kdiddy.org

I’m going to get this out and then that’s all I’m going to say on the matter.

1) To the victims of Sandusky, and to victims everywhere: I’m so sorry. We always tell you to listen to adults because we’re in charge and we supposedly know what’s best for you. You’re supposed to trust us. Every single person who should have kept you safe and didn’t failed you and there’s no excuse for that. I wish there was some kind of official list of grown-ups who have sworn to look out for you, but there isn’t. So let me say this to anyone who might need to know: if someone is hurting you, you can tell me. I will make it stop. I promise.

2) To the media (I’m looking at you Fox News, though the fact that you still get called “the media” is such a joke) and anyone else with the ability to communicate: stop calling this a “sex scandal” right the hell now. A sex scandal is something naughty, something whispered about, some indiscretion between two or more people that maybe amounts to nothing more than a not-nice thing to do. A sex scandal is not illegal or wrong in every possible way. There was no sex involved here. What happened was criminal, morally reprehensible, rape, abuse, terrorizing innocents, and a systematic cover-up that is so disgusting it nauseates me almost as much as the initial violations. And scandal doesn’t really cover it. This was a disgusting, shameful failure of unbelievable proportions. Stop thinking with your ratings and REPORT WHAT HAPPENED FOR ONCE.

3) We can talk more in-depth about sports and “sports culture” later, but I really don’t think that’s a factor. People who rape children, or who cover up said rape, or who defend the people who did said covering up don’t do so because “they’re sports fans and that’s how they are.” They do such things because they are f*cked in the head and rather disgusting individuals. I know that my intense devotion to the Steelers will tempt people to draw comparisons to the actions of our quarterback. Though this isn’t quite a parallel case, I think you’ll recall that plenty of people wanted him gone, because Lombardis really don’t matter that much. I can tell you for certain, as I established above, my love of sports doesn’t suddenly erase my sense of right and wrong. If someone, especially a kid, is being hurt, and I have the power to stop that, I’m going to. I don’t care who I cheer for.

I feel the need to declare that, overall, I feel pretty alright, because I need to remember feeling this way for the times when I don’t. Like this morning, when I sent the baby upstairs to get dressed for school, only to find him 10 minutes later sitting on his bedroom floor reading a comic book. I was furious, which was perhaps an overreaction, but seriously, what the hell? Then, like an idiot, I tried to get him to walk me through his logic that led him to chill out with some reading material when it was clearly close to time to go.

“Well, you didn’t lay out any clothes for me…”

“So…that meant that you just weren’t going to need to get dressed today?”

“I don’t know.”

SIGH. Is there such a thing as the Terrible Tens? Because he seems to be in the midst. Oh, and the first person who says anything in the neighborhood of “pre-teen” gets punched.

But all of that nonsense aside, we’ve been doing a lot of our traditional fall stuff, including going to Trax Farm this past Sunday. Because October is always so busy for us, we always end up squeezing our farm trip in at around the last minute. And we always have to go with everyone else in the tri-county area who is working their annual trip in around the Steeler game. So there’s always a tense hour in the market part where you come face to face with how horrible the general population is at functioning in crowded spaces and steering grocery carts. Really, there ought to be a license for carts and things like, “Leaving your cart in the middle of the aisle while you gawk at the apple butter display instead of pushing it out of the way,” will be fineable offenses. (This, by the way, is the main thing that I hate about the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. The customers’ idiotic navigation, especially in the horribly arranged produce section. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost hurt people’s feelings in that store. And, yeah, I take grocery shopping a little too seriously. I don’t have time for foolishness.) But we had a really good time, got our pumpkins and about 300 other precious autumn things. I had the presence of mind to be thankful that the baby didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to take his picture next to the huge wooden pumpkin, because I know in the next year or so he’s going to refuse and that will be when I become that woman who gets drunk and cries at the farm. But you guys. Look:

That’s from Sunday. And this? This is from 2005:

I can’t even. I’m doing this to myself a lot lately, which is admittedly kind of masochistic, because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that he’s turning 10 soon. It’s just so…big. And I’m warning you now that I’m going to go all mommyblogger on your asses and put together a montage.

