kdiddy.org

See that guy up there on the left? Recognize him at all? That’s my son, the guy I’ve often referred to as “the baby” on these here internets. That’s “the baby” at his 13th birthday party on Saturday. Yes. Thirteen. THIRTEEN! For reference, when I first started blogging on LiveJournal back in 2002, he and I looked like this:

He had his party at the Pittsburgh Athletic Association in Oakland. He and his friends had fun but the whole experience was a little weird. The PAA is this very old school institution, established back at the beginning of the 20th century when Pittsburgh was lousy with titans of industry. My grandparents have been members for many years and I spent many special occasions there. It was always very exciting, since most of the time if we were going there, we had to be dressed up. I remember being enamored with the grand lobby and its huge fireplace. Above that fireplace was a huge painting of a Roman bath scene. I can imagine how slick I must have looked trying to sneak peeks of the naked guys. I was also impressed with the ladies room because it had a separate lounge area with some couches and vanity. “Wow! You can pee and then hang out for awhile! So fancy!” Also, I met Mister Rogers there one time when I was maybe four years old and it remains one of my most vivid memories. The building deserves its landmark status for that reason alone, in my opinion. If the club was at all run down back then, I never noticed it.

Since then, membership has declined and the facilities are looking really shabby in places. There are plans for the club to enter into a partnership with a new hotel coming to Oakland across the street, which will help them with repairs and a new revenue stream. One really sad effect of this agreement is that the bowling alley, which is a perfect mid-century time capsule will be demolished to make room for a parking garage.

While the kids were bowling, I remembered that he had his sixth birthday party there back in 2007, when he looked like this:

Because I always like to draw parallels and blah blah blah symbolism, I thought about how I would have (and did) meticulously documented his 2007 birthday, but haven’t been doing much meticulous documentation the last few years. Part of that is because his life is increasingly becoming his own and I want to respect that. But the bigger part is that I’ve let this part of myself (and several other parts) go and it bums me out. I feel comfortable telling you that he’s as challenging and wonderful as ever. He does some things that I’m really proud of and others that I’m not so proud of. But he’s a thoughtful individual and still very much my buddy. I’m pretty pleased with us so far.

I think it’s safe to say that summer 2014 is finally coming to a close. My kid has been in 7th grade for a few weeks and today the weather had that familiar cool crispness to it. I was initially a little sad to see summer go. We had a hectic-at-times summer but a good one. (Highlights are behind the “Read more” via photo essay.)

I’ve been busy with work/tired from being busy with work. I’ve never been comfortable posting too much about my job (any job) but I’m involved in some Big Things. This is simultaneously enthralling (“I’ve always wanted to be involved in Big Things!”) and terrifying. After particularly stressful days, I find myself thinking/saying things like, “I just want to go be a sister wife somewhere and take care of babies and make jam.” I feel terrible about this. For one, it’s not like that line of work is easier. (Plus, I would manage to turn it into The Most High Stakes Sister-Wifeing Ever We’re All Gonna Die Fail Which Is Worse I Don’t Know.) Also, I’ve never even made jam so I have no idea if this would even be a viable option.

The husband has been busy with music. His group, Pittsburgh Track Authority, has been doing really well, along with other related projects that he’s involved with/heading up. They’ve been getting a lot of press coverage, locally and nationally, and they’ve been DJing all over the place. It’s all very exciting.

The kid has been busy hanging out with friends, hanging out with grandparents, etc. I was upset the last week or so of summer vacation because I felt like I had barely seen him and it’s not like he’s going to be looking to spend less time with friends and more time with me as he gets older. I’ve been pushing our Great Race training because it’s 40 or so minutes that are just for us. It’s just unfortunate that we spend them huffing and puffing and figuring out how to avoid running up this one horrible hill by our house.

This was all kind of exacerbated when we went to see Boyhood a few weeks ago, which I loved. Richard Linklater gets a pass from me on certain aspects of movies that would otherwise bother me. I don’t know. He does the meandering-thoughts-and-experiences-of-not-extraordinary-people thing so well. It was very striking to watch a story unfold over time with the same people, especially, of course, the boy at the center of it.

My kid is still very much a kid, but he’s really looking forward to growing up and experiencing all of the failures and successes of becoming an adult. I get that and I don’t immediately tell him to just enjoy being a kid, “because being an adult is so much harder.” I don’t really believe that. Being a kid is easier only in mechanical ways that mostly have to do with money and being a candidate for blame. He seems to really be looking forward to the experiences that he’ll have, though I’ve cautioned him not to set his expectations too high. Parties and whatnot are never as epic as they are in the movies. “You’ll have fun, I promise,” I tell him. “But nobody has the time or energy for a drunken odyssey.”

