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I was sneezing all day yesterday but kept insisting that I was fine, that it was just allergies. Then around 4:30 p.m., I got that baseball-bat-to-the-head feeling. I am totally disgusting today and have completely surrendered any shred of dignity left by simply shoving a tissue up both nostrils and just letting it drip.

My brain has ceased functioning so this is all DayQuil. And my motor skills and capacity for critical reasoning is on par with that of a two-month-old. I’m pretty sure if I hadn’t popped some liquicaps this morning, I’d be on the floor, drooling.

We had a little resume workshop in my class this morning and of course our prof came over and listened in on my group while we were looking at my resume and cover letter. After she left, there was an uncomfortable silence as we all wondered just how I managed to not kill myself getting out of the shower everyday, now that my utter stupidity has been displayed for all to see in the form of subject-verb disagreement. Simply put, I wrote my cover letter in lolcat. “I haz batchlurs. I will haz masturs. I can haz job now plz?”

In other words, I’ve been a little busy and my work, all areas of it, are suffering. I knew the cover letter was going to be a piece of shit, mostly because when I tried to recall when I wrote it, I simply could not remember. Luckily, the day job will ease up slightly in the next week or so and I might not flunk out of my grad program. Now I just need to remember where I left my kid…

In cooking news, I made Stovetop Cheddar Mac last night. It was certainly inferior to the homemade stuff that Jwan makes, but it was quick and easy and it hit the spot. I added a couple generous sprinkles of cayenne pepper to brighten the flavor a bit. The other night I made Apricot Poppy Chicken which was really REALLY good. The baby declared it “the best dinner I’ve ever eated.” So there. Also, the new issue of Everyday Food arrived at our house yesterday and there are so many awesome cool-weather recipes this month. They feature meat loaf and I curse any available deities that my husband hates meat loaf, cause I need a baked pile of ground beef with a Heinz ketchup glaze in my life, goddammit.

You Tube: Louis CK’s stupid dog.

You Tube: Louis CK, the cartoon.

You Tube by way of retrojunk.com: I’m the only person I know who remembers Cough Whip. This bums me out.

Frisky Wife: I’m supporting my family while my husband completes his engineering degree. In 1960, this would have earned me a “Good Wife Certificate.”

I think the darling lolcats may have already completed their internet life cycle and have entered the realm of monotonous. However, they still have one or two nuggets of brilliance left in them.

College Humor by way of Tracey: Prank War. Apparently this is real, but it’s pretty wild. If it is, these guys have psychologically ruined each other.

The scene is early on a Saturday morning in a run-down house in the wannabe-suburbs section of the city. A husband and wife, reeking of garlic from last night’s salsa, are stinkily snoring away. Their child walks in and starts demanding breakfast and shocks his mother awake with icy cold hands, the first of the autumn. Their cat runs laps from room to room and when the wife pries her eyes open, she sees the cat dragging her cell phone out of the room by the wrist strap. She hisses at the cat to drop the phone and the cat snaps his head around to stare at her, wide-eyed, with her cell phone still dangling from his mouth. He is also whining at the wife for breakfast. The night before, after the child had been scolded for misbehaving and had responded by crumpling onto the couch and sobbed, the cat had rushed to the child’s side and sniffed his face. Concerned, the cat had grabbed the child’s head and playfully bit at it. What strange siblings.

Yesterday was one of those days that just didn’t work. The work day was fine, my class went well, etc. But when the husband and the baby picked me up from work, things went downhill.

We didn’t get to squeeze in our grocery shopping on Sunday so we headed toward the evil empire around 5:30. We, of course, got stuck in horrendous traffic and ended up arriving at Wal-Mart a good hour after we set off. Our actual shopping was fine, but we were in the check out line for almost an hour. There were maybe 3 lines open and none of them were moving. I commented that for the largest private employer in America, they sure didn’t seem to have anyone working there. When we finally got to a cashier, the woman in front of us was debating the price of some apples. The discrepancy was about 20 cents. Now, while I respect the rights of the consumer and don’t think we should just hand over money to a corporation like Wal-Mart when it’s not rightfully theirs, I think it’s really shitty to fight over 20 cents when there are 50 tired people behind you who just want to get their low-priced crap and go home. The woman sent her son to check on the price and didn’t seem to understand that the final price was going to be different because of these things called taxes. I desperately wished that I had a quarter handy so I could throw it at her and tell her to get the hell out of my way.