The other kids in our house, the furry ones, are doing pretty well, too. Florian the kitten is getting bigger everyday and is still a bit of a mad man. Greedo the cat is so chilled out by nature that this is kind of exhausting for them. I was getting concerned, but then went and spent an absurd amount of money on a cat tree. I think because there were no existing territorial issues for it, and it gave something for the kitten to attack, it seems to have made them much happier. They even hang out in it together sometimes!

Florian is quite the love bug and usually sleeps next to or on me, which is fine, except for when he gets the itch to gallivant in the middle of the night at the expense of my slumber. Last night, I became momentarily aware that he had scrambled across my forehead and had some bleary thought of, “Kitten. Scratch. Face. Ow. Register pain in morning.” I had completely forgotten about it until I saw myself in the mirror and noticed the little spot of dried blood. At this rate, I’m going to start looking like Omar from The Wire. Or, perhaps, Michael K. Williams dressed up as Omar dressed up as King Richard for Halloween or something equally ridiculous.

I have no idea why that picture exists, by the way. I just know that I’m eternally thankful that it does because the mere thought of it makes me giggle. This morning, for some reason, that scene from Forrest Gump where Jenny is throwing rocks at her molesting dad’s house came to my mind, because I’m such a naturally cheery individual. I thought about how the line, “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks,” would make a great caption for a picture of, say, Whitney Houston smoking crack. But then I pushed it out of my head, figuring if I could dream it, then someone on the internet has already made it exist and I’m not breaking any new ground there. This is both sad on many levels and one of the reasons that the internet is so great.

Anyway. How are you doing?

I’m really not exaggerating when I say that practically every weekday morning comes with some event, large or small, that makes me think that I must be on The Truman Show or something. Usually it’s absurd traffic jams or the school bus company failing at their raison d’etre. But occasionally things will happen like my elderly neighbor will wander outside on a frigid winter morning or something else equally notable.

On Wednesday, the baby and I made our way to the bus stop, still reveling in the recent switch to a new bus company that does these crazy things like “show up” and “transport children to school before 10 a.m.” We noticed a news van and a group of people gathered on the corner, plus some police cars. I asked another mom at the bus stop what was going on. “Um, apparently there’s a hostage situation,” she said.

Uh. What?

She, of course, was sketchy on the details but heard that there had been some kind of domestic dispute and the husband was supposedly holed up in the house with some weapons.

This obviously worried me, since there was a SWAT team present. Were there other people in the house? Was the situation going to go nuclear before I could put my kid safely on the bus and hightail it back to my house? Was I a total idiot for staying there regardless?

The situation ended up being resolved several hours later in a most ridiculous fashion. After the wife had initially left the house, the husband, probably realizing that the police would be coming, left as well. So the police and the SWAT team were standing outside, shouting surrender orders through a bullhorn, firing tear gas and flash bang grenades. We got to hear one of those flash bangs go off, which was super startling and prompted me to get my “INCOMING!” duck and cover ready to go. They also sent in a robot to suss out the situation, after which point the family dog finally surrendered to police. The police finally called the guy on his cell phone and found out that he was two blocks away.

Now, obviously, he needed to be arrested on the domestic violence charge. It’s also possible that he’ll face firearm charges since they found several guns in the home, including an AK-47.

It’s not shocking to me that people possess illegal firearms and that those firearms are hopefully way more gun than they need. But it really freaks me out that this guy had a small arsenal and lives just a few steps away from a preschool. Not that there would be any good place for him to live with such things, other than in a cabin that he built himself somewhere in the woods.

My stance on guns and gun control has evolved over the years. I used to be firmly anti-gun, supported all strict gun control measures, and would have gladly supported any candidate proposing to ban them altogether. But I came to understand many people’s justification for owning them, whether or not I agreed with them. I’ve remained a supporter of gun control measures though. There will always be underground methods for obtaining any item. That shouldn’t stop us as a society from regulating how they’re traded above ground.

