I posted on MamaDojo the other day that I’ve been putting some effort into my appearance. For me, 32 has been a particularly shifty year when it comes to my self-image. I’ve never been so at peace with my body, but I’ve also never been so proactive in changing it. Well, changing probably isn’t the best way to put it. I think I’m finally at a point where I’m recognizing how good this bag of bones has been to me and I want to treat it right. I eat well, making almost all of my meals with a focus on what my body needs, what will make it feel good. I exercise, but not so much that I risk hurting myself. I regard the tiny lines that are quietly etching their way around my eyes with a sense of, “I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Pretty much the opposite of what I was doing 15 years ago when my body was, outwardly, Holy Shit Amazing to most standards.
This is not to say that I’m “cured” of all of that nonsense. I still fret about the size of my belly and how weird it is that the meat on the side of my left knee is so much bigger than that of my right. Stuff like that.
But I’m noticing that I want to be more…visible? Like I mentioned in my MamaDojo post, Joan from Mad Men rocks my world. She’s got boobs. She’s got hips. She’s got an ass. And we know all of this, but more importantly, we know that she knows it. I’ve been trying to adopt some of that attitude while remaining true to the fact that I like being comfortable and somewhat conservative.
So, today, I was a little apprehensive about my outfit, especially when the husband sized me up and said, “What…what’s with this outfit?” I then peppered him with questions, paranoid that I was, to use a somewhat offensive and not at all feminist word*, skanky. Of course, this recalled another hilarious exchange between the two of us when I had some anxiety over a pair of shorts that were shorter than I usually buy.
“Are they skanky?” I fretted.
“I think you and I have very different definitions of skanky,” he replied. “You look like you’re about to go golfing.”
“But not, like, skanky golfing?” I confirmed, because you know how skanky golfing is totally a thing.
I just want to make sure that I’m not overdoing it and that I’m projecting a relatively youthful vibe without looking like I’m denial over the fact that I’m 32.
So, here’s me in the bathroom at work this morning while our network was down. (What else was I supposed to do? Write things down on paper? Pssh.) I’ll provide the inner monologue.
Conservative shot…terrified someone will walk in.
Try to emulate one of those ladies who document their outfits everyday…ow, I think I pulled something.
Getting really daring now. Attempting to look up without falling over. Oh, why does my posture look weird? Can you tell that I have a wad of paper towels in my left hand?
I need to stop messing around. Jaunty, flirty pose. Vogue.
Not pictured is a bracelet I was wearing this morning…until I remembered that I really don’t like wearing bracelets.
It’s shorter than I would normally go for and the addition of a belt was, to me, completely impulsive and weird. And I would have worn a necklace but I was so thrown off by the belt and the bracelet that I was worried my head would explode. But how do you think I’m doing?
* I’m usually really conscious of my language but sometimes I just have to go there.
The husband called me one afternoon last week and told me that he and the baby were stuck in a good deal of traffic coming home from the Pirates game and would I mind taking the bus home? That was fine with me. I left work a few minutes early to beat some of the rush and on my way to the bus stop, I could see a cluster of inbound buses idling at the stop light. I knew that I was way too far away to catch them before they pulled up to the nearby stop and decided to just take my time and catch one of the next bunch.
Then this…nonsense ran through my brain.
As dumb as they are, I kind of wish I had a Segway right now so I could just make one of those buses…
But Segways are for douchebags.
I should jog more so that I can build up my speed so that I could just run to the bus stop…
But then I would have to wear my big ol’ sports bra all the time just in case I have to take off and my sports bra gives me UniHooter.
What would be really awesome is if I could fly. Then I could fly to the bus stop…
But wait…if I could fly, why would I be taking the bus? Wouldn’t I just fly home? Why is my imagination making me a pigeon?
Around this time I realized that I need to quit being so absurd.
* * *
Last night, I was talking in my sleep so loud that I woke myself up. I took a few seconds to wonder who I was talking to and about what before I realized that the answer to my questions was “No one real,” and “Probably bacon.”
