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Schmutzie recruited me to do her Grace in Small Things exercise about a year ago and, predictably, I abandoned it after a few weeks. Eh. It happens. But this morning I saw something that would definitely qualify.

The baby and I were walking to the bus stop and were surprised to see a big piece of cardboard tied to one of the street signs. Someone had written, “JOE LUVS MARY” on it with spray paint and surrounded the message with a big, pink heart. “Oh!” we both said, surprised and then irritated by the sign’s presence, since it forced us to step around it into the street.

Further down the sidewalk, tied to the marquee/display sign at the corner church, was another big piece of cardboard onto which Joe (presumably) had spray painted, “GIVE ME A CHANCE!”

“Aww!” I squealed and fumbled for my phone to take picture. My phone died at that moment, because I never remember to charge it.

We passed a few church workers who were outside, hemming and hawing about what to do with the signs. Had Mary seen them already? Was it safe to take them down? Could Joe have maybe left his number so that they could check in with him to see how much longer he would be needing the support of their marquee/when would he be exiting the doghouse?

After putting the baby on the bus, I headed back to the house and scooted around the signs. I heard a car coming up the hill and paused for a few seconds, waiting to see if, maybe, it was Mary, on her way to work, her eyes still swollen from crying. It would be awesome to see her face light up at the gesture.

The driver was a woman and my heart beat a little faster when her hands rose to her head. But, alas, she was smoothing her hair. Her eyes glanced at the signs as she drove past them but she didn’t stop. Perhaps Mary was still at home.

I glanced back at the signs one more time before quickening my pace toward my house. I still needed to pack my lunch. “So sweet,” I sighed.

Then, of course, my true pessimism kicked in and I started muttering, “I wonder what he did that he has to go to such lengths to apologize. What a dick. You deserve better, Mary!”

The baby often accompanies me to the nail shop and has come to develop an appreciation for good manicures. He recently asked me if he could pick out a color and/or airbrush design the next time we went. I agreed, but quickly realized I needed to have some veto power when, while standing at “Nail Polish Station,” the words “sparkles” and “bright yellow” got tossed around.

We compromised. I picked a relatively neutral shade for my fingers and he got to pick the color for my toes, since I decided yesterday that I was in desperate need of a pedicure.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still not very much of a girly girl and my patronage to the nail shop has raised more than a few eyebrows. I feel weird saying this but in my…circle of culture (?), fake nails and the like just aren’t done. They’re too corny and brash. And the hipsters stay far away because they’re too ostentatious to be ironic.

But I like them. I don’t know why. I’ve come to find a little piece of delight in the ritual of my biweekly fill-ins and smiling politely when I’m not included in the Vietnamese conversations. And chuckling when the co-owner, while holding my ballet-abused feet in his hands, tells me that he really doesn’t like doing pedicures.

*Tip of the wide-brimmed hat to Truvy Jones

Still more rough days trying to get through this semester. Yeah, there’s light at the end of the tunnel, but there’s some old lawn furniture and a bear and some marbles and a field of sharpened bamboo between here and there.

But obviously, what I have to go through in the next few weeks is nothing compared to what other mamas have to go through the rest of their days. So, in recognizing how very, very lucky I am and how not even the greatest deed would make me worthy of my kid, I want to remember this goofy little moment that we shared earlier this evening that might otherwise be forgotten if I hadn’t gotten that harsh reminder to do whatever I can to relish it.

For Easter, we gave the baby a few books out of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, including the Do-It-Yourself Book. He was filling out the page on his predictions and got stuck on, “In twenty years, cars will run on ________.” The baby thought about this for awhile and finally said, “Cars will run on…sidewalks!”

Thanks, dude.

I love this.

I especially love how everyone is so amused at the camera’s presence and the men who raise their hats and chuckle.

Something about it reminds me of this:

View Larger Map

Posting is still slow around these parts, I know. I’ve been working my dupa off this semester, this past week in particular, and had a mini-meltdown Wednesday morning. Just one of those, “I…just…don’t want to do all of this anymore! Hwwheeee!” kind of crying episodes that I have at least once a semester. I met with one of my instructors this morning to go over some XML basics and was wildly comforted that she didn’t think that I was a total moron. She has a daughter around the same age as the baby, and works, and teaches, so I think she recognized that, “I’m falling apart,” look in my eyes. I don’t honestly think that I’m going to crash and burn, but I guess I don’t always believe it.

Anyway, when I do have a minute here and there, I don’t feel like voicing anything, preferring instead to retreat to quiet. I spent a few hours the other day looking at the pictures on Shorpy and marveling at how alive the pictures seem and how a little twitch in the universe could send me there.

I love this picture of Pittsburgh in 1941 so much.

rainy pittsburgh 1941

It’s raining, of course, just as it has been here for the past few days. But if you lean in, you can almost hear the drops slapping onto the street and bouncing off the roofs of the cars. I can almost smell the refreshment of an early summer storm and grin because it’s almost here.

