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I posted to MamaPop last week about a UK show called Big Fat Gypsy Weddings (or My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding according to some sites) and wailed about how it wasn’t available to watch in the US. I forgot, of course, that this is the internet and anything can be had if you know the right people. I won’t reveal my sources, but a few discs with some episodes arrived in my mailbox last week and I spent Saturday afternoon devouring them.

It’s pretty wild. The gypsies and travelers regard themselves as very strict and traditional. Gender roles are severely defined and haven’t changed much in the face of several waves of feminism and a sexual revolution. Girls marry young and move immediately into their roles as homemakers. They do this in their mid-to-late teens, which is around the time that many girls begin exploring their sexuality. So they’re able to say with some degree of authority that there is no pre-marital sex.

Because of the young marital age, gypsies and travelers seem to be far more tolerant about outward displays of sexuality extremely early in life. I watched, slack-jawed, as a group of 8-year-old girls celebrated their cousin’s First Holy Communion by grinding in high heels and tiny skirts and tops. Their parents and grandparents sat and watched and beamed with joy, the same expressions that they might have if they were watching the kids play Duck, Duck, Goose. They’re not concerned about the early sexualization of the girls because a) they’re only a few years out from being married anyway and b) they’re merely imitating the behavior of presumably chaste adolescents. The boys display a sense of territoriality by participating in “grabbing,” a courtship ritual that sounds a lot like accepted assault to me.

I wish the show would explore these gender roles and sexuality conventions more thoroughly, but they spend a lot of time on the bridal attire, if for no other reason than how absurd it is. I’m really curious about the general attire of the young people, which is, again, sexually provocative but to the ends of securing a husband, and other outfits that almost look like stereotypical/racially offensive gypsy costumes that you might see around Halloween in the US.

Anyway, all that pondering aside, I suddenly found myself feeling a bit of a pang during the Communion scenes. It occurred to me that the baby is around the age, perhaps even a bit older, that he would be making his First Communion if we were raising him Catholic. I remember being extremely excited about mine and in the context of this show I began to wonder how much of that was because of the dress and the veil that I got to wear. We looked like mini-brides and were giddy about that. But the important thing about my Communion outfit was that it was my mom’s. I was the latest in a long of people who had made the same sacrament. It was presumed that I would continue the tradition…until I knew that I wouldn’t.

Parenting and life are so scary sometimes, that maybe traditions, even those surrounded by yucky things like inequity, are comforting because they give us some road map that was laid down by people who lived and took care of their families with what seems to be a degree of certainty. Of course, the old ways were once new and there’s nothing stopping us from forging new traditions that are more appropriate for how we feel about and experience life. But I can’t help but look at even the most ridiculous, competitive dress for a young gypsy girl and think there’s something at least a little nice about it, the sheer celebration of survival of it.

The baby has not had a full day of school in close to two weeks due to various things like holidays, school closings, doctor’s appointments, and Surprise! Your Strep Test Is Positive! parties. I’m not entirely convinced that he has retained the ability to read.

On Sunday, I started displaying symptoms of the husband’s Man Cold that he was just getting over.

This resulted in me doing things like NotLaundry and NotGrocery Shopping. The husband and I both ended up passed out on the couch for a good two hours in the afternoon. During that time, the baby turned on Adventure Time and helped himself to a bag of Cheetos (aka our AFC Championship buffet). I half-opened one eye about 1.5 hours into my nap and mumbled, “Yo. Take it easy on those Cheetos, dude,” and went back to sleep. It was a proud moment for me as I have long yearned to reach the same level of parental competence as Britney Spears.

After a night of sleep that could only be described as, “Really weird…and moist,” I went to work yesterday fueled entirely by DayQuil. Aside from being rather drippy and cycling in and out of sweating spells, I felt surprisingly okay. But last night, I started to feel kind of woozy. I told the husband this and he cackled and told me that I had not yet reached the zenith of my sickness. Yay.