* * *
I took the day off of work on Friday because I had a dentist appointment at a weird time. I was also, apparently, very exhausted as I slept on Thursday night through Friday morning for something like 12 hours. That evening, we headed out to Oakmont for the annual Greek food festival, which was unfortunately rained on but not before we had some delicious chicken, lamb shank, and loukoumades.
Saturday I was not feeling well, physically or emotionally. My mom came over and was trying to do stuff around my house while the husband was going to his grandmother’s to pick up his grandfather’s old hi-fi and there was too much stuff going on for me to handle. I burst into tears quite irrationally, but to my credit I haven’t done that in WEEKS. The baby felt really bad for me, though, and gave me a bunch of hugs, then took me by the hand and led me to the couch. “Lie down, Mum. Take a nap. You’ll feel better,” he said, and put a blanket over me. He then brought me some books, his DS, and a cup of water and patted me on the shoulder. It was the sweetest thing ever.
Of course, this morning, I was trying for 15 minutes to get him out of bed amidst his whining and groaning. While brushing my teeth, I yelled, “Are you out of bed yet?” He replied, “Yes! Gawd!” And technically he was. He had climbed out of bed…and then curled up on the floor and was falling asleep again.
We all have nightmares. None of us is unique in that respect. And I think we’ve all had a few that have always haunted us. I have at least a handful of nightmares that have so thoroughly terrified me that I’ve never forgotten them. Like the nanny legs from the Muppet Babies trying to kill me, which sounds silly but, seriously, if I brought this to life in a horror movie you would lose your shit.
But maybe less so if they were played by these guys.
There was also the series of apocalyptic nightmares that I had in the months following 9/11 and leading up to the baby’s birth, obviously spurred by that harsh realization of the kind of world that I was bringing a child into.
There was the weird, crucifixion-type dream that I had when I was pretty young, in which I was executed along with two other people for the vague crime of being bad. I woke up screaming, desperate for forgiveness.
And there was, of course, that weird alien one from a few years ago.
But I think the scariest nightmares are the ones that don’t scare us at all.
I had one last night in which I was abusing the baby consistently over a long period of time. Hitting, screaming, abandoning. It was terrible. Thinking about it today I’m thankful to be fuzzy on the details since what I do remember makes me feel sick.
I haven’t talked about it much here, but I’m coming out of a pretty dark period in life from, I think, a lot of insecurity about mistakes that I think I’ve made. I’m doing so, so much better now. Like 180 degrees better, but I know that turning over the rough stuff about what the baby must have thought of me when things were getting bad has been on the back burner.
I don’t beat myself up for having days when I’m just not being the mom that I wish I could be. It’s not always up to me. Sometimes the baby is in a cranky mood and I’m exhausted and we end up bickering. But what I did in my nightmare was make sure that he knew that I did not love him, which has never been the case no matter how inescapable my darkness may have seemed at times. I think it didn’t scare me because no matter how improbable those other nightmares have been, this one was the one that was utterly impossible.
Much to his increasing embarrassment, I will often grab him and smother him with kisses and hugs and “I love you”s. Something inside makes me do this, I think because I fear that he’ll have dark days like the ones I’ve had. If one of my jobs as a parent is to teach him survival skills, then I’m going to always be braiding a lifeline for him that he’ll be able to find even in the murkiest of waters.
Not long after I published my post on Friday noting that I hadn’t uploaded last day of school pictures, I realized that I totally had and just forgot all about it. Dur. So, here is the (not so much) baby on his last day of third grade.
That crumpling sound you hear is my heart. Please ignore.
But anyway, I’m coming off of one of the best weekends I’ve ever had and I have the messy kitchen and piles of dirty laundry to prove it. Friday night I accompanied the husband to Eclipse where he was playing records. That place is decent, though I was a little put off by the Ikea-heavy decor and the odd 1998 look of the place. However, the original glass block bar is so cool-looking. I gawked at it for a good 20 minutes. We took off kind of early because we had a big day on Saturday.
