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Failure One: Mousse

I made a cake for my co-worker’s birthday. Specifically, this Chocolate Overdose Cake. I’m not really exaggerating that the cake has made me something of a legend at the office. (And, perhaps, alienated my co-worker for stealing the spotlight on her birthday. Sorry. Am jackass. But with tasty cake.)

Also, Abby (I think) reports that people will never take you seriously if you’re the person who brings in baked goods to the office. To which I say, “Fine. Don’t take me seriously. Enjoy your grocery store cake. Nyah.”

Setting out, I realized that I didn’t have any round cake pans so I convinced the husband to let me cross the threshold of Sur la Table. Oh. My. God. I actually forgot one thing and had to go back the next day. Getting into the car, I said, “I really should be commended for the restraint that I showed in there.” A whole wall of small appliances. Every kind of spatula you could imagine (Spatula City). A stack of shelves with cake pans that I could barely see the top of. It was heaven. And also why I have thus far avoided any restaurant supply stores. I would absolutely break down and chain myself to one of those big KitchenAid mixers. Pictures that I’ve seen from others’ trips to such places nearly had me in tears.

Anyway, to make the mousse layer, the recipe tells you to make the whipped cream in a chilled mixer bowl, melt the chocolate, and put the chocolate in a separate stainless steel bowl. Then, take 1/4 cup of the whipped cream and whisk it into the chocolate to temper it, then fold the rest of the whipped cream in. In an effort to avoid cluttering my tiny kitchen with more bowls, I just left the whipped cream in the mixer bowl, tempered the chocolate, and then put it into the whipped cream. I quickly found out why the new bowl was necessary.

That is not cookies and cream ice cream, but whipped cream with tiny bits of melted chocolate that were shocked into solid pellets upon their meeting the cold whipped cream. It tasted okay, but the consistency was too weird. I left the bowl of failed mousse with the husband and baby so that they could pick at it, and tried again.

MUCH better.

I don’t have any pictures of the finished cake because the “decorating,” if you can call it that, looked worthy of Cake Wrecks. And I made the ill-advised decision to write “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” with one of those Cake Mate “easy to write!” tubes. Here’s the honest to dog truth: any product that claims to be for home chefs and easy-to-use is full of crap. Take some extra time and learn how to use the real thing. Because “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” ended up looking like, “Hbbbj Bbbbby Vcccccc!” with random lines and dots scattered throughout.

Those snafus aside, it was AMAZING. So delicious. Make it. Or have someone make it for you to prove their love.

Failure Two: Our child evokes one of the characters in Idiocracy

I mentioned recently that the baby is very grumpy about school right now. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of that, but in the meantime we’re still working with him on our own to make sure that he’s learning stuff.

Last night, while sitting in horrendous traffic, the baby asked us what the capital of Pittsburgh was.

“Cities don’t have capitals, buddy. Countries and states do,” we explained.

“Oh,” he said.

“So, what’s the capital of Pennsylvania?”

“Harrisburg.”

“Right. And what’s the capital of the United States?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Right! And what’s the capital of San Francisco?” we asked, checking to see if he was paying attention.

“Um…Philly?”

“What? No. Philadelphia is a city in Pennsylvania. San Francisco is also a city in California. And cities don’t have capitals, remember?”

“Noooo! PHILLY is in San Francisco!”

“Buddy, no, “Philly” is short for Philadelphia, and it’s in Pennsylvania.”

“Man, I HATE Biology.”

Oh, dear. So, when we finally got home and after the baby had finished his homework, the husband went over some biology geography with him. It hadn’t really been a focus of ours, but we had hoped that he was picking up some useful knowledge from this interactive map game that the husband’s grandmother gave him a while back. Of course, upon closer inspection, perhaps we shouldn’t have handed over some of our teaching responsibilities to this thing.

It has a bit of a Kerouac ring to it, yes? Packing up the jalopy and driving across the America. Wait til we be lovers in Frisco.