(more…)

We were at my mother-in-law’s house three times over last weekend: on Friday for her 4th of July party, on Saturday to eat 4th of July leftovers, and on Sunday to eat more 4th of July leftovers. She keeps a radio on in the backyard tuned to the oldies station and during our leftover stops, the station played “Cecilia” a number of times. It also played that “In the Summertime” song by Mungo Jerry, which sounds awesome and is a classic summer song, but that line, “If her daddy’s poor you can do what you feel,” makes me uncomfortable. Bother. Let’s put all these deep thoughts aside and sing along to a traditional hymn.

Speaking of 4th of July, it was a nice and low-key affair. I was sitting and talking with the husband’s cousin about some aspect of living in the city, but added that Pittsburgh is pretty country. As if on cue, my mother-in-law’s cat emerged from the small wooded area behind her house with a snake in its mouth.

After the snake got passed around to all who wanted to play with it, we went past the swimmin hole and got us some sodypops yeehaw.

Speaking of that guy in the picture/video above, I heard him tell one of his Little League teammates the other day that he’ll turn 13 in December, which brings me to my next point: ASAK&@(&(&@@%)(*AUP87(*&)(%#hijokl?

A teenager. I’m going to have a TEENAGER. As I (far too) often joke, I don’t see how he can be 13, since I’m 13.

(Aside for those of you reading along: these recent posts feel very awkward to write and I imagine they’re awkward to read. Much like the huffing and puffing that I’m having to do with running as I get back into a habit/routine, these sound out of breath and wheezing to me as I get back into writing shape. Just getting into WordPress and putting some thoughts down is a challenge. Thanks for your patience and I sincerely appreciate it if you’re stopping by.)

Consider this an awkward throat-clearing on a dreary Monday. I want to write again so I’m just going to…begin.

I’m dropping back in here after a generally insignificant weekend that somehow feels momentous. Perhaps the actual nothingness of it is what makes it feel so important. Our spring seasons always experience a hard shift into fifth gear near the end, with school, work, sports, and music colliding into a breathless combination of activities and obligations. Not having to really go anywhere these last few days and actually seeing each other for more than 10-minute bursts at a time almost felt odd.

But this weekend contained a lot of the activities that I’m hoping will make up most of our Saturdays and Sundays these next few precious months.

The husband and I slept in to a somewhat vulgar degree on Saturday. I always feel guilty for not getting a somewhat early start, but we needed the sleep and the time together. We’ve both been going pretty hard the last few weeks and are both still battling the lingering side effects of a nasty head cold.

After getting up, I worked on some laundry, which is an area of my life that is just thoroughly out of control. There’s just so much of it all over the house and I don’t understand how three people can have so much clothing. I also did a really half-assed job of putting away winter clothing and bringing out summer clothing. (Read: both types of clothing are sitting in piles all over the place.) We also have a large cabinet sitting in the middle of our bedroom that was displaced when we got a new washer and dryer and actually you know what let’s stop discussing laundry.

The kid and I have danced around encouraging each other to be more active. I have increasingly become a slug over the past year and it’s pretty upsetting. In my previous job, I was fortunate enough to be able to work out during my lunchtime. My new job, while being wonderful in many ways, does not really have the flexibility to duck out for an hour in the middle of the day. Not regularly, anyways. So, I’ve really struggled to figure out how to get back into a good routine. Aside from the obvious physical, uh, softening that has accompanied this new schedule awkwardness, I’ve noticed that my anxiety has gone way up. Not getting that 30-45 minutes a day to wear myself down means that I get wound up and stay that way.

I’ll come back to this because there’s a lot of unpacking that I want to do about it. But for now I just wanted to mention that the kid and I took two really nice, long walks on Saturday and Sunday. During those walks, I kept thinking about how ten years ago I would take him for a walk in his stroller everyday when the weather was nice. Then one day I started working and that more or less stopped altogether. Back then, I would narrate our walk to him and he would babble back at me and point excitedly at school buses and construction vehicles. This weekend, we discussed how he felt about his now completed sixth grade year and paradoxes. Yes, paradoxes. We’ve cautiously allowed him to venture more onto the internet the past year and he finds some interesting stuff. We had a pretty in-depth discussion about the omnipotence of God which…what? Weren’t you just a squealing toddler who subsisted solely on PediaSure a few hours ago?