I just really have not met anyone who has felt that they really REALLY needed a gun outside of hunting who wasn’t a) kind of an idiot about it or b) up to some dirty business. Like the friends who live waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere and own guns to protect their home from crackheads. I mean, I don’t know why a crackhead is out in the woods but maybe you need to move to, like, a populated area so you’re not defending yourself on your own. And, yes, there are shooting sprees and attacks and all of these things, but unless you’re actively training to respond to such a situation often, you’re probably not going to save the day just because you have a concealed weapons permit.

After our house was broken into, we did the inevitable mental circus of “what-if” scenarios. We were extremely freaked out that the burglar had entered our home while we there, asleep, and were just so, so thankful that he was only there to steal things and not interested in hurting anyone. I really and truly don’t care about my things and even if the dude had announced that he was going to be taking every last thing in my home, I would have let him with the understanding that he not lay a finger on any of us. I have insurance, you know? Plus, more importantly, stuff is just stuff and neither a single thing in my home nor my pride is worth any bodily harm to me or my family. But we did wonder about what if it had been a break-in with the intent of doing harm to us. How would we have defended ourselves? The truth is, I don’t know. And we did seriously considering purchasing a gun. But I just couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it. I didn’t want a gun in my house. I didn’t want to constantly think about the fact that my family and I, like everyone else in the world, am just one (statistically unlikely) coincidence away from some horrible fate.

Unless that guy in my neighborhood was about to start a revolution but had to beat his wife first, which seems somewhat improbable, he was just some sociopathic jackass who thought he was bad enough to need an assault rifle.

The baby started fourth grade today, which is of course blowing my mind. He has this year and next year at his current school and then will move to a 6-12 school, which I’m just kind of not thinking about.

The things that I remember most about my fourth grade year are getting glasses and taking up the flute. Clearly, I was gunning for the title of Coolest Kid Ever. (Spoiler: I lost.) My kid, however, just might have a shot. He wore the Kangol that he got in New York and the Adidas shell toes that we purchased last week. He’s going for a Run DMC/Grandmaster Flash vibe. I couldn’t be more pleased.

I don’t have the traditional first day of school picture on the porch to share because the school bus was 30 minutes late today so I didn’t have time to take pictures off of my camera. While waiting, we got to enjoy the sight of other kids getting on their school buses without difficulty and took in a torrential downpour or two. My shoes are still damp.

Despite having a new bus company this year (I called and complained about the old one as “unreliable” would be too kind of an adjective), I still had to call and get an update on the bus and got the, “Well, there’s traffic and it’s raining,” rigamarole. Sorry. Unacceptable. Saying that there’s traffic and rain in Pittsburgh like it’s some kind of unique set of circumstances is like saying, “Gee, it’s a bit sultry atop this volcano.” We almost gave up after waiting for so long but it seemed somehow important to me that the baby and the bus driver meet on the first day. When the bus finally arrived, I had to do the whole, “Here’s my one and only child. If you could now cease being an idiot from this point forward, that would be aces!” hand off. I’m pretty empathetic to people messing up at work, seeing as how I do it ALL THE TIME. But this has been a constant issue and I am getting pretty fed up.

ANYWAY…what else? The husband and I spontaneously tackled our third floor on Sunday night. It’s served as a repository for anything and everything the past five years. It’s a perfectly liveable space and it’s being wasted right now, so we started pawing through the various bags and boxes that we’ve been toting around with us since our late teens. There’s lots of just random stuff that gets shuffled when you move a lot and also lots of meaningful stuff that I’m really glad that we kept. I found a pros and cons list that I composed while determining whether or not I should go out with the husband (mostly pros, the only con being that we were good friends and I didn’t want to potentially ruin that) and a few of our angsty, early emails that essentially serve as our love letters. He found the scrap of paper that he wrote my phone number on. We don’t seem like the most romantic people, but I guess we are.

I think the start of a new school year has that unavoidable feeling of a new start, and we are, of course, going through some transitions. We’re trying to figure out what we’re doing with our life from here and I think getting the house more in shape is indicative of us finally moving forward, even though things don’t look like we thought they were going to.