When we got home at 8 fucking 30, we had to face the following obstacles: groceries needed to be put away, the husband had homework, I had homework, the baby had homework, the baby needed a shower, Weeds was on at 10 (which might not seem important but I recap it for MamaPop so it’s my WORK, bitches), Californication was on at 10:30, none of us had eaten, and it was garbage night. Sigh. I put groceries away while the baby worked on his homework with the husband, who had run out of patience and rational behavior at that point and had taken on the task of whining at me until I could barely resist the urge to stab him with corn holders.

After all of that had been taken care of and the baby had been put to bed an hour and a half after he should have been, I sat down on the couch to do homework and discovered that I had pretty decent headache. I slogged through it but eventually had to go to bed at 11. The husband, still irritated, said, “Fine. Go to bed. This is not how I wanted this night to go.” Eh. Whatever, man. Nights like last night will happen when you have way too much going on in your life.

Despite sleeping almost 8 hours I was still so tired this morning. I really wish I could sleep less. It would make my life much more manageable.

Perhaps I should try some of that crystal meth everyone’s always raving about.

All of a sudden, it’s fall today. The air is crisp and cool. The leaves are showing a hint of color. And I am craving all things squash, soup, and pumpkin-flavored.

Also, it’s September 11th.

I did nothing exciting this weekend, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I did get my hair cut on Saturday, so maybe I’ll grace this space with a picture later.

I did have some handy types come over on Saturday to do some work in the small bedroom. It’s possible that that room will finally be finished in October. And it only took two years! At this rate, the house will be where we want it just in time for us to die. Can’t wait.

Another handy type came by yesterday to look at our dining room and give us a price on finishing and painting it. I guess I had never really looked at how jacked the walls are, but I’m really going to have to have a plasterer come in and smooth them out. The previous owner did all the repairs himself on the house and really it would have been better off if he had just let it be. For instance, here is the awesome addition he put on the back of the house, presumably while mainlining Jack Daniels:

Sigh.

In other news, the baby missed the bus for the first time this morning. Aw, yeah. Third day of school. In our defense, the bus was easily five minutes early. So we had to drive him to school, obviously, but once we were there I had no idea what to do with him. I took him into the building but a woman informed me that that was not the thing to do and that he had to wait on the playground until the teachers collected him. So I took him back outside and was like, “Uh, okay, I guess I’m going to leave you here now. But you recognize some of these kids, right?” Of course, he didn’t. But his bus pulled up right as I was getting ready to leave so I’m assuming he was in the right spot. Don’t you love my crossed-fingers method of parenting?

We watched Stranger than Fiction on Saturday, which was pretty good but not as awesome as I had been anticipating. I think Will Ferrell just doesn’t do it for me. But I would watch Maggie Gyllenhaal read the phone book. Love her. Dustin Hoffman was also really funny, but I felt like he just put a professorial spin on his character from I Heart Huckabee’s. But I did love his freakish coffee consumption and the fact that he taught a course on “Little did he know.” And I need more Emma Thompson in my life.

I watched that new HBO show Tell Me You Love Me last night. I’m going to write a recap for MamaPop but I left my notes at home. It’s much starker than any previous HBO series. Very serious. In all of their other dramas there’s always been at least a sprinkle of humor. There’s practically none in this one. We’ll see. It is pretty good, though…which means it will most certainly be canceled after its first season.

Louis C.K. was awesome last night. The show was at the Rex on the South Side which was about 500 degrees. Todd Barry opened up for him and he was pretty great, as well. He had a deadpan approach which ended up working particularly well because there was a pretty high meathead population in the audience. A guy in the front row just interrupted him early on and offered him a beer and Todd Barry was like, “Oh. You heckled me but were nice enough to offer me a beer.” Then the guy continued to apologize for like 3 minutes and Barry dubbed that “the Pittsburgh apology,” in which one apologizes for interrupting by continuing to interrupt. That guy was a douche and heckled him some more, but Barry pulled his card every time and said that he looked like he had just come from a caddying job. There was also guy a few rows behind us who kept going, “YEEEEOOOOWWWWW!” which Barry said was more of a Toby Keith concert cheer. Hehe.

I hate people.

