kdiddy.org

My friends, I stand…er, sit…before you today as a changed woman. I ran my first 5k on Sunday.

It was cool. Like I mentioned before, I signed up for the untimed*, non-competitive 5k run/walk because I was intimidated by the competitive runners.

I set my alarm for 6:00 p.m. that day because I am kind of dumb, but luckily my mom called around 7 a.m. to wish me luck and ask me why it sounded like I was still asleep. We made it into town with relatively little trouble and I left the husband, the baby, and my mom near CMU to make my way over to the start. I followed a few people who looked like they were participating and then suddenly came upon a mass of people in Schenley Park. I could tell from the timing chips on their shoes that they were there for the timed race and so walked over to Flagstaff where the tents and booths were set up. I wasn’t willing to admit that I had no idea what I was doing, so I just kept walking until I saw a sea of people walking toward Phipps and over the bridge. I shuffled into line with them and asked a few people around me, “Are you going to the untimed run/walk thingy?” “Um, I think so?” was the response that I kept getting. For some reason, I found it comforting to be moving slowly along toward an unknown destination with a bunch of people who were as clueless as I was. This might explain so much about my life.

Eventually we stopped just over the bridge near what I figured must be the closest we could get to the starting line. Right around the time that the wholly unnecessary blasting of “Runaround” by Blues Traveler was giving me the shakes, the crowd started moving slowly forward. “Great! The race must be starting! Or we’re moving toward our slaughter. Whatever! At least the Blues Traveler will end!” I thought.

I had been expecting a lot more joggers in the mix, but it turned out that the vast majority of the tens of thousands of people there were indeed intent on Walking for the Cure. Or, in some cases, Standing for the Cure. I had been taking baby steps for at least 10 minutes when I finally caught sight of the official starting line. My heart sank because I thought that I wouldn’t be able to run at all and that this, my first 5k, would end up being a total dud. I texted the husband that it looked like I might just be walking the whole thing. Then I saw a few people jogging along the side and decided to try to follow their lead. I walked sideways and then trotted for a few feet, but it was still so crowded that if I wanted to jog, I would have to do so on the side of hill. Since my goals for the day did not include breaking any ankles, I fell back in with the crowd, frustrated.

Around the time that we hit the .5 mile mark, the crowd was finally starting to thin out and there was enough room for me to jog without risking mangled feet. So, off I went.

And it was fun! I started to see other joggers, which was extremely encouraging. Whatever anxiety I had about being the slowest one disappeared and I allowed myself to just go with it. And the normal feeling of, “Ugh. Can’t wait for this to be over,” that I usually get when I’m jogging by myself never showed up.

I took a few walking breaks as there were a few hills that I was just not up for and sent the husband updates on my progress, right up to the finish line.

Or the "finjishef" line, for when you've just completed your first 5k and are a Swedish chef. Bork bork.

It took me about an hour and four minutes to finish, but I didn’t really care considering it took me so long just to get started.

The husband and the baby and my mom greeted me afterward and congratulated me. I felt legitimately proud of myself and resolved to do another one as soon as possible.

Since Sunday, I’ve been having some kind of extended celebration. That, coupled with a huge work event on Saturday, have me going into some kind of maintenance mode. I’m functioning on like the bare minimum level of adulthood. I’m going to work and getting the baby off to school, but I scoff at grocery shopping or cooking dinner or any of that bullshit. Last night, I felt totally justified in having a hoagie and some of that Jimmy Fallon potato chip ice cream for dinner. Then I got a gross stomachache and passed out in a food coma around 10 p.m. As for housekeeping…

That’s two empty milk cartons that are waiting to be rinsed out and put in the recycling. And some knives and shit. But, hey! The milk is (was) organic. That counts for something, right?

Tonight, after the baby’s baseball game, we’re running to the store to get cereal (and, uh, milk apparently) so that my child can have something to eat in the morning. Parenting, FTW. Maybe I’ll invest in some TRIPLE HEALTH ENGLISH MUFFINS.

