kdiddy.org

The semester is starting to wind down, which means both work and school are getting a tad psychotic. I keep hearing about how awful “Christmas creep” is but I’m going to be honest and say that I am all about Christmas this year. I’ve already started listening to Christmas music because I have this cockamamie theory that it makes me more productive. I listened to Christmas music when I was arbitrarily cleaning my house last week and I was surprised at how motivated I was. I think maybe my mom used to pull that with me when I was little, putting on Christmas music and telling me to help her clean and decorate, the incentive being that if I did, Santa might not give me the shaft. And, you know, I had some serious Tinkerbell and Cabbage Patch habits back in the day.

I’m also very gooily and mushily in love with my husband and son right now, and Christmas music reminds me that I will soon have days and days to cuddle with them and soak them up. I hate being this busy, but it really does make me appreciate how much I love them and miss them.

Anyway, here’s what’s been going on.

My dad is doing well. Very well, in fact. He’ll need to do a round of chemo to ensure that any microscopic spreading of the cancer is killed, but his doctors are very optimistic. Right now, he’s trying to figure out what he wants to do about his job…to retire or not to retire.

The husband finally had the tendon in his finger repaired about two weeks ago after some really ridiculous delays. By the way, anyone in need of an orthopedic should NOT seek treatment from Ronit Wolfstein, who does not return phone calls and schedules appointments and then just doesn’t keep them, which is especially unnerving when she tells patients that they need to have surgery as soon as possible. But whatever. A new doctor was secured, surgery was had, and all is looking good.

The husband has this foam stabilizer thing that looks like a wedge of Swiss cheese to keep his hand elevated. He only has to use it when he sleeps now, which results in some hijinks.

I took this picture without his consent, but I think I’m justified and I’ll tell you why. We have a full-sized bed which makes things cozy and with this thing sharing the bed, I often wake up gasping for breath in the middle of the night because the husband’s be-cheesed arm has found its way onto my face. Narrowly escaping suffocation every night is pretty exciting.

The baby finally lost his front tooth, which was dangling by a thread for weeks and just generally looking pretty gross. Now he looks so cute I can barely stand it.

And this kid of mine turns SEVEN in a few weeks, which I really cannot believe. He’s awesome, of course. Mischievous, sure, but smart as hell. He’s doing so well in school. He’s reading like crazy and actually adding inflection and emotion when he reads out loud, which is just so cool. He’s really interested in his Spanish classes and is picking up math really well. He can spell like a mad man and his handwriting is surprisingly neat considering the husband and I both scrawl like serial killer chicken scratchers.

He’s also drawing a lot, which is cool because he really wasn’t into art very much until recently. In preschool, he was way more interested in trucks and trains, and when the teachers would encourage him to try drawing something, he would sigh and scribble a few lines on paper before getting back to stuff with wheels.

Now…well, check it out:

He has a whole series of attack scenes. I keep waiting for his teachers to call us in for a conference where we’ll be forced to meet with a team of psychologists and some dudes from Homeland Security. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the no-fly list but, eh, we don’t go anywhere anyway. But here we have Godzilla and some other monsters attacking a city (presumably Tokyo) in Japan. How do I know it’s Japan?

The Lapan Japan sign! Duh!

Here, some aliens are attacking Washington, D.C. Lots of detail in this one. Let’s take a closer look!

Ah, there’s the Wigt House, aka the White House. And I think that dude fleeing is George W. Bush. What a little girlie man! If only Bill Pullman were President! The baby is vying for a position in Obama’s cabinet as head adviser on alien and giant, nuclear reptilian attacks.

Another detail of note:

That’s the Subway that’s two doors down from the White House at 1604 Pennsylvania Avenue. Aliens love them some $5 footlongs.

Also, another gem from his homework:

I was pretty irritated about including a McDonald’s sign in his homework, mostly because I really hope that our public schools don’t have to turn to frightening corporations to subsidize our learning materials. But the husband pointed out that it’s an exercise working with signs that the kids see. Valid point, I guess. But, as I already noted on the flickr page, if I wrote 1st grade learning materials, food would have snarky quotations and the other option would be constipation.

So, that’s pretty much what’s going on. I also wanted to say that I’m sorry I suck so much at responding to comments. I really appreciate you guys that read this nonsense and then take the time to interact with me. I read everything! I’m just kind of shitty about replying. Kisses!

Yesterday was mostly pretty awesome. I got so much love and birthday wishes. We got our house looking pretty cool:

I like having decorations for holidays but I don’t have any…creative vision, I guess. Nor do I have any patience for that sort of thing. Oddly enough the husband usually pulls those things together. He’s fancy like that.