I got myself and the baby up kind of early and my mom took us into Shadyside where I was getting a long-overdue haircut and pedicure. My mom dropped me off at home and she and the baby went to Legofest at the convention center and I made one more stop to the nail shop to get my fingers looking nice. It was, as Truvy from Steel Magnolias would say, “a full day’s beauty.” Then the husband and I got dressed and headed into town.
Aren't we swell?
We ate at Seviche, which we’d been dying to return to since we ate there last year, and had one of the best meals ever. Here’s our obscene list of tasty things:
Strawberry Mimosa Champagne Mojito
Cuban Pomegranate Martini
Trio of Chips and Salsa
Traditional, Curried Tropical Fruit, and Fire & Ice Seviches with Ahi Tuna, Scottish Salmon, and Hamachi
Mojo Criollo Nigiri
Bistec Bocadillos with Filet Mignon
Chorizo Wrapped Diver Scallops
I also made the executive decision to order a really expensive bottle of Malbec and noted to the waiter that we splurged because of the special occasion. As a surprise at the end of the meal, he brought us a piece of Tres Leches cake with fresh strawberries and two glasses of Champagne.
After dinner, we walked over to the Consol Energy Center for the Sade concert. It was a happy coincidence that it came around the time of our anniversary, because it was the no-brainer special event. And the concert was so, so amazing. Sade the singer and Sade the band are all so beautiful and talented and smooth and wonderful and sexy. Sade didn’t speak much, but when she did her soft British accent made things like, “Pittsburgh, you’ve built a lot of bridges and they all lead directly to my heart,” and “He charms the birds out of the sky because they want to bask in his light,” sound beautiful and poetic instead of kinda cheesy. The stage was gently lit and adorned with sheer white curtains that would dramatically fly away or drop into the recesses of the floor.
The music, of course, was beautiful. The highlight for me was “By Your Side.” I’ve always liked that song just fine, but never really regarded it as one of their greatest. But for that song the stage was lit in this warm, sunset color and at the end confetti was shot out over the audience. The husband and I were literally by each other’s sides and I knew that we would remain that way for many more years to come.
Edited to add: Can’t believe I forgot to mention Father’s Day, which we spent at my mom’s house with my dad, grandparents, aunt, and uncle. After a slight panic early in the afternoon, we had a rad cookout and then went to see Super 8 at the drive-in. Yeah. This weekend ruled.
Pretend that I have here a picture of the baby’s last day of school on Wednesday and a comparison shot of his first day of school and, perhaps to torture myself, some half-assed collage of his first and last days of school. I meant to upload those pictures last night but I started playing some stupid game on my computer and it didn’t happen.
But yes, I’m officially the owner of a fourth-grader now, which just seems way too surreal. I only kind of remember third grade. I think the main reason that I remember anything from it at all is because that was the year that I got chicken pox and you don’t really forget that kind of misery (two words: sitz bath) (four more words: pox. inside. my. eyelids.). But I definitely remember the fourth grade so it’s weird to me that all of this is really going to stick in his brain now. Or maybe it won’t since he got that chicken pox vaccine and he won’t have that experience to anchor him.
Little League also ended for us last night in a playoffs defeat. The baby’s team had a really rough season, I think winning only two (maybe three?) games. They had a ton of rain-outs and as a result never really gelled as a team. Oh well. I can’t say that I’m not kind of glad to have our evenings returning to some semblance of a routine and to not get dinner from the concession stand multiple times a week.
I’m not sure what exactly is up with me, but I’ve gone to bed insanely early the last couple nights. I’ve put in at least 9 hours each night and am still forcing myself out of bed, albeit with much less misery on the far too many days that my total sleepage is pathetically low.
As schmoopy and gag-worthy as it sounds, I have a hard time sleeping without the husband and I think his nearly week-long absence caught up with me.
In other schmoopy and gag-worthy news, today is our fifth wedding anniversary.
All together now: "Awwwwww!"
When we mentioned it to the baby this morning, he said something along the lines of “Time flies,” and it really does.
