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I’ve heard from various sources that you’re supposed to get your hair trimmed every six weeks. This sounds nice and all, but I’ve always fancied it to be excessive, both in terms of maintenance and cost. Granted, I tend to let things go longer than I should, but usually get my hair cut maybe twice a year.

My most recent trim was back in September and I went to another salon on the main boulevard in my neighborhood. The one that I first went to last summer, the one that the husband feared would give me poofy bangs, was fine, but they seemed slightly put out that I was messing with the age curve.

So, in September I went to another place that served a slightly younger clientele and got a haircut that I wasn’t sure about at first, but turned out to be just fine. And it got me parting my hair slightly off-center, which, when I look back on 2009, will stand out as one of life’s big events. What Master’s degree? DID YOU SEE MY PART?!?!?

So, with my ends looking mighty unhealthy, I headed down to the same place on Saturday. I wanted to keep the little side bang, take off a few inches, and get some layers.

The haircut portion of my visit was fine and I addressed the de rigeur pitching of Redken products with aplomb.

When it came time to dry my hair, the stylist said, “Now, last time, we dried your hair straight. Could we try playing up your curl this time?” Eh, sure, go for it. I always have stylists dry it straight because it always looks so smooth and pretty, but change is good, right?

Well, 5 curl-defining products, a diffuser, and a curling iron later, I found myself staring at this:

The stylist, bless her heart, was so excited about the Bon Jovi masterpiece atop my head that when she asked me, “Do you like it?” I had to reply, “Yes, of course!” I normally wouldn’t endorse lying, but like I said, the cut was fine and this style would go away just fine. In the meantime, I just tried to stifle my laughter and wondered if I could find neon spandex pants at the thrift store.

When I walked into my house, the look on the husband’s face was one of horror mixed with whatever contortion happens when you try to stifle laughter. I couldn’t contain myself and cracked up.

It’s calmed down considerably since I washed it, but if you’re in need of a groupie for your 80s revival band, I’m available.

Failure One: Mousse

I made a cake for my co-worker’s birthday. Specifically, this Chocolate Overdose Cake. I’m not really exaggerating that the cake has made me something of a legend at the office. (And, perhaps, alienated my co-worker for stealing the spotlight on her birthday. Sorry. Am jackass. But with tasty cake.)

Also, Abby (I think) reports that people will never take you seriously if you’re the person who brings in baked goods to the office. To which I say, “Fine. Don’t take me seriously. Enjoy your grocery store cake. Nyah.”

Setting out, I realized that I didn’t have any round cake pans so I convinced the husband to let me cross the threshold of Sur la Table. Oh. My. God. I actually forgot one thing and had to go back the next day. Getting into the car, I said, “I really should be commended for the restraint that I showed in there.” A whole wall of small appliances. Every kind of spatula you could imagine (Spatula City). A stack of shelves with cake pans that I could barely see the top of. It was heaven. And also why I have thus far avoided any restaurant supply stores. I would absolutely break down and chain myself to one of those big KitchenAid mixers. Pictures that I’ve seen from others’ trips to such places nearly had me in tears.

Anyway, to make the mousse layer, the recipe tells you to make the whipped cream in a chilled mixer bowl, melt the chocolate, and put the chocolate in a separate stainless steel bowl. Then, take 1/4 cup of the whipped cream and whisk it into the chocolate to temper it, then fold the rest of the whipped cream in. In an effort to avoid cluttering my tiny kitchen with more bowls, I just left the whipped cream in the mixer bowl, tempered the chocolate, and then put it into the whipped cream. I quickly found out why the new bowl was necessary.

That is not cookies and cream ice cream, but whipped cream with tiny bits of melted chocolate that were shocked into solid pellets upon their meeting the cold whipped cream. It tasted okay, but the consistency was too weird. I left the bowl of failed mousse with the husband and baby so that they could pick at it, and tried again.

MUCH better.

I don’t have any pictures of the finished cake because the “decorating,” if you can call it that, looked worthy of Cake Wrecks. And I made the ill-advised decision to write “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” with one of those Cake Mate “easy to write!” tubes. Here’s the honest to dog truth: any product that claims to be for home chefs and easy-to-use is full of crap. Take some extra time and learn how to use the real thing. Because “Happy Birthday [Name of Co-Worker]!” ended up looking like, “Hbbbj Bbbbby Vcccccc!” with random lines and dots scattered throughout.

Those snafus aside, it was AMAZING. So delicious. Make it. Or have someone make it for you to prove their love.