Goals for the summer (to be discussed further in later posts):
– Work on establishing a new workout schedule
– Incorporating the kid in this schedule as much as possible
– Writing
– Reading a book (I’ll come back to this, but any time someone mentions a statistic about how some depressingly high percentage of Americans haven’t read a book in the past year, I get pretty red.)
– Get this blog fixed (something became borked with WordPress on here like two years ago and I can’t figure out how to fix it. Help?)

Facebook has a handy little year in review for users. Looking through mine and one that you can generate for InstaGram, I found them a little dissatisfying. They didn’t really seem to capture all that was good and bad and huge about 2013. The big things were included, like my new job, but as I’ve pulled away from the internet more and more, I have less of a record of what has happened. I’m not particularly happy about this. It’s not necessary to document everything. There are, after all, only so many memories that you can truly cherish. But I’ve always liked being able to look back on an ultimately inconsequential moment.

There are also constant hums that I’ve become more aware of this year that are impossible to condense and articulate into a tweet or a stats update or even a blog post. My anxiety about basically everything has been pretty tough to contend with. I have really complicated feelings about key people in my life and I can’t tell if they’re valid or not. My kid is undeniably growing up now and I feel hyper-aware of the time that he still spends in childhood. Any time he cuddles with me or drops the front of tough adolescent that he tries on here and there, I breathe a sigh of relief that I haven’t missed it all yet.

Anyway, neither the Facebook or InstaGram reviews contained any moments from July, and I realized that that month contained one of my favorite nights of this year, one that I think/hope that I’ll always remember. Just in case, I don’t, though…

On July 11th, there was a brief but significant thunderstorm in the very early evening. The power went out and we went through the normal stages of reaction: sitting very still for a minute, sighing when it becomes clear that it wasn’t a momentary outage, pacing carefully.

Since it was still light out, the three of us sat on the porch and admired the pretty, midsummer sunset.

We could hear our neighbors shouting their theories about the power outage at each other. So-and-so a few blocks away still has power. Did a transformer blow? What did Duquesne Light say? Have you seen one of their trucks go by? How much stuff do you have in the freezer?

I wanted a popsicle and got some to cool us all down.

It started to get really dark and we needed some source of light. I gathered an odd assortment of scented candles and clustered them on the porch. They were mostly Christmas-related scents. It was odd to smell cedar and sugar cookies mixed with summer stickiness and rain.

After a few hours, we were getting hungry and frustrated. An alert chimed on my phone letting me know that the Pirates game had finally started after being delayed for the power outage. “We could go to the Pirate game,” I suggested half-jokingly. But the husband pointed out that at least there would be power and we could get something to eat.

“Let’s do it.”

We rushed over to the park and purchased bleacher seats. The crowd was pretty sparse since it was a weeknight and the game was just starting at 11 p.m.

I held our seats as the husband and the kid went to the bathroom. A girl coming up the aisle in a sequined skull shirt caught my eye. I quickly noticed that her date was Mayor Luke Ravenstahl.

The game turned out to be great. The Pirates added one more win to what would ultimately be their best season in 20 years. And the three of us did something spontaneous. We went on a tiny adventure and escaped life for awhile.

This week, the kid is making a repeat appearance at a frisbee camp. Yesterday was the first day and we got a kick out of meeting all of the coaches. The staff is mostly college-age kids who are best described as clean hippies. Very little hemp or facial hair but just so many exclamations of, “Duuuuude,” and “Awwwwwwesome,” and that laugh. You know the one, that kind of breathy, throaty chuckle. Not a bad way to spend his second full week of summer vacation.

The big milestone around here, aside from our wedding anniversary, is that my kid was promoted from his elementary school in an adorable ceremony two weeks ago. All of the kids, excited by finally being free of school uniforms, got dressed up in suits, dresses, and wackier outfits. My kid wanted to look fairly clean cut.

Clean cut down to the shoes, that is.

He received several awards for academic achievement and perfect attendance. It’s such a relief to me that his time in school seems to be going so much better for him than it did for me. He still has a reasonable amount of gripes with it. But overall he seems to enjoy learning and being around his peers and things “click” for him pretty smoothly. I was always too busy flailing about something to get consistently good grades or go to school every day. WHATEVER IT WAS MY JOURNEY AND I HAD TO GO THROUGH IT ON MY OWN TERMS *sob*.

In the fall, he goes off to the big 6-12 school. He’s really excited and I am, too. But the new school just seems so different from his elementary school. It was so warm and sweet and just the right size. His new school is in a huge, imposing building and contains huge, imposing teenagers. My kid is still so physically little that it seems like the new school will just swallow him up.