I was looking through my “Wedding” folder that I have on my work computer (yes, I did some wedding planning at work, couldn’t be helped) for something and came across the track list for the mix CD that we handed out as favors. Among the songs that we chose was “Once in a Lifetime” by the Talking Heads, which seems kind of odd since it’s a somewhat cynical look at life and marriage and adulthood. But listening to it today I thought about how there have been plenty of times already when I wondered who I was and what I was doing, certain that I had screwed up terribly. There have been plenty of times when I have, in fact, said to myself, “My god, what have I done?” But when I take a good long look at the husband and the baby, I know exactly what I’ve done and I know exactly how good it is.
The husband returned from Chicago yesterday and was able to resume his Driving Me to Work duties this morning. Of course, I got to experience one more morning commute to work aboard Port Authority Transit. On a Monday, no less.
Pittsburgh doesn’t have the worst public transit in the world, but it is beleaguered by a perfect storm of inadequate funding and the city’s troublesome topography. It’s also just not the simplest system. You kind of just have to KNOW how it all works. And with frequent service and route changes, I’ve had multiple experiences in my close to 20 years of PAT history of shuffling up to the driver and saying, “Uh, I think I screwed up. This is not where I was trying to go.” (But, then again, I’m kind of an idiot.) This has made me less than confident in my ability to get anywhere and last summer when I was in New York, I had a great deal of anxiety about navigating the subways by myself. Of course, as I soon found out, NYC’s transit is amazing and idiot-proof. After all, it’s a huge city with all manner of people in it. And really, this guy, whose mind is obviously preoccupied with other things, gets around just fine so I should really quit getting my ovaries in a bunch about it.
Anyway, yesterday the bus was a little late, but I had told my boss that I was going to be arriving around 9:30 on the days that the husband was out of town because that’s just how it is when I have to get the baby off to school first. We meandered out of Brookline and I turned my attention to my phone as we headed into downtown. I looked up a few minutes later because I noticed that the bus had been idling awhile and realized that we were in Allentown.
I immediately became concerned because while Allentown is far from the worst place on earth, for me I’m always wondering, “Why are we in Allentown?” if we hadn’t intended to go to Allentown. I glanced at my fellow passengers to gauge how I should be feeling, because I sincerely thought that maybe I had passed out or something and managed to get on the wrong bus. This seemed reasonable because I had two sleepwalking episodes (and one sleeptalking episode in which I requested some chicken) when I was a kid and now I’m just waiting to become one of those people who is like, “Oops, stepped off a building.” Everyone else had that Allentown face, too, though which brought me some relief until I realized, “Holy shit, no one knows why we’re in Allentown!”
The bus driver sped past people at two stops who were trying to flag him down and at that point I concluded, “Well, this is it. He’s driving us to the woods somewhere and is going to make us dig our own graves behind the murder shed.” But then I remembered that I hold the internet in my hands and was able to ascertain that there had been some massive power failure in the Mt. Washington tunnel. This was but a detour, which made a little more sense than my murder shed theory.
We finally pulled into town a little after 9 and a 61B quickly arrived, thus beginning the second part of my journey. I anticipated a quiet ride to work.
No.
The 61B was filled with one of each of the characters that God created specifically to ride the bus and make your commute that much more interesting. It was like the Noah’s Ark of mass transit. Loud Talker was there, as was Smelly Guy. The lady who refuses to sit on the seats or touch any of the handles was there, stumbling about and bumping into people. I mean, I get where she’s coming from. I, too, have seen those Dateline specials that have titles like, “Fecal Matter Everywhere” and “Feces Pieces” and “How Much Feces Are You Inadvertently Eating Right Now?” But I figure at some point someone told me to, “Eat shit and die,” and I’m just kind of going along with that. But if you’re going to go the germaphobe route, own that shit (no pun intended). Get on the bus in your hazmat suit and gloves. Don’t put all of your faith in your ability to defy physics. It’s annoying.
I realize I’m being very snotty, but that’s what such an eventful bus ride will do to a person. It changes you, strips you of your compassion. This seems to be a universal experience:
The other day, I noticed a few ants in the kitchen. I wasn’t concerned and disposed of them pretty quickly. The next day I was slightly alarmed to see two more surveying my cat’s food bowl. Disposed of those as well, and cleaned the bowl.
