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Last night, we watched Time Bandits with the baby. He dug it, but we started the movie kind of late and I was debating with the husband, who was in the bathroom at the time, whether we should just let him finish watching it or stop and finish watching it the next night.

“It’s getting close to 9 p.m. What do you think?” I asked.

“*errrr…gruunnnnt…bathroom noises* Well, how much time is left in the movie?” he replied.

And here’s where the set up for the embarrassment that I would endure later happened. I looked at the DVD player and noted that it was 53 minutes into the movie. I looked at the DVD case and noted that the movie ran 118 minutes long. I tossed those figures around in my head and answered the husband:

“There’s about 25 minutes left!”

For the record, 118 minus 53 equals 65. About 45 minutes later, we’re in the midst of the showdown between Evil and the Time Bandits and I go, “Dude, what the fuck, I said that there was 25 minutes left and that was like 45 minutes ago.” The husband looked at me, confused, and asked how exactly I arrived at that conclusion about 25 minutes. So I got all snotty and said, “Well, duh, the movie was at 53 minutes and the total running time is 118.”

The husband’s eyes widened and he said, slowly, “Kelly…what comes before 100? 59 or 99?” I realized my mathematical error but luckily my 7-year-old whispered, “99,” to me. Thanks for lookin’ out, kid.

…

I have vague memories of something funny that I thought of last night and now it’s gone. But trust me, you would have laughed.

…

I got a little panicked this morning about this blog and how I haven’t been writing very regularly. I started to worry that I effectively killed it. But I remembered that I have that same worry every semester and I eventually get back into it and people eventually start being able to read what I write again.

I’m still clearing my throat, as it were, when it comes to this space. I’m amazed at how quickly I get out of shape for writing about myself. I’m of course still writing at MamaPop and We Covet, but about other people and things. So maybe I need some help. I’ll open the floor up for questions. Anything you want to ask me?

One of the best days that I’ve ever had happened around 8 years ago this month.

The husband was The Boyfriend at the time. He and I had been together about 3 and 1/2 months. We had crammed a lot of relationship into those 3 and 1/2 months. We had broken up and reunited at least twice. We had fought and made up countless times. We had cried in each other’s arms, terrified at the breakneck speed that life seemed to be running at all of a sudden. We had been buddies and then suddenly lovers and at our feet was a messy puddle full of recent ex-lovers and confused friends.

But by March it felt like things might actually settle down. We managed to buy some tickets for the Washington, D.C. Weezer show and coordinated a caravan for the road trip. The boyfriend and I borrowed his mom’s old minivan since there was no way his Ford Escort would survive the trip. Our friend Paco was going to ride with us and our friend Andy was going to drive three other friends in his car.

We stopped at the store before leaving Pittsburgh to grab good road trip food, picked up Paco, and headed on our way.

The drive from Pittsburgh to D.C. isn’t too bad, but just long enough to potentially drain you of all energy. We kept each other going by making fun of people in other cars and giving our friends the finger when we passed them. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I remember that we listened to Metallica and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

We got lost outside of D.C. This was before GPS on iPhones and we were relying on an atlas, which is fine for general directions but not so great for finer details. We stopped at a couple of gas stations to ask for directions and employed some questionable maneuvers to turn ourselves around in the outskirts.

When we finally got to American University, we stumbled into the gym and stood amongst a sea of horn-rimmed glasses and old man sweaters. The sweaters soon disappeared since a gym is still a gym, whether there are basketball players or nerds present: hot and musty.

We endured one opening act (The Get Up Kids) and enjoyed another (Ozma) and in between danced and sang along to the music that they played over the sound system. “Blitzkrieg Bop” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” made everyone sing and dance and giggle.

In class rock show fashion, the lights finally went down and everyone started to cheer. Weezer played a snippet of a slow, sweet song in the dark until they switched to the unmistakable opening notes of “My Name Is Jonas.” I don’t think I can overstate how nuts everyone went.

For the next few hours, the audience sang along to all of the songs off of the blue album and Pinkerton. The boyfriend and I would catch each other out of the corner of our eyes and grin at each other, my friends and I would punch each other in the arm. Kids.

The band closed the show with “Only In Dreams.” I could feel the boyfriend behind me, wrapping his arms around me. In between molecules.

We drove back to Pittsburgh that same night, exhausted and happy.

At some point around that time, I got pregnant.

That trip and that concert always give me a feeling of “the last.” The last whirlwind road trip we took. The last big group outing. The last time that particular group of people acted goofy together. And, yeah, the last time Weezer was any good.

It sounds wistful, but it’s not. I’m just so glad that it happened at all, that I had that night and that I can remember it so clearly.

1) toasted cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese

2) lattes, even if they burn the tip of my tongue

3) the way a library smells and the way they all kind of smell the same no matter where or when you are

4) old Kik-Steps

5) spring break

I turned on Toddlers & Tiaras a little bit ago because nothing else that I wanted to watch was on and I thought it would be a good release to watch something really stupid/infuriating.