Failure Three: The pesky need for air

I seem to have caught some of the Man Cold that the husband and baby were fighting a few days ago. And it really hadn’t crimped my lifestyle until last night when I went to do the 30 Day Shred. I was kind of excited because it was my first attempt at Level 2. I was getting bored with Level 1 and had been eager to move on, but achey knees prevented me from doing so sooner.

Here’s the thing about strenuous exercise while congested: Don’t. Do. It. Seriously. Very bad idea. I nearly died during one of the cardio portions because I had to exercise while mouth-breathing, which caused severe mouth dryness, which caused a malfunction when I tried to swallow and catch my breath without the benefit of a functioning airway.

While Jillian screeched, “I WANT YOU TO FEEL LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” I wheezed and coughed and tried desperately to rehydrate my mouth.

When I finally finished, the husband said, “Do you feel like you’re going to die?” I replied, “I nearly suffocated and saw birdies.” Then I sneezed on him.

When I was 16, I used to smoke cigarettes out of my bedroom window in the middle of the night.

My relatively brief stint (6 years) as a smoker started at my 16th birthday party and didn’t pick up as a true habit until I lived on my own when I was 17. In the meantime, I had one pack of cigarettes that I kept hidden and sometimes, after my parents were asleep, I would crack open the window and smoke.

There was a spot underneath my windowsill that sounded kind of hollow when you tapped on it and when I was little, I imagined that it was a secret passageway. I had heard of Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad and in my naivete didn’t understand that “underground” was a socio-cultural adjective, not a location, and that the railroad was mostly a figurative noun.

I imagined that I could squeeze through what would have been an impossibly narrow passage between the exterior and interior walls of my house and climb down into a portion of the trail that African-Americans followed out of slavery.

I recognize that this is completely bonkers and back when I was 16 and practicing the perfectly cool exhale, I would tap on the hollow spot through the floral wallpaper and shake my head at my 6-year-old self. Then I would go back to thinking about how badly I wanted a boyfriend, about ballet, and about who I was going to be.

During the winter, this was an especially risky activity. The cold air would pour into my room, not only putting me at risk for frostbite, but could cause a shift in the house’s temperature that my parents might notice. I would open the window only as wide as my face and work very hard to keep the smoke going out. Mostly, it just made my nose and cheeks numb.

I spent this past weekend alone, as the husband and the baby went to Blue Knob to ski, and I had the urge to go outside Saturday night. I had had a drink and was lonely and my living room was starting to depress me. I tugged on my big, winter coat and stepped out onto the front porch. It was pretty quiet outside, which was unusual. There were no signs of the revelers celebrating the end of another week on the main street below us.

Feeling the cool air on my face made me remember the illicit beginnings of my nicotine addiction and the embarrassment that I felt at how silly I was as a little girl.

I thought for a long time about an argument that the husband and I had had before they left. It was an ugly argument, one in which some of the more hurtful things that we’ve ever said to each other sailed through the air and hung there, following our thoughts around. Is that how we really feel? Is this who I’m going to be? How big are my mistakes?

My face started to sting as the low temperature became uncomfortable. 15 years stood between me and those moments by my bedroom window. And yet somehow the air felt the same.

I just groaned imagining all of the times that that headline has been used for promoting or reviewing The Chief. But I’m unimaginative and I recognize this.

I bought the husband tickets to see the aforementioned one-man play about Art Rooney for Christmas. Because I am awesome, about two days after I purchased them, he spotted a billboard for the play and mused, “I’d kinda like to go see that.”

Our interest in the play went beyond the fact that it was about Rooney. The guy who was performing in the title role was Tom Atkins, a Pittsburgh native who has starred in a couple cult-ish horror movies, in particular Halloween III, Escape from New York, and The Fog, which are favorites in our house.

As we were heading to the theater last night, I realized that, despite the Steelers’ season ending in a whimper, there would probably be plenty of people wearing their jerseys. Well…not only were people wearing jerseys, but they were selling Terrible Towels in the lobby. (Sadly, no one twirled one during the performance.)

