kdiddy.org

ohmygodnoshutup

Rough couple of days. There’s too much going on with work and school and the sheer amount of stuff that I have to do makes me want to sleep. The situation with my mom got better…and then it got worse. That also makes me want to sleep. The laundry is piled everywhere and the sink is full of dishes. Yesterday it took us almost two hours to get to work. The baby’s cough was better, but now it seems to be back just as bad as it was before. I’m starting to worry. His school called me because they felt he should go home. My mother-in-law is picking him up. I want to go home, too.

And, it’s Valentine’s Day. Fucking hell. I guess the husband and I aren’t doing anything for it, but since I know he’ll be reading this, I’ll go ahead and post a little valentine to him. The video is cheesy, but the sound is the same.

Since the wind chill was -7 last night, we busted out the super thick half of this insane comforter I bought at Ikea a couple of years ago. Normally we can get by just fine with the thin half, but since walking back to the car from Wal-Mart led to my experience of having my breath taken away by the frigid wind, thereby preventing me from shouting at the assmunch who had the audacity to honk at the frozen pedestrians from inside his heated car, we decided to bust out the big polyester guns.

I didn’t so much fall asleep as slipped into a coma. And, frankly, cocooned up in my bed is where I still am.

But I managed to take my folder of W2s, 1040s, and FAFSA forms to enrollment services, push it across the counter and say, “Here. Turn this into $2,000 please. I don’t know what I’m doing.” I’m attempting to not gnash my teeth through the tax-paying process of my graduate education and I’m thinking one of them thar fancy student loans will be just the ticket. Not that I’m terribly excited about adding some more debt to my pile, but it needs to happen.

Speaking of taxes, I need to file them shits so I can start stimulating the economy. It’s all up to me, apparently.

I also trekked to my mom’s office and hashed some things out with her. See, I told her that it would be better for us to wait to talk to each other until after I had had some time to calm down and she had a chance to speak to someone not in our deranged family (read: a pro). Lo and behold, our conversation was civil and productive. It did not end in my mom crying and me getting pissed at her, as every other serious conversation of ours has. See? I don’t know why people don’t listen to me all the time. I’M BRILLIANT.

The mother-in-law picked the baby up from school on Wednesday, and when we got to her house to pick him up, I noticed a smudge on his forehead. The mother-in-law had indeed taken him to Ash Wednesday services and had indeed asked the priest to “bless” the baby and, according to her, he just happened to bless him with his ash thumb.

Now, she’s pulled this subversive Catholicisim stuff before and I don’t appreciate it. Because while I’m not against the baby practicing some sort of religion, I really don’t want anyone besides me or the husband dishing it out with him. I don’t want him getting the idea that Catholicism, or any religion, is superior to any other, which is what I’m pretty sure will happen if I put his religious education in the hands of the mother-in-law. I say that because when we griped at her for the ashes, she snotted that it’s not like they were off doing witchcraft or weird rituals.

And, like…ugh. Dude. Just because you grew up with them and you happen to live in a country where Catholicism is mainstream, doesn’t mean that you’re not doing rituals and that they wouldn’t be perceived as weird to other cultures. I mean, doesn’t one of the main rituals involve eating the body and blood of Christ? Plus there’s chanting and incense and bells and dudes in robes. Shit. Put that outside on a solstice and add some topless bitches. THEN tell me how it’s not like witchcraft.

Anyway, Bolt asked the mother-in-law about this and the mother-in-law told her what she also told us, which is that we all used to go to church and loved it. And we should be repentant for our sins. God, back off lady. And then she added that when we discovered this thing called independent thought, we would surely return to the church.

Quoi? I mean, not to say that all practicing Catholics or whatever are devoid of independent thought, but, uh, my independent thought is what led me to peace out from the church quite some time ago.

But, seriously, if I’m doing my thing and being a good person and Catholics are doing their thing and being good people, can’t we all just get along leave each other the hell alone?