Seriously, what’s triple health?

* Can we discuss the gross misuse of “un-” as a prefix? It’s not like the run/walk was timed and then that time stricken from the records. Unsweetened is another one. You don’t sweeten something and then take the sweetener out. Surely there is a better way to distinguish such things.

I’m trying to not think about earthquakes because they scare the shit out of me and aside from donating money for relief there’s not a whole hell of a lot anyone can do about stuff like that. Earth got a wedgie. Then everything went boom.

I’m ordering new checks and have the option of adding a pithy expression to them. I’m so tempted to add something ridiculous and untrue, like, “Horses are my life.”

After writing it out, it seemed so deranged and wonderful that I went ahead and ordered them as such. So now, at least in my checking existence, horses are my life.

I’m still jogging, as you can see from the widget over there on the left. I’m working on building up my speed because I have this somewhat arbitrary goal of being able to run 5K in 30 minutes. I decided to accomplish this by redoing the Couch to 5K program but using it to incrementally increase how fast I can go. It’s pretty cool, because I can remember getting on the treadmill around this time last year and barely being able to survive going 4.0 miles an hour for longer than a few seconds but eventually, after weeks and weeks, getting to 4.7 miles an hour and thinking, “Wow! I hope my face doesn’t peel off from going so fast!” Now, 4.0 mph is my warmup/cooldown walking speed and I’m pushing past 6.0 miles an hour.

One of the students where I work checks in on my progress occasionally. He did the Couch to 5K about two years ago and now regularly competes in triathlons and stuff. He’s obviously more hardcore about the whole thing, as I don’t think I’m really interested in working toward that big of a goal. He did encourage me to sign up for a 5K race, though. I told him that I had been hesitant to do so because I didn’t want to be embarrassed by how slow I am or how many walking breaks I might have to take, but quickly gobbled up my self-doubt with, “But, I KNOW that that doesn’t really matter. It’s far more badass to go out there and just do it than to stand on the sidelines and pout about how much better everyone else is.” He paused and said, “No, it matters.” To which I replied, “Oh…oh.”

A few days later he emailed me about the Race for the Cure, encouraging me again to go for it, adding, “There are lots of old people, so you know you won’t be the slowest person there.” Thanks, man! Now I’m thinking about making a point of running past old people at this breast cancer shindig and saying stuff like, “OOOOHHHH in your FACE, coffin-dodger! How does my ass look jogging further and further away from you? What was Prohibition like?” But I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if an 80-year-old elbowed me out of her way. We’ll see.

And in stark contrast to all of that health and exercise talk…

Since it’s the first Friday of Lent and we’re celebrating my mother-in-law’s birthday today, we’re going over to her house for fish sandwiches. I am far too excited about this. And I agreed to make her a birthday cake. So, knowing that she really likes Oreos, I made her a Chocolate Oreo Cake, the recipe for which I found at Sing for Your Supper.

The hardest part was actually cutting Oreos in half. They’re such brittle cookies. Even still, I didn’t finish up with this until nearly 1 a.m. because I had a horrific stomachache that kept me confined to the couch for a few hours.

This morning, I was putting my oatmeal on the stove and the baby was supposed to be getting his shoes and jacket on. When I came out of the kitchen, he was reading a book. “BLAFGGHHHAHAH!” I shouted. We made it to the bus stop just as the bus was pulling up to the light. The bus driver actually said to me, “You know, you almost missed the bus,” to which I replied, “Hehehe,” which is what I say when someone has just said something so thoroughly annoying and obnoxious and unnecessary and I need to prevent myself from saying, “ALMOST DOESN’T COUNT AND ALSO I ALMOST HATE YOU EVERY OTHER MORNING WHEN I STAND HERE FOR 15 MINUTES WAITING BECAUSE I GET HERE AT THE PRESCRIBED TIME.” I don’t like to provoke the people commandeering large vehicles containing my child. I’m overprotective.

