kdiddy.org

As with most scenarios in life, I can compare this experience to an episode of Roseanne.

I don’t have what real estate listings refer to as a “chef’s kitchen.” It’s small and electrically challenged and downright ugly, but I’ve managed to outfit it as best I could. And I really grew as a cook and a baker in it, despite its severe limitations.

One of the “luxury” items that I have is a portable dishwasher that was handed down to us from the mother-in-law. It’s 20-some years old and not exactly attractive, but it did the job and saved me one bit of drudgery. And even though it tried to eat my toe, I loved the dishwasher for making it so that I had one less thing to do every day.

A few months ago, the dishwasher started leaking. We determined that while it was still washing dishes just fine, the door had started to disintegrate. I tried just stuffing towels underneath it, but the water was too much and would seep underneath our cheap plastic floor tiles, which started to disintegrate, too. I wanted to get another dishwasher, but new portable dishwashers are expensive and a few recent transaction failures on Craig’s List made me wary of going that route. So, I resigned myself to hand-washing the insane amount of dishes that three people accumulate every day.

It sucked, especially since I was the only one who actually did the dishes. (Yes, I know, I should be more forceful about making the husband and/or the baby help out and I am totally taken advantage of and a pushover and perpetuating bullshit gender roles of housework division. Thanks for lecturing patronizing reminding me.)

Finally, while having a particularly bad fit of, “This SUCKS! I’m not working all day AND cooking for everyone AND doing everyone’s dishes,” the other day, I gritted my teeth and got on Craig’s List again. And suddenly there it was: a practically new portable dishwasher for half the price of what they are in stores and being sold by a person right by our house. I sent an email to the seller to find out if it was still available, and when he responded that it was and did not ask to see my tits, like a previous Craig’s List user had, I thought that I just might have a good deal waiting for me.

Of course, there were ordeals to be had. Like trying to get money to pay for the thing. I went to my credit union yesterday to get money out of my savings, and then to the PNC on campus to deposit the check so that I could get cash out. This seemingly complicated process is why I have any savings whatsoever. It relies on my inherent laziness to keep my money in one place. Of course, the new-fangled ATMs wouldn’t accept the check and the old-fangled ATM on campus that still accepted deposits in envelopes just wasn’t turned on. I had to wait for the branch manager to return from lunch. When I told her my problem, she replied, “Oh, yeah, those credit union checks…the paper for those is too thin so the check feeder can’t read them.”

“Okay, so, can I give you this check and you can put my monies in my account?” I asked.

“No, you just have to wrinkle the check up first before putting it in the machine.”

“Well, obviously.” I replied.

I approached the ATM again and got to the prompt screen to insert the check. I looked at the bank lady and said, “Okay, so wrinkle it like this?” I asked, crumpling the check up in my fist, partially out of compliance, partially out of OMFG ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?

“Ohh, no, not that much,” she replied. “Now you’re gonna need to flatten it out a bit.”

I glared at her and tried to come up with some burning remark about money changers and the Bible and damnation or something, before rubbing the check along the corner of the ATM. Finally, it accepted the check and I grabbed the wad of 20s in my sweaty fist.

The actual transaction went smoothly enough, with the only hiccups being getting the dishwasher down the seller’s immaculately landscaped front steps. Getting the old dishwasher out of our house was surprisingly emotional, especially since that thing tried to take off my other big toenail.

That night, there was one more obstacle: plugging the dishwasher in. The cord on the new machine was not long enough to reach behind the oven to the one outlet close enough to the sink. I began scrounging for an extension cord, only to discover that two of the three in our house are two-pronged. ARGH. I found another extension cord in some unused gardening equipment outside that was covered in mud. But finally finally got the damn thing up and running. After watching it closely, waiting for it to explode or eat my Fiestaware, I was elated to declare the dishwasher functional. Then I started dancing around my kitchen like in one of those 1950s appliance commercials.

With one batch of dishes successfully washed, I officially welcomed my new favorite family member:

(I officially have no shame with the IC Light Mango. I’ll just drink it and I don’t care how ridiculous it is.)

