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On Saturday night, we went to see Dan Bell play records. It was at this reception hall in Bellevue and the whole thing was very odd. Bellevue, which has a really awesome sign when you enter it that says, “Live. Worship. Shop,” (“It’s like something out of They Live!” –the husband) is sort of a classic Pittsburgh suburb and the reception hall just screamed “yinzer wedding.” It was awesome. It had wood-paneled walls and a parquet dance floor, nauseating carpeting and a teeny-tiny bar with a sign that read, “BEER ONLY.”

There were a ton of people there, most of whom I didn’t recognize and looked really young. The music was awesome and everyone was dancing. I commented that it really felt like one of the after parties in Detroit. Very weird.

What was especially rad was that I saw at least 3 people I wasn’t really trying to ever see again, one of whom said to me, “You guys own a house? That’s retarded.”

Another guy attempted a rather awkward and, I imagine, drug-fueled conversation with me and at one point he asked me, “So, you’ve been around a long time? You’re kind of old?”

That’s me. Retarded. Old.

I happened to look over as a huge light fell about 3 inches from Jwan and spent the rest of the night telling him how glad I was that he wasn’t dead, because that would have bummed me right out.

This one girl was wearing this iridescent…bikini? And she was grinding up against this guy who was rubbing all over her and toward the end of the night he walked over to Bolt and I and asked for a high five. Maybe if I were wearing latex gloves, dude.

When we were getting in the car to go home, a guy in a pick up truck asked if we wanted to go to Club Erotica. “They got wings n’at.” We declined.

I love Pittsburgh.

It’s mad frozen here.

The baby has a two-hour delay and when we walked outside this morning to take me to school, the husband gave a hearty, “Aw, hell naw.” So, we’re chilling in the house for a little bit. I am out of coffee. Go ahead and ask me how excited I am about that.

I’m not real sure when the school bus is supposed to get here. When there was a delay on Wednesday, the bus came at 9:30, but who knows because the driver’s kinda…I don’t know. I think he wants to fight me. Which is fine. We can throw down whenever, dude.

Anyway, check out my kid doing his breathing treatment.

Cute, no? Thankfully, the cough and congestion and the runny nose finally seem to be going away. As an added bonus, the prednisone gave him an actual appetite. He’s eating like a normal human being now and not like…Amy Winehouse.

Aside from my culinary misadventures on Friday evening, about 6,000 other ridiculous things happened in those 24+ hours.

In the morning

The husband and I set out toward work/school and soon discovered that there was massive traffic jams on Pioneer and West Liberty due to a fire in the Fort Pitt tunnels. Our alternate route was also clogged with traffic and we sat in the same spot for about 45 minutes. The driver of the car in front of us had left his keys on his back bumper, so we alerted him to that, and I spotted a yinzer with a really fantastic handlebar mustache. When the traffic finally let up, we saw that a car had rammed into a school bus and the car behind that one swerved to avoid the wreck and ran into a guardrail. I got to my lab class 30 minutes late and sat down at a computer to discover that some jackass had switched all of the keys around on the keyboard. I discovered something interesting about myself: I know the QWERTY row and the home row, but that bottom row is all murky for me.

After dinner

We took the baby to the mother-in-law’s house so he could hang out there because the husband was playing records at a club downtown as part of a gallery crawl. My sister-in-law and I apparently become violent once we cross the threshold into downtown, because our plans for future visits to the cultural district involved machine guns. Just sayin’.

The husband started playing records and was in some kind of mood. Artsy types in Pittsburgh don’t do much dancing, but prefer standing around, sipping $13 “martinis,” and arguing.

Jwan was there, smelling his heavenly beer.

The sister-in-law and I made our way to the bar and made friends with this fabulous boy tending the bar who poured with a heavy hand. While waiting for my drink, a guy leaned over to me, jerked his thumb toward the husband and slurred, “What do you think of this DJ?” Bolt guffawed and walked away and I said, “Oh, I think he’s awesome.” If I were quicker on my feet I would have said something clever like, “I think I’m going to sleep with him tonight,” or “I think I want to have his baby!” I asked the guy what he thought and he replied, “I have my doubts.” Fair enough. I grabbed my drink and spent the majority of the evening bobbing my head and talking to various people that I haven’t seen in a couple of years.

I commented that the worm at the end of the event’s logo kind of looked like an “nj” and snotted that we weren’t in New Jersey.