Anyway, this past weekend, I consumed like a good American.

Movies:

The Duchess

Yawn. Very pretty-looking period drama about the Duchess of Devonshire, but I get so bored with heavy-handed, “You’ve come a long way, baby,” pearl-clutchers in which women are overtly oppressed in such a way that we’re supposed to go, “My, it’s so good that sexism is all gone now.”

The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia

I can’t remember why, but in one of my short story classes in college we watched The Dancing Outlaw, about the wild mountain dancer Jesco White. He was a character and not always likable but entertaining enough. It never occurred to me what kind of cloth he was cut from. But someone went back to Boone County, WV and made a documentary about his family, including matriarchs Bertie Mae and Mamie, Kirk, and of course Sue Bob, aka The Pretty One.

I admire their loyalty to each other and their determination to live exactly the way they want to. But it was undeniably fucked up to watch Kirk snort crushed up pills in her hospital room while her newborn daughter slept nearby and to know that even if they do get sober, the only real option they have is to break their backs working for a coal company and still be more or less broke. Blargh.

ANYWAY

The Glories of Big Box Commerce:

We went to Teh Wal-Mart to procure groceries. Most of the time this is a purely robotic venture. We march up and down the aisles, grabbing stuff on our list and try to make it out of there expeditiously so that we can get on with our lives. But sometimes if you really look at the stuff that’s available to purchase, it all seems kind of surreal.

Chocolate-covered Froot Loops. You can tell from the startled expressions on the faces of the banana, orange, and cherries that this was an unexpected development. I’m not really opposed to chocolate-covered anything and really if you’re eating Froot Loops, why the hell not dip them in chocolate at that point?

It’s never encouraging when your food barfs before you even eat it. “Ugh, I’m nauseating.”

This is very clever product placement. Next to the condoms, you have both the Gatorade Prime, for the pre-game, and the Gatorade Recover. It’s got electrolytes.

Doo-do-doo, I’m strolling through the hair care aisle. The last thing I’ll run into is pla–

I had heard of placenta treatments for hair, I just never imagined seeing them in Wal-Mart.

Charlie Sheen and Ronald Reagan. A double dose of “I just can’t bring myself to give a shit,” and “Thanks for the legacy, a-hole.”

This is me, pretty much all the time now:

I feel like all I do is work and then come home and fall asleep on the couch. In between all of that, I mentally toil with some stuff, but nothing that I feel comfortable sharing here. Maybe I could do like the blog equivalent of Mad Libs?

“Kelly [adverb] [verb]ed some [adjective] [noun] with [person in the room]. It was a [adjective] [noun] and it made her [verb].”

I can tell you that I got my hairs cut the other day.

The oily T-zone was free

My desire to keep the salon blowout has prevented me from washing my hair, so picture me today with a stringier, somewhat Kelly-Cutroneish version of the cut above.

I have, however, been keeping myself busy around these here internets. I wrote on MoxieBird this week about Arianna Huffington, the iPad 2, legislative fetuses, $14,000 prom dresses, and gender roles in toy commercials. On MamaPop, I wrote about the aforementioned Kelly Cutrone, Kate Middleton, Oprah, and, of course, Big Love (or, as I tend to call it nowadays, “God damn fucking Big Love,” because I write out the events of each week’s episodes and sprain my eyes from rolling them so hard. Who knew a show about polygamists would turn out to be absurd? Oh, wait…). Also also wik, I’m writing on the new iteration of Sweetney. I wrote last week about what my “Mommy Card” might look like, and this week I wrote about how bitchin’ roller skating is.

I’m hoping that Daylight Savings ending next weekend will help. Winter seems to kick my ass harder and harder each year. SIGH.