* * *The other big thing happening today is that it’s the baby’s last day of fourth grade.

While you’re processing that, and maybe you’ll have more success than I am, the new dishwasher and I are going to drink and cry together.

1) I was pretty anxious last week and while packing my lunch one morning, found myself taking that out on a hapless bag of romaine lettuce. I was deriving so much satisfaction out of angrily reaching into the bag and then angrily slamming it into a bowl and muttering things like, “You’re lucky you’re already chopped up because I feel like kicking someone’s ass,” that it took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that OH WOW I HAVE COMPLETELY LOST IT.

2) After the kid’s talent show on Friday evening, we all went over to my mom’s house for pizza. I burned the roof of mouth because I absolutely could not wait two minutes for the pizza to get to a reasonable temperature. The injury received new life last night when we went to Dormont Dogs and I was similarly impatient to get food into my facehole. I don’t know what this says about me.

3) The other night, the kid said, “I think I have a splinter.” He showed me his finger, which basically had a 2 x 4 embedded under his nail. “Ooh, yeah you do. Let’s get that out,” I said, trying to hide my sadistic glee because I LOVE extracting splinters. It’s up there with removing ingrown hairs and peeling sunburned skin. I started to work on the splinter with the tweezers and realized that we needed to clip his nail a bit first. Anything that requires two steps is elevated to “procedure” status and pretty much makes me a doctor. With the extra nail out of the way, I really got down to business, which meant that my kid starting shouting, “OWWWWWWW!” really loud. This upset our older cat, who came into the bathroom to yowl along because he gets upset any time anyone raises their voice. The kid and the cat then began the most obnoxious call and response ever, which was really messing with my concentration.

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Everybody be quiet.”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Shh! Dammit, I can’t do this if you’re moving around and yelling.”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“Shut up, Greedo!”

“OWWW!”

“MROWW!”

“EVERYBODY SHUT UP!”

It’s important to note that the window was open, so we were broadcasting our demented choir to the whole neighborhood.

There’s a day care center on the campus where I work and the caregivers take the kids for a walk, weather permitting, every day. It’s a nice treat to be in the middle of the day and come upon a gaggle of toddlers squealing and enjoying the day. For them, everything is all, “YAY I WOKE UP AND HAD CEREAL AND I HAVE A DOG AND YOU HAVE EARS TOO AND LOOK AT EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL THE TIME HOLY SHIT!” And it reminds me, of course, of my kid, both the moments of wonder that he still has at his advanced age and the time when he was still tiny and adorable and didn’t do things like READ COMIC BOOKS WHEN HE SHOULD BE GETTING READY FOR SCHOOL OMFG.

Anyway, today while I was running some errands, I saw the kids from the day care center on a patch of grass playing with one of those multi-colored parachutes.

I really had to restrain myself from running over and joining them because a) I had stuff to do and b) I would probably get arrested. I remember being so thoroughly thrilled when it would be gym class during elementary school and the parachute would appear because that shit was the most fun ever. We had a couple of different routines that we would do with the parachute. Sometimes we would hold it up in the air and kids would take turns letting go and running across to tag the next person to let go. We would also let one person sit on the parachute in the middle of it while the rest of us wildly shook it up and down. I always liked this because the silky parachute would always brush against my face and it felt and looked so pretty. But the best would be when the teachers would lift the parachute high in the air, all the kids would run under, and then the teachers would hold the parachute on the ground so that we could be encapsulated in it for a few precious minutes. Once under, we would all shriek and run around, because we were inside something, which was always so thrilling for some reason. And for a few wonderful seconds the world was just big enough for us to run all over it and was as colorful as it was in our dreams.

I had my dermatologist appointment yesterday morning, which was good because it gave me a little extra time in the morning to get my act together, which I desperately needed. By Sunday afternoon, I had felt like everything was falling apart because the laundry wasn’t done, lunches weren’t packed, we had missed the announcement of little league pictures being taken that day, and my kid realized as we were walking out the door to go to my mom’s house that he still had homework to do. I don’t deal well with situations like that and began this really dramatic inner monologue about how thoroughly we did not have our shit handled as a family and how it felt like I don’t actually do any adult things with any degree of competence. Don’t I sound like fun?

