kdiddy.org

Hurricane Sandy is having the side effect of extending Halloween. The city has postponed trick-or-treating to Saturday evening. I can’t say that I’m upset, since I really like Halloween and am happy to be able to fit a few more specific activities in while it’s still technically the season. We haven’t watched many scary movies and our pumpkins are still waiting to be hacked and anthropomorphized. This past Saturday, our neighborhood had the annual parade and the baby debuted his D.M.C. from RUN D.M.C. costume.

He obviously needs to work on his intimidation skills.

Unfortunately, he didn’t win any prizes for his costume. I think it was just too obscure (*coughhipstercough*).

Friday evening, while the baby was at his piano lesson, the husband and I plopped on the couch to unwind. I turned on the TV and was pumped to see that Teen Witch was on. You would think that after nearly 12 years together, there wouldn’t be much that would surprise me about the husband. But I was shocked to learn that he had never seen this masterpiece. But I guess it kind of made sense since, thinking back, all of the girls in my class were always obsessed with that movie and how absurd it was, while all of the boys were fairly ignorant of its existence. I guess something called Teen Witch doesn’t really appeal to boys in their early adolescence? Weird.

At first, the husband was pretty dismissive, but I advised him that he needed to treat this event like the paradigm shift that is. Life can be broken up into to two periods: before Teen Witch and after Teen Witch. There’s just so much wonderful in that movie. Like, where does Louise even find those frumpy clothes to begin with? Why is her little brother…like that? Oh, holy wow, the inappropriate harassment from her English teacher? How Brad is just not quite Tom Cruise but tries so hard to squeeze it out of himself? Remembering how most of the girls gave the side-eye to Louise and Brad’s trip to the abandoned house? NO red flags, Louise? None? And why the hell would you ever take your shoes off in a place like that? The quintessential synchronized dance sequence at the prom? And the kind of completely amazing original soundtrack? And how watching it now I think the whole thing is actually just a metaphor (of course) for teenage drinking and/or drug use?

As we were watching it, I said, “There’s this scene…I can’t remember if it already happened or not. No…wait…here it is. Just so you know? This is the greatest thing ever.” And if you’re familiar with Teen Witch, I think you know that I’m referring to this:

After that final, “Top THAT,” from Polly, the husband and I sat in silence for a moment before he finally whispered, “That was awesome.” Halloween truly is the most magical time of the year.

My kid is a source of many wonderful quotes that range from adorable naivety to developing wisdom to just plain adorable and entertaining. In the past 24 hours, he’s had two that I need to document so that I don’t ever forget them.

The husband’s band was featured in the Tribune-Review on Sunday, so we had a couple copies on the dining room table. Last night, while the baby was doing his homework, he called out to us, “Hey, some guy is planning a comeback in Afghanistan?” The husband and I were both silent for a minute, trying to figure out what he could possibly mean. “What are you talking about, dude?” we asked. “It says here in this newspaper that some guy named Al…Kuh-eee-duh? Is doing something in Afghanistan.”

You know, that guy Al. Al Qaeda. (Note to self: brush up on current events.)

This morning, on the way to the bus stop, the baby and I were talking about the basketball team that he just joined at school. He was excitedly chattering away about the PE teacher who coaches them. “He’ll do this thing where he announces the starting lineup just like at a real basketball game. When I came out, he said, ‘AT 4 FOOT 9, FROM THE BRONX…!'” I chuckled, and the baby continued, “Pfft…I’m barely 4 foot 8!”

I recently lamented on Twitter (twit-mented? lamentweed?):

Literally every weekend for the past month or so has been outstanding. Downside is that they’re making Mondays increasingly brutal. #fb

— kdiddy (@kdiddy) October 14, 2012

This past weekend was similarly excellent, though not because of all of the events going on, but because of the lack of them. For the first time in many weeks, the husband, the baby, and I got to be together from Friday evening all the way to Monday morning.