Speaking of parenting, over the winter break, I started watching…nay, devouring episodes of Intervention on Netflix. The husband finds this habit of mine entirely absurd and even I reached a point about halfway through season three where I thought, “I can’t watch this anymore.” The situation was so disturbing and I had a pretty sick feeling that we only knew the half of it. Just to be clear, I’m not referring to the episode featuring Sylvia, the alcoholic Southern belle. Though that episode was disturbing because when they first showed her cracking open a mini-bottle of vodka while driving, I said, “Holy shit, is that Lucille from Arrested Development? Is this like the April Fool’s episode of Intervention?” The resemblance was that uncanny.

But the whole thing has me freaked out about parenting. I mean, plenty of the people featured on the show had some really horrible experiences and I don’t think anyone can blame them for just checking out of life. But then there are some people who had relatively good existences and then blam. “My mom pushed me to get good grades so I started doing heroin. My dad criticized my cooking this one time so now I weigh 30 pounds. My mom was tired that one time and couldn’t devote her entire consciousness to me so now I’m 90% Jack Daniels.”

I’m not terrified of the baby trying alcohol or even some drugs when he’s older. But I am scared of him finding any number of my imperfect behaviors devastating and running with that to the crack house. Now, every time I shout, “DO. YOUR. HOMEWORK!” I panic and hide all of the liquor. But I know I’m oversimplifying and overreacting. If something as crazy as addiction could be simply boiled down to bad parenting, I doubt it would be so hard to overcome. I just…I just see a bunch of people who love ya like crazy and they feel like they’re losin’ ya.

(Sigh. Right after I finished writing this, I had to angrily reclaim my iPhone from the baby after I asked for it three times so now I’m wondering what in our house can be used to cook up a shot.)

I spent most of yesterday on the couch, tooling around on the internet and watching TV, which is what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. I think the giddiness that I experience at the prospect of being able to partake in such activities without a smidgen of guilt is what jump-starts the recovery process.

I watched things that wouldn’t cause me any grief if I were to fall asleep during them. Daytime TV is made for that sort of thing, but that’s also what makes it kind of enthralling, leaving me napless. First was The Family Stone, the plot of which captured about 3% of my attention. The rest of them time I spent thinking, “God, I LOVE that house.”

Then I watched a particularly absurd episode of MTV’s True Life, which was about young psychics. One young woman was having trouble in her relationship with a guy whose name I believe was Squash because he didn’t believe in her abilities. There was also the not insignificant issue of her Christianity and her psychic gifts were not in line with the Bible. Squash went to Chattanooga to buy guns and then they broke up over the phone. She started dating a guy she met at a psychic expo and made out on camera, but then broke up two weeks later. (Insert joke here about why she didn’t see that coming.)

There’s a soap opera channel and they were showing an episode from the first season of Beverly Hills 90210. I realize now that the only reason that I ever liked that show was because I was 12 and a moron. I wanted to smack Brenda so badly and Jason Priestley does nothing but furrow his eyebrows the whole time.

At some point in all of this, I saw a commercial for Rent-a-Center starring Troy Aikman and Hulk Hogan. The, um, plot was that Troy talks up the great deals at Rent-a-Center for a few seconds and then Hulk Hogan wanders into the frame wearing an elf costume. He then utters the words, “I have an elf wedgie.” And that’s it. That’s their commercial. That’s how a company chose to sell themselves. I have an elf wedgie. If viewing this commercial caused you to consider patronizing a Rent-a-Center, please drop a bag of hammers on your foot.

Later on that night, the husband and I ended up watching Spies Like Us, which is way more hilarious than I remember. We were cracking up over the training sequence, particularly the Radical Vertical Impact Simulation exercise.

We then ceased being able to breathe when the husband read the comments for this video. Someone actually formed this thought and then typed it:

They watched the explosions, the bog of pig shit with machine gunfire, flamethrowers, g-force exercise, and an airplane smashing into the ground, and THAT was the detail that gave them trouble.

