kdiddy.org

I have homework that I’m avoiding, so I’ve been incredibly domestic the past two days. The baby had to go to a classmate’s birthday party yesterday afternoon, but after that was over, we came back home and casually started decorating the outside of the house for Halloween.

There’s no real “theme” here obviously, unless you count, “I had a bunch of stuff in the basement that my grandmother bequeathed to me in one of those ‘I may not be around much longer’ purges so I just used most of it,” as a theme. But to spice it up, I purchased some new lights at CVS.

Tacky Fancy, no? Also, the baby was in charge of window displays.

This required me to do some actual cleaning, with Windex and paper towels and squeegees. It was pretty exciting.

I’m cleaning off and on today. I also baked some banana bread (sans walnuts and raisins) so I wouldn’t have to throw away some abandoned bananas that were attracting fruit flies and being all brown and mushy and gross.

The baby kept taking bites of my slice so I finally gave him his own. He ate about four bites and then about 3 seconds after I took that picture he told me he didn’t like the banana bread. Whatever, dude.

This guy was just thrilled with my cleaning, as he gets to coat everything anew in grey fur. I also unearthed some tiny green fuzzy ball which he has been attacking all afternoon. I’m glad I made him happy. It’s the least I can do to thank him for standing on my neck around 4:00 this morning. That was my favorite thing ever.

MamaPop turns one today. Hooray!

Also, I filled in for Lena to do the Friday Eye Candy. It was really grueling, scouring through pictures of shirtless men. I’m exhausted.

What are you doing this weekend? I think I’m going to do something really exciting, like go to a 6-year-old’s birthday party and then mainline Tylenol.

I have a bottle of wine, too. That should get me through the afternoon.

If anyone reading this works for an insurance company, could you answer a question for me? I have an HMO and am only allowed to get one refill of birth control a month. Why is that? Is it simply a cost issue or is there some behavioral prediction going on there? Like, since I’m lower income, do they think I’ll take the extra refills and sell them on the street?

“Hey, man, I got that NuvaRing. Got that NuvaRing, son. Need a patch? Need a patch? Need a patch? This new Seasonale will get you not-pregnant as SHIT. AND it’s good for your skin.”

I’m not sure why, in my imagination, black market birth control customers are male, but there you have it.

I could call Health America and ask them myself but something about calling an insurance company strikes fear into my heart.

Also, ewww…

Check that out. The baby lost his second tooth on Friday. Also, pudding was consumed. Don’t know if you could tell. He lost it during school and told us about it when we picked him up. We got excited and said, “Oh, cool, let us see it!” And then the baby’s eyes kind of shifted and he said, “I left it at school.”

Yargh.

We were able to get it back yesterday since we were in for our parent teacher conference. It was a good meeting. He’s doing really well in school and excelling in math, which is wild since I’m Miss Two Plus Two Equals Kleenex. He’s also well-liked by all the kids. His teacher said that his morning entrance to school is akin to that of a rock star. “He must have inherited that from you!” she said to us, which was hysterical because while the husband had many friends but even more enemies, I was just kind of…Mary Katherine Gallagher.

After the conference we were imagining his future prom pictures. The baby stands, dashing, in front of the mantle with his gorgeous date then poses with his parents, who are, you know, these assholes:

“I’m in desperate need of a chainsaw.”

My friend ladycakes over at LiveJournal did a meme and I am to return the favor.

The official directions are: Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Obviously, this makes for a chunky translation into this realm, since people don’t generally have an interests list. So, if you would like to participate…uh…I don’t know. Tell you what, if you want to participate, just post and explain seven interests that you have.

Anyway, ladycakes wanted to know about some of my interests, namely:

chapped lips – I constantly have chapped lips because I have a horrible habit of picking at them. Whenever I see someone else with chapped lips, I immediately feel a kinship to them.

fear of driving – I’m terrified of driving. I am 28 years old and I’ve never been able to successfully procure a driver’s license. I haven’t totally given up, but I’m not sure how I’ll ever be comfortable enough to take to the roads myself.

Gilda Radner – she’s amazing. I see so much of her in me, what with the frizzy hair and the goofy, quirky humor.

only children – I’m an only child and the baby is an only child. I think only children are a pretty interesting group. We’re loners but we long to have companions.

Shel Silverstein – I was never into Silverstein that much when I was a kid. But as an adult I came to really love all of his books. I love the look of his illustrations and his books are all so fun to read aloud. And do I really need to mention The Giving Tree?

sprawl – this refers to urban sprawl. There’s something very sad about the unlinking of communities in the interests of consumer desires. While I’m not suggesting that the old tenements should make a comeback, I’m generally confused by the leaking of human environs out into every available space. No one seems to feel that nature should have space to itself. The new houses that are thrown up in these communities are dull and apart from one another. Most of them do not have front porches, which makes it hard for neighbors to sit out and simply experience one another. I don’t get the mindset of “I need to have a new house in a new neighborhood in a new area. This is what I want and therefore I deserve it and therefore I will have it.”

Television Without Pity – I don’t read that site that much anymore, but I started reading it waaaaaaaaaay back when it was still called dawsonswrap.com. They obviously started with Dawson’s Creek recaps and then slowly added a few other shows to their repertoire. It was some of the funniest shit I had ever read. In recent years…I don’t know. It’s changed and I don’t look forward to recaps like I used to. But I do unabashedly try to emulate those early recaps in the stuff that I post on MamaPop, so they definitely deserve a tip of the hat for that.

