kdiddy.org

I’m home a little early today because of a dentist appointment and am now desperate for sugar because of my contrary nature. I just wanted to pop in and make note of two things.

1. The winner of the 77kids gift card giveaway is hellohahanarf from midnightcliff.com! Congratulations and thanks to everyone for entering.

2. My buddies Emily and Shannon have a blog and have started a cool new feature called Guest Music Snob and today I was the snob in question. I recycled my post about Andres for them, but you should head over there and check out the site in general, since they’re always posting about the music and design things that strike their fancy and their cool dinner parties.

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!)

The baby and I did two unusual things two weekends ago: got up early on a Saturday and went to Ross Park Mall. Ross Park Mall is on the other side of town for us and we all know how I feel about sleeping, so you can imagine that whatever pulled me out there must have been pretty cool. The folks at 77kids and TheMotherhood invited me and a few other local blogger-types to see the new store out there, check out their cool winter displays and merchandise, and learn about their charity initiative.

We arrived before the mall even opened, so it was nice and quiet, aside from a few mall-walkers (those folks who powerwalk around the mall early in the morning for their exercise). 77kids launched about two years ago in Robinson and the Ross Park store is pretty new. The store itself was warm and cozily lit, which made it instantly comfortable. The baby made a beeline for the interactive photo booth display so that he could live out his Shaun White fantasies.

After oogling at his photo after it printed, we headed to the outside of the store to see their cool window displays. 77kids took a cue from the downtown department store window displays and had the 77kids birds skating around and skiing. The window is interactive and the kids were invited to race each other’s birds down the hill. I would have taken a picture of the race in action, but I was holding our coats and my coffee and a bagel and a DS and a doughnut. I managed to get a shot after the fact.

I had to stuff his bagel back into his mouth to free up my hands, though.

Back inside the store, we learned about Wish 4 Snow. In stores, customers can add a donation at the register that will go toward children’s hospitals all over the country. Online, you can play the Make a Snowflake Wish game. 77kids’ goal is to get 100,000 snowflakes made for their blizzard by December 14th. If they reach that goal, they will donate an additional $25,000 to children’s hospitals. AND for every snowflake that you make, you’ll be entered to win a $77 gift card to 77kids and a chance at the grand prize: a winter block party for you and 77 guests. You can click the widget over on the right to get to the Wish 4 Snow game. It’s pretty cool. I’ve made a couple snowflakes and they look WAY better than the ones I’ve attempted with scissors and paper, which tend to look like diseased Swiss cheese.

I had to drag the baby away from these huge pillow bean bag things to go look at clothes.

Can’t really say that I blame him, though. They looked extremely comfortable.

He made a beeline for this hat, which I unfortunately can’t find on the 77kids site anymore. I hope it’s not sold out completely!

After donning the hat, he was drawn back to the photobooth to play with the neat little DJ setup that they had. Since his dad’s a DJ, the baby is always trying to play around with records whenever he gets a chance, so he was really into this gadget.

He circled around the store one more time and grabbed some gloves, a pair of jeans, which are awesome because they have that adjustable elastic waist and my toothpick kid needs that, and these cozy pajama pants that reminded us a little of the Abominable Snowman. We’ve been pretty happy with all of these so far and that hat gets so many compliments, it’s ridiculous.

Now, here’s where the cool stuff happens for you. I’m giving away one $50 gift card to 77kids to one of you lovely readers. All you have to do is leave a comment on this post between now and Monday, December 6th. I will choose one winner at random and announce the winner here on Tuesday, December 7th. You could give the gift card as a gift to your favorite kid or parent or stock up on some duds for your shorty. You should also take a minute to go play that Wish 4 Snow game. Do it! It’s for the kids!

(Awkward full disclosure: I’m working with 77kids and The MotherHood on this campaign. For my efforts, they provided me with a 77kids gift card and a small stipend.)

“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.

I really need to get my driver’s license.

I’ve taken the test four times and failed each time. I can’t seem to get my mind past the fact that I hate driving, I hate obnoxious drivers, and I hate how strict they are about the test and fail me for imperfect parking but seem to just throw licenses off of a float in the middle of a parade for, like, All Jackasses’ Day. Seriously, the stuff that I see on a daily basis? There ought to be an investigation launched into the DMV.

The other main thing that’s really keeping me from just going and taking the test until I pass is that we can’t afford another car right now and if I’m driving myself to work, then the husband is without.

It’s only around times like these that I really notice how much easier life would be if I could drive.