But we had a nice Mother’s Day and Monday morning I was able to putz a little bit after getting the baby off to school. Packed my lunch, made smoothies, put a load of laundry in. It gave me a chance to at least do some stuff that made me feel like I was making up for falling apart parentally. Or something.

By the way, the dermatologist said that my clown lips were most likely dermatitis caused by a contact allergy. I couldn’t think of anything weird that I had eaten, but he mentioned toothpaste. The husband said that we had been using a different variety of the brand that we usually buy when that started. In my compulsive Googling, I found that many toothpastes contain sodium lauryl sulfate, which is a foaming agent that some people are sensitive to. Probably the variety of toothpaste we got was SUPER EXTRA WHITENING POWER! which probably meant that it just had extra SLS in it. He gave me some topical steroids (YAY MORE ‘ROIDS) so hopefully this long, annoying circus will soon be over.

My kid has a big week this week. Today he has his first track meet for the little track team that they’ve cobbled together at school. Later in the day he has his band concert in which he’ll be squeaking out some notes on the saxophone. On Thursday, he has a baseball game. And on Friday he has his after school program’s talent show, in which he’ll be playing some songs on the piano. I’m not going to today’s events because I have a big work event coming up, so I’m kind of in head-down-tunnel-vision mode until Saturday

When I was going down this list of events this morning, I joked, “I can’t wait for him to burn out when he’s like 12.” But in all honesty I inserted myself into some half-assed Time article about overscheduled children and lack of unstructured play and WaldorfAttachmentWhatToExpectWhenYou’reMomEnoughCryingItOutSuzukiMethodKumonHookedOnPhonics. I think, more than most people, I understand the importance of doing nothing from time to time. If I don’t get at least a few minutes of nothing a day I get all out of wack. But it started me down this indignant path of, “The old ways of doing things really weren’t always that great,” mutterings. Like when people complain about how they didn’t have any xPads or Nintendo phones, they just had dirt and sticks and their obviously superior imaginations. Yeah, right. Then they thought up games like King of the Mountain, which is some microcosmic version of capitalist assholery or Torture the Stray Cat or Throw Rocks at the Windows of the Abandoned House or Taunt the Neighborhood Crazy Guy.

I get similarly cranky when people complain about iPhones ruining the fine art of conversation. I don’t know about you, but prior to having the ability to stick my nose in my phone to look at absolutely anything, I wasn’t sitting on the bus, for example, thinking, “This conversation about illegal immigrants that I’m having with this entitled a-hole is so great. I’m so glad I have no way of obviously signaling that I’m not listening or interested in engaging with him whatsoever.” Also, it’s not like reading and more or less ignoring the people around you was invented with the iPhone. What did people say when printed materials and literacy became common? “‘Tis a shame that the unwashed masses can now read the newspaper on their way to their 18-hour shift in unsafe conditions at the meat plant, which they might not survive. I remember the good old days when they would say to each other, ‘Hey. Do you have any idea what’s going on at all?’ and, ‘No. But I will see you at the virgin sacrifice later and hopefully the angry god living in the mountain yonder won’t eat us.'”

About a month and a half ago, I suddenly noticed that the skin around my lips was very dry, flaky, and red. I attributed it to seasonal weather changes and sensitive skin, generously applied various moisturizing agents, and tried to be patient until it cleared up. Except it never did. I finally admitted that it wasn’t going away on its own and made a dermatologist appointment.

I have a typically long wait for an appointment (May 14th) and am bracing myself for the hours of my life that I will waste in the waiting room. In the meantime, I did some Googling and figured that the condition was due to either rosacea (which I have), a fungal infection (Christ, I hope not), or a food allergy (dear God, no). So I refilled a prescription for a roasacea medication that I let lapse a few months ago in the hopes that that would help. The flakiness has subsided, and the area feels better, but the redness is still there and it’s really embarrassing. I feel like I look like a clown, which sucks because a) I’m not a clown and b) I really, really hate clowns.

