kdiddy.org

My friend ladycakes over at LiveJournal did a meme and I am to return the favor.

The official directions are: Comment on this post. I will choose seven interests from your profile and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post this along with your answers in your own journal so that others can play along.

Obviously, this makes for a chunky translation into this realm, since people don’t generally have an interests list. So, if you would like to participate…uh…I don’t know. Tell you what, if you want to participate, just post and explain seven interests that you have.

Anyway, ladycakes wanted to know about some of my interests, namely:

chapped lips – I constantly have chapped lips because I have a horrible habit of picking at them. Whenever I see someone else with chapped lips, I immediately feel a kinship to them.

fear of driving – I’m terrified of driving. I am 28 years old and I’ve never been able to successfully procure a driver’s license. I haven’t totally given up, but I’m not sure how I’ll ever be comfortable enough to take to the roads myself.

Gilda Radner – she’s amazing. I see so much of her in me, what with the frizzy hair and the goofy, quirky humor.

only children – I’m an only child and the baby is an only child. I think only children are a pretty interesting group. We’re loners but we long to have companions.

Shel Silverstein – I was never into Silverstein that much when I was a kid. But as an adult I came to really love all of his books. I love the look of his illustrations and his books are all so fun to read aloud. And do I really need to mention The Giving Tree?

sprawl – this refers to urban sprawl. There’s something very sad about the unlinking of communities in the interests of consumer desires. While I’m not suggesting that the old tenements should make a comeback, I’m generally confused by the leaking of human environs out into every available space. No one seems to feel that nature should have space to itself. The new houses that are thrown up in these communities are dull and apart from one another. Most of them do not have front porches, which makes it hard for neighbors to sit out and simply experience one another. I don’t get the mindset of “I need to have a new house in a new neighborhood in a new area. This is what I want and therefore I deserve it and therefore I will have it.”

Television Without Pity – I don’t read that site that much anymore, but I started reading it waaaaaaaaaay back when it was still called dawsonswrap.com. They obviously started with Dawson’s Creek recaps and then slowly added a few other shows to their repertoire. It was some of the funniest shit I had ever read. In recent years…I don’t know. It’s changed and I don’t look forward to recaps like I used to. But I do unabashedly try to emulate those early recaps in the stuff that I post on MamaPop, so they definitely deserve a tip of the hat for that.

You know what I watched last night for the second week in a row? Don’t Forget the Lyrics. It stars Wayne Brady, who I think I’m kind of in love with. Partially because he makes Bryant Gumbel look like Malcolm X, and partially because he makes little comments like, “The Isley Brothers, ‘For the Love of You’…all skate,” and nobody really catches them, but they’re great. The show itself is kind of stupid, but I get to scream stuff like, “WHY WOULD YOU PICK LIONEL RICHIE?” which is something that I don’t get to do nearly enough in life.

Thanks everyone for commenting the other day! There are way more lurkers than I thought, which is cool and also a little creepy, especially when I think of the people who didn’t take the invitation to delurk. For my part, I know that I slacked on commenting. Sorry about that. I’m a bad person, what can I say?

We have our parent-teacher conference with the baby’s teacher on Monday, which is just one of several things I dropped the ball on this week. On Monday he had a field trip, but I thought it was on Tuesday, so he was dressed in uniform even though he should have worn regular clothes. The kid he sits with on the bus informed us of my mistake. Meanwhile, Tuesday was picture day, which I totally forgot about. The kid he sits with on the bus informed us of that mistake, too. I’m thinking that kid needs to come live with me and keep me on top of stuff. I also missed the sign-up sheet for conferences, so I sheepishly emailed his teacher all, “I’m crazy busy. It’s amazing that I have pants on.” She was cool about it and even said we didn’t need to have a conference if we didn’t want to since the baby’s doing so well. That’s always nice to hear, but I need to talk to her anyway since the baby can “never remember” what he does during the day. I don’t know why he has to be so aloof. But he told us yesterday that some kid has been punching him during lunch, so we need to discuss that, for sure, despite the fact that one of his friends has been defending the baby. That’s awesome, but I’d rather the teachers be aware of that and put a stop to it.

This parenting stuff is hard.

Oh, well. Nothing much else to report, other than the really awesome news that our friend Ike passed the bar exam and is now a lawyer. Ike Jones, Esq.!

I am going to steal a cue from Angela and post a Friday Random Twenty, courtesy of the iPizzle.

(more…)

But that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to punch Carrie Bradshaw and her outfits in the head sometimes. And what’s with the cups of that dress? Has she never heard of, I don’t know, socks?