The husband is in Detroit for a few days and my mom, who works right near me, was supposed to take me and the baby to his piano lesson and then home. But my mom came down with the flu or something and I had to call upon my mother-in-law to get us, which obviously makes me feel guilty since she has other stuff that she’s doing.

This morning, I had to catch the bus to work, which is fine, but since Port Authority did their most recent round of service cuts, the bus from my neighborhood to downtown has the most absurd morning rush hour schedule. There’s a bus at 8:07 and another at 8:41. Missing from that lineup is the bus that I used to catch at around 8:20, which would get me to work in Oakland by 9:00…maybe a few minutes after.

The problem with that is that the baby’s school bus comes at 8:16. So I have to get the 8:41 bus, which gets me to Oakland around 9:30. Or I have to deposit the baby at his bus stop and leave before he gets picked up, which I’m not comfortable doing yet. I feel like there’s probably plenty of 8-year-olds who manage such responsibilities just fine, I’m just not sure either of us is ready for that. I’d kind of feel like he was the baby in that Dave Chappelle bit where his limo driver drove him into a really sketchy area in the middle of the night and then left him waiting there for awhile.

(Some NSFW language in here.)

About four and a half years after Frank stood a few feet behind me, supporting me as I married the husband, I stood a few feet behind him as he married his wife. It was super cool and I felt incredibly lucky to be able to say to people who asked me that day, “Frank and I have been friends for 11 years. He was in my wedding and now I’m in his.”

It was a lovely day and it’s so life-affirming to witness the union of two people who are genuinely in love and devoted to each other. Those really are the moments that we live for, you know?

I brought my camera and thought about grabbing it a few times, but ultimately decided to leave it in my bag and just experience the day. Besides, there were professionals on hand to capture the action. I did snap a quick picture of myself in the mirror, because I wanted to make sure that my hairdo was documented.

I met up with the bridesmaids at a salon on Saturday morning and told the hairdresser that I just wanted my hair blown out straight. He nodded, then pursed his lips, then finally said, “I think we should do an up-do!” Err, okay. I was not facing the mirror for most of the ‘do’s creation, and kept getting increasingly nervous when I saw ringlets out of the corner of my eye and when the hairdresser said, “I need another can of hairspray.” Forty-two bobby pins later (I counted), I had that super cool hairdo. It went well with my dress, which was pretty retro. The husband and the baby thought I looked silly, but whatever. It was fun to play dress-up.

I was wearing a pretty hardcore foundation garment and I understood why women in the 40s, 50s, and 60s were so thin: you can’t physically eat very much of anything when the possibility of stomach expansion is simply eliminated.

The cookie table was epic. People were practically sick from eating so many and there were still hundreds left over. Relatedly, if anyone wants to come over for snickerdoodles, I have a couple dozen.

After the wedding, the husband and I went to VIA because he was slated to play records. It was a pretty cool event and it was encouraging to see so many people just out and taking in musical performances that they probably wouldn’t have given a second glance otherwise. (Shh…can you hear that? I can hear someone’s horizons broadening!)

We got to see Dam Funk perform, which was pretty cool. He and the husband chatted afterwards and are, like, BFFs now.

“Mum. Mum, I have a nosebleed.”

The baby’s wiry shadow stood by my bed, his hands clutching his nose.

“Are you okay?” I muttered, poking myself in the eye with my glasses as I pulled myself out of bed.

“Yeah.”

We stumbled to the bathroom and I assessed his nose. It wasn’t bleeding very badly. A few quick applications of pressure and he was back in bed.

I returned to my bed and nudged the husband’s knee out of my spot before curling my pillow back under my head and closing my eyes.

I expected to fall back to sleep immediately but instead a convention of worries began in my brain. All of the regular players were there: How Will We Ever Pay Our Student Loans showed up with Maybe We Should Try to Sell the House. Should I Get a Second Job on the Weekends came stumbling in followed by I’m a Terrible Parent, who promptly put the lampshade on her head and ended the night by peeing in the front yard and calling her best friend a bitch. Again.

These are all the kinds of things that are not affected whatsoever by worrying, especially not at 4:30 a.m., thereby making my worrying pointless and self-indulgent.

My body started to tense up the way that it does when I’m worrying like this. My jaw clenched, my shoulders rose, my legs wouldn’t relax. I whipped the covers off of me and went downstairs, feeling the need to direct the tension elsewhere.

I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen a little bit, every few minutes poking my head through the blinds to see if there was any hint of daylight yet. A weird idea had crept into my unexpected, early morning housekeeping: go for a jog.

