By the time you read this, it will be August 31st. I’m writing it on the 24th and on the 24th, it is a very stressful day at work for me. And I miss my kid and my husband terribly. On the 24th, they are at the beach for five more days.
On a day like the 24th, what would keep me going is the thought of coming home and hugging my kid and then curling up next to my man at night. On the 24th, I can’t do that and due to poor cell reception I might not even be able to hear their voices.
On the 24th, I realize this and burst into tears at my desk.
What makes it even tougher is that I can’t make this post public and reach out to the people who help to hold me up. “I’m alone in my house and emotionally vulnerable and therefore probably drunk!” doesn’t seem like the best thing to post to the internet.
Unrelated to any anniversary activities, last night I made some strawberry honey butter because some strawberries that we got in our CSA box last week were on their last legs. When it was done, I shoved the rubber spatula into the husband’s face and said, “Taste.” He wrinkled up his nose and pushed his head back. “What is it?” I told him and he tentatively stuck his tongue out. “Ugh. It’s good but it’s like eating butter,” he said, like that was a bad thing. I don’t understand his logic.
We had some pretty impressive storms last night. The husband called me from this meeting he was attending in Squirrel Hill and said that things were teetering on apocalyptic over there and that there were reports of tornadoes in the area. Because I have awesome survival skills, I crossed my fingers that the power would stay on long enough for me to Google “what the fuck the do I do during a tornado?” then started furiously searching for a compass app on my iPhone so that I could determine which walls in my basement I needed to avoid. Don’t you want me around for your next natural disaster?
However, the clouds and activity, while notable, didn’t seem tornado-level. So I did the sensible thing and left my child alone in the house with any number of short-circuitable things and went outside and took pictures.
Video, because I like to provide a multimedia experience whenever possible:
Please note that I did not take this picture in black and white. That’s just how ominous it was.
Eeek!
On the upside, I won’t need to water my plants for a few days.
About a month and a half ago, the husband and I ventured out on what some might call a proper date. We were going to the drive-in and looking forward to watching the Pittsburgh-centric Adventureland. Dreamy.
We ended up pushing our bashed up car out of the Sonic parking lot so that we could trudge to the boring old regular theater and see the movie, which was only okay.
We made a second attempt at our drive-in outing on Sunday and I’m happy to report that we were successful. We went to Dependable and saw a double feature of Drage Me to Hell and The Last House on the Left, both of which were fantastically campy and perfect for drive-in viewing. Er, well, I think the latter was supposed to be more disturbing, but it wasn’t.
Anyway, I highly recommend this method of movie-viewing. It’s generally cheaper and it’s more laid back, though it’s admittedly better for movies that don’t rely on expensive sound systems and whatnot. If you’re interested, Wikipedia has a list of active drive-in theaters.
I really liked the whole atmosphere, since the the screens are out in the woods and on a nice night, like Sunday was, it was really relaxing. Plus, you get to snark on the movies as much as you want and people don’t need to shush you.
I would advise taking some insect repellent. We were lucky enough to emerge unbitten, but a few gigantic mosquitoes were hovering, including one that one made me gasp. “That looks like some West Nile Virus right there,” I moaned. “Oh shush,” said the husband. “Besides, how do you know he’s not from the East Side?”
I’m still working on my recap of our trip to Detroit, even though each day that passes makes it more irrelevant but whatever. It’s my blog, I’ll post what I want and you’ll read it and you’ll like it. In fact, next week I might post about Valentine’s Day and how wack it was. If you don’t read it, that just shows how uncommitted you are to this relationship.
In fact, this isn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s what I’m going through. But let’s have angry and weepy break-up blog sex real quick before I help you find your Wii games. Jerk.
…
Anyway, I have this vague sickness going on and it’s weird. It hasn’t knocked me out and only makes me feel really crappy every so often. My throat is sore but not killing me and I’m getting what can only be described as hot flashes. I must have that throatal menopause that I’ve heard absolutely nothing about.
Last night I went to bed pretty early and when the husband came up a little bit later, he found me drenched in sweat and panting. And I imagine he resembled Bill Murray in Ghostbusters when he said of would-be girlfriend Dana Barrett, “Okay…so…she’s a dog.”
He popped a thermometer in my mouth and I didn’t have a fever, so I don’t know what happened.
…
I’m kind of not watching the Penguins game right now because I am HIGHLY concerned at this point and instead have been attempting to take a picture of the baby and the cat with whatever photographic devices in reach (ie, husband’s iPhone, my laptop). They fell asleep next to each other on the couch, but with the cat’s butt perilously close to the baby’s head and god damn if that ain’t one for the baby book shameless mommy blog.