Failure Two: Our child evokes one of the characters in Idiocracy

I mentioned recently that the baby is very grumpy about school right now. We haven’t gotten to the bottom of that, but in the meantime we’re still working with him on our own to make sure that he’s learning stuff.

Last night, while sitting in horrendous traffic, the baby asked us what the capital of Pittsburgh was.

“Cities don’t have capitals, buddy. Countries and states do,” we explained.

“Oh,” he said.

“So, what’s the capital of Pennsylvania?”

“Harrisburg.”

“Right. And what’s the capital of the United States?”

“Washington, D.C.”

“Right! And what’s the capital of San Francisco?” we asked, checking to see if he was paying attention.

“Um…Philly?”

“What? No. Philadelphia is a city in Pennsylvania. San Francisco is also a city in California. And cities don’t have capitals, remember?”

“Noooo! PHILLY is in San Francisco!”

“Buddy, no, “Philly” is short for Philadelphia, and it’s in Pennsylvania.”

“Man, I HATE Biology.”

Oh, dear. So, when we finally got home and after the baby had finished his homework, the husband went over some biology geography with him. It hadn’t really been a focus of ours, but we had hoped that he was picking up some useful knowledge from this interactive map game that the husband’s grandmother gave him a while back. Of course, upon closer inspection, perhaps we shouldn’t have handed over some of our teaching responsibilities to this thing.

It has a bit of a Kerouac ring to it, yes? Packing up the jalopy and driving across the America. Wait til we be lovers in Frisco.

Failure Three: The pesky need for air

I seem to have caught some of the Man Cold that the husband and baby were fighting a few days ago. And it really hadn’t crimped my lifestyle until last night when I went to do the 30 Day Shred. I was kind of excited because it was my first attempt at Level 2. I was getting bored with Level 1 and had been eager to move on, but achey knees prevented me from doing so sooner.

Here’s the thing about strenuous exercise while congested: Don’t. Do. It. Seriously. Very bad idea. I nearly died during one of the cardio portions because I had to exercise while mouth-breathing, which caused severe mouth dryness, which caused a malfunction when I tried to swallow and catch my breath without the benefit of a functioning airway.

While Jillian screeched, “I WANT YOU TO FEEL LIKE YOU’RE GOING TO DIE!” I wheezed and coughed and tried desperately to rehydrate my mouth.

When I finally finished, the husband said, “Do you feel like you’re going to die?” I replied, “I nearly suffocated and saw birdies.” Then I sneezed on him.

It’s slightly pathetic how excited I am to be back at work. However, I have good reasons: a functional computer (well, sorta, my work computer is OLD), functional internet, one more quiet week to hunker down and get stuff done, and for the first time in years, I can work without having to stop and go to class.

Plus, the baby is back at school today and as fun as our winter break was, he was exhibiting signs of extreme cabin fever. After a day or so of non-stop (literally NON. STOP.) talking, we realized he needed to expend some energy. He went skiing with the father-in-law and played in the snow. We also went roller skating the other night and I am happy to report that our relatively frequent skating sessions have restored my long-dormant skills. Like, I can actually move both feet now instead of dragging along my paralytic left foot and making up for its dead weight by pumping my arms. This skating method is neither effective nor graceful and I do not recommend it.

When we were inside, I showed the baby this montage of Harrison Ford forcefully saying, “my WIFE,” or “my FAMILY” in at least 40 movies and he is now obsessed with it.

I hear him muttering, “my WIFE” every now and then and it’s a little disarming. It is now my favorite pop culture tic of his, with his impersonation of Aaron Eckhart in The Dark Knight crying, “RACHEL! RACHEL!” a very close second.

Also, and I’m going to abruptly end this post after this because…I don’t know, the engagement photos channel of Awkward Family Photos is absolutely mesmerizing. The pictures of people who look they were caught mid-dry-hump are the best. The husband and I never did engagement photos because a) we didn’t care and b) we’re REALLY not the type. In our wedding pictures, the ones that are posed you can tell that we’re stifling laughter and any other pictures that we have taken together end up looking like this:

One of my quirky pet peeves is inefficiency. Specifically, inefficient packaging. As insignificant as a concern as this may be, I think it will start to have significant consequences as people rely more on e-commerce and shipping in terms of costs, both financial and environmental.

So, for the baby’s birthday, I ordered (shh, don’t tell) this safety knife set because he always wants to help me cook and I want him to have 10 intact digits. Like I said, I’m quirky.