I think this was the first year that the baby really got into trick-or-treating. He came away with a really impressive haul. We had a lot of trick-or-treaters, definitely more than in past years. Weirdly enough, a lot of them complimented me on the jack-o-lanterns, all of which I ended up carving myself while the husband was at the ER with his severed tendons and whatnot (horf). I mean, sure, they looked decent, but they were just the usual triangles and toothy grins. Occasionally, I switched it up with some circles. But these kids were all, “Wow, did you carve these yourself?” I don’t know. Maybe with those fancy patterns everywhere, these jack-o-lanterns are all throwback and shit.

We stopped down to the mother-in-law’s and while we were there some crappy head cold just descended on the husband and me. It was weird. We were fine and then all of sudden we both felt awful. We came home and I fell asleep at like 10:30 or something. I guess it helped since I don’t feel too terrible today.

The Pumpkin King rests after another successful Halloween.

I need to catch up on my shared items! Since October 29th:

Kittehs help wif science

God Hates Signs protest waged against Westboro Baptist Church

Are you talkin’ to ME? My note: “Thackeray Hall? I wonder if this was at Pitt.”

Ice Cube signs on for NBC cop comedy My note: “Wait. What?”

Wonkette: Jesus people pray that false idol will save God’s economy My note: “good luck with that, assholes.”

basement cat

Roseanne’s Halloween episodes

Wobbegong shark costume

The Libby My note: “Somebody make me this.”

Drew’s Due My note: “I can already see the defense for this as some kind of twisted interpretation of free speech. Being a bully to people your own age is one thing. Bullying a kid when you’re an adult is just fucking messed up. I hope this asshole gets hit with a baseball bat many times.”

RA: The good, the bad, and the deep: Rick Wade My note: “My husband bit my style and became a writer.”

Witch Head Nebula

It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: Charlie & Mac sing the song from Ferris Bueller My note: “HAAAAAAAAAAAA I’ve seen bits and pieces of this show and I’ve always ended up in tears from the awesome, promising myself to start watching it regularly and forgetting but now I must renew my commitment to this show and run-on sentences and candy.”

In Videos: Anti-Candy Corn Song My note: “Sigh. I miss the days of Noggin.”

10 Castration Scenes from Movies As a card-carrying feminazi, I consider this important research. I’ve only seen three of these, though. I’m slacking.

Graphic Design Fail

Welcome to Britney’s “Circus” My note: “I had to say “If You Seek Amy” fast like 50 times before I got it. These kids today and their innuendos.”

Not pictured: extremely sore throat. Ow.

Of course, I don’t feel older yet, but I did wake up early which is…kind of a first for me. Now it’s only a matter of time before I’m going to bed at 7 p.m. just so I can wake up at 4 a.m. because, to quote my cheery grandmother, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.”

But I just want to point out that I took a picture of my 30-year-old self at 6ish in the morning. Just for you. Because I love the internerds and being able to document even the most insignificant details of my life has been such an awesome exercise so far. I started blogging when I was just a wee 23-year-old with a tiny baby and a world of confusion. Now I’m…uh…well the morning’s no time for self-reflection.

Since our life is such a comedy of errors, the husband will spend a good portion of today with an orthopaedic surgeon. He sliced his pinky right good while we were carving pumpkins last night and wasn’t able to move the joints above the cut. I told him that he probably cut a tendon and needed to go the ER, but first he sat down and googled his condition, which I found really amusing.

Happy Halloween, dudes. I hope you all are in sugar comas by sundown!

The baby won “Most Funny” (seriously, that was the name of his category) at the neighborhood Halloween parade yesterday. He felt particularly triumphant after going home empty-handed last year and was rewarded with a $25 gift certificate to any business on the main boulevard that is a member of the local chamber of commerce which means he can get…uh…maybe an ice cream cone. Or what might happen is I’ll say to him, “Take mommy to the nail shop to get a fill-in and some airbrush. I want to get a beach scene on my right hand and I think ‘Water Lilies’ on my left. Chop chop.”

Or maybe he can go to the corner store that is a very poor front operation and buy some used jelly shoes and some chips.

We went to see the Zack and Miri premiere at the Oaks last night and it was so good. I’ve heard that it’s not been getting very good reviews which is just stupid. It’s so funny and really classic Kevin Smith. He did a Q&A afterward and was really funny and interesting.

After watching the movie and driving through “the wrong side of Pittsburgh,” I got a really strong swell of love for the city. It really is an awesome place to be.

I’m going to go bake a pie.