“And here’s the time that the neutered cat teabagged you…”
…
All of this is to say that I’m not totally “with it” right now, so bear with me. Oh ALSO I have to do a “field observation” for my class on Friday, so I’m going to watch the staff at Starbucks interact from 9:30 to 11 a.m. And you know what my sophomore classmates said when we decided on that time? They said, “Hmm…well, yeah…I guess I can get up that early.” ISN’T THAT THE MOST PRECIOUS THING YOU’VE EVER HEARD?
So, through a weird twist of events, I’m attending BlogHer in July and I figure since I’m going to a blogging conference, I should probably do some of that there blogging that I’ve heard so much about. (Aside: I’m obviously going through some pretty serious writer’s block and I’m trying not to freak out about it but…I’m freaking out about it.)
We were in Detroit over the long weekend for the DEMF (Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival for you squares). This was my sixth annual trip there and, as usual, there were many hijinks and good times and a few episodes of drama.
We drove there somewhat early on Thursday with our friends Adam and Carleton. We talked a lot about Pittsburgh and the state of music there currently (nutshell: fucking grim).
When we got to Detroit, our first stop was Archer Record Pressing. Adam had to pick up the latest release from Technoir and the husband was picking up the first release on the label that he recently started, Love What You Feel. The record is by a guy who goes by the name of Disco Nihilist and do you like how I don’t write here regularly for months and then I pop up with this entry about records and Technoirs and disco nihilists? You love me.
Anyway, Archer was a really REALLY neat place. We were too late in the day to see any actual records being pressed but the guy that owns/runs the place gave us a tour and a brief explanation of how records come to be.
That’s the husband checking out one of the records. It may not look like it, but I could tell that he was really excited to finally be holding it in his hands. He had worked really hard on it and it was something that’s he’s been wanting to do forever, so it was cool to capture this moment.
We stopped at this place, Simpson’s Records, which Carleton told us about. It’s been in business for over 40 years. Detroit has a TON of independent businesses. Because it’s so spread out and public transit isn’t very good, these businesses operate in markets/neighborhoods that consist of people of very limited means that need to attend to all of their shopping within walking distance (at least, this is what I could gather just from observing). So, these small businesses usually double or triple up their services. Simpson’s sells gospel records, candy and snacks, and you can get your taxes done there. We also passed a barbershop/barbecue restaurant, which sounds gross but I can assure you that the barbecue was outside, away from flying hair.
Carleton is from the Detroit area, so we drove him to his house before making our way to our motel. His mom is currently kicking cancer’s ass and she and I talked about my dad’s recent struggle. Then I made a cancer joke and I think, uh, it might have been too soon because she just kind of looked at me and I felt like the world’s largest jackass.
After we were settled in our room, we went in search of a place to watch the Penguin game. Weirdly enough, Hockeytown was closed. I don’t know what kind of managerial genius you have to be to decide to be closed during the Stanley Cup playoffs. But I had checked the PG’s list of Steeler bars and already had a back-up place that was likely to be Pittsburgh-friendly. I didn’t see any Steelers paraphernalia there and the bar itself was pretty butt, but they were showing the game and they were nice enough to turn off the Stevie Ray Vaughn garbage that they were blasting so that we could hear what was going on.
Friday was full of record shopping at Melodies and Memories and picking up various characters as they arrived in the city. Frank flew in from NYC, Kenny took the train from Ireland (not really), and another friend…we’ll call him Hot Mess, flew in from Atlanta. Incidentally, the husband had described Kenny to me as his Irish doppelganger and that turned out to be a creepily accurate description. Lookit:
Kenny, by the way, was rarely without a drink in his hand the whole weekend and never appeared to be the slightest bit intoxicated. He’s kind of my hero, especially considering my poor performance later on that evening, which we’ll get to in a bit.
We met up with other various members of the Pittsburgh/Pittsburgh-friendly crew for dinner at some touristy but semi-decent Tex-Mex place in Greektown and then started to prepare for our first night out on the town.
Since we had some time to kill we drove around Detroit for awhile, checking out various parts of the city that we’d never seen despite all of our trips there. You probably know that things in Detroit are not great. We saw a lot of heartbreaking poverty and so much evidence of the glittering Seventh City that Detroit used to be. The population is now around 800,000 which is roughly four times the size of Pittsburgh. So it still seems huge to me. But when you see all of the abandoned buildings, you realize that at some point not that long ago, all of those huge buildings were needed to house and employ all of the residents. And now they just sit there, neglected and unnecessary. It really hit me just how many people left, out of fear or necessity.