Anyway, I was thinking about the upcoming presidential election yesterday. I don’t know, it seems to be the hip, in thing to do these days. Also, this piece on Jezebel got me thinking, because I do think it’s bullshit that women’s tendency to cry more than men is perceived as a sign of weakness. I think it was Wanda Sykes who said that God made women the weaker sex because otherwise we would just go around beating the shit out of people.

I mean, I cry when I’m sad or devastated obviously, but I also cry when I’m angry and it’s so annoying. I wish I could stop because I think it gives the objects of my anger an opportunity to be like, “Oh, whatever, she’s not THAT angry.” And it’s like, “No, I AM, motherfucker. I just can’t box for shit and I’m furious and everything’s starting to, like, SEEP or something. Here, why don’t you just choke yourself with my hand and we’ll call it even. Cool?.”

But, yeah, the presidential election. Folks are grasping onto the two times that Hilary has managed to hint at crying and prove that this is why a woman can’t handle being president. Fuck that. Hilary is just as self-serving and psychotically ambitious and centrist-serving as any other person that makes a serious run for president…which is what makes her campaign and Obama’s campaign such a drag. I got to thinking about how I cry often about the state of the world. I mean, it just fucking bums me out, you know? I can’t imagine if I was the president and had access to ALL of the information of just how fucked we are…I would be splattered on the sidewalk outside of a tall building about 15 minutes into my administration.

The past few mornings, the baby has accompanied our routine by singing everything in this virbrato, operatic voice. Sometimes he counts to 100 in this voice or sings the ABCs, he often answers questions or commands in this manner.

“The baby, go put your shoes on.”
“OkaAaAaAaAyYaYyaY!”
“The baby, did you take your vitamin?”
“YeEeEeEeEeEsssss!”

I am always happy to provide the responsorial chorus of “Would you fuc–…just STOP! Talk normal!”

But we got his report card yesterday and he’s doing really well in school. The only sub-par marks were for listening and paying attention. No big surprise there.

I don’t have much else to report. My hair has insane frizz today. I want to shave it off.

It’s mad frozen here.

The baby has a two-hour delay and when we walked outside this morning to take me to school, the husband gave a hearty, “Aw, hell naw.” So, we’re chilling in the house for a little bit. I am out of coffee. Go ahead and ask me how excited I am about that.

I’m not real sure when the school bus is supposed to get here. When there was a delay on Wednesday, the bus came at 9:30, but who knows because the driver’s kinda…I don’t know. I think he wants to fight me. Which is fine. We can throw down whenever, dude.

Anyway, check out my kid doing his breathing treatment.

Cute, no? Thankfully, the cough and congestion and the runny nose finally seem to be going away. As an added bonus, the prednisone gave him an actual appetite. He’s eating like a normal human being now and not like…Amy Winehouse.

1) Procure DVDs of The L Word. I left off early in season 3, right around the time Jenny started shooting people with a Taser. And I just saw a MAJOR spoiler in a friends’ LJ and I realize that I need to get up to speed.

2) Get belligerent at my TV screen during the Super Bowl.

3) parent, do laundry, get caught up on grad skool and whatever.

I’m going through a very rough patch with my mom right now. She and I have always had a close, but very rocky relationship. Without spewing too much personal stuff, I’ve always felt that she had boundary issues that were only made worse when I got together with the husband and had the baby like five minutes after saying, “Yeah, sure, we can hang out or whatever,” to him.

I honestly feel that it’s way beyond the normal, “My mom is a pain in my ass,” stuff. Someone told me last night that I look bad in the situation, like I’m just being mean to my mom because I’m a nasty person, and that really sucks. I think what everyone is seeing is that I never stand up for myself, so when I do, I look like a humongous bitch. Or maybe I just let things go too long and when I finally do say something, I can’t help but explode.

In any case, something drastic has to happen, or else I’m moving to a little cabin in the mountains or some shit.

In less emo news, my co-worker is going through a break-up, which has allowed me to tap into one of my favorite “genres” of music…break-up songs. Some of my favorites: “Not Gon Cry” by Mary J. Blige, “There You Go” by P!nk, and “Song for the Dumped” by Ben Folds Five. Yours?