While the baby was at his piano lesson Friday after school, the husband and I went on a little date to Fuel & Fuddle. We met up with the baby and my mom afterward and then headed to Squirrel Hill to see Samsara, a documentary that I’ve been anticipating for years. I had told the baby going in that this was a different kind of movie: there wasn’t any dialogue or a story, per se, just images of life and the world for the purpose of giving you something to think about.

SAMSARA Teaser from Baraka & Samsara on Vimeo.

He did have a few questions of the, “Where is that? Why are they doing that?” variety during the movie and I tried to get him to save them until after. A film that quiet and atmospheric needs a similarly serene and receptive audience. Overall, however, he handled it amazingly well and even had some really interesting thoughts afterward.

(The fact that a 10-year-old was able to experience it that way should have made the grown people sitting behind us feel that much dumber for talking the whole time and drunkenly getting up and falling down several times. If you’re over the age of say, 15, and you can’t sit still and contemplate life for at least a little bit, you need to just put your eatin’ dress on and stay in the house. We have shit to do out here.)

During our furious discussion of the movie afterward via iMessage, Frank had told me that he felt very grim after seeing it. I can see why, there were some very unpleasant things portrayed. But even the shots of landfills and meat factories didn’t upset me the way that they might normally. I just kept seeing images of chaos and our sometimes precious attempts to impose order on it. It made me feel very serene, like nothing that is happening is somehow surprising or out of turn. Not that we should take that as a reason to be uncaring or cold or seek change where it is needed. But that familiar panic that ordinarily wells up inside of me when I think about all that there is to think about didn’t show up. And it can stay gone, for all I care.

I think this moment is really what did it for me:

Who knows the story of his life and his tattoos? But it seems safe to assume that some chaos, good or bad, led him to mark his body, his method of asserting control where he could. But none of that is relevant here, as he nuzzles his infant daughter. She softly touches his face as the world suddenly becomes very small, a population of 7 billion reduced to 2 in a moment that is repeated over and over again everywhere.

The absence of Big Exciting Things to do this weekend meant that my world got to be wonderfully small for a few days. On Saturday, we went to Trax Farm to re-up on our decorative gourds (motherfuckers). The baby tried to tell us that he was too old for that stuff and after I pieced together the shards of my shattered heart upon hearing of this omen of adolescence, I pushed him into the car with the promise of, “FAMILY TOGETHERNESS AND FUN TIMES GODDAMMIT!” But after we drove past all of the pretty foliage and once we got there and that unmistakeable potpourri of kettle corn and animal poo hit him, he warmed right up.

Adopting Captain Morgan poses on pumpkins and whatnot.

Earlier in the week, he came up to me and said, “Want to do something together this weekend?” And then I died. He does a ton of stuff with seemingly everyone else in his life, while he and I seem to have a strictly business relationship sometimes. Of course, we have moments of enjoying each other’s company, but I realized that very rarely do he and I ever do anything just the two of us. I was trying to think of something to do and we kept shooting down each other’s suggestions. I thought about trying to find a cooking class, since he often wants to help me cook which is hard to do in our tiny kitchen, but I couldn’t seem to find any that were for kids and parents. Finally, I said, “Do you want to cook something together?” He liked that idea and it seemed like the least stress-inducing option. We wouldn’t have to go anywhere or spend any money, and he had an eye on a recipe for mini deep dish pizzas.

So, yesterday I set everything out for us and let him do mostly everything, only helping when he asked me to. “This is so much fun!” he said. And it really was. Plus, those little pizzas were so good. He also helped me to make some applesauce from the bushel of apples that we brought home, which was especially exciting since he got to use the cool apple peeler.

Today, the world is its usual size and its attempts to bring order to everything seem so silly. I can’t wait to get back to my cozy little microcosm.

These past two weekends are causing a bit of deja vu.