I had four of these. One could argue that this picture was taken from my perspective at this point, in which my head was resting on the bar. You’d be half-wrong.

I went to the bathroom as things were winding down and was in a stall next to a girl who was working at the event, who couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. I realized that I didn’t have any toilet paper, so I reached my hand underneath the stall divider and said, “Hey, could you spare a square?” A moment of startled silence followed before she finally replied, “Uh, I’m sorry. I don’t do drugs.”

I nearly died laughing and explained that I needed toilet paper. When we exited the stalls, I asked her if she ever watched much Seinfeld…you know, when she was a baby. She hadn’t but we parted on good terms. After washing my hands, I looked to my left and discovered a drink that someone had abandoned on the sink. Score!

I sauntered out to the main area and found Bolt. “Look! I found a drink!”

“Awesome! I found a Blackberry! Someone left it here. It’s mine now!” Awesome! Bolt, undeterred that the Blackberry was password-protected, stuffed it in her purse (Edit: we returned the Blackberry to the bar the next day) and we split the drink, rationalizing that if it had rufies in it, we were with the husband so we should be cool.

On our way home, we realized that there was an important stop that we needed to make:

The O has hoagies.

The O has Runts.

But that’s about it for candy.

We feasted on fries at home and I passed out on the couch. I woke up in bed the next “morning” (read: 12:30 p.m.) and wondered why I was so sweaty and why my chest felt so constricted. I don’t remember much about actually going to bed, but I managed to remove my bra. But instead of removing the shelf-lined camisole I was wearing, I just put another one on top of it.

One of my professors has a really interesting research area: Pittsburgh Speech or Pittsburghese as we call it. Last year, she asked me to help her with some podcasts that she was doing for her website.

Being a native Pittsburgher, I’m rather fluent in Pittsburghese, but the teachers that I had as a child made a point of encouraging us to be aware of our speech and not to slip into the dialect. I generally speak (or try to, anyway) in a relatively neutral tone of voice, but can turn Pittsburghese “on” when I want to.

Or when I’m drunk.

In any case, you can hear me on the podcasts for “nebby” and “dahntahn.” Check it aht.

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you think, “Nothing. None of this is working. I must quit everything?” And I recognize that that statement sounds very woeful, but I’m coming from a very frustrated, irritated point of view in which my willingness to give a shit has simply ceased.

See, the husband’s classes started up again today and suckily enough he has a 9 a.m. class on Mondays and Wednesdays. 9 a.m. classes don’t go over very well in our family because a) we’re not morning people, b) the baby’s bus sometimes doesn’t arrive until 8:30, and c) we live in a cheap part of town, meaning we sacrificed convenience and are usually faced with horrendous traffic. Added to all of that is the fact that one of the main boulevards in Pittsburgh is closed for the next year for repairs, so our usual morning commute clusterfuck has been replaced with the new ’08 model clusterfuck: The Motherf@($*#((%@)$%*%))@!!!!one! 3000.

This morning, we gritted our teeth through the traffic which was way worse than usual, probably because all of the Pitt students are back in the mix. By the time we got to Oakland, it was about 8:58 and I still needed to be dropped off at work. So the husband was already seething and muttering about how we were going to have to radically alter this routine before Wednesday. We pulled up to a red light at the intersection of Forbes and Craig, right in between Starbucks and Kiva Han, the cool indie coffee shop where all of the English and film majors and white Zapatistas go and say cool things like, “Yeah, me too.” *

So, we’re sitting at the red light and all of the artsy and academic types that populate Oakland are blearily shuffling on the sidewalks, absorbing the Mondayness of it all. And the light changes to green. And then this fucking shithead starts to cross the street. Very. Slowly. And he had timed it so that he was walking right in front of our car as the light turned green. And he has his Starbucks cup and his backpack and his floppy hair and just totally did not care that it’s 9 a.m. on a Monday morning and people have to be places because he only has to drink coffee and be a shithead. The husband laid on the horn because what the fuck?

Then. That kid. Spit. At. Our. Car.

The husband rolled down the window and screamed a string of obscenities at him. Ordinarily, I would have tried to reign him in a bit but that kid totally deserved it. And all of the artsy and academic types looked up, startled, and were probably irritated with us but whatever.

The 9 a.m. class. The traffic. The closed boulevard. The Starbucks-spitting shitheads. The lack of apostrophes.

I want them all to die.

Happy Monday!

* Louis C.K.