If nothing else, I got to laugh at stuff like my old Venus razor.

LOLShaving

I know that the internet is already sick of hearing about this, because it happened like HOURS ago and plus earthquakes happen other places and other things happen, too, and GOD WHY DO WE TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET AT ALL JUST BE QUIET EVERYONE. (I’m truly puzzled by this because now that we have all of the communication that we could possibly want, I think we’re realizing, “Oh, right, I want you to shut your face.” More than two tweets in a row about any possible subject and the “Move on, already!” brigade shows up. “Talk about something else for three seconds until I get sick of that and then await further instructions!” Jesus. Go for a walk.)

Anyway, at some point fairly recently, the husband and I were talking about how not into natural disasters we are. I mean, Pittsburgh has its faults, but the worst thing you can say about it, weather-wise, is that winter steps on your neck every year. And aside from the odd blizzard, even that isn’t too bad. We like going about our days not worrying about hurricanes or tornadoes (much). And I think we had watched a video of the earthquake in Japan and were both like, “EFF THAT! I am so glad we don’t have those here. I am not into earthquakes at all.”

Obviously, I had no idea what an earthquake was like. And yesterday, while I was sitting at my desk and felt the building move, a lot of thoughts went through my head.

“I’m pretty sure the building’s moving. That’s odd. It generally doesn’t do that. It kinda feels like how the new Target does when cars drive in the parking garage beneath it. But…we don’t have a parking garage in this building. Maybe they’re doing some kind of heavy construction on this building? But it’s silent. Oh, shit. I bet I’m having a stroke. Or the psychosis is finally taking full control. ”

Then I noticed some of the stuff on my desk vibrating and finally, in a very tiny voice, said, “Um, is the building moving?” Tiny voice because if you’re pretty sure that your brain is imploding, you’re not really keen to announce it. “HEY GUYS! THE BUILDING IS MOVING AND ALSO PUDDING ROGER THAT GOING TO POOP ON THE FLOOR NOW!” But one of my co-workers confirmed that she felt it, too, and had been similarly hesitant to survey everyone else. However, my other co-workers did not feel anything, which put us back to being concerned.

“Could it have been an earthquake?”

“NOOOO! We don’t have those here…Er, well, I guess there was that one about a year ago. Hmm…”

Now, this is, I think, just the cutest thing I’ve ever done: I opened a new tab, pulled up Google, and typed, “earthquakes.”

Just that. Not “earthquakes Pittsburgh” or even “earthquakes WTF?” Like, I went to Google and basically just HURR DURRed at it. But Google knew exactly what I needed and pointed me directly to the NSGS site…which told me that, yes, there was just an earthquake in Virginia and you felt it where you are and aren’t you sweet, just sitting there through it.

“You guys…that WAS an earthquake! Ack! We were supposed to stand in the doorway!” So, I got up and stood in the doorway, even though by that point the earthquake had ended about 10 minutes ago. My emergency preparedness is on a bit of a delay.

Then I got kind of scared. Remembering how it felt made me dizzy and hearing everyone poo-poo it didn’t help. I know that they happen everywhere all the time and are much worse, but the first time experiencing it was pretty scary. I feel fairly certain that West Coast residents might remember being aware of an earthquake for the first time and being freaked out by it, so a little bit of sympathy would have been nice. Just sayin’.

Oh, hello. We were in the Outer Banks last week and I’ve spent this week so far “not holding it together” as the husband would say. Crappy life stuff knocked me down so I took a few days off of work to recuperate. My recovery regimen has included sleeping a lot, watching Mad Men on Netflix, and doing a juice cleanse.

Yes, god, I’m doing one of those things. A blog that I read did one some time ago. And a few weeks ago, Tracey had expressed her plans for one while she and Charlie were here visiting. However, they were going to be doing the whole shebang with juicing their own produce and whatnot. I was intrigued, but knew that I wouldn’t be a good candidate for the homemade version. Too much work and I’m at the office all day.