My CSA subscription continues to be awesome. However, I am failing one important piece of produce. They keep sending beautiful bunches of green leaf lettuce. And I guess once summer is over, I am just done with salad for the year. The lettuce sits in the fridge while I go, “Uuggghhh, I really need to wash that lettuce and eat it but graaarrraghhhghhhg it’s October! Don’t wanna!” And the husband and the baby aren’t really lettuce eaters, period.

I’m ashamed to tell you that I’ve thrown out at least 4 heads of lettuce. I’m determined to use this one because letting veggies rot in a landfill is sort of antithetical to some of the reasons I subscribed to the CSA in the first place.

But if I can find some preserving agent, I can just convert this week’s lettuce into some sort of mantle decoration.

Isn’t it fancy? I don’t know why it’s so spread out like that, but I had a hell of a time stuffing it into a bag for the fridge.

Also, these:

Oh, man. I’ve had three since I’ve been home and I’m sure I’ll have at least one more before the night is over. I’m going to have to start going to meetings for these shits.

…now I just need testicles, a wallet, and a watch and I’ll be able to make the sign of the cross! Also, bonus stuff for you lucky ducks: post-Wal-Mart stringy hair and pimples! Don’t say I never gave you nothin’.

I’m still getting used to them, but I think I’m pretty happy.

“The Husband.”

“Mmph?”

“Turn the light off.”

“What?”

“Turn the light off!”

“What light?”

“The light! Turn it off!”

“What?”

“Your lamp! Turn it off!”

“What lamp? What the hell are you talking about?”

“YOUR BEDSIDE LAMP! THE ONE THAT’S ON EVEN THOUGH IT’S THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! TURN IT OFF!”

“*snore*”

“DUDE!”

“WHAT?!?!?”

“TURN. YOUR. LAMP. OFF.”

“YOU ARE SUCH A PAIN IN MY ASS!”

Or something along those lines. That was the argument that we had ’round about 3:30 or 4 a.m. The husband fell asleep with the light on and I woke up to help the baby to the bathroom and then had that infuriating exchange. What light? Give me a goddamned break. The light that is replacing the darkness that I should be seeing right now, you ass. God. It’s not like I asked him what newspapers he reads.

Anyway, I used to have this big old Toshiba laptop that I bought with some of my college graduation money. It turned out to be a bit of a lemon and a few years ago I brought it into work so that the computing people here could at least get it to function a little bit and I could get my pictures off of it. I put all of the pictures onto a bunch of zip discs. Yes, zip discs. I intended to take them home and transfer them to a functioning computer, but just never got around to it.

Yesterday, I was poking around in my office and came across both the discs and a zip drive. So I spent a little bit of time transferring them to my computer and uploading the pictures to flickr. They go back to 2003 and it’s really neat to see so many pictures of the baby being all little that I had totally forgotten about.

I have another big post in me about how looking back at these pictures has also been very upsetting, because in a lot of them I’m very thin. It’s been drudging up a lot of stuff that I really want to get off my chest, but I can’t do it right now.

Meh. In the meantime, my kid is cute as HELL.

We are jam PACKED this weekend. Tomorrow at noon, the baby is going to hang out with the husband at the record store while I go to the eye doctor, then after that I’m getting a massage! I’m in dire need, really. My neck and back have been totally messed up. Then we have a kid’s birthday party to go to and the baby is going to some Magic Tree House show with my mom.

In somewhat stark contrast to the picture below, in which my brand-new son and I clung to each other, skin on skin, I report to you that I spent a good portion of the evening bellowing, “DO. YOUR. HOME. WORK. NOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.” And throwing in a, “There will be no TV ever again and if you think I’m joking, just TRY IT!” for good measure.

Gah. Today was perfectly fine until we tried to drive home and got stuck in the most horrendous traffic ever. We didn’t actually get home until 7 and I was just going to make us some grilled cheese sammiches, because what’s better after a stressful fall day than grilled cheese? But, lo, there was no cheese.

In the midst of this meal angst, the baby was just being…I don’t know…purposefully and infuriatingly obtuse about his homework. I went to help him and read the directions aloud: “Read the words in the box…Come. Good. On. That….Uh.”

That was my fridge on Saturday. The fridge that I had as a sophomore in college looked shockingly similar, minus the green juice (try as I might, I just can’t get into drinking the stuff, but am really happy that the baby loves it). It also smelled very similar to my young kdiddy fridge up until last night when I finally found a hunk of mozzarella that had weird red spots in it. Whoops.

So, we had two weeks in the Outer Banks and it was just wonderful. My dad rented this awesome house right on the beach. We don’t get to see my dad that much, so getting to hang out with him was great.

We fell into a really comfortable pattern of lingering over coffee in the morning before strolling a few feet to the beach. The water was warm and renewing and the sand was incredibly soft. Several of my dad’s friends stayed with us and were excellent cooks, so we would have delicious dinner every night before retiring to the tiki bar.

