kdiddy.org

A perhaps too-large portion of my brain is dedicated to remembering movie and TV quotes, which has served me well in life almost never. Nonetheless, I’m trying to figure out a way to note on my resume that I have a running database of Boston actors rattling of a list of names:

Mark Wahlberg in Ted

Matt Damon in Good Will Hunting

Comedian Steve Sweeney performing a bit that I initially saw on a Comics Come Home special in 1996

Disabling embedding is fascist.

Thanks, Brain. Appreciate it.

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I mentioned to the sister-in-law when she was in town over the 4th that perhaps one of the reasons that American society shifted to quick, cheap, processed foods is the fact that kids can be ungrateful little turds. I have been on pretty severe pancake and banana bread kicks this summer and almost every weekend sees me sweating over the stove trying to achieve buttermilk pancake perfection.

The morning of the 4th, I was back at the pancakes, having skipped running a 5k nearby because of female trouble.

GPOY

Giddy on Aleve, I added dashes of nutmeg and cinnamon to the batter and fresh, organic blueberries from the farmer’s market while the pancakes were cooking. I was thinking up names for my new domesticity blog when the kid looked at these glorious circles of flour and buttermilk and feminine mystique and said, “Eh…they smell too Christmasy.”

What.

It was the nutmeg, I guess, but DUDE. Come on.

“Haven’t you ever heard of Christmas in July?”

“No. What’s that?”

“It’s uh…it’s…you know,” I replied, slowly realizing that I had no clue what it was aside from something that I heard about at an age young enough that I accepted its existence because it sounded awesome because hell yeah let’s do Christmas now; why wait?

“…It’s Christmas…but in July.” He was obviously past the age where this sounded like anything to get excited about, plus Hallmark has their Christmas stuff out already, so who cares.

Anyway, it turned out to be an appropriate segue for the rest of this month. I’ve been trying to fit the events, both small and annoying and large and frustrating, into a reworked version of “The 12 Days of Christmas,” but I’m not that creative. If I was, it’d go something like:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me:
12 days of pinkeye
11 days of antibiotic eyedrops
10 days of heavy rain
9 days of 90-degree highs
8 days of fruitfly infestation
7 days of housefly infestation
6 days of uninhibited poison ivy growth in the backyard due to aforementioned heavy rain
5 days of waiting for dry days to get toxic spray on the poison ivy
4 days of stinkeye from my neighbors who are all fancy and don’t live in their own personal urban jungles
3 days sunburn and unsatisfying peeling
2 days of flash flooding
And a partridge in a pear tree

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…)

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.

So it seems like the tea tree oil treatment is helping my face situation, though I think it might have something to do with the fact that it requires me to wash my face more. I don’t know.

I was really hoping to embed that Proactiv commercial featuring Puff Daddy where he says that it “moisturizes my situation…it preserves my sexy,” but apparently he took some kind of legal action and deprived the internet of that joy. Asshole.

The oil itself has a really strong scent that makes my eyes water, which gives me that satisfying, “It hurts therefore it must be working” experience.

It’s also a super effective contraceptive method. When I put it on, the husband goes, “AUUUUGGGHHHH WHY DO YOU SMELL LIKE THAT?”

Speaking of the husband, his birthday was yesterday. The baby and I gave him a book of Kurt Vonnegut interviews and some bougie popcorn. I helped him to devour one of the boxes of Fleur de Sel Caramel and guuuuuhhhhhhh it was so good. We’re going to the mother-in-law’s tonight for his official birthday dinner. I made these Vanilla Chai Cupcakes with Cinnamon Buttercream Frosting. I hope they’re good.

I’m running the Great Race this weekend and I’m really nervous about it in a frustratingly non-specific way. It’s the 10k, which is a longer race than I’ve ever run before, and I’ve only run a 10k distance exactly once. I think I’m scared that I won’t be able to finish and am dreading the shame that I will inflict upon myself if that happens. Sounds healthy, doesn’t it? But it’s clarifying for me why exactly I don’t do too many races. They kind of ruin my weekend. Aside from having to get up at an ungodly hour on Sunday, I have to physically coddle myself on Friday and Saturday. Usually by Friday evening I’m ready to stay up really late and whatnot. But this weekend I have to spend prime goofing off hours sleeping and hydrating. I really wish the husband was into running so that we could do it together. Woe!