And then.
Yesterday morning, I came downstairs and was horrified to see that my cat’s food was now moving and wriggling. The call had gone out and the buffet had begun. A steady stream of visitors were marching through my kitchen and my entryway looked like Grand Central Station for Disgusting Insects.
Of course, this discovery came right when the baby and I had to rush to get to his bus stop and mine, so I did the only rational thing I could think of and grabbed a hand vac. I sucked up a good hundred ants or so and dumped them outside, then ran back in to throw some kind of lunch together for my kid and put some kind of clothing on me.
When we came back downstairs to get our shoes on and leave, I was extremely upset to find that the ants’ cronies had replaced their predecessors with a vengeance. For reasons I won’t get into now, I had a box of unopened potato chips in my entryway and worried that they had somehow attracted the ants. With three minutes to finish getting ready and out the door, I grabbed the box and tossed it onto the basement steps. My cat, constantly curious about the existence of Basement Cat, zoomed past me. Once he gets down there, he doesn’t emerge for hours. Flustered, I yelled after him, “Well, I guess you’re staying down there all day, then!” and closed and locked the door, not realizing until later that I could have left the door open, since I lock the door to keep the cat OUT.
I was upset all day, feeling shame and disgust with myself that I had ants, and worried about leaving my cat to his own devices all day without food or water. Maybe he’ll make himself useful and kill a mouse or something, I thought.
I burst in the door that evening on the way to the baby’s Little League game, certain that my entire house would now be made of ants and that my cat would have managed to kill himself in the basement. I thought of the husband, returning home from his Chicago trip on Monday to an ant-house and a dead cat and a frizzy-haired wife shrugging and saying, “I dunno. It just went all wrong,” and how he would realize that I can’t be left to my own devices.
I turned to the MamaPop distro for advice and heard about cinnamon sticks and talcum powder and traps. I pictured my entryway and kitchen looking like something out of The Blair Witch Project with a cinnamon stick man seated on a boric acid trap surrounded by a circle of powder while I stood nearby chanting. I opted to go with the basic ant traps and warned my cat to not manage to kill himself on those, either.
This morning, the situation was still…a situation, but seemed to have improve somewhat. I went about packing the baby’s lunch and wanted to slice a peach for him. That’s when I remembered my lack of ability when it comes to stone fruits. I slit all around one peach and tried to pull it apart, but I was too forceful and it became mush. I grabbed another that felt firmer but the same thing happened. With time running out before we had to leave, and my neurotic need to never waste food, I stood over the sink and ate both mangled peaches. “Get your shoesh on, dude! Come on!” I shouted, mouth full of peach and spitting juice everywhere.
A recurring problem that we’ve had this half of the school year is the baby’s school bus. At least once a week, we’ve had to deal with it being extremely late or not showing up at all. I’ll call the bus company. They’ll apologize. Things will be fine for a few days with a new bus driver…until that bus driver disappears into the ether, taking my son’s ride to school with him or her.
I have no idea what it’s like to be a bus driver. It seems like one of those jobs that’s probably very stressful and woefully underpaid, because that’s how we tend to treat difficult but essential jobs in our society. And I imagine that for my son’s bus route, which is made up of a very small group of kids from our area going to their magnet school, a low-seniority bus driver is usually stuck on that route. It has seemed like the drivers that we’ve had were kind of young and maybe just starting out.
All of this is to say that I understand where the problems might come in. That doesn’t make it okay, though, and it really doesn’t make the 40 minutes that I waste on the corner any more worthwhile.
Yesterday, after the bus was again absent, I called the bus company and was told, “Oh! We’ll send someone!” What the? Do I need to prompt them now? Did they morph into a cab company? The deal is, at the beginning of the school year, they say, “We’ll be picking up your child and transporting him to school at this time, Monday through Friday,” and I say, “Great! See you then!” and place the one and only fruit of my loins into their care as they navigate potholes, construction, and *gulp* Pittsburgh drivers. There’s no, “Hey! Guess what, bus company? I’m sending my kid to school again today! I know! Two days in a row lulz!”