Last week, while I was elbow-deep in one of my potato chip lunches, I noticed that I felt really…swollen. I knew exactly what the culprit was: incredibly delicious North Carolina barbeque, wine, chips, wine, chips, candy, chips, fish, wine, chips, wine, and chips. Having been on a similar diet just two weeks earlier while in Conneaut, to say that I felt kind of gross would be an understatement. That’s close to a month of eating like the apocalypse is upon us. So, I busted out my credit card and purchased a three-day Renovation Cleanse.

I had timed my cleanse for when the husband and the baby would be in New York City for the weekend, my reasoning being that I would be less likely to kill them should this whole thing go horribly awry. Also, coming back from vacation our cupboards were pretty bare so I wouldn’t have too much temptation.

My juices arrived yesterday morning and were waiting for me when I came home from a walk. I had planned to start it today but figured since there were already there and I was home, I might as well jump on in.

I find the juices to be just fine. The Pineapple Apple Mint is especially delicious. I have not, however, had the experience of the Serious Eats crew of feeling too full to finish any of them. I wasn’t starving, either, but I’ve definitely been hungry in between juices. I’m mostly dealing with a mild headache which is probably due both to hunger and lack of caffeine. I don’t think I’ve been doing as much extra flushing as I’m supposed to do, as I’m supposed to keep the water and green tea coming in between. Frankly, I’ve been afraid to go into the kitchen, lest I find myself munching on dry cat food.

I can tell you that I’ve noticed just how many food blogs I’m subscribed to, as I can barely stand to look at my Google Reader and all of its delicious things. I’m really excited to eat healthy stuff after this. My mom and I have big plans this Saturday to visit the new Target in East Liberty (it has a cart escalator!) and I’m sure we’ll have to veer over to Whole Foods so that I can stick my face in the salad bar.

By the way, “juice cleanse” is just one of the phrases that’s been falling out of my mouth lately that makes me want to punch myself in the face. Others include, “my therapist says,” “guided imagery,” and “energy.” I fear that I’m a vision quest away from carrying crystals around.

A few weeks ago, the sister-in-law was in town for the weekend and we took the baby to a class he was taking at Dance Alloy in Garfield. After dropping him off, we ran down the street to grab a cup of coffee. Garfield is an area of town that is currently being gentrified. The people involved in that community I’m sure don’t like that word and would rather I say that it’s being “creatively revitalized and resuscitated from the consumptive plague of urban blight through art” or something. Whatever, I’m not judging, since I obviously participate in it. I’m just saying that building modern, eco-friendly lofts next to a crack house rings a lot of gentrification bells. It’s cool.

Anyway, I noticed that the constant, low-to-mid-level pissiness that seemed to define my personality in my 20s must have tapered off. When we exited the coffee shop, I saw a parking meter that someone had yarnbombed and it made me irrationally irritated in a way that seems to have been absent. Yarnbombing, for those of you with the wisdom to ignore the antics of idiots, is sometimes called “guerrilla knitting” and is basically putting yarn around inanimate objects because…I don’t know. All I know is that I imagine someone saying, “I made this fence a sweater because I’m so full of life and appreciate beauty and yarn lulz!” and I just want to kick something because that is moronic.

None of this has much to do with anything but I thought of it because I’ve had several shitty days in a row following a kind of okay vacation in Conneaut Lake with my family last week. Don’t get me wrong, most of it was really fun. There was just stuff like the mattresses in our cottage being from the Eisenhower administration, which sort of forced the husband and I to sleep on the floor if we were to maintain any mobility. There was also me taking steps to maintain my healthy eating but getting sidelined by alcohol and candy. Despite noshing on stuff like kale most of the week, around Wednesday evening I snapped and started being that person who’s like, “I’d like a steak a la mode,” and, “This Champagne would be really good with some chocolate covered pretzels in it.” Kind of gross. And I didn’t work out once and I gained like 8 pounds which just made me mad. I also got my period at a restaurant because I’m like 13 or something and can’t handle the bodily function that I’ve had every month for nearly 20 years. Are you there God? It’s me, diddy.