Last year, on the last Sunday of September, I ran the Great Race, then the baby had his soccer pictures, then he had a soccer game, then he went to a Pirates game with my dad, and we celebrated the husband’s birthday. This year, on the last Sunday of September, I ran the Great Race, then the baby had his soccer pictures, then he had a soccer game, then he went to a Pirates game with my dad. We celebrated the husband’s birthday a few days earlier.

Last year, on the first Saturday of October, the husband and I were out suuuuuuper super late at one of the VIA events, then got about 30 minutes of sleep before going to the baby’s soccer game at motherfucking 9:00 in the a.m. This year, on the first Saturday of October, the husband and I will be out suuuuuuuper super late at one of the VIA events, then get about 30 minutes of sleep before going to the baby’s soccer game at motherfucking 9:00 in the a.m.

Argh. These two weekends are shaping up to be traditionally equal parts exhilarating and annoying and tiring. However, last year, while lamenting to our partied out friend about our son’s early morning athletics, said friend replied, “I FUCKING LOVE SOCCER!” which was kind of the most perfectly slurred thing to say at that moment. I hope he does it again.

Anyway, if you are in the Pittsburgh area, you should definitely come out to some of the events happening as part of the VIA festival. It’s been going on for the past few days and some supremely cool things will be happening this weekend. We’re taking the baby to the juke + footwork workshop at the Shadow Lounge this evening, then the husband and I will be checking out some music and visuals at the old PNC Bank in East Liberty. Tomorrow night, we’re going to see Moodymann, one of our Detroit faves, which I’m just so, so excited about.

I can’t overstate how fantastic it is that something like this goes on every year in Pittsburgh. If you have some time to kill, check out some of the events. A lot of them are during the day and are all ages, so bring the kids!

The other morning, when the weather was all, “And now…AUTUMN!” the baby and I stood in his room digging through a bin of last year’s school clothes. We were looking for a pair of pants that would fit. His 10 slims were now too short and too tight around the waist. At some point over the summer, my beanpole had gone and acquired a little meat for his bones finally. Those of you who saw him eat, or “eat,” as is more accurate, when he was a toddler will know what a relief this is. I think he consumed a total of 500 calories from the ages of 2 to 4.

But the 10 slims were all that we had and as I looked at his face contorting as he tried to determine if he could stand to wear a pair of them all day, I realized that he was just going to have to wear shorts.

“Well, there are a couple of ways you can play this,” I told him, as we walked to the bus stop, his chicken legs exposed to the brisk, dewy air. “You can pretend to be one of those people who claim that the cold doesn’t bother them and who wear shorts and tshirts in the middle of winter. Like, act super tough. Or just tell everyone that you have an extremely mean/irresponsible mother who made you wear shorts today.”

I forgot to ask which scenario he went with.

The baby is in fifth grade and in his last year at his sweet, little elementary school. I’ve noticed already that the homework is tougher and takes longer and there’s more of it and it makes me sad. The world is demanding more of him and his time now, time that the husband and I have to relinquish so that he can make his way. We don’t have as many spare hours in the evening to spend together because there’s work to be done.

He used to be mine to share with the world as much as I saw fit. Now he’s the world’s to share with me when there’s time.

Hey.

So, I had a pretty great weekend. How about you?

Friday, we had some friends over for dinner for what I think will become a regular gathering. The wife of one of the husband’s oldest and dearest friends invited us and a few other oldest and dearest over for dinner at their house a couple of times. We all had such a good time together we figured we should make it a regular occurrence. The rough plan is to have dinner at someone’s house once a month. The husband has been rolling his eyes about the whole thing, whining that dinner parties are for yuppies. But he’d by lying if he told you he didn’t enjoy seeing his lifelong buddies regularly.

