Did I ever tell you the story about how I hate my cat sometimes?
The story starts on Friday night when the baby (along with his lovely parents) hosted his first slumber party. His two buddies came over after soccer and the baby came home after piano and three of them were off. They had such a great time. The husband and I just kind of sat back and observed them, occasionally handing them food and drawing our hands back quickly. “Man. We’re such parents,” I kept saying to myself, rapidly reaching my quota of deep thoughts for the day.
In the morning, I slowly heard their still little voices gradually wake up in that uber 9-year-old boy way. “Murrf…Grunt…Pffft…Hey…Hi…I slept good…I KNOW RIGHT I LOVE VIDEO GAMES AND DIRT AND FARTING YOU’RE AWESOME WE SHOULD HANG OUT MORE HAHAHAHAHA POOP!”
They had slept in and were perfectly fine entertaining themselves as I rolled out of bed and down the stairs. I made yummy pancakes that they gobbled down. The baby said, “Isn’t my mom a good cook?” and I became mush.
I tried to get them out to the park but they were too busy reveling in their boyhood friendships to get ready in time. The two friends went off and the hum of an average Saturday sounded all around us.
I set about puttering, putting some bedding in the washing machine and getting another load of dirty dishes ready to go into the dishwasher. Our portable dishwasher needed to be unhooked from the faucet, unplugged, and spun back across the room to its resting place so that I could empty and refill it.
GASP
In spinning the dishwasher around, an action I’d performed a thousand and twelve times before, I made a miscalculation in the physics of the situation. The chaotic possibility that I would perform this action with just the right sets of variables in posture, stance, and force meant that the sharp metal corner of the machine would swipe through the air just so. That corner would meet the top of my left big toenail at just the right moment in time and place in space. In the king-of-the-mountain battle between the metal and my toenail for rights to that piece of space-time continuum real estate, the metal won.
It was not immediately evident to me what had happened. I stared at my foot and slowly evaluated the damage.
“Ow. Oooh. Uhhh. Ow. Ow. Ow. OH FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST.”
I hopped up the stairs and into the bathroom and informed the husband that, “I *#*#%#@ UP MY FOOT *#(%)*)$!” as I dripped blood all over the floor
Then I burst into tears. “I’m suppohohohosed to run a 5k in two weheeheeheeks!”
We went to MedExpress and were in about in about 45 minutes. A tetanus shot and some soaking instructions were my souvenirs. The nail might not make it but my Chariots of Fire dreams remained alive. As we drove away, the husband continued our neverending game of Punchbuggy and reflexively punched me right where I got my tetanus shot upon seeing a VW Beetle.
The husband went out that night and I opted to stay home. I crawled into bed and tried to deal with the increasing throbbing in my toe. Despite downing some Aleve, I couldn’t find a comfortable position and decided that the best course of action would be to watch Mad Men episodes and whimper.
The cat jumped up to siphon body warmth from me and began the awesome process of walking on my feet to find the perfect spot.
“No, cat. No. Please. No.”
I gently moved my feet around and he followed them. I didn’t want to make too sudden a movement because he has a tendency to attack body parts moving around under the covers. I texted the husband for moral support. He replied, “Gatooooo.”
I think it’s safe to say that the husband and the baby and I squeezed the last drops of summer out this weekend. After work on Friday, the husband and I went to see Our Idiot Brother while the baby was at his piano lesson. I strongly disliked the movie and spent the next few hours sulking about why good writing with interesting characters is so impossible to come by. Of course, the last place you want to be when you’re lamenting the state of American culture is the mall, and that’s exactly where we were. I sauntered through the food court, addressing every guy that passed me as, “Bro.” We went to Dick’s to get the baby some soccer stuff, and I lost it temporarily in the entrance. I don’t know why I didn’t take a picture of it, but they had a banner up for this initiative that they’re working on with Jerome Bettis about preventing concussions. Which is great, obviously. But they used this picture of Bettis.
Nothing looks amiss about this picture until you crop his face (and more importantly, his mid-sentence facial expression) and put it right next to the word concussion. Let me illustrate.
CONCUSSION
I also took issue with this product, which was being sold as a Tailgate Toss.
This game, my friends, is not called tailgate toss. It’s called cornholing. I don’t know where it got its name, though I imagine it was thought up by a bunch of Beavises not unlike yours truly. Point is, if you’re going to go cornholing with your buddies before the big game, call it what it is.
Then I went in the store and bought a yoga mat and some soccer stuff, tied my cardigan around my shoulders, and flounced off in a cloud of Soccer Mom.