Louis C.K. himself was just hysterical. I could listen to him talk about his wife and kids all day because so much of what he says is so so true. He did a bit about trying to get his five-year-old daughter into her car seat. She won’t go in, then she wants to buckle herself in and then can’t do it right so she whines and the parent finally goes, “JUST GET IN THE FUCKING CAR!” then grumbles all the way around to the driver’s side door. I was practically in tears. He also touched on her first day of kindergarten, which was on Tuesday, and said that they had this idealized vision of kissing and hugging her goodbye before tearfully sending her off. The reality was, “Come on! COME ON! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? LET’S GO WE’RE GOING TO BE LATE!” While the baby’s send off on the bus went smoothly, there were definitely some “are you fucking kidding me?” moments.

He also talked about going to a Steeler game one time and sitting in the nosebleed section next to these very Pittsburgh dudes. He said that they looked like manatees and were wearing these tiny tshirts. The skin on the back of the neck was all red and frost-bitten but they didn’t care and one of them had a squeezy bottle of Jack Daniels which Louis took a swig of. Ha. Totally.

Jwan, that bastard, got to meet him after the show for a second. Jwan’s glasses broke during the show so he was trying to fix them. He left the theater after everyone else and ran into Louis at the bar. I would have stayed behind to meet him and Barry but I had to get out of that sweatbox. I’m so ready for it to just be winter. I’m sick of sweating.

I spotted some big bug in our room this morning and assumed it was some cockroach or something. So I grabbed Greedo (our cat) and plopped him in front of it, only to realize that it was a grasshopper. I felt kind of bad because he died a slow, painful death at the paws of Greedo…but what the hell was a grasshopper doing in our room anyway?

Sigh. There he is. My kindergartener. Despite sleeping later than I meant to, this morning went rather well. We got all of his stuff together last night and I explained to him that some of the other parents would be at school with their kids this morning but that Mum and Dad had to go to school, too. We wouldn’t be there to transition him into his classroom, take his picture, give a few extra hugs, but that didn’t mean we weren’t with him in his heart or that we didn’t love him. He cried a little bit but I reassured him and this morning he was ready to go.

The arrival of the bus was a little anti-climactic. After seeing several of the little yellow variety go by, a white van with one of those school students signs on it pulled up. I think we were all a little disappointed, but hey, as long as it gets my one and only child to school safely and in one piece, I don’t care.

We kissed him and made sure he was buckled in. Then they pulled away and were gone.

Then I cried.

(more…)

Listening to undergrads compose short fiction is kind of painful. The stuff that they think is esoteric and indicative of their untapped wit is really just kind of stupid. I know, because I wrote the exact same shit when I was an undergrad. I should see if I can dig up the short story I wrote about the faux-Lifetime channel. It was meant to be a biting satire on women’s television, but it was really just a steaming turd. Oh, well. These are the lessons one must learn on her own.

Someone please tell me that this little phase that the baby is going through will dissipate once he’s in school. Every single night ends in tears (both mine and his) because he is either in total asshole mode, which includes mouthing off, refusing to listen, fooling around when he’s (not) eating dinner which results in food on the floor, flicking me and his dad with his fingers when we tell him no, or he switches right to you’re-way-too-old-for-this mode, which includes screaming, crying, and just general tantrums. Dudes, I am DONE! Louis C.K. says that the reason his 4-year-old daughter is an asshole is because nobody calls her on her bullshit. I don’t get it. I call him on his bullshit. I see no improvement.

Thank god that some monkeys once ate some fermented grapes that had been sitting on the ground and invented wine and the almighty buzz.

The guilt-ridden mom in me keeps thinking, “This is because you work and the husband goes to school and you aren’t around him everyday.” Granted, there may be some truth in there. He doesn’t get to see us during the day and I imagine he’s pretty bored with life by this point. He has some justifiable reasons to act out. I just wish he wouldn’t.

Speaking of Louis C.K., you are all jealous of me because I am going to see him tomorrow night! I should probably invest in some Depends, since he has a tendency to make me pee my pants. However, I bought the tickets months ago, when I thought that the baby’s first day of school was August 30th. So I get to pull another stellar parent moment when I say, “How was your traumatic first day of kindergarten at your new school with the school bus and the kids and the lunchroom I have to go bye kiss kiss.”