Today, the knife set and the other gifts that I ordered arrived and I gleefully set about opening boxes. I couldn’t quite remember what was due, so when I got to the biggest box, I wasn’t sure what was inside.

I offer my foot for scale, if that helps. I wear a size 8, 8 1/2.

Another shot of the impressive box, complete with my stained shirt. (My grandmother gave me four shirts for my birthday. I’ve worn three. I’ve also stained three. Eff my life.)

At this point, seeing the cooking.com tape, I’m figuring it’s the knife set, but I’m not yet concerned about the size because I didn’t check the dimensions when I ordered it. Maybe that makes me a bad consumer. I don’t know.

Ooh, looks enticing.

Dig, dig, dig. “Any minute now,” I say to myself, “I’m going to reach the gift. Sweet!”

Eventually, I reach China this:

I know what you’re thinking: SRSLY?

Srsly.

I estimated this to be 27 feet of Fill-Air. TWENTY-SEVEN FEET. All for this.

And, look, I get it. I ordered this around the busiest shopping time of the year. I can only imagine the fatigue that the shipping staff of cooking.com and amazon.com were experiencing and I’m sure they were experiencing packaging challenges that would make me barf. But this is really ridiculous. It’s inefficient and wasteful and frankly I expect better.

Hi. I’ve just returned from the ridiculously overpriced on-campus convenience store where I procured Pepto Bismol because things have gone all wrong in my stomach. I’ve been grappling with what I can only describe as extreme hunger since early this morning and the only explanation that I can come up with is that since I’ve spent the last four days eating (and doing little else), I’m on some weird new digestive schedule. If the Pepto doesn’t help, I may have to call my HMO to see if they will cover an IV of liquefied mashed potatoes.

I could tell that this mini-vacation was going to be rad when my son came downstairs Tuesday night looking like this:

And said, “Take my picture in this outfit and put it on Facebook!” Um, no. But I will put it on my blog. This is why I don’t really let him on the internet and as far as he is concerned, the series of tubes begins and ends at cartoonnetwork.com.

Wednesday, I got out of work early and the dudes and I went to the museum to see the whale exhibit, which features a replica of a blue whale’s heart and apparently blue whales are really big because the heart was the size of a Volkswagen. Kids were able to crawl around in it and the baby invited me in. Because I possess the ability to identify Spaces In Which I Will Get Stuck, I declined but stuck my head in to take a look. From what I could smell, someone in the recent past had not made it out of there in time to make it to the bathroom, which is probably the only instance in life where you could close your eyes and be unsure of whether you were on the bus or a plastic blue whale’s heart.

After that, we went to see Fantastic Mr. Fox, which was pretty great and then rushed home because I had pie-making and potato-mashing duties to tend to.

Thursday morning I made the executive decision to make 5 more pounds of mashed potatoes and this made the husband very nervous. But I don’t have time for girly-men when it comes to Thanksgiving, so I shushed him and we piled into the car and headed to my mom’s.

YES.

My dad and his cancer-free ass showed up to bring the appropriate level of cheer to the event.

If you ever wondered where I get my sunny disposition, look no further.

This portion of Thanksgiving went off relatively without a hitch, and I couldn’t help but think of one Thanksgiving in 2003ish, during which we got into a huge fight about I don’t even remember what and all of the pictures feature my red eyes and puffy nose because I don’t understand why you have to be such a bitch MOM. Anyway, the only tense moment was when I realized that my grandmother and I had both made pumpkin pies and my grandmother said something about passing the torch and I detected a note of bitterness.

Look at her giving me the stinkeye. Your applique sweater fools no one!

After we were adequately stuffed, we rolled out to my mother-in-law’s house for the second shift. That culminated in lying on the couch, groaning and farting, while watching The Godfather on AMC. This is a torturous activity because The Godfather is several hundred hours long as it is. When you add 300 commercial breaks, you begin to have the urge to shoot Vito and blow up Appollonia yourself just to get on with life.

I am pleased to say that spending time with my family and getting to visit with Frank over the past couple of days has greatly improved my mood. I’m still sad about stuff a lot of the time (which has had the fortunate side effect of a clean entryway), but our people really do rally around me and my little family and they’re not going to let us smack the bottom. They’ll at least help us to land softly.

The next week and a half is going to be an exciting one. The baby turns 8 (EIGHT!?!?!) on Sunday and then next Tuesday I give my final presentation as a graduate student. Effectively, I will be done with my MA a little over a week from now.