The baby, not surprisingly, is shaping up to be quite the smart ass. When he was leaving for school the other day, he said good-bye to the husband, who told him (as he does every day) to do well in school. The baby replied, “Thanks for the words of wisdom, Daddy.” I’m so screwed.

So despite my unsettled feelings about religion, I’m a huge fan of Christmas. I imagine it pisses some people off to know that I secularize such an important holiday, but I can’t help it. It has all of the elements that I love: gaudy decorations, days off of work and school, pretty music, funny movies, hanging out with my family, presents, huge meals, cookies, candy, and really early acceptable drinking times. As long as I’m not actively being evil, I think I get to do Christmas until Christ Himself comes to my house and demands a birthday cake, at which point I will make Him such an awesome cake that He’ll drop and give me 40 rosaries and 10 Hail Marys right there.

Anyway, yes. Christmas. It was pretty good, but was generally kind of a bummer because on Christmas Eve morning, my grandfather fell. He’s 88 years old, in excellent health both physically and mentally, doesn’t take any medications, exercises every day, and still works 40 hours a week. That morning, he went for his constitutional, and tripped. He had to drive himself back to his house because no one was around and my grandmother doesn’t drive. When they got to the hospital, they diagnosed him with a dislocated shoulder and a black eye. Not the most pleasant outcome but definitely not the worst. During tests, however, they discovered an irregular heartbeat and informed him that he would need to be in the hospital for a few days to correct it. He came home yesterday and is doing well, but he had to spend Christmas in the hospital and my grandmother, being how she is, never left his side. I’m, of course, glad that he’s okay but it wasn’t the same not to have them around.

Despite that and a soul-crushing trip to Macy’s the week before, we gathered up all of our Christmas spirit and prepared to enjoy the shit out of some presents.

It helped that our tree this year is, I think, the best one that we’ve had.

It smells amazing and has barely lost any needles. I am now basically this lady:

Plus, we got some of those LED lights this year and they’re so pretty. I hope that they make up for the fact that we don’t have any decorations outside because the pre-lit garland things that usually adorn our front door became the focus of my attention after the aforementioned, ill-fated trip to Macy’s that made me hate everyone on the planet (more). The garlands are now sitting in a pile on the porch after they were ripped from their posts around the door for such crimes as, “Not keeping their green whore asses up where they’re supposed to,” and “HOW MANY OF THESE STUPID BULBS ARE BURNT OUT?!??!”

The baby had a pretty good Christmas, presents-wise. We are navigating the murky waters of whether or not to believe in Santa and his age being a weird, in-between one…too old for most toys but too young for just clothes and whatnot. We ended up giving him a lot of stuff that’s tied to specific interests of his, namely Monty Python, Star Wars, and WWE.

I think we’re sticking with Santa for now. If nothing else, he’s still fun to talk about.

And the cat was pretty pleased with how it all turned out.

The WWE thing is a fairly recent development that made both the husband and I scratch our heads. But I vaguely remember being interested in wrestling for about 20 minutes when I was his age so maybe it’s just a rite of passage for Western PA kids or something. He hasn’t even really watched any WWE on TV, but I felt the need to explain to him that it’s theater more than combat. Yesterday we ended up falling down this weird YouTube rabbit hole when I showed him how cleanly the wrestling matches were choreographed (“See how he’s not actually punching that guy?”) and then in contrast showed him a few clips of Mike Tyson doing various savage things to people who used to have names but are now just One of Those Guys that Got Knocked Out By Mike Tyson. Then I realized that it was kind of messed up to be showing him all of that. So, yeah, I apologize for contributing to the desensitization of the next generation. My bad.

Anyway, I shopped online for some WWE toys for him just a few days before Christmas and was just kind of blindly picking things. I got him this which he was pretty excited about:

But I imagine OSHA wouldn’t have very good things to say about that particular workplace.

My mother-in-law gave him this game:

The other night when my sister-in-law was visiting, we had this conversation:

Her: “Is that game…beer pong?”