We sat in our seats and waited for the lights to go down and the theater piped in every popular song that was about or referenced or was even remotely related Pittsburgh, including Mister Rogers’ “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which made me tear up because I’m a sap.

Atkins is a fantastic actor, capturing minute mannerisms and rambling on with stories about Rooney’s upbringing in the North Side.

The play itself wasn’t the most staggering work of genius. And it seemed safe to assume that many audience members were drawn to the theater simply for the fact that the play was about Rooney. And the play was obviously written with a very specific audience in mind, designed and timed to hit certain pressure points. There was nothing universal about it. For a second, I thought that maybe this should bother me, but, as the husband so eloquently put it, “It’s Pittsburgh shit for people from Pittsburgh. Who gives a fuck about anyone else?”

At one point, Rooney shows the film of the Immaculate Reception. I whispered to the husband, “That’s kind of cheating.” For Steelers fans and for most native Pittsburghers, that catch is legendary, part of the lore handed down from generation to generation. It’s almost not fair to show it during a play, as it’s guaranteed to stir emotions in the audience. But watching it was just as thrilling as any other time and hearing “Rooney” describe how he fatefully missed the whole thing and how it sounded like a tornado had hit when the elevator doors opened and he realized that the tide of the game had turned was simply magical.

Near the end, Rooney’s emotions swell and he describes what the Steelers have meant to their fans. I’ve rambled about it myself many times. He described circumstances that were just as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. People out of work, clear skies but dark outlooks. But the Steelers, there, reminding us with every hard-earned victory and every crushing defeat, that Winning. Is. Possible.

Tears stung my eyes as I sat there, in the dark, next to my husband. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve made some mistakes and we’ve landed ungracefully. But it’s possible we can win. Still.

We exited the theater and scurried to the parking garage in the bitter cold, soggy snowflakes covering us. We needed to eat and tossed several options around before settling on Fiori’s, the pizza place near our house that feeds us at least five meals a month.

We sat and ate our cuts and our wings and talked about the play, laughing at some of the anecdotes that we remembered. Soon enough, we had to head back out into the cold to pick up our son.

I grabbed the husband’s hand as I teetered across the slippery cobblestone street that had been around since smoke from steel mills darkened the sky and the Steelers were still a punchline in the world of professional football.

Earlier in the day, I had been sad after hearing about a fantastic career opportunity in California. But I can’t go to California. I must stay here, where the job prospects are much dimmer, because this is my home.

Forget New York. If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.

Dinner and a show, Pittsburgh-style, with football and pizza. When we pulled up to our, big, old, drafty house, I felt like Pittsburgh royalty.

It’s slightly pathetic how excited I am to be back at work. However, I have good reasons: a functional computer (well, sorta, my work computer is OLD), functional internet, one more quiet week to hunker down and get stuff done, and for the first time in years, I can work without having to stop and go to class.

Plus, the baby is back at school today and as fun as our winter break was, he was exhibiting signs of extreme cabin fever. After a day or so of non-stop (literally NON. STOP.) talking, we realized he needed to expend some energy. He went skiing with the father-in-law and played in the snow. We also went roller skating the other night and I am happy to report that our relatively frequent skating sessions have restored my long-dormant skills. Like, I can actually move both feet now instead of dragging along my paralytic left foot and making up for its dead weight by pumping my arms. This skating method is neither effective nor graceful and I do not recommend it.

When we were inside, I showed the baby this montage of Harrison Ford forcefully saying, “my WIFE,” or “my FAMILY” in at least 40 movies and he is now obsessed with it.

I hear him muttering, “my WIFE” every now and then and it’s a little disarming. It is now my favorite pop culture tic of his, with his impersonation of Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight crying, “RACHEL! RACHEL!” a very close second.