For the past five years, my friend Karen has run a really awesome business called Girls Night In. She and former partner Alison have hosted educational lectures and parties, which are like Tupperware parties but with sex toys. Best of all, GNI is based on feminist ideals, so instead of a Cosmo-tinged “how to make your man go wild,” their focus was on helping the ladies ensure that they made themselves go wild.

Sadly, the party aspect of GNI will be no more. Karen will be holding a “going out of business” sale tonight in the hopes of sending all of those dildos and vibrators to loving holes homes.

The sale will be held at Amani International Coffeehouse from 8:00pm-10:00pm.

Any additional details that you might need can be found on the GNI site.

If you are in the Pittsburgh area, check it out. Your vagina will thank you. And so will Karen, probably.

I emailed this picture to the mayor’s office a few weeks ago and today I got an email from Gigi Saladna, the Communications Manager.

“Hi Kelly,
Just a note to let you know we did receive your email with the picture of the Mayor back on Oct. 29 (We’re a little backed up with emails!)
What a nice surprise! The Mayor loved it and thanks you for your kindness. (We were all teasing him how tall he looks in the picture!)
Thanks for taking the time to write to us – we really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
Gigi”

Our neighborhood had a Halloween parade on Saturday. A bunch of kids came out in their costumes and paraded down the main drag, cheered on by parents, grandparents, shopkeepers, and whatever patrons managed to stumble out of the bars. The baby is going as Godzilla this year, but we couldn’t find a Godzilla specific costume and I am not yet up to the job of constructing costumes, so we borrowed a dinosaur costume from my mom’s friend. It serves the purpose, kinda, but the baby was increasingly irritated with people assuming that he was some chump dinosaur. “I’m GODZILLA!” he would whine. Duh. Trampled Tokyo multiple times…ring any bells?

The baby actually once told me that Godzilla protects humanity from the tyranny of all monsters. Those were the words he used. Who is he?

Anyway, the parade was alright. I took a few pictures of the baby but mostly spent my time snapping shots of the boulevard, which is a good way to see how…odd the neighborhood is. It’s equal parts old world Pittsburgh and honestly-we-don’t-give-a-shit.

For instance:

There’s a drive-thru beer distributor. This is not unique to us, of course, but I think any place that has establishments that combine two things that aren’t supposed to go together (ie, drinking and driving) has a certain je ne sais quoi.

There were some miscreants about. These kids watched the parade with a certain amount of wistfulness in their eyes. I could tell they really wanted to still take part in all of the pageantry, but felt that they were too old now.

Or maybe they were just high.

Firehouse. Mediterranean grocery store containing the bomb pita, hummus, tabouleh, and grape leaves.

Luke Ravenstahl, Mayor of Pittsburgh, looking very…mayoral. I emailed this pic to the mayor’s office but have not yet heard back from Luke saying, “OMG thanks! I’m making it my default pic on MySpace right now.”

Me and Godzilla, who looks pretty gentle. Also, there is not a cheerleader growing out of his head, even though it looks that way. And, yes, I’m wearing a Sean John hoodie. My dad gave all three of us hoodies last year for Christmas and they were all brands that he had seen on drug dealers on The Wire. My dad’s weird. But that hoodie is huge and warm and I love it.

Anyway, speaking of Halloween, I’ve posted a very useful scary movie guide on MamaPop which you should peruse at your earliest convenience. To sum it up for you: Suspiria owns.

Maybe the lack of wholesome cinema in my diet can explain my attitude as of late, which is rather poor. I’ve definitely hit a slump and am viewing all of my duties with contempt. I did not do the readings for any of my classes over the weekend, I did not do laundry, I did not scrub poopy toilets (can’t imagine why not, I’ve been looking forward to it so), and am cranky at work. This morning, I realized, to my great annoyance, that I still needed to pack a lunch for the baby. As I told Angela, I have a very, “You need fed AGAIN? I just fed you yesterday!” approach to parenting at the moment and all this needs to stop because I need to make a living, get my master’s and keep my kid alive. God, adulthood is such a drag.

I guess I need to watch some Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood or something.

“Wolfman’s got nards!”

This week’s trip to Incredibly Strange Video yielded this gem from my childhood. Note that it’s the 20th Anniversary Edition. Gulp.

Also, if you are in the Pittsburgh area, ISV will be hosting a zombie double feature at the restored Hollywood Theater in Dormont. They’ll be showing the original Night of the Living Dead and the new Dawn of the Dead (which actually isn’t that bad). Show starts at 7:30 and costs $10.