sounds gross), the most delicious, cheap, sweet tea and the awesomeness that is Turner’s tea-shirts, to find out if they had considered reviving their home delivery service. My rationale was that there would be a lot of interest since attention has turned back to the environment, reducing waste, and buying local.

They wrote back.

“Dear Kelly,
No.
Love,
Turner’s”

Well, they weren’t that brusque, but costs are a huge roadblock to this service ever returning, which isn’t surprising.

Okay, so no home delivery of milk. Drat.

Other things that I’m trying to get going with include composting (and if anybody can steer me in the right direction on how to get started with that I would really appreciate it), gardening with said compost, despite the fact that my brown thumb is probably deadlier than any smog, and my latest obsession has been making my own yogurt.

I eat a lot of yogurt nowadays and have been buying it by the quart. However, the quart containers aren’t accepted by the recycling folks here. So, I’ve been saving them…but now I just have a bunch of containers cluttering up my kitchen. It makes sense to me to refill them with yogurt. I know Alton Brown has poo-pooed yogurt makers, but I’ve been eying them. I am lazy and am always fond of a machine that can do for me what I can do for myself in a more low-fi way (see also: my big ass rice cooker).