Me: “No, it’s…well…yeah, actually, it is beer pong.”

Then later, the husband came home and said, “Isn’t this basically beer pong for kids?” Violence and drinking games…that’s the kind of parenting I provide.

We normally go to my grandparents’ house on Christmas Day but obviously that was out so we all gathered at my mom’s house. We have a tradition where we take a picture of all the guys and then all the girls. The Y chromosome is strongly represented in our family.

Love, Actually is one of those movies that I don’t really like except for right around Christmas. Because of this, I don’t really want to invest in a copy of the DVD and it doesn’t seem to be on any of my cable channels. I’m having trouble accepting that it’s not available on Netflix’s instant view and today I went to check again to see if it might have magically appeared. It hadn’t, but I noticed this recommendation that Netflix had for me.

Based on my interests, in Jackie Brown and The Turning Point, Netflix is suggesting “Mid-Life Crisis Movies” to me. Thanks, guys.

I’m going to squeeze in two more days of truth today: a book I’ve read that changed my views on something and my views on gay marriage.

I feel like the book question sort of corners you into selecting a non-fiction book. The first one that came to mind in that category is probably The Omnivore’s Dilemma, though I don’t know that it really changed any of my views but was just really, really informative about some stuff that I kind of already assumed. Perhaps a better example would be The Way We Never Were which is a sociology book about what author Stephanie Coontz calls “the nostalgia trap.” We accept the myth of the “good old days” without really examining data from that period. If we did, we would realize that we had a lot of the same problems that we’ve always had. A fiction book that had a great effect on me was The Road. It fleshed out a lot of feelings about life and parenting that I was really afraid of experiencing or thinking about, but it was really good to release after reading it. (That means I cried hysterically for about an hour, but, you know, a good, cleansing cry.)

As for gay marriage…if you’re against gay people marrying each other, I feel bad for you and wish that you would get your head out of your ass. If you are actively working against gay people marrying each other, I really have nothing nice to say to or about you. I wish I could say I was open to dialogue about this issue, but I’ve seen no evidence that people who are truly troubled by the prospect of consenting adults marrying each other aren’t just huge jerks. Life is too short to engage such people. But know that I think you are deeply troubled and should pray for peace. I will vote against your politicians and quash your pathetic attempts to discriminate. I will dismiss any religious backing for such hate as a truly unfortunate side effect of the First Amendment. Call me close-minded. I never claimed to be open-minded toward mean people.

Day 1 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 2 Something you love about yourself.
Day 3 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 4 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 5 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 6 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 7 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 8 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 9 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself

So that short guy that I write about from time to time? The fruit of my womb? This one?

He’s NINE today. NINE YEARS OLD. And he’s all:

By the way, we didn’t spray-paint his friends’ faces in real life. Just protecting their privacy and whatnot.

Like last year, we had a roller skating party. It turned out to be a pretty great day. We stopped in Polish Hill to pick up one of his friends and then swooped through Lawrenceville to pick up one of our friends who was going to be attending the party. On our way to Lawrenceville, the husband said, “Hey, look. Beetlejuice. Driving.” What? We looked in the direction of his pointed finger and saw an old burgundy minivan and, no shit, this guy at the wheel:

Not Michael Keaton circa 1988…at least I don’t think it was him. But a guy dressed up as Beetlejuice. The costume was amazing and the makeup was incredibly detailed. We just, uh, weren’t expecting that. As Beetlejuice drove past us, he saw our stunned expressions and grinned. It was really bizarre.

After we had picked up our friend, we shifted seating so that he and the husband were sitting up front and then in the back it was me, the baby’s friend, and the baby. About halfway through our drive to the roller rink, the baby’s friend said, “You know, I get carsick a lot.” To which I replied:

But we made it to our destination without incident.

Once we got there, and my grandparents showed up, the party quickly reached Animal House levels of mayhem.