Friday night, I polished off the last bottle of wine from the absurd number that we consumed at the beach. I spent the rest of the night trying to act like I wasn’t completely sloshed. I don’t think I succeeded.
Saturday, we went to Idlewild to fulfill our quota of Family Fun, Dammit for the season. It was actually a really nice time. I guess since it was 90-some degrees out and a “limited operations” day, people stayed home so we were able to gallivant about without ridiculous crowds. It was some church’s picnic day and I only saw one creepy “purity” shirt on a 9-year-old girl, so that was cool. (Seriously, Jesus fans, it’s great that you’re all about abstinence, but I find the omnipresent discussion about the sexuality of little girls kind of weird.) Limited operations didn’t affect us too much. The ferris wheel and a few other rides weren’t up and running. But what did cramp our style was the lack of lollipops on the Good Ship Lollipop. You know how you pace around the tiny boat on that swampy water and then a junior from St. Vincent’s deadpans. “Yarr. Thanks for visiting me ship. Have a sucker?” Our visit ended with, “Yarr. Thanks for visiting me ship.” And then…nothing. No lollipop. It was really awkward because I was standing there looking at this kid like, “Soooo….?”
I only took one picture because I only had my phone. It’s this:
That’s the husband in the green shirt. He’s in the process of putting his hands up as he and the baby ride the Whip. But I know at some point I’m going to forget what this is and wonder, “Why do I have a picture of the husband being held at gunpoint by an idyllic white picket fence?”
When we got home that night we popped over to my mother-in-law’s house for one final session of nightswimming. R.E.M., would you mind providing us with a brief musical interlude?
Yesterday, we had some vague plans of doing stuff around the house, but when it turned out to be cool and rainy all day, we just laid around and napped. It was nice. I did all of the laundry and put some summer clothes away, so if the cool temperatures upset you, don’t worry. My act of putting the sundresses in the bins in the attic have ensured us three weeks of sweltering heat at some point soon.
The baby took a three-hour nap, which was nice because he was being a humongous jerk prior to that. When he started crying because he couldn’t do something in a Wii game and I couldn’t help but laugh, he told me he hated me. So, yeah, no more Wii for him for awhile.
On a more serious, commie note, I want to acknowledge Labor Day and thank the National Postal Mail Handler’s Union and the Communication Workers of America and all of the laborers who came before them. Because of the NPMHU and the CWA, the husband and I grew up with health insurance and parents who weren’t so overworked that they couldn’t be in our lives. Despite only having high school diplomas, our parents were able to raise children who would go on to receive bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Thank you for fighting for a better life for yourselves, for me, and for my son.
The baby started fourth grade today, which is of course blowing my mind. He has this year and next year at his current school and then will move to a 6-12 school, which I’m just kind of not thinking about.
The things that I remember most about my fourth grade year are getting glasses and taking up the flute. Clearly, I was gunning for the title of Coolest Kid Ever. (Spoiler: I lost.) My kid, however, just might have a shot. He wore the Kangol that he got in New York and the Adidas shell toes that we purchased last week. He’s going for a Run DMC/Grandmaster Flash vibe. I couldn’t be more pleased.
I don’t have the traditional first day of school picture on the porch to share because the school bus was 30 minutes late today so I didn’t have time to take pictures off of my camera. While waiting, we got to enjoy the sight of other kids getting on their school buses without difficulty and took in a torrential downpour or two. My shoes are still damp.
Despite having a new bus company this year (I called and complained about the old one as “unreliable” would be too kind of an adjective), I still had to call and get an update on the bus and got the, “Well, there’s traffic and it’s raining,” rigamarole. Sorry. Unacceptable. Saying that there’s traffic and rain in Pittsburgh like it’s some kind of unique set of circumstances is like saying, “Gee, it’s a bit sultry atop this volcano.” We almost gave up after waiting for so long but it seemed somehow important to me that the baby and the bus driver meet on the first day. When the bus finally arrived, I had to do the whole, “Here’s my one and only child. If you could now cease being an idiot from this point forward, that would be aces!” hand off. I’m pretty empathetic to people messing up at work, seeing as how I do it ALL THE TIME. But this has been a constant issue and I am getting pretty fed up.
ANYWAY…what else? The husband and I spontaneously tackled our third floor on Sunday night. It’s served as a repository for anything and everything the past five years. It’s a perfectly liveable space and it’s being wasted right now, so we started pawing through the various bags and boxes that we’ve been toting around with us since our late teens. There’s lots of just random stuff that gets shuffled when you move a lot and also lots of meaningful stuff that I’m really glad that we kept. I found a pros and cons list that I composed while determining whether or not I should go out with the husband (mostly pros, the only con being that we were good friends and I didn’t want to potentially ruin that) and a few of our angsty, early emails that essentially serve as our love letters. He found the scrap of paper that he wrote my phone number on. We don’t seem like the most romantic people, but I guess we are.