This shit is boring. I mean, yeah, fucking freakshow parents and hideous clothes, but it’s…too easy? I don’t know. This particular subculture is so self-contained and weirdly populated with seemingly “normal” people. The problematic aspects of it are just so blatant it’s not even worth thinking about.

Plus, the top prizes in these pageants have titles like “Grand Supreme” and it’s all just getting way too close to some KKK shit for me.

Anyway, I’m watching crap to decompress. I had a HUGE paper due today and had to give a presentation on it. I later described the presentation as a cautionary tale. I got all freaked out beforehand and saved like 5 different copies of my presentation all over the place and I guess uploaded the wrong one in my frenzy. So, halfway through my presentation, I was out of slides. So I said, “Uh…my slides are missing. This is just like a nightmare I once had.”

Luckily, I had printed out hard copies of the notes pages so I just kept going without slides, lubricated by the five gallons of sweat that came pouring out of me. But my professor said that I did really well so COOL.

My back is killing me and has been really achy for the past couple of days. I think I’ve been holding the stress of the paper there or something. I’ve also been spending hours hunched over my computer writing the damn thing.

How are you?

My paper is done. The accompanying presentation is done. I just have to look at both with fresh eyes in the morning for any glaring errors, upload them to Blackboard, give the actual presentation and that will be one more struggle under my belt. The other large-ish assignment was moved back a few days so that gives me some time to breathe and then next week is spring break. Of course, that means that I only have to work full-time and be a mom but seriously that seems like a vacation sometimes.

Anyway, with that major assignment pretty much done I will actually be able to hang out here some more! At least until finals start crushing my will to live but for now it’ll be just like old times! Remember when I used to post here more than once a week? Those were the days, eh?

But for now, I think we’ll keep things light and look at some of the notes I’ve scribbled to myself in the margins of my notebook:

“* talk to Heather”

Uh, okay, self. About what?

“* bring HW2 assignment, task analysis”

I totally forgot to do this.

“Pizza Hut”

Uhhhh. Then in the same margin as “Pizza Hut,” it appears as though I do a little word association:

“zone out
streets
fighter
baby
oscar
trailer park
gorgeous
bride
radio
head”

I think that might actually be the mathematical formula for Radiohead’s video for “Street Spirit,” but who knows.

There’s also this doodle that consumes the word association:

It’s like a…maybe a…It’s like my inner child was eaten by a coral reef or something.

The baby had an allergic reaction last night. For those of you who are new to this corner of the internet, my son has a tree nut allergy. Luckily, we haven’t had much trouble with it and tree nuts are not as pervasive as peanuts, so he doesn’t have to live in a bubble or whatever. Last night was actually only the second time that his allergy flared up, the first time being when we found out that he had a food allergy.

When we go to restaurants, we always ask the staff to check to make sure that no nuts are used in whatever dish the baby is getting and so far this has kept us in the clear. But probably what happened was there was something nearby that got in his food. We had his EpiPen with us and for a few minutes had this vague panic of, “Do we jab him?” But we didn’t since he wasn’t having any trouble breathing. Our poor waitress stopped over to see how our meals were (they were delicious, rogue nuts be damned) and had the misfortune of coming upon the scene of us sitting in silence, watching the baby’s lips swell and uncertainly holding a large, green shot near his thigh. We drove to the hospital and just kind of waited. Eventually the swelling started going down and the baby reported that he felt fine. We took him home, gave him some Benadryl, and put him to bed and checked on him every couple minutes.

I am, of course, tremendously relieved that he is okay and am hoping that these symptoms are as bad as it gets. Avoiding anaphylactic shock would be tops.

It was just one of those moments where it was like, “Of COURSE you’re having a potentially life-threatening allergic reaction. WHY THE HELL NOT? I haven’t had a panic attack in at least 15 minutes, so I was due.” I’ve been working on a mid-term paper for one of my classes for several days now and to say that it’s stressing me out would be an understatement. On Tuesday, around 11 a.m., this particular academic nightmare will be over. I have another, large-ish assignment due on Thursday that I haven’t even looked at because I just can’t deal at the moment.

I never got this stressed about school until I started grad school (and I have the QPAs to show for it!). But I guess the stakes are just much higher this time around. Plus, I have to juggle so much more. It’s really wearing me down. After this semester, I have one class I’ll take in the summer and then one in the fall. Obviously, not having to deal with two classes at once will be a huge relief. I’m just trying to hang on until the end of the year when I will finally be done. It just sucks because I’m wishing for the time to go faster so I can get to a relatively easier phase in life, but in doing so I’m wishing away large chunks of my kid’s childhood. I actually apologized to him the other night for being so grumpy and impatient and busy. I’m doing all this so that I can make a better life for me and my family, but I guess in the thick of it the cost seems way too high.

Anyway, I didn’t mean to get all morose and I didn’t mean for this to sound like, “My kid had an allergic reaction and it was really scary for ME ME ME IT’S ALL ABOUT ME!” I’m glad my kid’s okay, obviously. And I know that this will all be over soonish and it will all be worth it. I will have a pretty kick-ass MA at the end of all this, after all. It’s just that this particular gauntlet of job + writing + school + school + school + being broke + whatever other crap has gotten really old.