kdiddy.org

I started this post the other day. Go ahead and read through and then I’ll meet you down at the bottom.

As I mentioned the other day, my semester is finally over. It’s a relief, sure, but I find myself uneasy about my final grade. But there’s nothing I can do about it now, so let’s discuss parties.

The baby had his birthday party this past Saturday and it was rather awesome. The Oaks Theater is available for parties so we booked that and showed one of the baby’s favorite Godzilla movies for him and his buddies. It was especially fun for the kids since they got to talk and giggle and wander around the theater during the movie. A taste of the forbidden! The guy at the Oaks also wrote a happy birthday message to the baby on the marquee, which was really cool for him to see.

It was a small group. The kids in the baby’s class don’t seem too big on birthday parties. But that was fine. Less noise, less stress, etc.

So, I highly recommend the Oaks for special events. I will note that it was a tad pricey (not surprising, really) and I’m thinking this will be our last big birthday party for awhile.

Of course, the baby started feeling crappy right as the party was ending and spent the rest of the weekend fighting off a nasty head cold.

I made cupcakes for the party, continuing in my deranged domesticity. Amber requested a picture of a cake wreck and I’m happy to deliver.

Those are chocolate cupcakes with mint icing, as per the baby’s request. I bought this pastry bag set the other day and it’s one of those crappy home baker sets, not a professional one. I don’t harbor any delusions that I am hiding a cake decorating superstar, but the pastry bag experience was rather frustrating. This is as far as I got the other day.

Anyway, yes, cupcakes. I went at them with the pastry bag set not really looking to make them fancy, but it just seemed easier to ice them with that than a butter knife or whatever I normally use. Not so much. But they tasted awesome.

AND I got my final grade for grammar and it’s an A minus. I’m not really sure how I pulled that off but I will so take it.

The title of this post refers to a story I was going to tell you about this yinzer baby shower I went to on Sunday and how I cleaned house during the loathed shower games. But it’s left me.

In fact, I am totally sapped of writing energy. I had an article due on Monday and I guess that and the usual end-of-semester meltdown have rendered me useless. I’ve been sparing you and subjecting the readers of MamaPop with my semi-coherent rambling. Lucky them.

Aaand I’m out of nothings to say. Instead, I’ll leave you with this clip from Sade’s Lovers Live DVD, which we started to watch last night and were stunned by it’s awesomeness.

My plans for today included laundry, eating, maybe going to the nail shop, taking a nap, and whatever the female equivalent is of laying on the couch and scratching one’s balls.

Instead, the mail came. And in the mail there was a letter from PNC Bank’s collections department.

Oh, yes they did.

I haven’t blown up like that in awhile. I was shaking. I was screaming. I confessed to wanting to do very illegal things to every PNC branch in the city. I called several different numbers (because of course they kept bouncing me around) and bitched at every single customer service rep I talked to. I don’t normally do that, because I know that most people are just doing their jobs and trying to scrape by themselves. But I now have a pretty decent amount of contempt for all bank employees, since this is some divide and conquer bullshit. Give broke people a somewhat decent job screwing over other broke people, all the while gambling away their retirement funds…it all makes me sick.

But what I found out from one poor woman who had the shitty fate of talking to me was that when I settled my account once and for all (or so I thought) about a month ago, the money that I handed over never went through and I was once again responsible for $137.74. That amount includes a $29.95 fraudulent charge that I disputed, the investigation fee (since they somehow found in favor of the merchant, which is a whole other WTF), and a couple overdraft fees thrown in for good measure.

“So I give your institution money that I can’t afford to hand over and which your institution does not deserve, all in the name of just getting you out of my life, and you guys lost that money?”

“Well, ma’am…” she said WITH ATTITUDE.

“Oh, well, that’s a real crackerjack operation you guys are running over there. Seriously. Awesome fucking work. I’ll go to the branch AGAIN and settle this AGAIN.”

When I got to the bank, I sat down with a guy (let’s call him “Skippy”) I’d dealt with at least two other times in this debacle and who had been a douche to me before. I considered the possibility that I would leave that building in handcuffs and charged with assault and like, terroristic communist threats or something.