I noticed a little bit ago that I have a gigantic grease stain on my pants that I’ve had a total of three months. I now remember that I got the stain because of my poorly handled treatment after an unfortunate egg roll incident about a week ago. I put very little effort into my appearance as it is, and if I continue along this path, I will be in sweatpants and Tweetie Bird tshirts by summer.

…

I’m taking the bus into work this week, which takes me into downtown. I haven’t been downtown in the mornings in quite some time and had forgotten how wild it can be. Yesterday, I was hit on by a very forward but nice construction worker who told me that, were he and I to have a baby, we could name it Butterscotch. I then found myself in the midst of a fight between two women and man, all of whom seemed to be in the depths of some kind of substance dependency. Woman 1 had insisted to Woman 2 that cigarettes cost $5.50, but Woman 2 soon found out that cigarettes actually cost $5.57 and when the fuck was Woman 1 going to pay her back that 7 cents? And, you know, money’s money. My only beef was that they were SO LOUD at 8:30 in the morning. And finally, a man rode by on a motorcycle blasting some song about Jesus.

This all happened within about 10 minutes.

…

The husband and I went to see Margaret Cho last Saturday. She was awesome, of course, though she’s started to incorporate some songs into her act that I’m kind of “meh” about. I’ve never really gotten into my body issue stuff on here because, frankly, I get sick of thinking about it since it’s been a constant neurosis of mine since I was about six years old. But whether or not I have ever fit into any traditional molds of beauty (and honestly fuck those) her words on the matter echo through my head all the time:

“I am so beautiful, sometimes people weep when they see me. And it has nothing to do with what I look like really, it is just that I gave myself the power to say that I am beautiful, and if I could do that, maybe there is hope for them too. And the great divide between the beautiful and the ugly will cease to be. Because we are all what we choose.”

Also, after the show I finally got a goddamned Shamrock Shake and it was sooooo good.

1) toasted cinnamon raisin bagels with cream cheese

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

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

4) old Kik-Steps

5) spring break

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

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

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

“* talk to Heather”

Uh, okay, self. About what?

“* bring HW2 assignment, task analysis”

I totally forgot to do this.

“Pizza Hut”

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

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

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

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

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

The baby’s Valentine box that he decorated at school:

It’s J Dilla-themed. (Pardon the homework that I was actively avoiding underneath there.) What’s especially cute is how hard he tried to recreate the Donuts album cover.

Please note the tilt of the head and the smile and the fact that his hat obscures his eyes.

…

The other night, we went to Chipotle for dinner. Since I was away last weekend and the Super Bowl was the weekend before, we haven’t gone grocery shopping in a number of weeks so we were really scrounging for food. The woman who waited on us labeled the baby’s burrito as “The baby’s,” which was pretty wild.

For those of you who might be new here, the baby is not actually a baby. He’s 7 years old. I started blogging when he was, in fact, a baby and the name sort of stuck. So how did this random woman at Chipotle know to call him that?

…

We watched I <3 Huckabee's the other night just because and I was reminded of how much I LOVE that movie. "What happens in a meadow at dusk?" ... I talked to my dad on the phone yesterday and he actually sounded pretty good. Chemo is a motherfucker. ... Five years ago yesterday, I asked the husband (known back then as "the boyfriend") to marry me. It was a (mostly) good idea.

Man, I failed at this venture pretty quickly, didn’t I? Well, I’m not ashamed to own up to that fact and get back into it.

I am a little grumpy this evening because I’m out of Diet Dr. Pepper and I need to just own up to the full-blown addiction I have to that stuff. Also, the baby’s school has been seemingly relentless with needing stuff (valentines! valentines box! project for the 100th day of school! baby picture! treats!). And I just can’t deal right now. Everything is converging with work and school and it’s so frustrating to come home wanting to slow down and having to just keep going, with my schoolwork and taking care of my kid and whatnot.

By the way, I think, for the 100th day of school projects, the school had something in mind involving those classic art supplies cereal and/or pasta and Elmer’s glue and posterboard. That’s not how we roll in my house, though. When I remembered tonight that he needed his project tomorrow, I let out a hearty, “Oh fuuuuuuuuuuck,” then went rummaging in the kitchen. We’re not big cereal eaters and I didn’t think 100 stale flax flakes would really cut it. So I plopped the baby down with some sketch paper and bingo markers and he made 100 dots. It’s like the perfect illustration of the looooonnng ellipsis of my brain. Or something.

Onward.

1. The totally sweet card that my kid made for his dad at school today, because he knew his dad would like it. Sniff.

2. Making my co-worker laugh really hard.

3. The MamaPop pool of pictures from Vegas.

4. The trip that made those pictures possible.

5. For once, NOT going on and on about how great the Steelers are and just holding that to myself for now. 😉