I had started jogging about 5 months ago and was surprised to find that I enjoyed it. Or rather, I enjoyed how I felt when my jogs were over and found myself getting antsy on the days that I didn’t have that release.

Estimating that sunrise was only about 10 minutes away, I pulled on my jogging gear, grabbed my phone and my key, and quietly made my way outside.

I warmed up by walking down our quiet street and down toward the main drag where there was more light. The only other people that I saw were the bakers in the two bakeries along the way. They were busy making the morning’s treats, doughnut-scented traps that nearly lured me in.

Finally, at the end of the main drag, I broke into my run and immediately had to confront a small hill.

The run wasn’t easy. I’m not used to hills and the lingering darkness of the lazy dawn and my uncertainty of my timing had me a little worried. My only companion was the automated voice of my running application that told me how far I had gone.

But I kept going, up into the next neighborhood and very nearly into the one after that. On my way back, the sun was finally starting to blink its eyes open and emit that sleepy blue light. A few other runners and walkers were out by then. They all grinned at me as I huffed past them.

When I got back to my house, I was no richer than I had been, but I felt somehow lighter. I peeled off my sweaty clothes and rinsed my still sleepy muscles in the warm water, thinking maybe I could go on for one more day.

At my graduation party about a month back, one of my professors stopped by with her husband. He and I were talking about Pittsburgh, and he asked me where I lived, specifically if I lived in a neighborhood.

I was happy to tell him that I do and even happier to tell him that my neighborhood has become more, well, neighborly since we moved in over four years ago.

We moved to Brookline for two main reasons: it was still near a grandparent (free babysitting is key) and we could buy a big house there at a ridiculously cheap price. The offset, especially for that latter reason, is that we were nowhere near the central “cool” areas of the city. Despite being only a block away from the main drag, there was virtually nothing within that short walking distance that was worth the effort of putting your shoes on…unless you needed to get drunk, get pizza, get a spray tan, or get your nails done. In which case, you could conceivably do all of those things at the same time. So, it sucks when you want to support your local businesses, but instead find yourself headed to another area of town or worse, the mall. (I’m not diametrically opposed to malls, but I like them to be a last resort. Like that time I needed both a VHS copy of American History X AND some Monistat at 1 a.m. on a Sunday night and good ol’ Wal-Mart was there for me.) (Don’t ask.)

But in the past year or so, my neighborhood has been slowly working its way out of whatever rut it had been in and we’ve really been taking advantage of it, which has been wonderful.

Last weekend, my sister-in-law was in town. After the baby’s afternoon baseball game, we went down to the main drag and stopped at Las Palmas, where we bought fresh, homemade tamales, tacos cooked on the grill right in front of us, and Mexican Coca-Cola, which is the kind made with cane sugar and is so much tastier than regular Coke, it’s ridiculous. Maybe it’s the glass bottle and the inherent dose of nostalgia that I somehow manage to conjure up, even though cans were the norm by the time I was a pop-drinking American, but Mexican Coke is refreshing and filling without being too sweet or heavy. And when I’m done drinking it, I don’t fiendishly crave another, like I do with regular Coke. I’m satisfied by the treat and get on with my life.

A picture of Las Palmas that I quickly snapped because I'm still scared of getting yelled at by people for taking pictures of them.

After polishing off our lunch at home, the sister-in-law and I went back down to the Boulevard to get pedicures (nail shops in excess may be tacky and a sign of a suffering business district, but having one good one is essential). When our toes were dry, we went down to Geekadrome, a little comic book/nerd emporium, because the baby had stopped in a few weeks ago to ask about getting a beginner’s Dungeons & Dragons set. (No luck yet, much to my growing dork’s dismay.)

We made another stop at Cannon Coffee to caffeinate before deciding to go to the tiny, BYOB Italian restaurant, Mateo’s, for dinner.

All of this on one street, walking distance from my house. (And basically the perfect counter-argument to my farm longing.)

The husband joked that I am becoming the most Brookline person he knows, especially when I suggested that we go to Moonlite Cafe, also on Brookline Boulevard, to celebrate our fourth wedding anniversary last week. Moonlite, if you’re at all familiar with Italian cuisine in Pittsburgh, is one of those restaurants that serves big, hearty “immigrant Italian” food. No Tuscan this or fancy cheese that. Spaghetti. Meatballs. Marinara sauce. Mancini’s bread. And lots of it, dammit. This is America! And that was exactly the kind of meal that I was in the mood for.