When I got my very own rosacea diagnosis, the dermatologist did not say, “Yes, the persistent acne and blotchy skin is from rosacea…which, by the way, is a really nice way of saying, ‘You have tiny bugs shitting in your pores.'” He stopped at “rosacea.” If it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have spent the rest of my life slathering expensive prescription cream on my face, blissfully unaware of the horrors taking place on my microscopic levels. So, thanks Buzzfeed. I guess.

This is one of my nose mites, Fred. Say hello to the nice people, Fred.

And, you know, I long ago accepted that we’re all just piles of bacteria and nastiness moving through a soup of bugs and muck, but at least I previously hadn’t been thinking about our face bugs shaking hands when I kissed someone on the cheek.

Over the weekend, I launched a campaign to get the situation under control, which included ordering tea tree oil, which is supposed to help, and new mite-resistant pillow coverings. Then I announced that I was going to be washing our pillows.

“I saw it on Pinterest. What could go wrong?” I bellowed. I used these instructions, which are informative but I must warn you contains the concepts of pillows basically being sponges that double in weight over a year or so due to us seeping all of our face bug shit and life oil into them and oh wait I’m vomiting, brb.

And actually, the whole process was going just fine. I washed my pillow, the baby’s pillow, and a few spares that we keep for guests, and they all came out fluffier and much, much fresher than they went in. The husband’s pillow, for some reason, came out of the washing process smelling like a dog who had spent the afternoon swimming in the Allegheny. (For reference, my dad and I swam in the Allegheny once when I was a kid and my mom wouldn’t let us near the house for like a day and a half.)

I attempted to rectify the situation by washing it again with some baking soda and vinegar to no avail. So the husband is out trying to find a pillow today, probably with a stiff neck. He called me a little while ago to report that Target only had two down pillows that were both really expensive. He called me to update me on this in quite colorful language and I think he heard my sheepish grin over the phone. My defense of his pillow’s demise have ranged from honest regret (“I’m soooo sorry. Really. My intentions were good. I just wanted your pillow to stop eating your face,”) to butthurt (“MY INTENTIONS WERE GOOD, DUDE, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I JUST WANTED YOUR PILLOW TO STOP EATING YOUR FACE. EVERYONE ELSE’S PILLOWS WERE FINE. WHY DOES YOURS HAVE TO BE DIFFICULT? YOU AND YOUR PILLOW ARE EXACTLY ALIKE YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER,”).

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.

The biggest mistake that I make with things like 3-day weekends is opting not to relax and/or putter around the house but instead pack a ton of activity into it. Like on Saturday, when I participated in the Run for Your Lives Zombie 5k.

When I first found out about this race, I posted it to my Facebook and got a few enthusiastic responses from friends who said they would do it with me. But that didn’t pan out and as the event approached, I became increasingly anxious about doing it by myself. Regular races I’m fine doing solo, but I knew this would be a mostly silly activity meant for friends to do together. I thought about people taking pictures of each other at the end and got sad about the idea of me wandering away from the finish line alone. I once again checked in with Facebook and found out that my buddy Brad was going to be doing the race, too, and starting at the same time as I was. Perfect!

Run for Your Lives was basically an all-day zombie-centric festival. People could participate in the race and then camp overnight while participating in other zombie activities and seeing some bands. It took place out in Butler, which is only a few miles away from Evans City, the spot where George Romero filmed The Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies.

Butler County Welcoming Committee

After making my way through all of the entrance stations, I was relieved to spot Brad and his friends in the crowd. Like many other groups there, they had made special tshirts for the occasion that referencedShaun of the Dead. After wandering around for a bit and taking an ill-advised sip from the “potable” water fountain (it was potable in the sense that it didn’t give me any intestinal distress, but it tasted like metallic dookie), we were finally able to line up in the corrals. After some smoke poured down on us, we were able to make our dramatic entrance into the actual race field. The first unofficial obstacle was the ridiculous hill…and then the ridiculous hills that followed. The first mile was seriously all uphill, which nearly killed me.

A few zombies were scattered through the woods but they were easily dodged. Then I finally came upon the first obstacle: two mudslides. I wasn’t paying close attention to what was happening to the people in front of me because I was waiting for the go-ahead to slide from the staffer at the top. But the muddy pool at the bottom was six or seven feet deep and I was surprised to find myself suddenly underwater. I emerged, gasping, with muddy snot dripping out of my nose and then marched up to the second slide. That one was just a tarp covering a hill and my butt became intimately familiar with all of the various sticks and pebbles poking through it. I soared down yelling, “OW OW OW OW OWWWW GODDAMMIT!” until landing in another muddy pool.