A few times, the husband and I took a moonlit stroll on the beach, dodging crabs and frightening the groups of teenagers that would gather to do any number of illicit things by the light of campfire.

The bushes on the dune by the beach hid the remnants of those gatherings…beer bottles…panties…you know, the usual.

I got to hang out with this guy a lot. We dug holes in the sand and dug trenches so that the ocean would fill them up and completely failed at building a sandcastle. Architecture is not in our bones.

We ate tons of BBQ and got the itis.

We topped off our trip with a stop at Idlewild.

We got really used to being barefoot constantly and wearing shorts at the most. Being here now, in shoes and pants, feels downright oppressive.

School starts next week for all three of us. The baby is starting first grade, which I just can’t believe. The husband is entering his last year of undergrad. I think we’re all very excited for him to be done. It’s been a struggle for all of us to get him through, but his degree will present him with many opportunities. Hopefully by this time next year we will no longer be a one-income family and things won’t be so precarious all the time.

I still have about two years to go on my master’s, but I’m not regretting slowing down with my coursework.

The cicadas hiss that fall will be here soon. I’ll miss this summer. I drank it in. And it was lovely.

So, I went to Conneaut last week…

There were bugs, including this beetle and a flying ant that I inadvertently ate while celebrating my cousin’s birthday. Said ant landed on my chocolate ice cream which I inserted into my gaping maw. I felt a little pinch, which I guess was the ant’s way of saying, “WTF ARE YOU DOING?” I spit him out, but it was too late. He was dead. I mourned him by eating more chocolate ice cream.

There were also bug parts, like this wing that landed on my towel and captivated me so.

You recognize my kid, of course, but the short, drunk-looking guy in the foreground is my baby cousin. He is very cute and likes to cuddle, but he drools a lot. He is the youngest of seven (SEVEN) boys.

I’m kind of over babies at this point in my life, which isn’t to say that I don’t like them, but before I had one I would always go apeshit over them and want to hold them and change them and blah blah blah. Then I had a baby and let me tell you, the novelty of all of that wears off somewhere around 3 a.m. the first night. Now I hold a baby for about 30 seconds and I’m like, “Yeah, I’m good. Here, take this. Is there more beer?”

But this little guy had me quite captivated. It might have something to do with the huge (moist) hug that he gave me. My heart might have melted a little.

Ring Pops for lunch…because we were on vacation and I just couldn’t care.

I scored 100% on “My Name Is Jonas” on the medium level of Guitar Hero III. This may not be an astonishing accomplishment, but the husband and I have been trying to best each other at this song for awhile. I took a picture because he was not around when it happened and I knew he wouldn’t believe me. We have a healthy relationship.

My kid and another of the seven brothers (who will need seven brides at some point, I guess). They look all sweet and precious here, but they were actually in the middle of an epic whinefest that included the longest recitation of, “STOP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIITTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT” ever.

Ain’t it quaint?

I don’t know this guy, but he sat on this bench for the longest time, just quietly taking everything in. I like to think that he stared at those clouds and watched the kids play and reflected deeply on his life.

Or maybe he was just taking note of how hot the lifeguard was.

On our last night we went to dinner at the Stable Pit and Pub, which is this Western-themed restaurant and bar smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania. It’s very corny and I love it. They have one cottage that they rent out and you can get a romantic getaway package that features champagne service, a Jacuzzi and a mirrored ceiling. I reminded the husband that we never went on a honeymoon, so maybe he’ll surprise me for my birthday. Because what better way is there to turn 30 than in the countryside of Pennsyltucky with cowboy paraphernalia a few feet away? Fingers crossed!

Anyway, they arrange their creamers in this little flower formation and I just thought that was the cutest thing ever.

As soon as we got home from Conneaut, the husband and I headed to Alto Lounge to hear our friend Tony play records. He was headed back to the Navy on Sunday and it was his birthday, so it was all kinds of bittersweet.

Yeah.

This French guy was there and told everyone that he had traveled to Pittsburgh, “in ze canoe,” and demonstrated his rowing technique through some interpretive dance. The sister-in-law found his antics hilarious, but then realized that she probably sounded exactly like that dude during her time in Argentina. “Me llamo Bolt. Yo me gusto Pittsburgh. N’at.”

After we left the club, we saw the French dude approaching random people sitting on their porches. The husband, who had heard all about ze canoe at length, hissed at us to cross the street. Luckily, Shadyside has plenty of alleys that one can sneak through when escaping odd French men. And I think Pittsburgh needs to promote that aspect of our fair city much more.