I think the start of a new school year has that unavoidable feeling of a new start, and we are, of course, going through some transitions. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing with our life from here and I think getting the house more in shape is indicative of us finally moving forward, even though things don’t look like we thought they were going to.
If nothing else, I got to laugh at stuff like my old Venus razor.
I write to you from day 3 of my juice cleanse and you know what? It’s not bad at all. I’ve been following the travails of the Serious Eats crew, who were one day ahead of me and decided to read the comments, hoping for some input from other people who have done it. The problem was that I forgot that Serious Eats is a huge site and has the douchey commenters to go with it, nearly all of whom ridiculed the juicers for being stupid and buying into fads. My instant reaction: “They hate me, too.” Because that’s the kind of super-sensitive-you-hurt-my-fee-fees week I’m having.
I mean, I get that plunking down some pretty serious bucks on 18 bottles of juice with perhaps little to no scientific research behind their efficacy is pretty dumb, but for me I was really needing to do some serious resetting. The cleanse gave me the opportunity to really examine how I behave about food and what kinds of hunger give me anxiety and what my instinctive reactions are. Do I feel “cleansed?” I don’t know. Physically, I don’t feel wildly different, and I didn’t experience any lightheadedness or other signs that I was without food, aside from an odd brand of dry mouth. (Though I did try to roll up my yoga mat while I was still standing on it yesterday, which was not my finest moment.) Mentally, though, I feel much better and I’ll take what I can get in that arena these days.
My point is, people spend a lot of money on much dumber things.
Just sayin'
Another cool side effect is that my sense of smell is super heightened. And not in the early-pregnancy “Ugh, what is that?” way. But everything smells so amazing right now. I guess my sense of taste is getting something of a rest since I don’t have the juice in my mouth as long as I do food, so my nose is picking up the slack. Yesterday, there was a mobile BBQ truck on campus for an orientation event and I swear I walked past it three or four times just to take in the aroma. Then I scowled at the people in line. “Look at them. Just grabbing the BBQ like it’s whatever. They don’t understand the magical meat that they’re holding in their hands!”
It’s also made me more excited about ramping up my already healthy eating. Like one of the Serious Eats writers, it made me a little more confident to have more vegan days during the week than I already do. Though, obviously, I’m not going full vegan any time soon (see: BBQ lust). This morning on the bus, a guy in front of me was having a frosted honey bun and a huge bottle of Brisk iced tea. It made me feel ill. But not sanctimonious! Eat what you like. Swearsies.
Tomorrow I’m supposed to take it easy introducing foods back into my life, but I don’t think I’ll be able to resist a bowl of oatmeal or my first cup of coffee since Monday (!). The caffeine part, by the way, was not too bad. Last night, I decided to drink some chai and nearly vibrated out of the house. I’m also surprised at my energy level, which I guess is the other physical effect. I don’t feel like I could run a 5k, per se, but I do feel light and unburdened.
Anyway, the husband and the baby are in New York this weekend. I’m excited to have some time to myself, but I do miss them something terrible. Especially when the husband sends me pictures like this:
He fell asleep reading last night. Could you die? Also, apparently one of the first things that he did upon arriving in NYC was to buy a Kangol hat.
I posted to MamaDojo last week about our impending trip to Kennywood and tried to explain the tradition of the park, Rick Sebak, and the importance of French fries to non-Pittsburghers. I’m not sure if I did an adequate job or not. But the key takeaway is this: the annual trip to Kennywood is an essential part of growing up in Pittsburgh. There are many rituals involved, from attire to the order of rides to what food is eaten when.
Strategy: get a few of the big coasters in right away. Then proceed straight to Potato Patch for a box (yes, a box) of restorative fries.
The husband, the baby, and I made our annual trip last Wednesday and it was one of the best Kennywood visits we’ve ever had. The weather was gorgeous and it wasn’t crowded, which meant no extremely long waits for rides. This was good because I woke up feeling not so great and I ended up riding the bench a couple of times throughout the day, but didn’t risk wasting much time doing so.
When I was a kid, going to Kennywood meant freaking out on thrill rides and shooting furtive glances at boys. Looking back, it was also usually a rare occasion when my parents and I would spend the day together and have fun for the most part. When the baby became big enough to go and actually ride things, I remember being really excited to share the experience with him. And after a few touch-and-go moments on the Pirate Ship, I could tell he was hooked.