It was a small group, but the kids had fun. And nobody broke anything so I pretty much my crossed off my entire list of goals for the day. Our other major coup was bringing a CD that we burned of songs that the baby likes. He has some current mainstream favorites, ie, Rihanna, T.I., but a lot of what he wanted to hear was Kraftwerk, Common, Black Sheep, and A Tribe Called Quest. The DJ put the CD in and pretty much just let it play, which was cool with us but the other kids who came to skate in a circle to “Party in the U.S.A.” for the 500th time in a row were close to revolting. Around the time that “Trans Europe Express” came on, I looked over and saw a gaggle of tweens shaking their fists at the DJ booth. Fortunately, the CD started skipping so the DJ switched to Ke$ha. Yay.

We’re going out to dinner tonight with my mom to celebrate. In the meantime, I’m doing that “Nine years ago at this time, I was…” thing. As much as I can, anyway. I spent most of the day in a post-C-section morphine cloud probably saying stuff like, “What baby?”

(Psst! Today’s the last day to enter my 77kids giveaway!)

“Alright, buddy, go upstairs and get dressed. We need to get going.”

Ten minutes pass while I make sure that lunch and piano books are packed. I head upstairs and foolishly expect to see the baby in some advanced stage of dressing, at the very least wearing pants.

Instead, he is crouched on the floor in his pajamas, reading a book.

“What are you doing?!!?!” I hiss. “We need to GO!”

“I couldn’t find any pants.”

“Oh for Christ’s sake…”

I rustle some clean clothes together and toss them in his room, explaining again that we need to leave in just a few minutes. I start getting dressed myself and poke my head into his room because I sense something off. Something procrastinating. He’s wearing pants, but no shirt, and is playing with some magnets.

“Dude. Seriously. Come on.”

“Oh, FINE!” he sighs, as though going to school is some inconvenient favor I’ve just asked of him.

Downstairs, he has not put on his shoes like I told him to, but is looking for the gloves that he threw somewhere in the house when we got home last night.

I finally get him out the door and hustle him to the bus stop, explaining along the way that he has to go to school so there’s no point resisting and when he goofs off in the morning we risk missing the bus, which would screw up everyone’s day.

“Understand?” I ask/demand.

“Yessssss,” he moans.

We stand and wait for the bus. He breaks the silence by innocently asking me, “Can you take heavy blows to the head?”

In non-bludgeoning news, my dad’s birthday was on Sunday and we had him over for dinner and cake. He brought Champagne. He’s my favorite father.

He’s getting ready to blow out the candles in that picture. He’s not overly excited about or terrified by the cake that I made despite how it might look.

By the way, that cake is this Chocolate Overdose Cake, which is some Serious Business.

Brownie, mousse, cake, ganache. Ya heard?

I’ve had two mostly low-key weekends in a row, which means I’m due for another whirlwind. Tonight we’re trying to go see the new Harry Potter movie. Tomorrow morning, I’ll be hanging out with some other blog types at 77kids to check out their holiday displays and to learn more about their charity initiatives. At some point, I need to bake some cookies because later in the day, I’m going to hitch a ride with Allison to Michelle‘s house for a cookie swap. Then I will ponder who I am, doing all of these nice, wholesome things. Sunday, my mom and I are supposed to do some hardcore cleaning at my house. I may have to drink throughout that process.

It occurs to me that a lot of stuff happened in October that I didn’t write about here. Nothing life-altering, but events that would normally go here if I had time to write about them. I was frustrated by my lack of down time, but it’s good in a way that I wasn’t able to document anything. I was too busy living.

So, back at the beginning of the month, Frank got married. I didn’t take any pictures of that, but I did take a grand total of two at the rehearsal dinner.

There’s the bride and groom, a large centerpiece, and the best man. I believe I took this during the father of the bride’s “toast,” which was more of an undulating monologue about his job and his recent birthday and I think snails or something. After meeting Andrea’s dad, the picture that she had shown me of him in which he had fallen asleep while repairing the kitchen sink suddenly made perfect sense.