I’ve mentioned before that my very simple goal in life is to host Thanksgiving at our house, to be the default house where everyone arrives at when it’s time to celebrate something with family. I’m not at that point yet for a number of reasons, so smaller gatherings like this give me an opportunity to scratch that itch. When the husband offered to lodge some musician friends of his who were playing in town, I went buck wild preparing this delicious breakfast. Our guests expressed their bewilderment to the husband, who replied, “Yeah, she likes to flex on shit like this.”

Fair enough.

So, of course, I got all excited about feeding our friends and made apple and fennel salad, roasted broccoli, tomato sausage lasagna, and chocoflan. Everything was delicious, if I do say so myself. Our friends John and Sarah brought their two little ones, including their 8-month old who is just so scrumptious. He and I got some cuddles in which I needed so badly.

After a long week, though, I fell asleep pretty early. Or, more precisely, I fell asleep in the middle of changing the channel on the TV, all “52–zzzzzz.”

Saturday, my dear friend Emily was getting married. We, of course, were running a few minutes late and when we got to the church, Emily and her attendants were lined up and about to go down the aisle. I panicked and RAN down the aisle with the husband behind me hissing, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!” When he caught up to me, he said, “What is WRONG with you? There’s a side entrance!” Ugh, I am such an ass.

The ceremony was beautiful and I was so happy to witness Emily marrying her true love. When I got to say hi to her afterward, she said that when she saw me in the door of the church, that was when she started crying. “Oh my god, was it because I was late and busted down the aisle like a total moron?” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. But Emily remembered how thoroughly I flipped out with joy when she told me that she had gotten engaged. It was pretty special, since how often do you get to feel that genuinely happy for someone?

I attempted to look nice:

At the reception, the kid was refusing to dance which seemed weird to us, so we kept telling to get his booty on the dance floor.  I eventually dragged him out to dance to “Shout,” explaining that it’s basically required to dance to that song at weddings. He was still unenthusiastic, to put it mildly, so I grabbed his hands and threw them in the air for him at the appropriate intervals. He screamed, “NOOOOOOOOOOO STOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPP” the whole time, which I think confused our fellow revelers. However, about five minutes later, he was on the stage, requesting songs from the DJ and dancing like the holy spirit had gotten him.

The kid had a soccer game the next day, which ended in a tie. Our team was up 4 – 1 until suddenly their defense fell apart. So, he was upset even though he had scored a pretty magnificent goal. He was sulking, so I took action.

Kid was upset that his soccer game ended in a tie. Followed him to the car saying “penis” kind of loud. Cheered him up. Parenting win. #fb

— kdiddy (@kdiddy) September 9, 2012

Crude? Sure. Effective? Oh, hell yes.

* Tip o’ the hat to Khalil Gibran, whose words have always felt just right.

The baby started playing baseball five years ago, when he was but a wee thing.

BRB, weeping.

As luck would have it, he’s had the same coach, Coach Eric, every year, an eternally patient man who has helped to foster a bunch of gangly babies, including his own son, into a team of ballplayers. Always by Coach Eric’s side was his wife, Lisa. The two of them basically kept the entire Little League program in our neighborhood running, organizing teams, ordering tshirts, running the concession stand.

Lisa had always been a sweetheart and she joked easily with the baby. I can remember last year when we showed up to pick up his uniform shirt and there were only two left in his size. She said to him, “Okay do you want number 10? Or 11? Or 10? Or 11? Or maybe 10?” The baby and I both giggled before grabbing 10. (Or maybe it was 11.)

This past season, I was on one of my dreaded days of concession stand duty. “Dreaded” because it always comes at the end of a very long day and because it requires me to do arithmetic on my feet, which is always embarrassing for everyone present. I happened to be working with Lisa and though I was usually uncomfortable interacting with the other parents (for admittedly dumb, self-imposed reasons), Lisa made me feel at ease. We chatted about rats and ridding our house of them and schools and kids and such. I liked her, I decided. She was a truly good person.

Lisa passed away on Monday. She had a stroke in late July and had been in a coma ever since. She was 39.

A stroke.