Anyway, yesterday and today I’ve walked to the park to pick him up from camp and it’s been nice to have a little bit of time just the two of us. We don’t get to do that often enough. Yesterday, he got a chance to see my new office, which he liked. Having recently watched Office Space for the first time, he appreciated my red Swingline stapler. On the way back today, we walked past my old building, which was one of the earlier buildings on campus and has a lot of cool, early 20th-century details. My new building is more modern; it’s maybe 30 years old and has a more basic appearance. We then had the following exchange:

“I think I like your old building better than your new building. Your new building is kind of…business casual.”

“Oh? What’s so ‘business casual’ about it?”

“It’s just kind of casual, not fancy. It kinda looks like Initech.”

I always look forward to the break that we get from school and work at the end of the year. Nothing all year tops the nearly two weeks that I get to spend mostly at home and with my family. This year, I literally can’t wait. These last few days of the regular routine are excruciating, because I can’t wait to be away from the world for awhile. I need so badly to be in my house with my husband and my son, to see them, to touch them, to reassure myself that, yes, they are here. Yes, they are real.

This is all exacerbated and made more raw by the shooting last week. I still don’t feel as if I’ve come back to a normal thought process since it happened. I still cry a few times a day, quietly and quickly, trying to make sure no one notices. This tragedy has affected all of us, of course, but it’s not mine. I don’t have to live the rest of my life with it as part of my story. Jonna did an excellent job articulating a lot of this.

I also get frustrated with the small actions that we’re encouraged to take: hug your kids tighter, tell them you love them, never take one moment for granted. Yes, of course I will but what about tomorrow? My hugs aren’t bulletproof and my love won’t make this go away. Please fucking tell me that we’re not going to try to just kiss this hurt away because it’s not fucking enough.

* * *

Yesterday, during some polite chatter over lunch, a few people asked me if the kid still believed in Santa Claus. I replied honestly: “He’s on the fence.” I never formally renounced Santa Claus, which isn’t to say that I think that a man literally performs all of those legendary actions. But I do notice (or perceive) a shift at this time of year that seems to be It. He’s asked me a few times if Santa Claus is real. I’ve always asked back, “What do you think?” and he has always replied, “Kinda. Some of the kids at my school don’t think he’s real.”

“The kids at your school are no older than you and they are definitely not any wiser.”

* * *

The other night, after we got our tree up and decorated, we did what we always do and turned off all of lights so that we could see the tree in all of its glory. The three of us cuddled together on the couch and stared up at our handiwork. We lingered a little longer than I think we ever have. It’s so confusing to be this excited at this time of year while also feeling so desperate.

I had a nightmare last night that was obviously my brain working out some of the bigger tangles of my thoughts about Sandy Hook. It was a bizarre but terrifying journey to the darkest depths of possibility, where I did what was awful but necessary, apparently: feel for a second in a hypothetical reality what those parents are feeling. I woke up hating myself for it. I shouldn’t get to entertain those thoughts when others have to endure that living nightmare forever. And who am I to think that I could possibly imagine what they’re feeling? I hate everything about this so much. Even the good moments that come out of it seem to make me sadder ultimately.

* * *

Something that has always always made me tear up is, “Yes, Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus.” I think when I was a kid it was comforting to read something so kindly authoritative about something that can be kind of scary when you’re little. Now I love the sentiment and I love the idea of a busy grown-up taking the time to find just the right thing to say to a young reader. Coping with this particular unimaginable fear and sadness at this time of year, it suddenly seems much more poignant and necessary (and makes me sob). It’s comforting to read those words and feel them stretching across time because we now have to figure out how to explain to our children that the intangible things that make life worth living are still very much around, even though we let all of the bad things in far too often, that we still care about them and keep them safe and help them when they’re scared because otherwise the, “eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.”

I used to blog on LiveJournal and I would post there every single day, often multiple times a day. This was before Twitter or Facebook, where I could deposit brief thoughts and this was also before I had a job or the life that I have now. I was a young mom and my days were very baby-centric, revolving around naps and nursing and diapers. In between those shifts I would write and think and write. I would offer up my thoughts on almost everything and very few world events passed without my input.

Now, I don’t feel comfortable expressing my feelings about huge events that much. I quickly grow weary of hearing everyone else’s opinions and then don’t wish to add my voice. Now it’s so frustrating to watch the dialogue degenerate from the communal shock and grief, to outrage, to the various factions of outrage, to the bitterness over how no one is saying anything right anymore.

Get rid of guns!

No! We need guns and 2nd Amendment and this poorly drawn analogy!