I win at life.

This a picture of me, the baby, and our associates, SpongeBob and Patrick. This picture is significant because it was taken moments ago by the photo booth application on my laptop. On my (admittedly ugly) couch. In my living room. Yes, after months of incessant whining on my part, something finally snapped in the husband’s brain and he hooked up our wireless router. Now that we have two computers with internet access, this marriage just might make it after all.

This gloriously long weekend has served me well. I’ve slept in past 9 a.m. TWICE, which I haven’t done in a looong time. However, I’ve been doing stuff like school supply shopping and picnicking, so now I have to squeeze in laundry and homework today around spending quality time with the husband’s family. And I don’t think we’re going to make it to a grocery store today so I’m really not sure what I’m going to do for lunch tomorrow. I’m thinking maybe something from the ghastly overpriced salad bar at the UC. Can’t wait.

Saturday I went to a canoe club in Verona for a picnic with some other MAPW types. It was nice, despite the fact that the baby came with me and is still on his Campaign of Terror. He nagged professors, screamed, whined, and flirted with grad students. Sigh. He did get to go canoing, which he enjoyed and was cute as hell.

The baby followed up his fantastic behavior at the picnic by waking me up early yesterday morning, wielding a vibrator he had found in my bedside drawer, and asking me what it was. I think I mumbled something about an egg beater before shoving it back in the drawer, too tired to be embarrassed.

I feel bad for wishing this summer away, but I’m ready for fall.

Wrote this last night

One week of the semester down, 15 more to go.

Man, I really wish I hadn’t just typed that out.

We had another trip to the baby’s new school today to do some developmental tests and whatnot. We also talked to the school nurse about his tree nut allergy and she seemed mildly freaked out. I am not concerned since I think the plan of attack is pretty simple. Check foods for tree nuts and avoid those that contain them. If he happens to ingest some, remain calm, administer Epipen, call 911. Or you can skip those first two steps and just call 911, especially since there’s a fire station with paramedics right across the street. In fact, you wouldn’t even need to call 911, just shout out the window. Eh, whatever.

I know I’ve said before that I’m excited for him to start school and all of those emotional, “Oh, my baby!” reasons still stand, but now I’m really excited because I’m hoping it will mean an end to this end-of-the-summer dementia he’s experiencing. He doesn’t have any playmates close by and it’s been tough getting together with any of his buddies, so he’s been pretty bored all summer. I feel bad about that, but there’s not a ton I can do about it. Consequently, he’s becoming quite the pain in the ass, whining constantly, throwing fits, picking fights with the cat. Stuff like that. He’s currently attempting to play Rayman’s Raving Rabbids on the Wii, despite the fact that it’s a little over his head. He’s obviously failing at all the games and then shouting at the TV. The husband is very helpfully talking on the phone. The cat is scratching the couch. I gave a hearty middle finger to the dishes in the sink.

We’re all sort of resigned to the suckiness of this time of year.

At least the weather was a little merciful today. Having to deal with 95 degree weather at this point is just obnoxious and I’m sick of sweating and being sticky and greasy.

But in less whiny news, the husband picked up a cheap copy of Short Circuit on DVD the other night. We watched it with the baby last night and today and the husband and I had both forgotten how amusing that flick is. And Ally Sheedy was so…squeaky.

And now today, after I had to abandon this post to difuse the Wii situation…

The husband had to go play records last night so I decided to watch The Devil Wears Prada. I had seen the end of it a couple of times, but wanted to watch it from the beginning and I knew the husband wasn’t into it. You know, that movie’s not too bad. I chuckled at the beginning when they contrasted Andy getting ready in the morning with the other glamazons. The unkempt hair, minimal makeup and comfort-over-style manner of dressing is so, so me. Meryl Streep really is frighteningly convincing as the evil boss and Emily Blunt was fantastic. I really think Anne Hathaway has a fantastic career ahead of her, so long as she can break out of the “she’s had to overcome so much…being brunette and all,” roles. Hollywood really needs to quit it with that shit. Coincidentally, both Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway are starring in separate Jane Austen related movies.

I have some housework and an MAPW picnic to go to today. My mom and I are also heading out to buy the baby his school supplies. I’ve had two cups of Pleasant Morning Buzz and am feeling rather pleasantly buzzed.

I need a shower.