We also saw some of the most gorgeous mansions sitting on the most pristine lawns, just a few steps away from burned out houses, which are the playgrounds for children whose parents may or may not be watching over them.
Remnants of wealth and a healthy middle class represent the entire life cycle of capitalism in one city block. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful, because out of this, nothing is left but life and survival and tears and thoughts and joy. And as the festival always teaches us, wonderful music is born from that pain and joy.
Later, Hot Mess showed up at our room wearing a Corona tshirt and swimming trunks and bearing a bottle of cheap champagne. He was soon followed by Kent, our buddy who we hadn’t seen in two years!
The “official” kick-off parties weren’t really tickling our fancies but the husband had heard about a house music night at a club not terribly far from where we were staying. I was already kind of tired before we went out, so Kenny and I went to the party store two doors down where I procured some vodka and Red Bull. The elixir was effective…perhaps too effective. See, the vodka gets you drunk (read: rowdy), while the Red Bull wakes you up (read: hyper). Rowdy and hyper. Really not a good combination.
Since it’s getting late in the day and this post is shaping up to be rather epic, I’m going to slap a “To be continued…” here. But, here’s a preview:
If I had written out an itinerary for yesterday, it would look something like this:
8:30ish – 9:30 a.m.: Wake up, swear a little for not getting up a little earlier since the baby has Little League parade in an hour. Rush through breakfast and dressing and whatnot.
9:30 – 10:30 a.m.: Parade through neighborhood with the baby and 200 other cuties in knee socks and cleats. Forget to put sunscreen on. Face, chest, and arms burn quite nicely.
10:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Loiter around ball field for awhile, waiting for LL season opener to begin. My parents, my grandmother, my husband’s parents, and his grandmother all show up for the big day. I am relieved to see my dad looking and acting pretty healthy, despite being in the midst of chemo. Everyone gets along, which is amazing, and I choose to chuckle at my grandmother’s paranoid insistence that my son stand absolutely still to minimize his chances of getting horrifically hurt by running down the hill and climbing the bleachers. Local politicians are politicking, shaking hands, and helping to hand out hot dogs and Little Hugs, including the mayor. I notice that after a certain amount of time spent amongst “my people,” I start to sound like Gina from Greg & Donny.
12:00 – 2:30 p.m.: Play ball! Baby does well in his first real game. Even takes the opportunity to slide into home. Teammate hits a grand slam (the Pirates should consider hiring him) and their team wins. Sweet! Somewhere in this time period, my cat comes across a half-drunk cup of chocolate milk that the baby left sitting in the living room and knocks it onto the floor, leaving a nice brown splash pattern on the rug that will dry and set very nicely while we’re gone.
2:30 – 3:00 p.m.: Run home, shower my dusty kid and send him off with husband’s dad to go bike-riding so I can work on homework.
3:00 – 5:00 p.m.: Half-heartedly work on final project for school. Try not to freak out over how much crap I have to do in the next two weeks.
5:00 – 5:30 p.m.: Cat curls up on my notebooks, gives me a look and purrs. My eyelids start to droop.
5:30 – 6:00 p.m.: I give in to the cat’s hypnotic powers and take a much needed nap.
6:00 – 7:00 p.m.: Get up and shower since the husband will be home soon and we’re going on a date to the drive in to see Adventureland. Husband arrives home and cleans the car, specifically the windshield so we can see the movie, while I’m fighting with a pair of shorts that totally fit me last year but are now throwing up a lot of resistance. My waist, much like the universe, is ever-expanding.
7:00 p.m.: Husband and I set off toward the movie. I’m excited since I’ve never been to the drive in.
7:30 – 8:15 p.m.: Hit horrendous traffic due to a poorly-planned detour taking motorists away from construction happening en route to the airport. We go back and forth on whether or not we can actually make the movie, which starts at 8:10. We finally decide to just drive out there and if we miss it we’ll go to a later showing at a regular theater near our house.
8:15 p.m.: Hear hideous squealing of brakes behind us and then suddenly realize that my head has tried to go from upright to 90 degree angle with my body, somehow without taking any path between the two positions. I say things like, “Oooohhhh,” and “Auuuughhhh,” as I realize that we were harshly rear-ended.
8:16 – 8:30 p.m.: Of course, our new insurance cards are not in the car but we get the other guy’s information. I eventually stop shaking. This is the second car accident I’ve been in. The first was when I was 16 and riding with a newly-licensed friend. That accident was so minor that I didn’t even realize what had happened until my friend tearfully filled me in. This one, while still very minor, was much more frightening and painful and gives me new perspective on how much serious car accidents suck. I burned my foot a few years ago by spilling boiling water on it. It was a small area but was tremendously painful and took months to heal and gave me new perspective on how much it sucks to be a serious burn victim. So, burns and car accidents are officially off of my bucket list because fuck that ish.