Yesterday’s flub was particularly bad because the husband had to go to the airport and having to take both the baby and me to school and work wasn’t really on the agenda. Also, the longer I stand at the bus stop, the better chance I have of encountering some of our neighborhood’s, er, characters. Like the under-toothed woman who, a few months ago during a similar incident, alerted me to a used condom lying on the ground nearby. But, like, in an insane way. Like, she got all in my face with her Newport breath and lisped, “There’sh a yewshed condom over there. A yewshed condom. What should we do?” and I wondered when, exactly, my life turned into a David Lynch movie. Yesterday, I heard her yelling, “MA’AM! MA’AM!” as I was finishing up ordering a school bus and she approached me and said, “The poleesh are looking for a light-shkinned fella who broke into a lady’sh houshe. An 80-year-old lady. And he had a gun. I’m sho glad you have a shell phone. If you shee him, call 911 becaushe he’s light-shkinned and hash a gun.”
Got it. Neighborhood block watch in effect but seriously NOT RIGHT NOW, OKAY?
Anyway, we eventually got to school and work and the airport and no light-shkinned armed fellas or yewshed condomsh were encountered. I put in several stern phone calls to my son’s school and the Pittsburgh Public Schools’ transportation department and today, the bus arrived, manned by a very professional older gentleman who gave me his card and introduced himself.
I managed to saunter over to my bus stop in plenty of time because apparently the earlier PAT bus never showed up, which sucked for the people who had been standing there for 30 minutes in the 90 degree heat. Of course, I was then in the direct line of my enemy, the sun, and tried to avoid getting a sunburn first thing in the morning by positioning myself behind a five-inch wide utility pole.
Survival skills. I have them.
Alas, the bus came and I boarded without incident…until I found an ant crawling on my face.
Over the long weekend, we made our annual pilgrimage to Detroit. After carefully considering the lineup and cost for this year’s festival, we decided to not attend the festival proper, and instead save our time, money, and energy for the after parties and the city at large.
It felt a little weird to not be marching down Jefferson toward Hart Plaza every day. But, as I explained to someone who asked, I just don’t feel like it’s for me anymore. The promoters are catering to a different crowd (read: wealthier and, I’m sorry, not at all sophisticated in musical taste or public behavior). The lineup is just not as worthwhile for me to endure the discomfort of sharing a space with people who are either too young or too old to act the way that they do…not that there’s a good age to wake up and say, “Today I think I’ll experiment with wearing just underpants.” Although, from what I understand, the behavior of festival attendees in general was extremely subdued compared to that of people in town a few weeks ago for a country music festival. Apparently, nightmares came to life and rode into town on John Deere tractors.
Anyway, our loose plan was to do some touristy things that had been on our list for awhile, take it day by day as far as the festival goes and set aside money for daily admission if there was someone who we really wanted to see and didn’t think we would have another opportunity. We would eat well, check out the sights, head back to the hotel for disco naps, and then enjoy the nightlife.
This worked out wonderfully.
My Twitter and Facebook remained virtually silent throughout the weekend, until finally I stopped laughing long enough to report:
By that point, I had spent nearly every minute since Friday afternoon with the husband, the sister-in-law, the sister-in-law’s boyfriend, Frank, and Noleian, plus other groups of Pittsburghers like Jwan, Liz, Adam, Preslav, Shawn, Kristine, Curt, Amanda, Tony, Sarah, and Arnie. We had been all over the city, exploring eateries and neighborhoods that we’d never seen before. Then we would go out and dance ourselves silly before returning to the hotel and waking the birds up with our slumber party antics. We had so much fun.
There was a decent amount of cutting loose, including an ill-advised plan on Friday to sample Four Loko and Blast by Colt 45. As I heaved the cans down from their shelves at the party store, I explained, “We’re all going to try a little bit of each. It’ll be like a wine flight!”
I took some tasting notes from the assembled imbibers:
“It smells like…something I’ve smelled before.”
“It looks like…something I’ve seen before.”
“Hmm…It’s like you soaked a urinal cake in beer and drank it.”