Anyway, yesterday was kind of brutal. I greeted the day on basically no sleep because of an hours-long thunderstorm that kept me up all night. Normally, I sleep through those but for whatever reason this storm demanded a bleary-eyed audience.

As I stumbled into work, my phone rang. It was the principal of my son’s school. I realized that if my son was sick, she wouldn’t be calling me, so that meant that someone was in trouble.

He had gotten into an argument on the school bus with his friend and had decided to kick his friend in the shins. Only he missed somehow and managed to kick his friend in the neck. I’m still not clear on the physics of this situation, but whatever.

My face turned as red as my clown lips as I realized, “My kid is a terrible bully and I am the worst mother ever.” The principal, however, didn’t seem too annoyed since the baby had already apologized to everyone ever and started crying because he felt so bad. And his friend, thankfully, was not hurt and had accepted the baby’s apologies. I silently thanked myself for never having enough time to sign him up for karate lessons. I was able to talk to him on the phone for a second. He sobbed as I reminded him that it’s not okay to get physical, especially not with your friend, and told him we would discuss it later.

Now, I understand that this was just a disagreement between friends that went to an immature and irrational place, and I don’t actually think that my kid is a bully. It’s just weird for me because when I was a kid, I was always the one to shrink away from conflict and, as a result, was often the target of teasing.* So I don’t really understand his perspective. On the one hand, I’m glad (?) that he seems ready to stick up for himself, which I never did, but on the other hand, I really don’t want him picking on anyone.

Later, when we finally got a chance to talk about it, I asked him if his friend was okay and if he was upset with him. “Yeah, I told him I was sorry,” he said. “We’re still broskis.” So, that was comforting. I would hate to see two broskis torn apart by a lapse in judgment.

* I’m happy to report, however, that I’m not bitter about all that stuff and finally stopped dwelling over it years ago since I know the people who teased me probably don’t remember it at all.

So I went on the treadmill today, because I didn’t have sunscreen and therefore couldn’t go on the track. I’m doing the Ease into 10K program, which is like the 10k version of the Couch to 5k. And today, for the first time in a long time, I really felt like I was okay. My breathing was in control, my legs felt fine, and while I wasn’t on pace to set any landspeed records, I was holding steady at 5 mph, a nice jog. I got nice and sweaty, logged almost 3.5 miles, and got to watch an episode of House Hunters. Really not a bad way to spend one’s lunch break.

I’ve signed up for the zombie 5k and the Great Race 10k, both in September. And I’d honestly been getting pretty nervous about them, even though they’re still months away. But I think I’ll actually be able to do them. My body is feeling stronger and more capable and like it’s getting back to where it was before my neck had that big failure. If nothing else, the neck injury has really taught me not to take my health for granted.

Anyway, everything else is good. We’ve been enriching the baby’s life through the classic works of American cinema.

We also took him to see Cabin in the Woods the other night, which is hilarious because I had just seen several indignant tweets from parents about people bringing their 9 and 10-year-olds to that very movie and what terrible people they were for doing that. So, hi! Worst parents ever! Right here! We’re a family of horror movie buffs, what can I say? And no, he did not have nightmares, and he’s only eaten three puppies, which is a significant drop.

Speaking of the baby, his baseball season started on Saturday. They had their annual parade at 10, then their first game at 2:15. It’s worth noting that it was 40 degrees and rainy all day Saturday, so that was pretty miserable, though cute.

Also on Saturday, we went to Art All Night with the sister-in-law and her friend who were in town from D.C. because they had submitted works. It was also too cold for this and I sped through the entire thing like, “Yeah, great. Art. Whatever. Can we go somewhere warm now?” So we went to Primanti’s and it was amazing.

Last Thursday was the Big Freedia show. I had not adequately prepared myself for all of azz that I ended up seeing. Be sure to watch the dancer on the right.