8:30 – 9:00 p.m.: We’re definitely way too late for the drive in movie, so we make our way to a theater a few miles away. We have some time to kill, so we go to Sonic and I note that at least we’re getting some drive in experience tonight.
9:00 – 9:15 p.m.: We get ready to make our way across the shopping center to the movie theater and discover that the car won’t start. AWESOME. Husband says, “Fuck it. We’re going to the movie. I don’t care,” and enlists a fellow Sonic patron to help him push the car into the parking lot across the way.
9:15 – 9:30 p.m.: Husband and I walk to the movie theater and get into a quick argument because he says something that I don’t hear, gets mad at me for not hearing, and WON’T JUST REPEAT WHAT HE SAID. GAAAHHHH.
9:30 – 9:45 p.m.: Wait in line for tickets because the theater made the brilliant managerial decision to have one ticketing booth open on a Saturday night. Husband goes in to grab seats while I go to the concession stand, which also has only one register open. I come very close to starring in my own episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm while the young girls in front of me order 60 overpriced items and then have to rethink their entire order when they hear that the Icee machine is broken. A teenager with a pitiable case of acne and a large crystal around his neck opens another register. The people in front of me go to him, while the rest of us stay in one line, wordlessly agreeing to alternate registers as they become available. Except for the guy behind me who goes to the new register, essentially cutting in front of me. I hate humanity.
9:46 p.m.: I angrily shuffle into the theater to find that I’ve missed the first five minutes of the movie. Fucking whatever, man.
9:46 – 11:30 p.m.: The movie is good and very, very sweet and makes Kennywood look even more magical and awesome. I love Pittsburgh.
11:30 – 12:00 p.m.: We wait by our car for the father-in-law to arrive with jumper cables. We study the damage to the rear bumper and the husband says, “I wonder if that will make it hard to close the trunk.” As he says this, he opens the trunk, which makes an alarming THWONK noise. The husband grins at me, because we both know that the trunk will no longer be closing. He tries to get me to stand on the bumper while he jumps on the trunk lid. I fear for my toes and the few people still at the shopping center wonder what the hell we’re doing. The husband and I have to chuckle at the day’s series of events and I give him some kisses because we went on a date, dammit, in spite of everything.
12:00 – 12:30 p.m.: The father-in-law arrives with jumper cables and we’re able to drive home. When we finally arrive at our house, five hours after we left to go see a two-hour movie, I realize that I wasn’t wearing my seat belt, despite being in a car accident just a few hours prior.
Sunday: Hoping absolutely nothing happens today. Edit: Nevermind. The baby is having breathing trouble and is now passed out in bed. Highly unusual. AWESOME.
The husband came home late last night (or early this morning) after playing records at the Shadow Lounge. I was still up because I watched the 12:30 airing of Grey Gardens and had grumpily started watching 300 afterward. I say, “grumpily” because I don’t really like that movie, but it looks cool and I’m a sucker for ripped dudes in capes and diapers. I am human, after all.
The husband plopped on the couch and we murmured half-asleep greetings to each other. “Watching 300?” he asked. “Yeah,” I sighed, just as Xerxes and Leonidas were giving each other their best bitch faces for the first time.
“Dude, you know what?” said the husband. “I had totally forgotten about this but I had this wild dream…must’ve been months ago…that I was holed up in a bar with a bunch of people and Xerxes was attacking us.”
A few seconds of silence followed as my jaw dropped.
“Dude, that was an episode of South Park,” I said, starting to cry with laughter.
“….Was it?”
“Yes! Oh my god. You’re like Bill Murray’s character in Scrooged.”
I feel the need to warn you that this post is kind of potty-humor-centric. Sort of a Farrelly Brothers/Judd Apatow movie wrapped in bacon and deep fried. It’s just a collection of weird/gross/immature things that have happened in the past few days.
Under the category of Boogers
The baby likes to help me cook, which is usually a good activity for us to do together (though the oppressively small kitchen and its tendency to drive me to drink sometimes make this impossible because my dear son if you don’t GET OUT OF MY WAY RIGHT NOW I SWEAR TO GOD!). The other night I was making pizza cobbler and the baby was helping me to put the dough on top.
I’ve had a tough time getting him to remember to cover his mouth when he sneezes and when he does I like to point out that that was a good thing. You can already see where this is heading, right? So, he sneezed and covered his mouth…with the hand that was holding a piece of dough.
“Um, it’s good that you covered your mouth but try to do that with the hand that’s NOT holding our dinner. kthxbi.”