Edit: also, Sarah Silverman (Program) eulogizes her abortions. That disgusting sound you just heard was me guffawing.

jwan: How’s your cold coming along, I’ve had the exact same symptoms, last night was the worst of it all
Sent at 12:00 PM on Thursday
me: same
last night was hellish but i’m feeling slightly better today
at least, i feel like my brain is functioning and my shirt isn’t crusted with snot that i wasn’t quick enough to catch
Sent at 12:04 PM on Thursday

So, yes, doing relatively much better today. Thanks for all of the sympathy yesterday. I took some NyQuil last night, but it didn’t knock me out and then keep me knocked out like I had hoped. I did have some weird dreams involving characters from Knocked Up. That was kind of strange. And I woke up a couple of times with severe cottonmouth.

The more I think about it, the more I’m pretty sure that I heard about this awhile ago and just forgot about it: Steven Soderbergh is directing Benicio del Toro in a two-film epic about Che Guevara. I’m really, really looking forward to this. I know Guevara is demonized here in the U.S., but he was truly very fascinating and I don’t think there’s any black-and-white way to view him. Soderbergh kicks much ass and I love love love Benicio del Toro. It’s also being filmed entirely in Spanish, as it should be. Is it just me, or does this smack of the Medellin storyline in Entourage?

Completely unrelated to anything above, the baby and I had a pretty heavy conversation last night stemming from him asking me if Life will ever end. We’ve had the death conversation a lot, but this was on some next level shit. I’ve never been comfortable feeding him stuff about heaven, mostly because I don’t think I really believe in that. While it might be easier for him to take, I’d just feel like I was lying to him. But I have always given him the option of believing in stuff like that. I’m taking the same hands-off approach that I took with Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, which is, “Do you think Santa/the Bunny is real?” And for right now, he does, so we’re going with that for now. Our conversation veered toward God for awhile. He’s really not sure about the whole thing. He wanted to know definitively if there is a God and I was honest with him: nobody knows though some people believe that there is and some people believe that there isn’t. In either case, I told him that, yes, Life will end someday but it will be a long, long time before that happens. I asked him if that scared him and he said yeah and I told him that it scares me, too. It’s funny because I feel like he and I are on the same existential wavelength. I mean, I must have pondered these things when I was his age, too, but I don’t feel like I’ve really thought about them until recently. It’s cool to have someone to talk about these things all wide-eyed. Especially since the husband, in all of his smug wisdom, has already thought about everything and has no time for these “Duuuuuuuuuuuude” conversations.

Angela and I are comparing cheesy Lifetime movies and it is easily the best conversation I’ve had yet today. Much like the titles of Friends episodes, we refer to all Lifetime movies as “That one where Tori Spelling gets stabbed,” or “That one with the Texas cheerleader murder plot with Lesley Ann Warren right when she started looking really crazy.”

Admittedly, I did think that this was a girl the first couple times I watched the video. But it’s a boy named Chris Cocker and he has more messages for Britney…from under his bedsheet.

LEAVE BRITNEY ALONE! pt.1

Add to My Profile | More Videos

I really like when he says “you” and points to himself. Of course, what needs to happen now is for someone to start making videos of themselves for Chris Cocker, sobbing and begging him not to off himself should Britney take that initiative. Just to spice it up, these videos should be made under an afghan.

You know he reminds me of? Avril Lavigne. It’s the eyes, I think. And the lack of a fucking clue.

A Live Journal buddy posted this but its awesomeness must be shared. Have you seen Falco’s grave?

If my grave doesn’t have an obelisk and contain the words “Der Kommissar,” I’ll know that no one truly loved me.

I did nothing exciting this weekend, which is exactly what I wanted to do. I did get my hair cut on Saturday, so maybe I’ll grace this space with a picture later.

I did have some handy types come over on Saturday to do some work in the small bedroom. It’s possible that that room will finally be finished in October. And it only took two years! At this rate, the house will be where we want it just in time for us to die. Can’t wait.

Another handy type came by yesterday to look at our dining room and give us a price on finishing and painting it. I guess I had never really looked at how jacked the walls are, but I’m really going to have to have a plasterer come in and smooth them out. The previous owner did all the repairs himself on the house and really it would have been better off if he had just let it be. For instance, here is the awesome addition he put on the back of the house, presumably while mainlining Jack Daniels:

Sigh.

In other news, the baby missed the bus for the first time this morning. Aw, yeah. Third day of school. In our defense, the bus was easily five minutes early. So we had to drive him to school, obviously, but once we were there I had no idea what to do with him. I took him into the building but a woman informed me that that was not the thing to do and that he had to wait on the playground until the teachers collected him. So I took him back outside and was like, “Uh, okay, I guess I’m going to leave you here now. But you recognize some of these kids, right?” Of course, he didn’t. But his bus pulled up right as I was getting ready to leave so I’m assuming he was in the right spot. Don’t you love my crossed-fingers method of parenting?