I mean, I expected it from the dancers, but watching a bunch of Pittsburgh girls grind on the stage was a little weird. Very fun, though. I’m glad we went.

I should have clarified in my last post that while my announcement of our upcoming trip to New York City was not an invitation to rob our house, it WAS an invitation to break in and clean the place, do the laundry, and remodel the kitchen. Or, at the very least, take our garbage and recycling to the curb because we forgot to ask my mother-in-law to do it and now, well, we are overflowing with blue bags and good intentions. I hate when you guys don’t read into what I write here.

So, yes. New York. Just like I pictured it. Skyscrapers and everything. This was my third time there and this was definitely my best visit. The reasons for this are threefold:

One: we had excellent hosts with good insight into interesting places to go. The first time I went there, we stayed with some very nice and gracious friends who were there for only a year and who had not ventured very far from their Manhattan apartment building. As such, when we asked them to give us some ideas for places to go, we ended up at The Hard Rock Cafe (museum that only sorta serves frozen food), Planet Hollywood (I don’t remember anything about this except for some facsimile of Sylvester Stallone hanging from the ceiling, watching me eat), and Fashion Cafe (filthy and really who goes to a restaurant owned by anorexic supermodels and expects a decent meal?).

Two: the weather was excellent. The first time I went was at the end of October/beginning of November and it was already freezing, a point that was driven home by the naked, shivering woman who had wrapped herself in a trash bag in Times Square. The second time was during BlogHer in August, at which point the city had become a festering asshole of humidity and garbage juice.

Three: I had nothing to do but be in the city. BlogHer ate up almost all of my time last time, leaving me with only one day to explore, which I spent at MoMA. That was great, don’t get me wrong, but this meant that I really hadn’t had a chance to experience the city as an adult.

Naturally, our trip was rather food-centric. Saturday, we spent most of the day in Flushing, which has to have some of the weirdest, hard-to-find delicious nosh on the planet. We first went to the Flushing Mall, which is a mall, but slightly off somehow.

We didn’t go there to shop, however. We were there to go to the noodle shop in the food court. It’s one of those places where the noodles are handmade and stretched, you know?

I don’t have any pictures of the actual noodles because once they arrived I couldn’t stop eating them. Also, looking through these pictures, I realized that my son now makes some version of this face in every picture. It’s charming.

Apparently the noodles or the grease from them had an adverse effect on a few members of our party, but I was fine and ready to move on to the next carb stop: the Ganesh Temple Canteen. I had heard about this place on an episode of Anthony Bourdain, which I think is uncool to admit? Whatever, dude and/or his staff can sniff out some good stuff. The temple itself was really cool because you’re just walking along a residential area when suddenly:

The canteen provided us with some of the best dosas and vadas that we’d ever had while we enjoyed a Hindu religious movie depicting some ancient epic battle.

The baby wanted to visit the actual temple, but I declined since I had no clue as to what the etiquette for something like that is. We did check out the entrance, which was beautiful, but then the husband panicked because we had shoes on and we weren’t sure if that was offensive and we rushed out of there so that we could be clueless white people in the safety of the bodega next door.

Frank, one of our hosts, then led us into another part of Flushing and scurried down the stairs of a non-descript storefront. At the bottom of those stairs was another “mall,” where mall is defined as “a haphazard collection of eateries and businesses arranged in an underground location that may have been burrowed out by those infamous New York City rats.” It was, uh, weird. And there wasn’t a drop of English to be found there, which really makes me want to take a gaggle of those, “Why do I gotta press 1 for English this is ‘Murrica!” toads there and watch their heads explode. But it contained an eatery that had done some really interesting things with duck heads and whipped up some of the tastiest dumplings I’ve ever put in my face.

We headed into Manhattan so that we could get some quality Central Park time in. The husband, baby, and Frank threw the frisbee around while I stripped my shoes and socks off and laid in the grass.