* * *

I’m taking this week off of 30 days of truth because the topics that I would tackle this week, my views on religion, politics, drugs, and alcohol, are way too long-winded to crank out during a lunch break blog post. Next time!

As I mentioned to an exhaustive degree during the Sonoma Grille/Seviche giveaways, this blog is not heavily marketed. So you know that if I’m touting a product it’s purely because I bought it and had a good experience.

Endorsement #1: Neutrogena skiniD. Around the time that I turned 27 or 28, I suddenly had an acne problem. I had pimples fairly regularly as a teenager, but after I had kicked puberty to the curb, my skin was pretty normal with maybe a pimple or two here or there. The adult acne wasn’t severe, but it bothered me. I was especially not fond of the dozens of small pimples that covered my now greasy forehead.

I thought about trying Proactiv, but honestly something about their commercials was unsettling to me. I’m highly perturbed by the caliber of celebrities that endorse their products, though I did get to hear Puff Daddy utter the sentence, “It really moisturizes my situation.” skiniD seemed less…Amway-ish, so I did the online quiz and within, I think, a day and a half the products arrived on my doorstep.

Full disclaimer, I have been drinking more water and eating a little bit better, so that could contribute, but my skin is pretty effing clear now. The only downside is that something in one of the products that I use has some kind of mild reaction with my sunscreen that causes a stinging sensation in my face. Not fun.

About my sunscreen: also Neutrogena. Ultra Sheer Dry Touch, spf 85 (yes, 85). Expensive, but feels awesome and I don’t get all grumpy about having to reapply it. A few weeks ago I wrote to Neutrogena gushing about how much I loved it, hoping that they’d send me some coupons. A few days later, they emailed me back with a hearty, “Thanks, glad you like it.”

So…yeah.

Endorsement #2: Blueberry Boy Bait. I made this once last summer and the husband nearly died of ecstasy. It’s so delicious. It’s called “boy bait” for, I imagine, purely alliterative reasons but I’m fairly certain that it would work on either gender. All I’m saying is that I made this sucker again last night and, well, it’s a testament to restraint that I don’t have a hickey or twelve today.

Endorsement #3: Louie. I know I mention how much I adore Louis CK a lot, but the dude is seriously one of the best comedians ever. Please watch this show. His first series, Lucky Louie, which was brilliant, was canceled after just one season and I informed him of my great disappointment over this in a rather frightening manner. Don’t make me scare him again. Watch the show. Get his ratings high. Please.

I’m trying to power through this writer’s block, especially since the husband resurrected our home computer and we purchased a new router, so my technology hermitage has ended. Fucking finally. And because I am so SO tired of the FML nature of my more recent posts, I want to share with you some tidbits about the fruit of my loins abdominal incision.

He’s getting really tall and so cute…like, in the way that I just know is already making girls giggle. Relatedly, he has a girlfriend. Or had. Apparently she was a little flighty. Whatever.

One day, a few weeks ago, he wore a bow tie to school. And joined the chess club. In the same day. Despite such nerdery, he’s pretty cranky about school and doesn’t want to do homework at all ever. I’m not disturbed by this (homework does indeed suck), but would really like to not have to have the, “JUST DO IT ALREADY, GAWD!” conversation again. I am pleased to say that these conversations have become less heated since I finished school. They no longer contain tirades of, “Write your spelling words three times??!?! Do you know what I would give to have to do that right now? Have you ever attempted to redesign the instructional text of an authoritative book on coherent topical progression? Or had to schedule user testing? HUH? HAVE YOU?” Although, at least that would usually stun him into a puzzled silence. Now he remains cognizant enough to talk back to me and I hate that.

We took him with us to see The Imaginarium of Dr. ParnAssus the other night. He’s developed a taste for Monty Python stuff and when we told him that the director of Imaginarium also directed Time Bandits and was Patsy, the King’s coconut-clacker in The Holy Grail, he was all about it. He liked it. We all did. Depending on your opinion of 8-year-olds, that might make total sense or be totally bizarre.