The next weekend, my cousin Jeffrey got married. The ceremony was at Heinz Chapel on the University of Pittsburgh campus.

Yes, I’m wearing the same dress that I wore to Frank’s wedding. It’s my new October Wedding Uniform.

I had never been inside Heinz Chapel before. It is indeed gorgeous. But I found that my attention span during Catholic masses is approximately the same as it was when I was six. I kept staring at the stained-glass windows and going, “Mom, look. Look. Look at those stairs! Mooooommm!” And then Jeffrey and Kristy were married.

Newton’s like, “Tsk! Stupid apple done messed up my coiffure!”

Their reception was in the Carnegie Museum Music Hall, which is also insanely gorgeous.

Carnegie may have been kind of a jerk, but he had awesome taste.

The next day, we celebrated my mom and grandfather’s birthdays.

My kid is so sweet.

The weekend after that, our friends Jwan and Karen got married.

It was a really nice time. Our group of friends doesn’t have a chance to get together that much anymore and the wedding was really casual so we spent most of the evening talking, drinking, and dancing. Afterward, we went to Jwan and Karen’s house were things got progressively sloppy.

That’s Jwan’s brother on the right, who is a very nice guy, but also very blunt. Late in the evening, he sat down next to me and explained that he could tell I was, “kind of insane.”

Tiny dogs attacked the husband and not long after this, said husband had some, er, digestive issues and we had to leave abruptly, though our buddy Alison protested vehemently. The sister-in-law and her boyfriend had to chase our car down the street. It was all very goofy.

Then there was another weekend, and I know we had some kind of social obligation but I can’t remember what it was at all. We also went roller skating. And I think this was the weekend that we made our annual trip to Trax Farms. I forgot to bring my camera so I don’t have any adorable pictures of my kid frolicking in a pile of pumpkins. I’m pretty sure that means my mommyblogger membership is revoked. However, Michelle was there at the same time and she took pictures of her cute kid. So I’ll just piggyback on to her post and say, “Yeah, us too. Also: petting goats.” I also forgot cash so we couldn’t buy a cup of feed to give to the animals in the petting zoo. We kicked it old school and just petted (is that the proper conjugation?) the animals. I want an alpaca. Aside, goats’ eyes, or their pupils anyway, are rectangular.

This kept freaking me out because goats and their rectangular eyes would silently appear beside me and, in the absence of the feed cup, would start gnawing on my hoodie or my purse or my hair. Surreal.

Then came last weekend. Saturday was the Halloween parade in our neighborhood. The baby’s costume was inspired by the hopping vampires in this old, Chinese vampire movie called Mr. Vampire.

Obscure interests much?

When the husband and the baby were in New York this summer, they visited Chinatown and found various elements of the baby’s costume. We basically just had to take care of some makeup and the little prayer sheets.

It turned out pretty good, though nobody knew what he was and…well, I’ll come back to that in a sec.

The other big thing that happened this past weekend was that I turned 32 on Sunday. We celebrated at my mom’s house Saturday night.

I got some really nice stuff from Anthropologie (swoon!).

And there was cake and champagne and then my dad made the most absurd argument about how people can’t truly enjoy sports if they haven’t played them because they don’t appreciate how hard they are and for some reason this leads my dad to dismiss the entire Pittsburgh Penguins’ fan base (but no other sport) because he believes none of them/us have played hockey. Does your brain hurt after reading that? Yeah, imagine hearing it live. I pointed out that I’ve never practiced medicine but I appreciate it any time a doctor, like, gives me an emergency C-section to save the life of me and my child.

Sunday morning at 8:30 am (ugh) the baby had his last soccer game of the year. His team has had a rough season, winning only two games. It was a tough lesson for them, understanding that if you don’t try (which they often weren’t) you don’t get the results that you want. However, they were awesome during their last game, and even though they still lost, they looked pretty bad ass.