As Skippy explained to me, when I settled my account the last time, they sent the general ledger credit slip to their collections department and that department rejected the slip for some reason. Skippy insisted that I had done nothing wrong and could consider myself free and clear.

“Oh. So you guys made a mistake.”

“Eh, no, it’s not a mistake,” Skippy replied. The collections department rejects these slips for any number of reasons, like the teller didn’t sign her name clearly enough or didn’t list all of the information on the slip.

“So you guys made a mistake.”

“No,” Skippy insisted. They had done everything correctly with my payment, just in a way that resulted in me getting a threatening letter from the collections department.

“I’m sorry, Skippy. I may be a writer and not a financial whiz like you kids here, but that sounds like you guys made a mistake.”

Skippy, ever the optimist, maintained that they had fucked up in the correct manner, and that if I received any more letters detailing their stellar operations to let him know, so that he and I could again discuss the details of the awesome way that they continue taking money from me and being idiots.

What’s really fucked up is that there is no “closing” my account with them. If PNC insists that I arranged payment to a merchant through them, they will re-open my account to “honor their agreement,” once again putting me in arrears. And considering I already had one fraudulent charge to a business that I’d never heard of and never received anything from honored by PNC, it seems reasonable for me to worry that they have the power to conjure up any number of charges that they can honor and bleed me for money for who knows how long.

All in all, trying to close my account has cost me close to $2,000, mostly in fees and trying to clear the new and exciting negative balances that they keep dreaming up. I never did get my hands on my economic stimulus. All of that went to PNC.

Do you want to know why we’re in an economic crisis right now? Because the people who run our financial institutions and businesses are shitty business people. They are stupid. They don’t understand how economics work and think that their crafty methods of screwing people over are brilliant moves. We have a generation of failures running this country.

The semester is starting to wind down, which means both work and school are getting a tad psychotic. I keep hearing about how awful “Christmas creep” is but I’m going to be honest and say that I am all about Christmas this year. I’ve already started listening to Christmas music because I have this cockamamie theory that it makes me more productive. I listened to Christmas music when I was arbitrarily cleaning my house last week and I was surprised at how motivated I was. I think maybe my mom used to pull that with me when I was little, putting on Christmas music and telling me to help her clean and decorate, the incentive being that if I did, Santa might not give me the shaft. And, you know, I had some serious Tinkerbell and Cabbage Patch habits back in the day.

I’m also very gooily and mushily in love with my husband and son right now, and Christmas music reminds me that I will soon have days and days to cuddle with them and soak them up. I hate being this busy, but it really does make me appreciate how much I love them and miss them.

Anyway, here’s what’s been going on.

My dad is doing well. Very well, in fact. He’ll need to do a round of chemo to ensure that any microscopic spreading of the cancer is killed, but his doctors are very optimistic. Right now, he’s trying to figure out what he wants to do about his job…to retire or not to retire.

The husband finally had the tendon in his finger repaired about two weeks ago after some really ridiculous delays. By the way, anyone in need of an orthopedic should NOT seek treatment from Ronit Wolfstein, who does not return phone calls and schedules appointments and then just doesn’t keep them, which is especially unnerving when she tells patients that they need to have surgery as soon as possible. But whatever. A new doctor was secured, surgery was had, and all is looking good.

The husband has this foam stabilizer thing that looks like a wedge of Swiss cheese to keep his hand elevated. He only has to use it when he sleeps now, which results in some hijinks.

I took this picture without his consent, but I think I’m justified and I’ll tell you why. We have a full-sized bed which makes things cozy and with this thing sharing the bed, I often wake up gasping for breath in the middle of the night because the husband’s be-cheesed arm has found its way onto my face. Narrowly escaping suffocation every night is pretty exciting.

The baby finally lost his front tooth, which was dangling by a thread for weeks and just generally looking pretty gross. Now he looks so cute I can barely stand it.