Also, and I’m going to abruptly end this post after this because…I don’t know, the engagement photos channel of Awkward Family Photos is absolutely mesmerizing. The pictures of people who look they were caught mid-dry-hump are the best. The husband and I never did engagement photos because a) we didn’t care and b) we’re REALLY not the type. In our wedding pictures, the ones that are posed you can tell that we’re stifling laughter and any other pictures that we have taken together end up looking like this:

Our home computer died and our wireless router crapped out weeks ago. Did I already tell you this? I can’t remember. Anyway, I’m tapping this post out on my phone, which is miraculous, technologically, I guess, but mostly a pain in the butt…er, thumbs. This morning, I trudged the baby through the snow to the library so that I could at least pay the bills and write my posts for MamaPop and We Covet. So my real live Internet time was perforated by, “Mum, I’ve looked through all of the cool books. Can we please go now?” and a sickening squirt every time the guy at the next computer spit his tobacco juice into his coffee cup. (I really could not believe the librarian was cool with that. I know I wasn’t. But then my Master’s is in Professional Writing, not Library Science and Tolerating Repugnant Habits.)

I will tell you more about Christmas and show you some pictures the next time I have some extra minutes online. For now I have to get back to cuddling on the couch with baby, the husband, and his ManCold and waiting for what seems like an acceptable amount of time before eating some of the brownie bread pudding that I made (oh my god SO GOOD). Stay warm!

It’s been 10 days since I posted here! That ain’t right.

I’ve mostly just been busy at work and then busy getting ready for Christmas. I was getting ready to do some work just now, since our office luncheon ate up most of the day, but then I looked and saw that it was almost 4:30 and decided blogging would be a better way to spend the last half hour of work.

Plus, the husband tells me that our desktop has up and died and our wireless router died weeks ago so our only internet access at home is through our phones. It’s like we’re living in the mid 90s or the 80s or something prehistoric.

It’s particularly tragic because I want to spend my winter break staring at BeTaMaXMas. Really, I’ve had this weird craving to spend a day in my 8-year-old life. I guess it’s because the baby is at the age where Christmas (and Halloween and whatnot) really is just one of the greatest ideas ever. And he still hardcore believes in Santa so that’s pretty fun (and useful for bribes/threats). I want a taste of that, I guess. I want be in my living room, watching crap like this:

I remember that commercial so vividly. It’s kind of pathetic. Consumerism’s bitch: I am it. My mom and I always thought that the tree in that commercial was so beautiful. When we would decorate our tree, we would always get excited about turning off the lights and seeing it in all of its glory for the first time.

Just for a day, I kind of want to be in the moment of being a kid, and ogle our tree, and hope that I got the Barbie crap that I wanted. Before my parents’ marriage really went to shit, before I realized that inexplicable sadness was just something that I would have contend with the rest of my life, before I questioned my strength.

The other night we put up our tree and what will probably be the extent of our decorations. I don’t like to go overboard with decorations because, while they look rad, you have to take them down. In late December or early January. When you’re bloated and sluggish from eating 24/7 for two weeks. I anticipate my laziness, dig?

Anyway, after we got everything set up, I turned on one of those silly fireplace screensavers that they have on OnDemand now. We got some eggnog, turned on some Bing Crosby Christmas music, and turned off all the lights so that we could admire our tree. It was gorgeous and smelled amazing.

I glanced over at the husband and the baby and suddenly realized, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

Things got quiet around here because a lot of stuff was going on. Things like my son turning 8, and a cousin’s baby shower, and me getting my Master’s. Also, I made cupcakes.

I couldn’t sleep last Friday night for whatever reason, so I puttered about making the cupcakes for the baby’s rollerskating party the next day and scanning pictures from when he was born. I wish someone could tell me how this:

becomes this:

Which isn’t to say, “How does this innocent baby become a red-eyed, knife-wielding psychopath who is shameless enough to wear a Steelers jersey on the day that said team loses to the Oakland fucking Raiders?” But rather, “How does that tiny squirt become this young guy?”