39.

Hearing the news affected me much harder than I would have expected. I couldn’t stop thinking about her older son, who is the baby’s age, and her younger son who is about 5 or 6. I couldn’t stop thinking about Coach Eric. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it must have upset her somewhere in her fading heart to know that she had to leave them.

The baby, the mother-in-law (who knew Coach Eric from before), and I went to the funeral home last night to pay our respects. Coach and the boys were holding up remarkably well and after extending my sympathies to them I stepped over to the picture display. Lisa beamed from some of the best moments of her life. Dressed up for her prom. With Eric at their wedding. Dancing with her dad at the reception. Holding a newborn son. Meeting Hines Ward. (This is Pittsburgh, remember. Those kinds of events are a big deal.) I started to lose it. I couldn’t imagine not being with the baby and the husband from this point forward. I couldn’t imagine being this age and proceeding through the rest of my life without my spouse. I couldn’t imagine working so hard to find the people that I love most in the world and making them mine, only to have that horribly changed by fate.

I know people do it all the time but I just don’t know how. I’m sure they don’t either until they find themselves doing it.

It’s so weird to me how, during any given week nothing much seems to change. But when I drop out of life to go be near where the land broke apart eons ago, I come back to a home that seems to have grown and changed so much in my absence. The Madagascar Dragon plant is suddenly huge and lush. The cayenne pepper outgrew its modest mason jar. Some forgotten piece of fruit begat 1,000 tiny flies that my kitten tries valiantly to catch. Intimidating pieces of mail arrived instructing me to go to a hearing to appeal my property assessment. I have to go and explain to some strangers that I haven’t given my house the makeover that I intended to and beg them not to believe otherwise so that my house doesn’t become yet another dream that was too big for me.

And my son, my baby, is thisclose to starting fifth grade.

In many ways, taking a vacation at the tail end of summer is the best way to do it. The weather is pretty cooperative. The earlier crowds have already come and gone and reentered real life weeks ago. And I feel like I’ve really squeezed every last drop out of summer.

I can’t really afford to take us on big vacations, so we always graciously tag along to the lovely places that people invite us to. (Diddy Family Motto: What we lack in money we make up for with good music, sparkling personalities, an endless game of punchbuggy, and weird arguments. Take us on your vacation today!) We go to the lake with my grandparents and every few years we go to the Outer Banks with my dad.

It was especially cool to be with the baby this time. While we were at the lake he spent most of his time with his cousins, but at the beach he was with us the whole time. He’s 10 and is at this weird point where he’s still very much a kid but is really trying out not being a kid. He’s not intimidated by adults and readily joins any conversation. But his lack of skills like small talk and telling jokes that are actually funny betray how young he still is.

Early in the week, some lingering phobias about jellyfish and sharks bubbled up inside of him. He was never a big tantrum-thrower when he was younger, so I never developed any real skills for effectively calming him down. I found myself trying to stay upright in the waves crashing at my knees and saying, “Stop. Stop. Please stop. What are you doing? Stop now,” as my kid thoroughly lost his shit for about five minutes. But I reminded him that throwing him into the gaping maw of certain death isn’t really my thing.

We rented sea kayaks for the week and the baby went out in his own little kayak with my dad and the husband. As he was rowing out to sea one time, he grabbed his paddle and pumped it in the air triumphantly. Out there he saw dolphins and schools of fish. When he came back and I was helping him out of the boat, he said, “I had so much fun today!” Such a simple statement but it was so happy and sincere that I’ve been replaying it in my head ever since.

My skin didn’t exactly survive the week. I got sunburned. Twice. And got a real burn on my arm while sticking it in the oven to check on breakfast that I was making. I heard *sizzle* and realized, “Oh, shit, that’s my flesh!” I also got a few tiny jellyfish stings and about 20 nasty mosquito bites. I also did a number on my knee while bodysurfing one day. I started to emerge from the water all, “Fuck yeah, I’m a badass,” when another wave was like, “NOPE!” and smashed me into the bits of shell and rock. I shrugged at the raw blotch on my knee until I sat down and observed, “Oh. I am bleeding.”