Their coaches gave them all trophies for their hard work. And though they were disappointed that they lost, I was secretly pretty glad that we were done for the year.

Sunday night was trick-or-treating. Now, we didn’t expect anyone to know what his costume was and I was really apprehensive about the assumptions that people would make. A lot of people responded simply, “Oh. Okay!” when he told them he was a Chinese, hopping vampire. But plenty of other people took a guess and said…sigh…”Chinaman.”

I know people get all irritated about political correctness, which is stupid because political correctness is just an admittedly poor term for a good thing: treating people with a equal amount of respect and not calling them things that they don’t wish to be called. There’s no legislation, there’s no censorship, it’s simply, “Hey, could you do me a solid and not be a douche and refer to my ethnicity/sexuality/religious/etc group as…?”

So, really, if you weren’t sure, “Chinaman” is not okay to say anymore. So stop.

Anyway, trick-or-treating went well. We had a perfect fall night and we’ve all been gorging on candy ever since.

And that was October. The end.

I’m just going to blurt it out: I hope I never have to bury my child. Anything else in the world I could endure. That…I’m not sure that I could survive.

Ahem.

Anyway, to try to push that out of my head, a close second to that is that I hope I never have to take a math test ever again. I thought I was in the clear after my sophomore year of college, when I finally passed the dummy algebra class after failing it twice. But then I had to go and apply to graduate school which required the GRE. I even ruled out a career as a teacher when I found out that there were hefty math requirements to get the bachelor’s degree.

Even though you generally take math tests quietly and on your own, I still feel like I’m having the mother of all naked anxiety nightmares when I have to actually DO math and then SHOW it to someone, since my computations generally look like this:

It’s not that I don’t respect math and all that is truly awesome about it. I just don’t get it. At all. I mean, I can drive a car better than I can do math and if you’ve seen me drive then you know how much of a dunce I must be about numbers. And I have always hated the reactions that I get from people when they start to grasp how little I understand math. Especially since people who have even a little understanding of it are so freaking smug about it.

So if I could avoid ever taking another math test, that would be wonderful.

Day 01 Something you hate about yourself.
Day 02 Something you love about yourself.
Day 03 Something you have to forgive yourself for.
Day 04 Something you have to forgive someone for.
Day 05 Something you hope to do in your life.
Day 06 Something you hope you never have to do.
Day 07 Someone who has made your life worth living for.
Day 08 Someone who made your life hell, or treated you like shit.
Day 09 Someone you didn’t want to let go, but just drifted.
Day 10 Someone you need to let go, or wish you didn’t know.
Day 11 Something people seem to compliment you the most on.
Day 12 Something you never get compliments on.
Day 13 A band or artist that has gotten you through some tough ass days. (write a letter.)
Day 14 A hero that has let you down. (letter)
Day 15 Something or someone you couldn’t live without, because you’ve tried living without it.
Day 16 Someone or something you definitely could live without.
Day 17 A book you’ve read that changed your views on something.
Day 18 Your views on gay marriage.
Day 19 What do you think of religion? Or what do you think of politics?
Day 20 Your views on drugs and alcohol.
Day 21 (scenario) Your best friend is in a car accident and you two got into a fight an hour before. What do you do?
Day 22 Something you wish you hadn’t done in your life.
Day 23 Something you wish you had done in your life.
Day 24 Make a playlist to someone, and explain why you chose all the songs. (Just post the titles and artists and letter)
Day 25 The reason you believe you’re still alive today.
Day 26 Have you ever thought about giving up on life? If so, when and why?
Day 27 What’s the best thing going for you right now?
Day 28 What if you were pregnant or got someone pregnant, what would you do?
Day 29 Something you hope to change about yourself. And why.
Day 30 A letter to yourself, tell yourself EVERYTHING you love about yourself