After a few minutes, I heard a loud THUNK. What was that noise? I wondered for a second before the pain set in and I realized that the noise was the sound of the frisbee hitting me in the head. The baby swore it was an accident, but I made sure to keep an eye on him the rest of the time. Matricide is no joke.

He ended up playing soccer with a bunch of kids which was one of those parenting moments that makes you really, really happy for no specific reason. “He’s playing soccer! In Central Park! With some kids he just met! That’s so awesome! Buildings! Grass! Yay!”

That night, Andrea made us Pioneer Woman lasagna (more noodles!). After the baby had been put to bed (er, put to couch as the case may be) under Andrea’s ad hoc babysitting services, we headed to Williamsburg to see some friends of ours, Beautiful Swimmers, play at a party in a warehouse. And it was all:

I know Williamsburg is supposed to be this hipster hell hole, and maybe it was the particular crowd we were amongst, but it didn’t really seem that bad. No worse than an average night out in Pittsburgh for us. I did take note of the apparent revival of the tiny backpack trend of the mid 90s, which is just so so dumb.

Sunday we got a late start and headed out to a record store in the Dumbo section of Brooklyn then took a long walk (stopped at a candy store, natch) to our dinner destination, Lucali in the Carroll Gardens section. We had over an hour wait for our table, during which three fire trucks responded to an apartment that turned out not to be on fire. The sister-in-law, Frank, and I walked to a nearby wine store and when we came back, that same apartment was getting a grocery delivery, so I guess all was well?

Our pizza was so, SO good. And our bill, $100ish for 5 people, was our most expensive all weekend, which isn’t bad at all. The baby had stated his desire to try cheesecake, so we decided to make the trek to Junior’s. This kicked off the low point of the weekend. The baby informed us that his seasonal allergy/lung funkiness was kicking his ass. The sister-in-law offered to let him piggy back most of the way there. She gave me her sweater to carry, which I dropped at some point. She and the husband hated me for this and I hated them for whatever so I went into the restaurant and tried to buy cheesecake. The cashier gave me some kind of lecture on saving money and long story short, I bought a whole cheesecake. Hilariously, the baby tried a bite and decided that he definitely does not like cheesecake. WHATEVER DUDE. We were obviously all way too tired, which the cab driver who had the misfortune of taking us back to Woodside had to discover. In other words, he got screamed at because nobody was escaping that evening without getting berated. On the upside, the cheesecake provided me with breakfast the next two days.

Monday, we went to Chinatown for dim sum and bubble tea where we got to see a vendor scream at some obnoxious girls. We then headed to MoMA because I wanted to see the Cindy Sherman retrospective and the husband and the baby needed to be there for the Kraftwerk show later that evening. Cindy Sherman was amazing and we took a quick peek at Starry Night and stuff.

At some point, the husband started running toward some guy and it took me a minute to understand that he had spotted Ralf Hutter, aka the Main Dude from Kraftwerk. He and the baby introduced themselves and I tried to take a non-obnoxious picture of the encounter.

For dinner, we went to the burger place that is hidden in the lobby of the Parker Meridien and then went to Momofuku Milk Bar to get some tasty things, like pretzel milk milkshakes, compost cookies, and crack pie. The husband, baby, and Frank headed back to MoMA for the show and the sister-in-law, Andrea, and I went to the restaurant in Momofuku, Ma Peche, to get drinks.

Frank texted me that people actually recognized the baby from the video of him finding out that we had gotten Kraftwerk tickets and a few even asked to have their picture taken with him. How adorable is that?

Tuesday we got another late start and didn’t get to pack in any last minute things before having to go to the bus stop, but I left feeling like I had really been there. There’s a lot that I don’t like about that city. It freaks me out to be confronted with how many resources it takes to run a city and I don’t know what drugs the mosquitoes take up there but I got a bite on my leg that is just ridiculous. But it was cool to be just one person amongst millions for a few days and to have the “problem” of too many wonderful things to do and see and not nearly enough time to do a tiny fraction of them. I got the sense a few times that New York is wasted on New Yorkers, who spend too much time immersed in it to realize all that they have (not that it’s awesome for everyone). But I felt welcomed and a part of it, the noise and the heat and the pulse. It really is one of the best places in the world.