Under the category of Crotches
The baby was goofing off the other night while I was nagging him to do something…probably going to bed or getting a shower or something.
And he just wound up and punched me in the crotch.
Like…
It wasn’t a hard punch, so it didn’t hurt. It was more dramatic sparring with a slightly slowed-down, kung fu, “HHHWWWWAAAAHHHH!” flare. But still. Demoralizing.
But I paid it forward. The husband and I have a tendency to act like brothers; lots of pinching and noogies and wedgies and trash-talking. This recently prompted the baby to ask us why we married each other if we hate each other so much. (Spite.)
This afternoon, as we were heading into the baby’s school to pick him up, we were engaged in an epic battle of Stop-Touching-Me-I’m-Not-Touching-You-See-I’m-Not-Touching-You, when I ended things by punching him in the crotch. PWNED.
Under the category of Pubes
I really dislike stray pubes. They’re certainly my least favorite aspect of cleaning the bathroom and I get really skeeved if I come into contact with them. I just hate how they’re so unapologetically coarse and all, “Nyah, I was on a crotch and now I’m on your towel!”
I was in the shower earlier and as I was rinsing off my washrag I noticed a pube on my hand. Ick. So I stuck my hand under the water to rinse it off…and the spray shot it off my hand and right into my eye. I had to dig a pube out of my eyeball. Like, who has that happen to them? Only me. I’m still so irritated about it.
I got a bag of coffee beans from a local roaster in my CSA box last week. I was really looking forward to trying them and yesterday morning I ground them up and brewed my morning medicine, that which fuels me to actually get out of the house each morning.
I poured my cup and took a sip. It sucked. It was bitter and tasted like the stuff that sits on burners all day at the 7-11. I was upset. And it all went downhill from there.
My kid has been a real pain in the ass lately about getting ready for school. He dawdles and whines about how he doesn’t want to go. As far as I can ascertain, there’s no real problem causing him anxiety, no bullies or anything, he just doesn’t want to go because, “all we do is LEARN.”
So he was pulling out all the stops yesterday. Whining. Stomping his feet. Trying to slap my hands away when I dragged him out of bed. Screaming back when I told him for the sixth time that he needed to eat his breakfast. Far too much for me to deal with on a half cup of shite coffee.
While I was explaining to him that, “What do you mean why do you need to put your socks on? You need to put your socks on because WE. NEED. TO. LEAVE!” the sleeping husband peeled open an eye a little and mumbled, “What’s his problem?”
I stomped out of the house with the baby and put him on the bus. When I got home I started working on getting the husband up and out of bed in a reasonable amount of time. Around 8:20, I told him to get out of bed for the third time, and he snapped at me, “I KNOW! I HAVE A FUCKING EXAM TODAY! LEAVE ME ALONE!”
I hated both of them in that moment. I couldn’t believe that I had to endure both of them getting pissed at me for trying to get them off to where they needed to go, especially when they just had to go to school while I had to go to work and school and deal with situations at my job that, frankly, aren’t always that fun or easy to deal with. Plus, the nagging anxiety that my husband is graduating from college in the midst of the shittiest economy ever and it’s possible that the thin financial string that we’ve been hanging by the past few years will have to sustain us even longer, provided nothing catastrophic happens like me getting laid off.
And the people who were so terrible at their jobs that our economy is now in the state that it is not only are guaranteed to keep their jobs, they get millions of dollars in bonuses.
That thought set me off and I went on this misanthropic spiral thinking about all of the utterly shitty people in the world and how they go on to create shittier copies of themselves and how I wished I had some superpower where I could drop 2 liter bottles of Coke on the toes of people I hated without consequence. And it’s not that we need to start regulating the number of children that people have but there does need to be some kind of social shift in the face of biological imperatives that it’s okay to not want to have kids but goddammit why do some of the most vocal proponents of the childfree movement have to be such a-holes and it’s not that I’m a total nihilist because I’ve felt something real when I’ve been in the presence of my family.
Oh and THEN I read this article that pissed me off even more. I mean, it’s not that it’s hard to draw parallels between Pittsburgh and Detroit but they’re two totally different places and what works in one place won’t necessarily work in the other. And I must have been looking for things to make me angry because then I went and read the comments which just made it worse because I hate people and all of their stupid “thoughts” and “opinions.”
I don’t know. Maybe I should go back on anti-depressants.
Or spike my coffee once I get better beans.
I was pissy throughout the day. I think my little family is at its worst when we convince ourselves that we’re not in this together. That we’re the only ones bogged down in our struggles and the other two members simply don’t understand what we go through day to day. I don’t know how to fix that.