You know what I watched last night for the second week in a row? Don’t Forget the Lyrics. It stars Wayne Brady, who I think I’m kind of in love with. Partially because he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X, and partially because he makes little comments like, “The Isley Brothers, ‘For the Love of You’…all skate,” and nobody really catches them, but they’re great. The show itself is kind of stupid, but I get to scream stuff like, “WHY WOULD YOU PICK LIONEL RICHIE?” which is something that I don’t get to do nearly enough in life.

Thanks everyone for commenting the other day! There are way more lurkers than I thought, which is cool and also a little creepy, especially when I think of the people who didn’t take the invitation to delurk. For my part, I know that I slacked on commenting. Sorry about that. I’m a bad person, what can I say?

We have our parent-teacher conference with the baby’s teacher on Monday, which is just one of several things I dropped the ball on this week. On Monday he had a field trip, but I thought it was on Tuesday, so he was dressed in uniform even though he should have worn regular clothes. The kid he sits with on the bus informed us of my mistake. Meanwhile, Tuesday was picture day, which I totally forgot about. The kid he sits with on the bus informed us of that mistake, too. I’m thinking that kid needs to come live with me and keep me on top of stuff. I also missed the sign-up sheet for conferences, so I sheepishly emailed his teacher all, “I’m crazy busy. It’s amazing that I have pants on.” She was cool about it and even said we didn’t need to have a conference if we didn’t want to since the baby’s doing so well. That’s always nice to hear, but I need to talk to her anyway since the baby can “never remember” what he does during the day. I don’t know why he has to be so aloof. But he told us yesterday that some kid has been punching him during lunch, so we need to discuss that, for sure, despite the fact that one of his friends has been defending the baby. That’s awesome, but I’d rather the teachers be aware of that and put a stop to it.

This parenting stuff is hard.

Oh, well. Nothing much else to report, other than the really awesome news that our friend Ike passed the bar exam and is now a lawyer. Ike Jones, Esq.!

I am going to steal a cue from Angela and post a Friday Random Twenty, courtesy of the iPizzle.

(more…)

Today is one of those unofficial blog holidays, namely The Great Mofo Delurk. It would be awesome if you would comment if you read here regularly, especially since I’m still new in this space and insecure.

I’m trying to do the same.

To facilitate your commentage, I’ll give you a question to answer: How awesome is Roseanne?

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to punch Carrie Bradshaw and her outfits in the head sometimes. And what’s with the cups of that dress? Has she never heard of, I don’t know, socks?

Edit: also, Sarah Silverman (Program) eulogizes her abortions. That disgusting sound you just heard was me guffawing.

My weekend kind of failed. I had grand plans to do all of my homework and reading for the week since I am way behind, do all of the laundry, go grocery shopping, watch the Steelers game, and eat some yummy dinner.

None of that happened. We went out on Friday. Our friends Curt and Amanda are moving to Atlanta on Wednesday and were having a going away party at Remedy in Lawrenceville. I had a good time. I got some drinking done and then a big group of us went to Eat n Park for late night noshing with plastic cups and no silverware. It was awesome. I felt…well, probably like how normal 28-year-olds feel.

My mom came over on Saturday. She and I are not really getting along at the moment and I was in a bad mood because I got a letter from our insurance company stating that since someone jimmied my front window open while I asleep and took a bunch of my shit, my premium is going up. Thanks, dudes! My mom wanted to, like, do stuff besides lie on the couch and nap, so that took up most of Saturday. I did get a big chunk of reading done, though.

But see, Sunday…the baby woke up kind of early and did his usual nagging to get me out of bed before 8 a.m. I don’t know. That kid must really like hearing the words, “Hell,” and “No.” Everything was normal. When I finally came downstairs, I gave him some cereal. He ate a few bites and then curled up on the couch. I asked him what was wrong and he said he wasn’t feeling good…and then all hell broke loose, intestinally speaking. There was puke. There was watery poop. There was even a nosebleed in the midst of all of that. He took a long nap while I washed soiled underwear and tried not to gag. He felt better when he woke up, like it never happened. I don’t understand how kids do that. When I throw up I’m out of commission for the rest of the day. But I’m also a pussy.

I started making some dinner and then worked on an essay when the Steelers came on. The husband spent the next three hours screaming at the TV while I typed away and checked the turkey, which was not cooking. See, I had a frozen turkey breast and didn’t defrost it and oh, I’m an idiot. I did some supplementary cooking of that, so we have dinner for tonight already, but last night we feasted on leftover mashed potatoes, ramen, and pita.

I never did get around to the laundry, really. I washed and dried two loads but they’re sitting in a pile in the laundry room, wrinkling away. We have some food, but I’m really low on WW-friendly stuff.

Ugh. Too much. I’m really hating myself for taking this particular combination of courses. The work load is insane. I keep thinking maybe I should drop one, but I would probably just be prolonging some future hellish fall semester. I’m so cranky nowadays, though.

But the weekend wasn’t total shite. Besides Friday’s tomfoolery, some nice pictures were taken. I snapped this one on Friday night:

Every now and then, I let the baby use the digital camera. He normally takes pictures like this:

You know…still lifes with Godzilla, toilet paper, and remote controls. But on Saturday he managed to snap this very nice picture of our cat:

Bonus: fingerprint dusting from CSI. I guess I should wipe that off. But maybe I’ll leave it so I can point to it and go, “That’s right, bitch,” and impress guests. Isn’t that a nice picture, though? I want to get him a camera for his birthday or xmas. I could get him one of those Fisher-Price joints, but it would be nice if he could make little movies with it, too. Like he told Jamie, “I’ve started making my own Godzilla movies.” You know, branching out from astute observer to director.

Oh, that reminds me. In recounting some of the details of the break-in to a friend, the baby lamented the theft of his piggy bank, sighed, and very seriously said, “Now I ain’t got no cash.”