For as good as I’ve been feeling all summer, and as deftly as I’ve handled upsetting moments in recent months, I find myself looking at empty hands where coping skills used to be. Everything’s fine, or rather, everything that needs to be fine is (we’re all healthy and fed and whatnot). Things have just been pretty rough for me the last few days.

That’s all.

How have you been?

That’s me. 23 years old. 9 months pregnant (though it felt more like 20). In our living room in our old apartment in Squirrel Hill. Smiling but scared to death.

About 3 months prior to when that picture was taken, I had sat in that room in my bathrobe and watched the September 11, 2001 attacks unfold on our TV.

“This isn’t real,” I had said, as mighty towers crumpled and fell. “This can’t be real.”

I don’t like to…own too much of the emotion of that day. It was terrifying for everyone, but I didn’t know anyone in those towers or on those planes, and the few people I knew in those cities were safe. I didn’t have any loved ones in the military.

All I had was a baby inside me. He squirmed and turned, blissfully unaware of anything outside of my belly, as I sat and seriously wondered if this was it, if this was the end of everything. And if it wasn’t, what would happen tomorrow? Being pregnant had stirred up so much introspection of my worth as a human being and now I had to wonder, really wonder, about the worth of the world that I was forcing him into.

There’s a Bob Dylan song called “Masters of War.” It’s angry and chilling and not at all pleasant.

You’ve thrown the worst fear
That can ever be hurled
Fear to bring children
Into the world
For threatening my baby
Unborn and unnamed
You ain’t worth the blood
That runs in your veins.

I’ve felt this way toward many people, not just toward cartoonish men with dastardly terrorist networks. I’ve felt it toward presidents and governors and senators and captains of industry. When I’m particularly angry, I listen to this song and I get it out. I let the anger happen, I let it have its moment, and then I’m ready for action, whatever form that may take.

Strong emotions live inside moments. I thought it was weird to see people celebrating, but I’m not going to tell anyone how they should feel immediately following something like this. I’m not rejoicing bin Laden’s death, but I am glad that his time among us has come to an end. I heard and read a LOT of things after his demise was announced. Very little of it was constructive, but all of it was emotional. That moment is over now, though. Now we figure out where to go from here. Things felt and said yesterday are in the past and there are hopefully many tomorrows to be lived.

This is me, pretty much all the time now:

I feel like all I do is work and then come home and fall asleep on the couch. In between all of that, I mentally toil with some stuff, but nothing that I feel comfortable sharing here. Maybe I could do like the blog equivalent of Mad Libs?

“Kelly [adverb] [verb]ed some [adjective] [noun] with [person in the room]. It was a [adjective] [noun] and it made her [verb].”

I can tell you that I got my hairs cut the other day.

My desire to keep the salon blowout has prevented me from washing my hair, so picture me today with a stringier, somewhat Kelly-Cutroneish version of the cut above.

I have, however, been keeping myself busy around these here internets. I wrote on MoxieBird this week about Arianna Huffington, the iPad 2, legislative fetuses, $14,000 prom dresses, and gender roles in toy commercials. On MamaPop, I wrote about the aforementioned Kelly Cutrone, Kate Middleton, Oprah, and, of course, Big Love (or, as I tend to call it nowadays, “God damn fucking Big Love,” because I write out the events of each week’s episodes and sprain my eyes from rolling them so hard. Who knew a show about polygamists would turn out to be absurd? Oh, wait…). Also also wik, I’m writing on the new iteration of Sweetney. I wrote last week about what my “Mommy Card” might look like, and this week I wrote about how bitchin’ roller skating is.

I’m hoping that Daylight Savings ending next weekend will help. Winter seems to kick my ass harder and harder each year. SIGH.

The baby, not surprisingly, is shaping up to be quite the smart ass. When he was leaving for school the other day, he said good-bye to the husband, who told him (as he does every day) to do well in school. The baby replied, “Thanks for the words of wisdom, Daddy.” I’m so screwed.

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.