Mud became the central theme of the day. I army crawled through mud underneath real barbed wire. I attempted to jog with water-logged shoes through muddy patches of ground while dodging zombies. I crawled through another mud pit underneath a wooden obstacle. I went through a field of live electrical wires in a muddy shack. I hurled myself over walls into mud patches. I tiptoed through a muddy maze in a dark shack furnished with zombies armed with Super Soakers. At the end, I spotted Brad who pointed at the last obstacle: a mud pit covered with an electrified fence. “Kelly!” Brad said, pointing at the fence. “This really hurts!” he informed me far too cheerfully. I squished through and suddenly felt someone seemingly club me over the head, causing me to bite my tongue. Alas, there were no clubbing zombies, just an electric shock to the skull.

I completed the whole thing in a little over 58 minutes and did not make it out “alive.” It was really, really hard but so fun. There are a few really good first-person videos online so far.

One of Brad’s friends took a picture of us in all of our muddy glory.

Later, at home, I peeled off my clothes and took one of the best showers ever in life. I found mud in places where mud should never be. If they have it again next year, I think I’ll participate. It’s too absurd to miss.

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.

So, hey. How’s your summer going? I feel like we haven’t really talked about it much.

Ours is pretty good, but a little too busy for my tastes. I mean, we’re busy in a good way. We go a lot of places and do a lot of fun things, but I need a lot of time to just be at home and be an introvert, which is annoying because that is no fun for anyone and I have, like, a family that wants to hang out with me and I’m like, “No, I need to sit here and watch My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding or I’m going to cry in public.”

I was beginning to feel like I hadn’t actually been home in months and the resultant disorder was beginning to really upset me. Understand, I’m a messy person and generally exist in a moderate amount of chaos, but I do have a breaking point that is somewhere well below Hoarders.

Generally not how I operate.

But last Friday I had an unexpected day off from work with nothing planned. I was excited because that meant that I would be able to get some stuff done around my house. The only problem with that plan was that it was 100 degrees on Friday. And we don’t have air-conditioning.

I was determined, however, and strapped an ice pack to my neck so that I could vacuum and tidy up and fold laundry with at least some degree of comfort. I ended up sweating profusely anyway but at least my entryway was clean and free of winter coats finally.

The sister-in-law was in town and on Saturday she agreed to help me make a second attempt at that goddamned cake. This time things went slightly better, but omens began raining down upon us when a thunderstorm showed up and the lights began to flicker just as I was getting ready to put the cake layers in the (electric) oven.

“I just need the power to hold out for like 15 minutes,” I pleaded.

Sure enough, 15 minutes and 2 seconds later, the power went out. The cake layers were fine but we needed to wait for a bit to make the icing. The main issue there was that it was still 100 degrees and we no longer had the ceiling fans to move the swampiness around. It was gross.

When the power returned and we had made the icing, we packed up various cake elements and headed to my mother-in-law’s for dinner, swimming, and air-conditioned cake assembly. Infuriatingly enough, even with the air-conditioning, the cake was a total mess again. Though the individual components were all pretty delicious. I know that I can’t really get too angry, considering that I stupidly attempted the cake on two of the hottest days of the year. Feh. Baking failures really gnaw at me.

Onward.

We watched the 1990 Total Recall on Sunday night and I remarked during the part where Ahnuld and Melina are sucked out into Mars and their eyes are bulging out that that was what the sister-in-law and I looked like during the power outage.

Sucked.

We were amused at how prophetic that movie’s vision of the future was: hand blenders, tablet computers, TVs integrated into the wall, controller-less video game exercising, 3D ultrasound. Well, that last bit is what I kept thinking about when Kuato came onscreen. I’ve always found those 3D images of in utero babies more than a little odd. I mean, they’re cool and all and perhaps I’m just jealous that those weren’t around when I was pregnant 800 years ago, but the resemblance is uncanny to me.

(I really wanted to post a picture of 3D ultrasound here but knowing my luck someone would be like, “That’s my baby!” and I’d have to leave the internet for suggesting that someone’s fetus resembled an underground mutant rebel leader of the future. Like that’s not a huge compliment. God.)

Anyway, the heat finally broke the other day and it’s been pretty nice. I think tonight the husband and I will go to the drive-in to see the Magic Mike/Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunterdouble-feature because obviously. And I will maybe make some moves on him.

This encapsulates our interactions so perfectly I can’t even stand it.