The movie ended up having some really interesting statements about…not so much celebrity, specifically, but devoting your life to bullshit and whatnot and death. They were especially interesting in light of the fact that Heath Ledger died in the middle of making the movie. Johnny Depp and Jude Law stepped in to act as alternate versions of Ledger’s character in the Imaginarium and seeing them say insightful things about fame and ambition and death knowing that they were kind of talking about the late Ledger was pretty wild.

Speaking of movies, our friend burned Paranormal Activity and Moon for us. The only problem was that the movies were .avis. We watched them on my laptop but my laptop’s speakers aren’t very loud and our furnace makes a huge racket. Whenever it would kick on, we couldn’t hear a thing of the movie. The husband acted as the crack A/V guy and tried several things to remedy the situation. At one point, we had the laptop hooked up to his clock radio, the short power cord necessitating it to be five feet away from us and ultimately useless. We finally wrestled the computer speakers off of the desk and hooked those up, and of course that power cord was too short so we had to get the big, green extension cord off of the porch. It was a total sight. I think it could have only been klassier if we had just extended the power cord with the string of Christmas lights that are half burnt-out and only display green and orange, which appeals to my Irish heritage but looks like a St. Patrick’s Day decoration gone awry.

But, whatever, he MacGuyvered that shit to within an inch of its life and fortunately the movies both turned out to be pretty good. (If they’d sucked, we’d have been pissed.) Moon was especially good, especially after I got over the rapid comparisons that I was making to 2001, Alien, Solaris, Multiplicity (um, yeah), and Los cronocrimenes. It eventually stood on its own two feet and was rather beautiful.

I just groaned imagining all of the times that that headline has been used for promoting or reviewing The Chief. But I’m unimaginative and I recognize this.

I bought the husband tickets to see the aforementioned one-man play about Art Rooney for Christmas. Because I am awesome, about two days after I purchased them, he spotted a billboard for the play and mused, “I’d kinda like to go see that.”

Our interest in the play went beyond the fact that it was about Rooney. The guy who was performing in the title role was Tom Atkins, a Pittsburgh native who has starred in a couple cult-ish horror movies, in particular Halloween III, Escape from New York, and The Fog, which are favorites in our house.

As we were heading to the theater last night, I realized that, despite the Steelers’ season ending in a whimper, there would probably be plenty of people wearing their jerseys. Well…not only were people wearing jerseys, but they were selling Terrible Towels in the lobby. (Sadly, no one twirled one during the performance.)

We sat in our seats and waited for the lights to go down and the theater piped in every popular song that was about or referenced or was even remotely related Pittsburgh, including Mister Rogers’ “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” which made me tear up because I’m a sap.

Atkins is a fantastic actor, capturing minute mannerisms and rambling on with stories about Rooney’s upbringing in the North Side.

The play itself wasn’t the most staggering work of genius. And it seemed safe to assume that many audience members were drawn to the theater simply for the fact that the play was about Rooney. And the play was obviously written with a very specific audience in mind, designed and timed to hit certain pressure points. There was nothing universal about it. For a second, I thought that maybe this should bother me, but, as the husband so eloquently put it, “It’s Pittsburgh shit for people from Pittsburgh. Who gives a fuck about anyone else?”

At one point, Rooney shows the film of the Immaculate Reception. I whispered to the husband, “That’s kind of cheating.” For Steelers fans and for most native Pittsburghers, that catch is legendary, part of the lore handed down from generation to generation. It’s almost not fair to show it during a play, as it’s guaranteed to stir emotions in the audience. But watching it was just as thrilling as any other time and hearing “Rooney” describe how he fatefully missed the whole thing and how it sounded like a tornado had hit when the elevator doors opened and he realized that the tide of the game had turned was simply magical.