In the grand scheme of things, I think it’s safe to say that not many people know about Kraftwerk. Folks who are considered nerds about music history know that they were fairly popular in their own right as pioneers in the field of electronic music in the early 1970s and know that they then went on to heavily influence early hip-hop, electro, new wave, and dance music. But ask your average music fan who they are and you’ll probably get a blank stare. I don’t say this to sound elitist. I mean, really, they’re an odd bunch of guys from Dusseldorf who are enthusiastic about technology and bicycles. In a parallel universe, perhaps they’re megastars.

I didn’t really start listening to them until college, when I had been enmeshed in the dance music scene in Pittsburgh for a few years and started to research the music, as I tend to do with everything. I found that listening to Trans-Europe Express while doing my homework seemed to help me to concentrate. When the baby came along, the husband began testing his nascent theory that Kraftwerk’s music tapped into some primal area of kids’ brains by playing The Mix for him. Consequently, the baby was a huge fan from an early age, loving the crisp beats and rhythms, weird sounds, and whole songs devoted to such wonderful things as robots and calculators.

And then we named our kitten after Florian Schneider, one of the original members. In case you needed a reminder, our other cat is named Greedo, after the Star Wars character. Yes, we are nerds. No, we are not ashamed.

A few weeks ago, the Museum of Modern Art announced that as part of a Kraftwerk retrospective, the band, now only containing one original member, would be performing each of their albums there over the course of about a week. When the husband told him about the shows, the baby actually teared up. (Read: Shit, now we REALLY HAVE to get tickets.) Each show would only have about 300 tickets, which would be $25 each. This was huge news, and music nerds all over the world counted down the days to February 22nd, when tickets would go on sale at noon. (Pittsburgh plug: Pittsburgh-based company ShowClix snagged the ticketing rights for the event.)

Yesterday, after a lot of fevered coordination, we had a team of people at the ready to purchase the two tickets allotted to each person. I had to be on my computer at work, which meant that I had to actively ignore anyone who stopped by to talk to me. (By the way, sorry everyone who came to my office and was greeted by my icy stare.)

Over 50,000 people tried to buy about 2,500 total tickets. I was not one of the lucky buyers. But my husband was. We decided that he and the baby would attend the Monday night performance of The Mix. I was bummed that I wouldn’t be attending, but the baby getting to go was the most important thing. Besides, we decided that we would all go up and have a long weekend in New York City. Nothing wrong with that, right?

The best part was telling the baby the news. Prepare to have your day made:

The baby’s friend wasn’t actually wearing aviators. I added those to protect his privacy and ensure that I’m exploiting only my child. If that kid’s parents want to exploit him, they’re on their own. I can’t do everything for everyone.

Something (else) that my kid might eventually hate me for is conceiving him in March, causing him to be born in December. He hasn’t yet made it evident if he is at all bitter about this, but I’ve heard from plenty of people that having a birthday in December sucks. Apparently people experience their birthdays getting kind of swallowed up by Christmas, which I think makes Jesus, like, the most annoying first-born sibling ever, getting all of the attention and stuff.

From my perspective, my kid’s birthday falls in the midst of one of the busiest times of the year. There are lots of parties and events to attend, plus the irresistible urge to just DO stuff, like clean and decorate the house and go on baking rampages. When he was born, I ventured out of the house for the first time when he was about two weeks old to go Christmas shopping. I tell you that Hunter S. Thompson, with all of his fear and loathing, would not have been able to handle the experience of a Bed Bath & Beyond in December after popping Percocet for a few weeks and existing in a weird twilight of breast milk and interrupted naps. I nearly had a psychotic break. Also, I got people like the shittiest Christmas gifts ever. I think my mom got a picture frame and my dad got a handkerchief or something. The husband got a Kendrell Bell jersey, which was cool at the time, but quickly became a dud when Bell got injured 830 times and then fell off of the face of the earth.