On Sunday, I went to a baby shower with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and grandmother-in-law that was very…Pittsburgh. It was in a fire hall (aka “fahr hawl” aka the event area of a VFW). The buffet featured fried chicken and rigatoni, which are staples of showers, weddings, and really any large gathering of people in Pittsburgh. And someone brought their Virgin Mary statue.

Mary just chilled in the middle of the table and I didn’t even think to ask why she was there, but apparently this particular Virgin Mary cries. So. I guess she was the entertainment.

Anyway, we went to my grandmother’s afterward and had a family birthday party for the baby. One of his favorite gifts was a “real” tie. He has several of the kid versions that zip up, but wanted the real deal.

Yesterday, I gave my final presentation and though I’m not officially certified yet (weirdly enough, certifying graduate degrees is part of my job so I’ll be certifying myself), I am done with my Master’s degree.

It was kind of anti-climactic, but my relief and joy is palpable. With the presentation successfully put to bed, I posted to Twitter and Facebook that I was done. The amount of heartfelt congratulations that I received made me cry a little, because everyone was so truly happy for me.

Calculating from the first day that I took a class until yesterday, I’ve been working toward this for 1,199 days. I honestly can’t believe that I made it. Around 10 a.m. this morning, right after I finished my informational exit interview, I suddenly felt very tired, as though I had been walking for many miles, or perhaps the abbreviated nights of sleep and weekends suddenly caught up with me.

I’m so glad that this accomplishment and celebrating another year of my son’s life comes at the end of a rather tumultuous year. After many months of mucking about, feeling broke and ineffective and unlucky, suddenly change seems possible. New year, new joys, new heartbreaks, new careers, new anything.

After we picked up the baby from school yesterday, we went home and I changed into sweatpants while the husband gave the baby his first lesson in tying a tie.

I made some macaroni and cheese and while the husband went to play basketball with some friends, the baby and I cuddled on the couch and watched the Food Network. We went to bed early, no reports to write, no research to conduct, no deadlines to meet. Just accomplishment and a moment to breathe.

Hi. I’ve just returned from the ridiculously overpriced on-campus convenience store where I procured Pepto Bismol because things have gone all wrong in my stomach. I’ve been grappling with what I can only describe as extreme hunger since early this morning and the only explanation that I can come up with is that since I’ve spent the last four days eating (and doing little else), I’m on some weird new digestive schedule. If the Pepto doesn’t help, I may have to call my HMO to see if they will cover an IV of liquefied mashed potatoes.

I could tell that this mini-vacation was going to be rad when my son came downstairs Tuesday night looking like this:

And said, “Take my picture in this outfit and put it on Facebook!” Um, no. But I will put it on my blog. This is why I don’t really let him on the internet and as far as he is concerned, the series of tubes begins and ends at cartoonnetwork.com.

Wednesday, I got out of work early and the dudes and I went to the museum to see the whale exhibit, which features a replica of a blue whale’s heart and apparently blue whales are really big because the heart was the size of a Volkswagen. Kids were able to crawl around in it and the baby invited me in. Because I possess the ability to identify Spaces In Which I Will Get Stuck, I declined but stuck my head in to take a look. From what I could smell, someone in the recent past had not made it out of there in time to make it to the bathroom, which is probably the only instance in life where you could close your eyes and be unsure of whether you were on the bus or a plastic blue whale’s heart.

After that, we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was pretty great and then rushed home because I had pie-making and potato-mashing duties to tend to.

Thursday morning I made the executive decision to make 5 more pounds of mashed potatoes and this made the husband very nervous. But I don’t have time for girly-men when it comes to Thanksgiving, so I shushed him and we piled into the car and headed to my mom’s.

YES.

My dad and his cancer-free ass showed up to bring the appropriate level of cheer to the event.

If you ever wondered where I get my sunny disposition, look no further.

This portion of Thanksgiving went off relatively without a hitch, and I couldn’t help but think of one Thanksgiving in 2003ish, during which we got into a huge fight about I don’t even remember what and all of the pictures feature my red eyes and puffy nose because I don’t understand why you have to be such a bitch MOM. Anyway, the only tense moment was when I realized that my grandmother and I had both made pumpkin pies and my grandmother said something about passing the torch and I detected a note of bitterness.