“Gives you corpse tongue.”
“Tastes like they had a bum swish this around in his mouth and then spit it in a can.”
The Strawberry Watermelon was terrible. The Blueberry Pomegranate was okay, but we were alarmed when a small amount spilled on the nightstand and stained it immediately, as we suddenly became aware of what this concoction might be doing to our insides. The Lemonade Four Loko was almost pleasant, but it’s worth remembering that we were probably irrevocably brain-damaged by the time we cracked that bad boy open.
With that milestone behind us, we headed out to see Suburban Knight and Juan Atkins. Suburban Knight was awesome. Juan was apparently hiding a wet blanket in his leather pants because he immediately made things weird and not fun, so we left.
On Saturday, the sister-in-law and her boyfriend and I went to Hamtramck, which is a city within Detroit, and met up with the husband, Frank, and Noleian at Detroit Threads. It was a cool record store but is also a vintage clothing store. This was a huge bonus for me. When I go on record shopping trips with the husband, I usually poke around for a little bit and keep an eye out for stuff that I know he’s looking for, but I can’t help but get bored after awhile. The selection of clothing that they had was really impressive and well-organized. The sister-in-law and I both actually found a number of items that were a) cute, b) decently priced, and c) fit us. It’s pretty hard to find all three of these qualities in many vintage stores, in my experience. I bought two dresses and a totally badass coat that I’ll have to take pictures of and show you. So excited about them.
We were going to go to Slows BBQ for dinner but they had a two-hour wait and we were getting murderously hungry. We ended up at Mexican Village, which was decent but not outstanding. I was pretty proud of us for going through multiple pitchers of salsa (yes, pitchers of salsa) and margaritas.
That night, we went to a cafe/performance venue to see Kai Alce and Omar S, which was so, so great. The venue is notoriously hot and within minutes we were all sweating. This did not deter us from going crazy the rest of the night, especially since Omar S’ set was completely bananas. I kept looking at the husband and saying, “What is this track?” and was frankly disturbed when he didn’t know any of them, because that dude is a veritable walking encyclopedia of dance music. I then said out loud, “I think maybe Omar S was abducted by aliens and they gave him a stack of records to play. I’m concerned.”
We finally got to a point where we had to step outside, and the husband and I bumped into Scott Grooves. He and the husband needed to exchange records, so we walked with him to his car. It was a unique kind of delight to come upon Scott’s mid-80s Pontiac Parisienne and to watch him open the trunk to reveal a meticulous collection of plastic bags. What an odd fellow.
On Sunday, we went to a Detroit Tigers/Boston Red Sox game at Comerica Park. It was slightly miserable for the first inning or so as it was in the mid 90s and sunny. But it eventually cooled down. It was cool to see a Major League baseball game somewhere other than PNC Park and we got to see Big Papi hit a home run. Comerica Park is very…busy. It seems like when it came time to decorate it, anything that was standing still was outfitted with a tiger, a baseball, a bat, a Chevy, a fountain, a bridge, or sometimes all six.
Also, this happened:
Which only bolstered my suspicions that aliens were present and indicated to me that CLEARLY I need to drink and get little sleep more often since it does so much for my critical thinking capabilities.
For dinner, we went to Buddy’s Pizza, which was ridiculously tasty. I’ve not done extensive pizza taste tests over the country, but I feel like, objectively, Buddy’s has some of the best.
The after party that we had planned on attending was shut down and without a real back-up plan we ended up just staying in for the night, which was kind of dumb. We should have just gone out, but oh well.
Monday we finally made it to Slows which was OHMYHOLYGOD delicious. Let me blow your mind here for a second (vegetarians, look away).
Green beans, pulled pork, chicken, and brisket. The brisket literally melted in my mouth.
An unfortunately too dark picture of our ribs, macaroni and cheese, black eyed peas, and baked beans. I wish I could have documented the meal better but my hands were shaking in anticipation from the meat fumes.
Banana pudding with banana slices and Nilla wafers. Swoon!
Then we were all kinda meat-drunk.