I gasped in wonder so many times. There was a meteor shower and we were far enough away from light’s pollution that I actually got to see them flying through the sky. It’s so strange to look up at that black cloak of old light and to suddenly see it move and dance. I got to see a dolphin swim away in a business-like manner about 20 feet away from me and gently paddled my way through a thousand swirling fish.

I also started to write the story of my vacation in the style of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: We were just outside of Corolla when the seasickness kicked in. I’m not out on the water often enough to remember that I get seasick. And being out in a tiny plastic boat is not the most ideal time to recall that fact. I did not, in fact, spew but I carefully warned my companions that if that was going to happen I wanted to not deal with the possibility of accidentally diving right into my chunks and/or watching fish eat them.

The best thing about vacation is the feeling like you can break some rules. Nothing major, like insider trading or anything. But you’re already not at work and aren’t expected to do much more than lay around all day. That kind of permission is so freeing. On Saturday, we were supposed to be out of the house by 10. And we just…didn’t. We knew that the new guests wouldn’t be there until 4. So we found a place to park the car and walked right back down to the beach. We swam in the now very chilly Atlantic (I like to think it was sad that we were leaving) until the sky turned dark grey and began to open up. We ran back to the house and peeked around corners to look for signs of people who might care. We scrambled into the outdoor showers and crafted a simple alibi in the event of capture. (“Why are you trespassing and using these showers?” “Oh. I’m so drunk!”) We toweled off fruitlessly in the brief downpour and then drove north up that narrow strip of land, the opposite direction than we should have been going to go home.

The old lighthouse beckoned to us, leading us into the safety of stolen vacation. The baby and I decided to make the climb up to the top. He charged ahead fearlessly, while I became anxious because of my inadequate footwear, certain that it would trip me. At the top, I looked out over the developed land that used to be barren when I was his age. He stuck his head through the safety railing to get a better view while I felt the need to keep one hand on the side of the structure.

I went to Baltimore last weekend to hang out with Tracey and Charlie, which was nice but incredibly short. I brought workout clothes with me, knowing that Tracey had a treadmill, because my schedule had been kind of wacky last week. The only flaw with this plan was that I did not take into account that those two would keep me at a pretty steady level of inebriation all weekend. Every few minutes, it seemed like Charlie was standing in front of me with a plate of grits and something boozy. Not a bad way to live life, I must say.

Saturday, we were going to go to Amy’s for dinner and it was getting to be about time to get ready to go. I sucked down the last of my Bloody Mary, stood up, and said, “Where’sh your treadmullll?” I don’t necessarily recommend jogging while tipsy, especially not on a treadmill, which is really disorienting. There are a lot of buttons and screens to interpret. Plus, the whole 15 minutes I could stand being on there, I was thinking, “Oh my god, I’m going SO FAST! This is insane!” and I was at, like, 3.7 miles an hour or something.

At Amy’s, Ezra fed me cantaloupe and Baby Ike took his first steps. I had forgotten how thrilling that moment is, since with older kids they accomplish big things seemingly all the time. But remembering how amazing it is to see a little guy have things just click between his body and his mind was so, so cool.

Speaking of my older kid, he’s still regularly cracking me up. He attended an Ultimate Frisbee camp a few weeks ago. (And since it was a really nice program I’m going to go ahead and give them an unsolicited plug on my well-established blog: Camp Spirit of the Game.) He had a really nice, full day of playing Frisbee, eating lunch and watching a bit of a movie, swimming, then more Frisbee. He got a really nice shirt to wear for the week and if that weren’t enough, the camp sent us these great pictures that their resident photographer took. This one was the cutest:

So many points and angles to this kid.