Look at her giving me the stinkeye. Your applique sweater fools no one!

After we were adequately stuffed, we rolled out to my mother-in-law’s house for the second shift. That culminated in lying on the couch, groaning and farting, while watching The Godfather on AMC. This is a torturous activity because The Godfather is several hundred hours long as it is. When you add 300 commercial breaks, you begin to have the urge to shoot Vito and blow up Appollonia yourself just to get on with life.

I am pleased to say that spending time with my family and getting to visit with Frank over the past couple of days has greatly improved my mood. I’m still sad about stuff a lot of the time (which has had the fortunate side effect of a clean entryway), but our people really do rally around me and my little family and they’re not going to let us smack the bottom. They’ll at least help us to land softly.

The next week and a half is going to be an exciting one. The baby turns 8 (EIGHT!?!?!) on Sunday and then next Tuesday I give my final presentation as a graduate student. Effectively, I will be done with my MA a little over a week from now.

Also, I made the executive decision that the husband and I needed to re-watch The Wire from the beginning. I think he was a little surprised, especially since we just started watching Deadwood (a couple of years after the fact, but whatever), but he didn’t really resist. Being able to watch the whole thing over again is so fun. I highly recommend it.

I don’t know why I’ve been hesitant to mention it, but my dad, who just a year ago was recovering from surgery to remove a malignant tumor and gearing up for six months of chemotherapy, was declared to be officially in remission a few weeks ago.

Thanks to him for fighting, thanks to the doctors and nurses for helping him to fight, thanks to his body for cooperating, thanks to cancer for fucking off, and thanks to whatever decided that he needed to stick around some more.

This morning, I was looking at myself in the mirror and thought that maybe I should institute a Negativity Jar for myself. It would be like a Swear Jar that some people have, where they deposit some amount of money (a quarter or a dollar or whatever) every time they swear, the thought being that it’ll prevent them from swearing so much or at the very least help them to set aside some fucking money. You’re familiar with the concept, I’m sure.

Anyway, the Negativity Jar would require me to deposit some money every time I had a negative thought in the hopes that I would start being more positive. But then I realized that, while most of my negativity is my just my usual charming self, a lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t have very much money and if I start paying the Negativity Jar, I’m just going to get pissed that it has all of my fucking money (score one for Swear Jar).

By the time I was done thinking of all of this, I owed these hypothetical jars about 300 bucks each.

So, yes, Thanksgiving is upon us and I am, indeed, thankful for being upright and having a chin that I can still hold high and the people who I love do, too. I think dealing with me the last few months has been especially rough on those closest to me. Recognizing that my basket case act might be tiresome, I decided that I needed some perspective. I sought it out in a way that was entirely novel to me.

I met up with my buddy Jennie, and she did me a huge favor and did a Tarot reading for me. Now, I am quite possibly the biggest skeptic in my ZIP code and I didn’t set out to make all of my decisions forthwith from the reading. I just…needed something different.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my thoughts on spirituality and religion and all things mystical before. If I had to classify myself, I would say that I’m a puzzled agnostic. I don’t play well with others, so organized religions are out and I just don’t buy the concept of God as it’s already laid out. But I do think that there’s something connecting us, the something that enabled us to develop empathy and understand cause and effect and whatnot. And it’s that something that helps us to identify things in others and if there’s any scientific explanation for why things like Tarot readings hit pretty hard to home, aside from them being broad enough to be interpreted, it’s that.

If nothing else, it was a relief to hear my troubles explained by someone other than me. Articulated in a way that I’ve been too upset to achieve. And it reminded me that nothing, not even shitty periods in life, lasts forever.

Perhaps the best part of my Tarot reading was after it was over, when Jennie and I just talked about things that were on our minds. But major arcana and Negativity Jars aside, I know things will get better somehow. And for that I’m thankful.