Since we were right by the iconic Michigan Central Station, we decided to walk off a little bit of our meal and check it out like good yuppie wannabes post-industrial ruin tourists urban explorers I-can-see-this-becoming-some-really-wonderful-loft-apartments-starting-in-the-low-300s!
It’s just…stunning. It’s huge and smells kinda weird but is still really, really beautiful.
Someone who used to work there just happened to drive past and told us how gorgeous and busy it used to be. He didn’t sound sad. Just matter-of-fact.
I felt kind of bad about the pictures that I took this year, since so many of them capture what people would see as negatives. But it’s hard to capture stuff like this:
…a grown man and his friends, laughing, for a few precious days not caring about whatever has them down, genuinely having a wonderful time with people who truly understand each other. Or this:
…the beauty of a renaissance center shrouded in fog late at night. If you’ve been there, then maybe you understand what I’m talking about.
Anyway, our last night was going to be at a house party featuring Andres and Malik Pittman, both of whom I adore. I was especially excited about Andres since he’s responsible for one of my personal anthems.
Unfortunately, the barbecue turned on me and I spent an ungodly amount of time in the bathroom. I resigned myself to the fact that I was too sick to go out. I crumbled into bed and turned on TV while everyone else went out. I was in the middle of a really depressing program about Gettysburg (the average time of a limb amputation in field hospitals was 12 minutes) when Frank texted me and asked if I felt like I could possibly make it out. “Maybe,” I replied. Then I decided that there was no way that I was spending our last night there in bed. The husband drove back to the hotel to get me and I shuffled to the car, ginger ale in hand. When we got to the venue, the bouncer let me in for free because I was wearing my Northland Roller Rink shirt. I was pretty proud of myself for rallying, even though I had to elbow some people out of the way to get some choice real estate near a window, as it was too hot for me in my, er, sensitive condition.
I came home to Pittsburgh feeling tired and kind of gross, but my spirits were totally rejuvenated. I love my friends. I love my husband. I love that we do this together every year.
Remember on Friday when I admitted that we hadn’t been grocery shopping since, like, Bin Laden was still alive? Yeah, still haven’t gone. Normally, we would do such a thing on the weekend, but, well…my weekend was wack. It was a wackend.
Saturday I had to work, which is inherently ugh. Yes, it was for a fun thing (graduation) and yes, I’ll get overtime, but it’s still working on Saturday. After that was over, we headed to the baby’s first piano recital, which was in his piano instructor’s storefront church in Swissvale. The baby, always one to tempt that struck-down-by-lightning thing, displayed the kind of religious tolerance that comes from only having brief glimpses of opulent Catholic churches and loudly commented, “This isn’t even a real church. It’s small. And plain.” I have a feeling this is going to be one of the things that comes up if The Rapture is, in fact, this Saturday. The recital was nice enough and not too long. The baby was adorably nervous but got through his piece, “Yellow Submarine,” just fine.
The husband had to DJ after that and I, after putting the baby to bed, passed out on the couch holding my drink. Classy!
Sunday should have been devoted to groceries and laundry but instead I had to attend a Ladies’ Luncheon. I was not in the mood, but went anyway because I decline them fairly often (they’re always at the worst times of the year) and I know it bums my grandmother out when I don’t attend. Of course, I started coming down with a bear of a headache and contributed little to the conversation, but that was good because I started babbling about Ghost Adventures and saying stuff like, “I wonder how much ass Zak gets in those small towns.” Nobody offered up any guesses.
I came home, still vaguely intending to go to the grocery store, but ended up nursing my headache the rest of the day.
Last night, the baby was supposed to have a baseball game but it was cancelled because the weather here has been less than cooperative. It’s rained so much that my grass is starting to look like something that people work on with sickles.
Speaking of baseball, Jwan came over for a little while last night and we were discussing the Pirates and their quick slide back down beneath .500. The husband commented that he still has faith in them ultimately having a winning season, that this recent streak of losses was a momentary hurdle. “More like a HURRDURRDLE,” I replied. The husband laughed but Jwan, who apparently is not aware of DERP, thought I was having a stroke or something.