Also, I made the executive decision that the husband and I needed to re-watch The Wire from the beginning. I think he was a little surprised, especially since we just started watching Deadwood (a couple of years after the fact, but whatever), but he didn’t really resist. Being able to watch the whole thing over again is so fun. I highly recommend it.

Here’s the after to this before:

And, no, the books are not piled up out of frame, they are now stacked in the handy little nook of the nightstand.

I think the fact that the books are crooked bothers me only slightly is a sign of serenity. Go me.

I am (still) having a rough go of it, emotionally. Today, when my mom came to pick up my kid to take him to Oakmont’s light-up night, I was crying a little bit because it seems I have a daily quota these days. She told me to do something that made me happy while they were gone, like laundry.

On the surface, this might sound horribly condescending. “Buck up, wifey! You’re neglecting your womanly nature by pursuing a career and having thoughts and stuff. Take a valium and dust and you’ll feel right as rain!”

Unfortunately, there are no valium here. But it is true that in fits of rage or depression, I’ve pulled myself up slightly by taking action in the one area of life that I can control. So I decided to tackle the area by my bed.

I have, I think, an understandably shitty attitude toward cleaning my house. Its run-down and just dirty looking, no matter what, so even basic maintenance often seems pointless. Combine that with the fact that I’m naturally a messy person and things like this happen.

See if you can spot your favorite book! And I’m sure Tracey will be touched to see the pictures of M scattered in with the debris.

So, I’m about to go to town on this sucker and will be back in a few hours (hopefully) with an after picture.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have…finished a room in our house.

There are, of course, a few details remaining. We need a window treatment and that dresser is actually the baby’s changing table/chest of drawers from when he was but a wee thing and, well, he’s kind of outgrown it. But, yes, this is the first room that I really consider done. Our laundry room is mostly done, but it has an addition off of it that will need to go and I anticipate that causing a few new swear words to be invented.

You say you’d like another angle? Well, alright then.

Perhaps the coolest part is that we were finally able to import the ceiling fan that he had in his room at my mom’s house.

I know that that isn’t the greatest picture, but my cat was intent on photobombing. See:

As a sort of birthday-slash-I-know-your-life-is-semi-wack-at-the-moment-so-please-cheer-up present, my mom helped us with the financing of some new carpeting. I have never been so physically attracted to something that just lays on the floor and smells kind of weird.

We ripped out a bunch of carpeting when we first bought the house, mostly in the name of ridding ourselves of the dried cat pee smell. But new carpeting wasn’t really in the budget. So the areas of hardwood flooring that were still in decent shape got some area rugs and the areas that weren’t got a steam clean and the stinkeye. Particularly because the existing carpeting was U-G-L-Y.

I remember at the closing the previous owner boasting how nice the indoor/outdoor carpeting was and wanting to punch him because…no. It’s not nice. Ever. Unless you’re living in a college dorm at a state school and need something that can stand up to Pabst vomit. The portions of the house that didn’t have the dark blue indoor/outdoor crap had this burnt orange shaggy stuff that was just depressing. The pile on the stairs had long ago been mashed down so it held on to every mote of dust and fuzz in the air. Vacuuming it was a total waste of effort and I felt like a total idiot every time I wasted an afternoon on it.

I’ve been really bad about taking official before and after pictures of our very slow remodeling, but here’s what I can offer in terms of B&A of the stairs.

Orange stairs of doom, plus my cute kid.

And now?

Can you hear the chorus of angels?

I don’t have a before picture of the hallway, but here’s one of our bedroom:

That’s the same indoor/outdoor junk and unfortunately, due to budget constraints, we couldn’t put new carpeting in this room, but you get the idea.

Cue the chorus of angels, please:

Now, finally, here’s the biggest transformation. The smallest bedroom was a total wreck and was the first one that we really tackled with gusto. We ripped up the carpeting, tore down the walls, insulated it, put in some wiring (I think), put up new dry wall, installed new wood trim, painted, stained…and it only took us four years! I think we’re good candidates for Extreme(ly slow) Makeover: Home Edition.

So here’s the official before and the room is at a weird angle so it’s hard to get a full shot:

Here’s a during shot:

Angels, please!

Now all that’s left for this room is covering the vent and outlets, getting a window treatment, a light fixture, and moving the baby in there. It might actually happen this weekend.

Screw Mayan prophecy, this is truly the sign that the end times are upon us.

My great-uncle brought it back from Italy after World War II and gave it to my grandmother. I wore it on our wedding day.