The baby is at the doctor with the mother-in-law to find out what the deal is with this cough that he’s had forever. They’re guessing bronchitis and gave him a breathing treatment and some Prednisone. Poor kid. I talked to him for a second on the phone and he told me, “Prednisone tastes nasty.” I promised him some candy.

I talked to my dad for awhile last night and re-realized something I’ve known for awhile: my family is batshit insane.

Aside from my culinary misadventures on Friday evening, about 6,000 other ridiculous things happened in those 24+ hours.

In the morning

The husband and I set out toward work/school and soon discovered that there was massive traffic jams on Pioneer and West Liberty due to a fire in the Fort Pitt tunnels. Our alternate route was also clogged with traffic and we sat in the same spot for about 45 minutes. The driver of the car in front of us had left his keys on his back bumper, so we alerted him to that, and I spotted a yinzer with a really fantastic handlebar mustache. When the traffic finally let up, we saw that a car had rammed into a school bus and the car behind that one swerved to avoid the wreck and ran into a guardrail. I got to my lab class 30 minutes late and sat down at a computer to discover that some jackass had switched all of the keys around on the keyboard. I discovered something interesting about myself: I know the QWERTY row and the home row, but that bottom row is all murky for me.

After dinner

We took the baby to the mother-in-law’s house so he could hang out there because the husband was playing records at a club downtown as part of a gallery crawl. My sister-in-law and I apparently become violent once we cross the threshold into downtown, because our plans for future visits to the cultural district involved machine guns. Just sayin’.

The husband started playing records and was in some kind of mood. Artsy types in Pittsburgh don’t do much dancing, but prefer standing around, sipping $13 “martinis,” and arguing.

Jwan was there, smelling his heavenly beer.

The sister-in-law and I made our way to the bar and made friends with this fabulous boy tending the bar who poured with a heavy hand. While waiting for my drink, a guy leaned over to me, jerked his thumb toward the husband and slurred, “What do you think of this DJ?” Bolt guffawed and walked away and I said, “Oh, I think he’s awesome.” If I were quicker on my feet I would have said something clever like, “I think I’m going to sleep with him tonight,” or “I think I want to have his baby!” I asked the guy what he thought and he replied, “I have my doubts.” Fair enough. I grabbed my drink and spent the majority of the evening bobbing my head and talking to various people that I haven’t seen in a couple of years.

I commented that the worm at the end of the event’s logo kind of looked like an “nj” and snotted that we weren’t in New Jersey.

I had four of these. One could argue that this picture was taken from my perspective at this point, in which my head was resting on the bar. You’d be half-wrong.

I went to the bathroom as things were winding down and was in a stall next to a girl who was working at the event, who couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. I realized that I didn’t have any toilet paper, so I reached my hand underneath the stall divider and said, “Hey, could you spare a square?” A moment of startled silence followed before she finally replied, “Uh, I’m sorry. I don’t do drugs.”

I nearly died laughing and explained that I needed toilet paper. When we exited the stalls, I asked her if she ever watched much Seinfeld…you know, when she was a baby. She hadn’t but we parted on good terms. After washing my hands, I looked to my left and discovered a drink that someone had abandoned on the sink. Score!

I sauntered out to the main area and found Bolt. “Look! I found a drink!”

“Awesome! I found a Blackberry! Someone left it here. It’s mine now!” Awesome! Bolt, undeterred that the Blackberry was password-protected, stuffed it in her purse (Edit: we returned the Blackberry to the bar the next day) and we split the drink, rationalizing that if it had rufies in it, we were with the husband so we should be cool.

On our way home, we realized that there was an important stop that we needed to make:

The O has hoagies.

The O has Runts.

But that’s about it for candy.

We feasted on fries at home and I passed out on the couch. I woke up in bed the next “morning” (read: 12:30 p.m.) and wondered why I was so sweaty and why my chest felt so constricted. I don’t remember much about actually going to bed, but I managed to remove my bra. But instead of removing the shelf-lined camisole I was wearing, I just put another one on top of it.