We watched Stranger than Fiction on Saturday, which was pretty good but not as awesome as I had been anticipating. I think Will Ferrell just doesn’t do it for me. But I would watch Maggie Gyllenhaal read the phone book. Love her. Dustin Hoffman was also really funny, but I felt like he just put a professorial spin on his character from I Heart Huckabee’s. But I did love his freakish coffee consumption and the fact that he taught a course on “Little did he know.” And I need more Emma Thompson in my life.

I watched that new HBO show Tell Me You Love Me last night. I’m going to write a recap for MamaPop but I left my notes at home. It’s much starker than any previous HBO series. Very serious. In all of their other dramas there’s always been at least a sprinkle of humor. There’s practically none in this one. We’ll see. It is pretty good, though…which means it will most certainly be canceled after its first season.

Wrote this last night

One week of the semester down, 15 more to go.

Man, I really wish I hadn’t just typed that out.

We had another trip to the baby’s new school today to do some developmental tests and whatnot. We also talked to the school nurse about his tree nut allergy and she seemed mildly freaked out. I am not concerned since I think the plan of attack is pretty simple. Check foods for tree nuts and avoid those that contain them. If he happens to ingest some, remain calm, administer Epipen, call 911. Or you can skip those first two steps and just call 911, especially since there’s a fire station with paramedics right across the street. In fact, you wouldn’t even need to call 911, just shout out the window. Eh, whatever.

I know I’ve said before that I’m excited for him to start school and all of those emotional, “Oh, my baby!” reasons still stand, but now I’m really excited because I’m hoping it will mean an end to this end-of-the-summer dementia he’s experiencing. He doesn’t have any playmates close by and it’s been tough getting together with any of his buddies, so he’s been pretty bored all summer. I feel bad about that, but there’s not a ton I can do about it. Consequently, he’s becoming quite the pain in the ass, whining constantly, throwing fits, picking fights with the cat. Stuff like that. He’s currently attempting to play Rayman’s Raving Rabbids on the Wii, despite the fact that it’s a little over his head. He’s obviously failing at all the games and then shouting at the TV. The husband is very helpfully talking on the phone. The cat is scratching the couch. I gave a hearty middle finger to the dishes in the sink.

We’re all sort of resigned to the suckiness of this time of year.

At least the weather was a little merciful today. Having to deal with 95 degree weather at this point is just obnoxious and I’m sick of sweating and being sticky and greasy.

But in less whiny news, the husband picked up a cheap copy of Short Circuit on DVD the other night. We watched it with the baby last night and today and the husband and I had both forgotten how amusing that flick is. And Ally Sheedy was so…squeaky.

And now today, after I had to abandon this post to difuse the Wii situation…

The husband had to go play records last night so I decided to watch The Devil Wears Prada. I had seen the end of it a couple of times, but wanted to watch it from the beginning and I knew the husband wasn’t into it. You know, that movie’s not too bad. I chuckled at the beginning when they contrasted Andy getting ready in the morning with the other glamazons. The unkempt hair, minimal makeup and comfort-over-style manner of dressing is so, so me. Meryl Streep really is frighteningly convincing as the evil boss and Emily Blunt was fantastic. I really think Anne Hathaway has a fantastic career ahead of her, so long as she can break out of the “she’s had to overcome so much…being brunette and all,” roles. Hollywood really needs to quit it with that shit. Coincidentally, both Emily Blunt and Anne Hathaway are starring in separate Jane Austen related movies.

I have some housework and an MAPW picnic to go to today. My mom and I are also heading out to buy the baby his school supplies. I’ve had two cups of Pleasant Morning Buzz and am feeling rather pleasantly buzzed.

I need a shower.

…died today at the age of 44.

One of the most unexpected moments of Saturday Night Live in the mid-to-late 90s was during a skit in which Will Ferrell was portraying his recurring Janet Reno character. Richard Jewell walked on, not long after his name had been cleared and Reno had admitted that he had been wrongly accused, and calmly punched “Reno” in the stomach. Reno stood up, shook Jewell’s hand and said, “Alright. Same time next week?” “Yep,” Jewell replied. The audience went nuts. I can’t find a video of the skit online anywhere. Argh.

Yes! I’ve been waiting for this to turn up on the intarwebs.

At the end of last week’s episode of Big Love, Daveigh Chase’s character Rhonda, who has recently “liberated” herself from the evil grips of polygamy only to spread hate and deceit elsewhere, sings the country classic, “The Happiest Girl in the U.S.A.” on a TV show. Rhonda seems to have just started to realize that her self-serving actions toward the Henricksons and their friends may not be totally forgivable and as she sings the song it takes on a very wistful feel. Adding to that, the song plays over shots of some decidedly unhappy girls. Also, Chase’s voice is quite beautiful and I got chills a few times listening to her sing this.