We need better access to mental health resources!

I’m not paying for some monster to talk about his feelings!

Mental illness!

Illness is illness, why must you categorize it as mental?

Children!

Video games!

Movies!

Not enough religion!

Media!

Family values!

Our culture!

Our government!

I don’t want to say anything because it will inevitably be the wrong thing according to someone. And unfortunately I don’t think that any real changes will come from this, still, because of that fear. Because we continue to allow a flawed set of ideals dominate. We won’t try something new (just try!) because a bunch of people don’t want to. I guess that’s freedom. But I hope that the folks who will fight to keep guns in our hands and money out of our healthcare and pollution in our environment are right about their, “everything will be fine if we change nothing,” approach. I honestly do. Since we won’t take a chance on trying something different, I hope that they’re right. But honestly I don’t think that they are.

The scariest part was how often the word “normal” popped up in my thoughts and words surrounding this latest glimpse of hell.

I said “usually” but I started to write “normally.” “I’m normally pretty stoic when a bunch of kids get killed.” Because this is normal now. It’s not everyday, not on this scale, but it’s normal.

I’m not so naive that I think at some point we’ll become totally peaceful and horrible things will cease to happen. And I’ve had to adopt some kind of rational outlook about that. I can’t exist in a bubble because bad things happen and I have no way of knowing whether one will happen to me or someone I love. But please could we at least try to get to a point where we can no longer gauge our reactions to the latest mass shooting? Could we try getting rid of guns? Could we try putting our money toward each other’s health and wellbeing? Just try? And if it’s a failure we’ll go back?

I asked the kid if he had any questions or wanted to talk about it. He just kind of shrugged and said that it was really sad. I told him that I wasn’t sure how to relate to his perspective since stuff like that didn’t happen when I was a kid and that was only 20 years ago so I don’t know how and what kind of scary it is for him. But I think he sees it something that happens sometimes. And that gave me chills.

Hey buddy! Today is your 11th birthday! Every year it gets harder and harder for me to believe how big you’re getting. This past year, especially, you’ve turned on to so many cool things and experiences. You’re playing a bunch of different sports, listening to all kinds of great music, getting good at chess, and developing your artistic interests by doing stuff like joining Shakespeare Club at school, which just makes my English heart go pitter-patter. Eventually, of course, you’ll probably need/want to pare down and focus your time and energy on just a few activities. But for now you have the opportunity to just basically try everything. Might as well, right? There are limitless interests to devote yourself to. You’ve really grabbed life and sucked the marrow out of it. Never, ever, ever stop doing that. (Plus, marrow is really tasty.)

I realized the past few months that I don’t chronicle your life the way I used to, and that made me a little sad because I only need to search through my archives to find the details of most of your first decade. The minutiae that you will never remember were all historic events for me and I can recall them with ease. But your life is just that now…yours. You move through days and nights independently and my role is basically tech support (though the absolute most enthusiastic tech support ever). Seeing you become an aware citizen of the world is just the coolest thing to witness and I want to tell everyone about it all the time because you blow my mind constantly. But my time as author of your tale has mostly ended and you get to pick up at the ellipsis that I left for you.

I don’t think you’ll ever get me to completely stop writing about you, though, since you are the gift to poets and warriors and songwriters and astronauts and anyone else who gets a glimpse of the beyond.

When I first started writing about us, we looked like this:

And now you look like this:

And I look like this:

And “us” is now “You. And me.” And it’s awesome.

The other night, I had had a bad day and told you that I might need some hugs because daddy had to go play a gig. After I declared it boob tube night and we ate our dinner while watching some cartoons, you popped up off of the couch and cleared our dishes way. You then returned with two cups of eggnog and put National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation on. You might not remember that night when you get older and I might forget some of it too until I happily stumble upon this old post. But kiddo that was one of the best nights ever and I felt so much better.

Happy Birthday.

I am on some like anti-NaBloPoMo business. I am, however, doing a photo-a-day “challenge” (sarcastic air-quotes because it’s not like it’s a triathlon or something) over on yon InstaGram, which I’ve recently become addicted to because oh, hello, 2010. Nice of you to show up.

Backing up just a bit, I would like to inform all of you that I am now 34 years old as of October 31st and am now very mature.

Also on October 31st was Halloween, which was kind of anti-climactic since trick-or-treating was postponed. But having it on Saturday was kind of nice since I didn’t have to rush home from work. My kid went as D.M.C. from Run D.M.C., which a few people actually got, despite the fact that he needs to work on his ability to look hard.

Anyway, moving on… (more…)