Anyway…what was I talking about? Oh, yes, my kid’s birthday. If it fell during a less hectic time of year, I would be able to focus more time and energy on it. But as it stands, I’ve outsourced his birthday party almost every year. That way, he gets to have a special day and I don’t collapse in the corner crying. High fives all around. As a result, he’s had some really cool birthday parties at movie theaters, roller rinks, and museums.

This year, we kind of blindly decided on an arcade called Games N’At. We had intended on checking the place out first, but about a month ago I realized that we needed to just go for it, lest we end up with nothing to do. Let me tell you, if you have any kind of party coming up, kid’s birthday, adult birthday, holiday party, whatever, consider going there. It’s fantastic.

It doesn’t look like much from the outside, but inside there are all of these rooms with every kind of video game you could possibly want to play, everything from air hockey and skeeball to XBoxes and old school Pac Man and Dig Dug. I had told my grandparents not to come because they would probably find it too loud and crazy, but the big party room that we were in (one of two) was quiet and relaxing, with a fireplace and a nice big TV to watch if you needed a break. The kids were able to pick what they wanted to eat…basic party fare; pizza, nachos, chicken nuggets…nothing gourmet but on occasions like these I CARE NOT. Parents got to eat, too, which was awesome. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve nearly passed out at a birthday party because the food is only for the kids. The staff also provided candy bags, so all I had to do was bring cake, which was fine because the baby always has me make him cupcakes anyway. The kids each got free tokens for the games that dispense redemption tickets, but we got a few extra because they had double-booked the party room. Another party was slightly overlapping ours, which really wasn’t even an issue, but the owner was so apologetic about it, which was really nice of her. For three hours and all of that service and amenities, the total was about $180. I guess that’s generally kind of expensive, but I felt that it was a total steal.

I also have to talk about the cupcakes that I made. The baby always asks for chocolate mint cupcakes and for the past few years I used a recipe that I didn’t particularly like. Then, one of my favorite food bloggers, Annie’s Eats, posted a recipe for some fancier mint chocolate cupcakes just a few weeks ago. The moist cake with the mint ganache filling and the mint Swiss meringue buttercream was so much better than my previous iterations. But, as my mom pointed out, were kind of wasted on the kids. I had braced myself for this and thought I would be cool with it, but had to bite my tongue when one of the guests promptly scraped off the buttercream. “I don’t really like icing,” he explained. THAT’S NOT “ICING” YOUNG MAN! THAT’S SWISS MERINGUE BUTTERCREAM, GAWD!”

But the baby had an awesome time, which is the most important thing. I’m hoping to go back soon so that I might redeem myself on the air hockey table. The husband doled out a horrible smackdown and I had the added insult of getting laughed at because my gameplay looked like my coach had been our kitten. I got all dizzy following the puck back and forth.

I had grand plans to make this really lovely photo montage for today, but because my kid is SO OLD, he was born before digital cameras were really A Thing and was several years old before they were cheap enough for us to afford one. So, the montage requires a great deal of scanning. I’m not saying it’s not happening at all, but it’s going to be delayed.

My son is 10 years old today. That is blowing my mind in every possible way.

Last night, I put him to bed and told him that I would see him when he was a 10-year-old. He grinned as he snuggled down into his blankets with his beloved stuffed dog and the little alligator baby toy that we had unearthed. I lingered for a second, staring at the top of his head, and wished for a second that I could keep tomorrow from coming. Not because I grieve for time lost or the fact that my child is getting older, but because I wanted just a little more time with him as a little boy.

I can’t seem to recap the past year of his life in terms of milestones and achievements. Things like “started to play saxophone” jumble up in my brain with “laughed for the first time” because it all seems like it has happened in an instant. When he was born and when the nurse first showed him to me, everything stopped. I think I’ve been existing mostly in that moment ever since, face to tiny face, staring into the greatest love of my life while everything continued around us. So while he has grown and changed and become this wonderful little person, I’m still there, seeing his face for the first time.