I think what he really likes about it is that it’s the three of us playing together. We all pile into the Racer and boo the other coaster or scream throughout the Phantom’s Revenge. I don’t think anyone would ever accuse the husband or me of being overly mature, but we’re definitely parents. And for a day we get to be kids with our kid.
The baby is still too short to ride the Thunderbolt or the Sky Rocket, so we missed out on those. But it was on some of the tamer rides that we had the best moments of the day. He and I rode the Bayern Kurve together and he cracked up the whole time. Hearing him just goofy with happiness for a few minutes straight was just…awesome.
We had saved a few rides for the night because they look the coolest in the dark and with the lights on. One of these was the Paratrooper. The baby and I sat together and the husband was in the parachute behind us. Again, the baby laughed and oohhed the whole time. It was wonderful. He’s getting to an age where he’s trying to appear older and tougher than he is. Hearing the little boy that is still inside of him made me find the little girl that is still inside of me and I laughed right along with him.
At the end of the day, the husband and the baby wanted to squeeze in one more ride on the Phantom’s Revenge. I had had enough for the day and waited for them on a nearby bench. I watched people file out with absurdly huge stuffed animals and kids look for the parents with only the vaguest sense of panic. I listened to that old song that they always play at the end of the day and felt the twinkly lights on the rides warm my skin.
After they had managed to do not one but two final rides, the husband and the baby and I made our way out, too, pausing to document our sweaty, gleeful, fry-stuffed selves in front of the sweet “Goodnight” heart.
Then came my favorite part: walking through the tunnel toward the exit. Everyone whoops and hollers and giggles at the echo as they shuffle along, the mark of a perfect summer day firmly pressed into their memory. Nobody looks back because they’ve all had their fill and the best part of the night is yet to come: that glorious post-Kennywood shower and sinking your tired feet into bed.
* * *
Because the folks at Kennywood want everyone to be able to experience a perfect day like this, they want to give you a chance to win four free tickets to the park. To enter, all you have to do is leave a comment below. You can also earn additional entries by posting a link to this giveaway on Twitter and Facebook. Just be sure to leave a comment here with a link to your tweet or Facebook post. The winner will be selected and posted on Tuesday, July 26th. Good luck!
Disclosure: I was provided with complimentary tickets to Kennywood in exchange for hosting this giveaway.
Update: And our winner is…Gina! Congratulations, Gina!
My eyes fluttered open at the thunder. It wasn’t a loud, startling clap. I always manage to sleep through those, oddly enough. This thunder was gentle, unimposing…like the sky was politely clearing its throat. The rain splattered onto the ground in those big, summertime drops and for a few seconds I took in the scent of the street cooling off.
But at the next cough of thunder, my heart suddenly sped up. The desk. The desk was on the porch.
My husband and our neighbor had hauled it out there a few days earlier. I had meant to cover it up with a tarp but kept forgetting. Now I thought of it sitting there, alone, rejected, its beautiful wood probably getting damaged by an otherwise lovely storm.
The desk came into my possession five years ago. We had just gotten married and were still setting up our house. The desk was going to go into my office-to-be on the second floor. There I would write and pay bills and do most of the managing of my life and our home. It settled into its temporary home in the dining room, because the second floor office was not yet perfect. Its perfection would only be attained once we had graduated, started making more money, and fixing up our house exactly how we planned.
But over the five years that it sat in the dining room, I realized a number of things. We weren’t going to be making the money that we thought we were. The office wasn’t going to look exactly how I’d planned. The desk, with its extreme, antique heft, was not going to make its way upstairs. I needed to adjust my expectations. I needed revise what I viewed as success.
I needed to find a more sensible desk.
The desk needed a new home, but I wasn’t going to give it to just anyone. I wanted it to go to someone who recognized its potential perfection, that the scratches and water ring marks and the drawer that stuck didn’t take away from it was: a beautiful home for hopes and ideas that would fit perfectly into someone else’s life. Just not mine.
The desk was, after all, an artifact from a life that never came to fruition, but that was replaced with this other life that I hadn’t planned for, that would probably always frustrate me with its reluctance to let me manipulate it into a shape in my silly desire to please people who don’t even have to live it. But this life will never fail to awe me when I let it, even if I draft its blueprints, blindfolded, at a smaller desk.
The desk would be fine. Whatever the rain did to it could be fixed. In the morning I would put a tarp on it like I had promised to and would see to finding it a new home. I shuffled onto my side and fell back to sleep.
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.
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.
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.
Did I ever tell you the story about how I hate my cat sometimes?