Near the end, Rooney’s emotions swell and he describes what the Steelers have meant to their fans. I’ve rambled about it myself many times. He described circumstances that were just as relevant today as they were 30 years ago. People out of work, clear skies but dark outlooks. But the Steelers, there, reminding us with every hard-earned victory and every crushing defeat, that Winning. Is. Possible.

Tears stung my eyes as I sat there, in the dark, next to my husband. We’ve been through a lot and we’ve made some mistakes and we’ve landed ungracefully. But it’s possible we can win. Still.

We exited the theater and scurried to the parking garage in the bitter cold, soggy snowflakes covering us. We needed to eat and tossed several options around before settling on Fiori’s, the pizza place near our house that feeds us at least five meals a month.

We sat and ate our cuts and our wings and talked about the play, laughing at some of the anecdotes that we remembered. Soon enough, we had to head back out into the cold to pick up our son.

I grabbed the husband’s hand as I teetered across the slippery cobblestone street that had been around since smoke from steel mills darkened the sky and the Steelers were still a punchline in the world of professional football.

Earlier in the day, I had been sad after hearing about a fantastic career opportunity in California. But I can’t go to California. I must stay here, where the job prospects are much dimmer, because this is my home.

Forget New York. If I can make it here, I’ll make it anywhere.

Dinner and a show, Pittsburgh-style, with football and pizza. When we pulled up to our, big, old, drafty house, I felt like Pittsburgh royalty.

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:

It’s been 10 days since I posted here! That ain’t right.

I’ve mostly just been busy at work and then busy getting ready for Christmas. I was getting ready to do some work just now, since our office luncheon ate up most of the day, but then I looked and saw that it was almost 4:30 and decided blogging would be a better way to spend the last half hour of work.

Plus, the husband tells me that our desktop has up and died and our wireless router died weeks ago so our only internet access at home is through our phones. It’s like we’re living in the mid 90s or the 80s or something prehistoric.

It’s particularly tragic because I want to spend my winter break staring at BeTaMaXMas. Really, I’ve had this weird craving to spend a day in my 8-year-old life. I guess it’s because the baby is at the age where Christmas (and Halloween and whatnot) really is just one of the greatest ideas ever. And he still hardcore believes in Santa so that’s pretty fun (and useful for bribes/threats). I want a taste of that, I guess. I want be in my living room, watching crap like this:

I remember that commercial so vividly. It’s kind of pathetic. Consumerism’s bitch: I am it. My mom and I always thought that the tree in that commercial was so beautiful. When we would decorate our tree, we would always get excited about turning off the lights and seeing it in all of its glory for the first time.

Just for a day, I kind of want to be in the moment of being a kid, and ogle our tree, and hope that I got the Barbie crap that I wanted. Before my parents’ marriage really went to shit, before I realized that inexplicable sadness was just something that I would have contend with the rest of my life, before I questioned my strength.

The other night we put up our tree and what will probably be the extent of our decorations. I don’t like to go overboard with decorations because, while they look rad, you have to take them down. In late December or early January. When you’re bloated and sluggish from eating 24/7 for two weeks. I anticipate my laziness, dig?

Anyway, after we got everything set up, I turned on one of those silly fireplace screensavers that they have on OnDemand now. We got some eggnog, turned on some Bing Crosby Christmas music, and turned off all the lights so that we could admire our tree. It was gorgeous and smelled amazing.

I glanced over at the husband and the baby and suddenly realized, “This is all I’ve ever wanted.”

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.

If you travel in the same circles of the internet that I do, then you doubtless ran across this fantastic compilation of the 100 greatest quotes from The Wire.

But, of course, all definitive lists are made to be analyzed, picked apart, and perhaps dismissed. This list was pretty good, but I thought that there were a few glaring omissions.

Omar’s explanation of his profession: “I rip n run…I robs drug dealers.”

Bunk and McNulty’s verbose investigation of a murder scene:

Snoop’s last words and just this scene in general:

This scene always kills me and the lieutenant’s eulogy is gorgeous, particularly his line about Baltimore being a dark corner of the American experiment.