That? That is the platter of rigatoni that they placed in front of me. It had to have been close to a pound of pasta and I took that picture after I had been shoveling noodles into my mouth for twenty minutes. As you can see, I was only able to clear away one tiny corner of the plate. Obviously, we took the leftovers home which fed all three of us for dinner the next night. Seriously.

But all of these things are part of what make living in a city neighborhood so rad. People can mutter about how Pittsburgh is just a big small town, but there’s plenty to be said for having all of these things at your fingers.

As if I wasn’t already so chamber of commerce about it, the baby wrapped up his little league season last weekend. They came in second place overall, which bummed them out, but the coaches treated them to a big picnic afterward that was really cool.

That’s my kid, just prior to the pie-eating contest. After I successfully pushed all traumatic images of the blueberry pie eating contest from Stand By Me out of my head, I was able to enjoy their scaled down and less barfy contest. Also, this picture immediately makes me go all Holly Hunter-in-Raising Arizona: “I luhuhve him so muhuhuhuch!”

The Penguins lost last night, ending the season on a bit of a whimper and sending Montreal on further toward their 8 billionth Stanley Cup. We opted not to watch the game until the bitter end when the score flipped over to 5-2 in the middle of the third period. It was getting late and the baby needed to go to bed and I don’t deal well with the stress of games like that. While the practical side of my brain knows that it’s probably over, my black and gold heart still wants to believe in an unlikely miracle. Then I end up nauseated and palpitating, and who needs that on a school night?

As the baby was getting ready for bed, he said, “I can’t believe the Penguins aren’t going to win the Stanley Cup,” sounding genuinely offended. We reminded him that you can’t win them all. Then I realized that he’s a little spoiled. In nearly all of the years that he’s been aware enough to care, some Pittsburgh team was winning a championship or at least getting close enough to taste it. So, as far as he’s concerned, a year without a Super Bowl or Stanley Cup victory is just…wrong. I mean, it’s been almost a year since we last had to shield him from drunken hordes and angry police on Brookline Boulevard. This is no way to go into summer.

But now we have time to focus our sports energy into Little League. My son is not the most natural athlete, but we wanted him to play some sports for a few reasons.

1) Activity is a good thing.

2) It’s a concrete (and hopefully fun) way for him to learn about working hard and slowly improving at something, which we’ve been struggling with at school.

3) I didn’t play sports when I was a kid. I was doing ballet and I was way too shy. I kind of regret that now. So I want him to at least try a few out just for the experience. The husband gets together with friends every now and then for a casual game of basketball and it kind of bums me out that I can’t really do something like that. (Not that learning a sport now is just so impossible, but I would obviously have a lot of catching up to do and the muscle memory isn’t there and blah.)

Anyway, the baby hasn’t progressed in baseball like some of the other kids his age on his team. While they’re getting turns playing first base and whatnot, he’s still in the outfield. He gets bored out there and on the few occassions that a ball comes his way, he’s not reacting quickly enough to make a play. We explained to him that he needs to prove himself in the outfield before his coach will trust him enough to play infield.

Last Friday night, he finally got it. He played well enough in the outfield that the coach let him play second base. His team was also winning by a pretty wide margin, so I guess the coach figured that he couldn’t do too much harm.

He played pretty well, though most of the action was happening at first base.

But then, the last hitter came up to bat, swung, hit the ball, and sent it directly in the baby’s direction. His glove went up in the air, his eyes widened…and at that precise moment the dad who was acting as first base coach stepped right in the line of vision of the husband and me. Gah!

But I caught a glimpse of the baby catching the ball on the fly, pausing for a split second to marvel at the presence of the ball in his glove, then scurrying toward second base to tag out the boy heading for it.

And with that, his team won the game.

It was so exciting! Everyone jumped up and cheered and called out his name and afterward his coach declared him MVP.

I was so proud that he had tried hard enough to improve and could finally understand, at least a little, that wanting to do something isn’t enough. Adding hard work to desire will often lead to success. Not always, but often.

I hope that it’s one of the moments that he’s able to replay in his head, even when he’s an old man. I’ve already tucked it into my “Flash Before My Eyes on My Deathbed” file.

That’s me at my desk. I’ve been in this position most of the day because I have this really annoying stomachache.

So what’s been going on with me? Eh, a lot and not much, know what I mean? I’ve been really busy at work, aside from being doubled over and groaning. The baby had his first Little League game last Saturday, which followed their annual parade down our main street to the ball field.
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