This one is my favorite:

A big aspect of the game was learning about sportsmanship and every day they had a key attribute that they would focus on. We were supposed to discuss these with him at home. The first day, I was asking him about camp and he was all worn out and whatnot. “What was your sportsmanship word of the day?” I asked. He replied, “Enthusiasmmmm.” But he said it in the most unenthusiastic way possible. Like the word just kind of fell out of his mouth. He’s just ready to absorb life lessons in a hilarious manner.

This morning, on the way to work, we were talking about Hoosiers because we watched it last night. I mentioned that they used to play the locker-room-speech-slow-clap scene at Pirates games and everyone would get all riled up.

The husband didn’t remember them playing that, but did remember seeing the “We Will Rock You” scene from Cheers at Pirates games, and told me to pull it up on YouTube.

And then, of course, we fell into a Cheers wormhole on YouTube, which isn’t the worst way to spend a morning commute. (But wow isn’t life weird now?)

After that last scene ended, the kid asked me, “Mum, now play that one where, um, the, uh…………….uh the girl is at……uh…..Disney? And it’s like….tragic?” The husband and I just sat there with our mouths hanging open because neither of us knew what he was talking about. “Can you, maybe, take a minute and try to form a coherent request?” When he trips over his words like that, he reminds us of George Michael in Arrested Development, when his dad insists that he doesn’t have any problem communicating and he replies, “What? Yes. Maybe? I don’t know. Okay.” My darling little Bluth.

A few weeks ago, the husband and I were at Wal-Mart exploiting workers, further diminishing the low rung of the middle class that we exist on, and stocking up on groceries. As we made our way past the clothing section, the husband stopped to take a look at their tshirts. He lazily flicked through the tshirts on a sale rack when suddenly his eyes lit up.

“Kel. You HAVE to get this shirt.”

He held the shirt up for me to see: a patriotic monstrosity the likes of which I’ve seen on people with too little intelligence and too many votes. It was on sale for $8. It was glorious. Taking in all of the elements of the shirt was almost too much for me and I actually teared up a little bit.

Before I could protest or accuse the husband of illicit drug use, the shirt was in our cart. We giggled while checking out and the husband made me promise not to reveal it until 4th of July.

Yesterday, he reminded me at least three times to wear my shirt and when I finally put it on there was much rejoicing chortling.

It was the bright spot in what had been shaping up to be a frustrating 4th. I had spent my morning working on a cake that I had been wanting to attempt since last 4th of July. The cake layers had turned out beautifully, but I ran into some serious trouble when trying to apply an ice cream layer between them. It was simply too hot in my house and the bottom layer of cake ultimately ended up swimming in ice cream soup. I kept trying to forge ahead and save it but it kept getting worse and I ended up dramatically throwing the whole thing in the trash. I probably could have salvaged one layer, and I felt really yucky for throwing it all out, especially since it contained one very expensive vanilla bean. I’m going to attempt the cake again this weekend, probably in the air-conditioned environs of my mother-in-law’s house because I must vanquish it. Much like in running for me, failure in baking is not an option. Obviously, I get really intense about weird things.

Anyway, I kept forgetting about the shirt until the husband or the sister-in-law would look at it and crack up. We went to Dormont for fireworks, which are always pretty decent for a smaller neighborhood, and watched a group of teenagers get arrested for throwing lit sparklers at each other. The baby was really, really disappointed that they didn’t get tased, because he apparently got a taste for that after seeing it happen to someone during a Super Bowl victory celebration on Brookline Boulevard. Also because he is Mommy’s Little Sociopath.

I have off work tomorrow, which I’m just so excited about since having a holiday in the middle of the week turns those of us with a tenuous grasp of maturity into whining brats who don’t wannaaaa gooooooo.

Other matters of biznass: today is your last chance to enter my Pilates giveaway. I also posted some sage advice for Claire Danes, who is up the stick. Call me, Claire! We’ll talk