And this kid of mine turns SEVEN in a few weeks, which I really cannot believe. He’s awesome, of course. Mischievous, sure, but smart as hell. He’s doing so well in school. He’s reading like crazy and actually adding inflection and emotion when he reads out loud, which is just so cool. He’s really interested in his Spanish classes and is picking up math really well. He can spell like a mad man and his handwriting is surprisingly neat considering the husband and I both scrawl like serial killer chicken scratchers.

He’s also drawing a lot, which is cool because he really wasn’t into art very much until recently. In preschool, he was way more interested in trucks and trains, and when the teachers would encourage him to try drawing something, he would sigh and scribble a few lines on paper before getting back to stuff with wheels.

Now…well, check it out:

He has a whole series of attack scenes. I keep waiting for his teachers to call us in for a conference where we’ll be forced to meet with a team of psychologists and some dudes from Homeland Security. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the no-fly list but, eh, we don’t go anywhere anyway. But here we have Godzilla and some other monsters attacking a city (presumably Tokyo) in Japan. How do I know it’s Japan?

The Lapan Japan sign! Duh!

Here, some aliens are attacking Washington, D.C. Lots of detail in this one. Let’s take a closer look!

Ah, there’s the Wigt House, aka the White House. And I think that dude fleeing is George W. Bush. What a little girlie man! If only Bill Pullman were President! The baby is vying for a position in Obama’s cabinet as head adviser on alien and giant, nuclear reptilian attacks.

Another detail of note:

That’s the Subway that’s two doors down from the White House at 1604 Pennsylvania Avenue. Aliens love them some $5 footlongs.

Also, another gem from his homework:

I was pretty irritated about including a McDonald’s sign in his homework, mostly because I really hope that our public schools don’t have to turn to frightening corporations to subsidize our learning materials. But the husband pointed out that it’s an exercise working with signs that the kids see. Valid point, I guess. But, as I already noted on the flickr page, if I wrote 1st grade learning materials, food would have snarky quotations and the other option would be constipation.

So, that’s pretty much what’s going on. I also wanted to say that I’m sorry I suck so much at responding to comments. I really appreciate you guys that read this nonsense and then take the time to interact with me. I read everything! I’m just kind of shitty about replying. Kisses!

I know I kind of dropped the ball on sharing my Google Reader links here. I’m hoping to catch up but I read quicker than I write and I’ve shared a TON of stuff since last week.

But right now, I need you to watch this. HEAR these words. Carry them with you. We’re all alone, but we can all be less alone if we just try.

One of the best parts of my day is coming home after work and school, kicking my shoes off, combining ingredients to make a nutritious, home-cooked-with-love meal, sitting down with my family, digging in and hearing, “Ehhhh, this has too much garlic! Why is there ricotta in here? I hate ricotta! This is too hot! Waaahhh!” And that’s just from my husband.

To be fair…if I had a cooking advice column and someone asked me, “kdiddy, if I need two cloves of minced garlic for garlic bread and have a jar of minced garlic that I want to use up, can I just use that for the bread even though it equals 6 or 7 cloves of garlic?” my answer would be, “Absolutely. Especially if you want to have the garlickiest garlic bread that ever garlicked.” I honestly didn’t think it was that bad, but I love garlic so whatever. *breathes on you*

I didn’t really watch the debates last night. I was being a good student and studying for my Grammar mid-term that’s on Thursday. I appear to have a serious problem identifying phrasal verbs and some other shit and oh my god, I really can’t wait for this class to be over. It’s fascinating, sure, but I hate hate HATE tests and I seriously will not take another one after this. Except for my driving test. I really need to get on that. But that’s a whole other panic attack.

I did hear about McCain referring to Obama as “that one,” which, you know, smooooth move, Ex-Lax. I also really liked the part where he started talking about speaking softly and carrying a big stick and how Obama speaks loudly…and presumably carries a small stick and, hey, let’s just call this whole election thing off and have a dick-measuring contest!

I also skipped all of the punditry and relied on play-by-plays from Sarah Palin, John McCain, Joe Biden, and, of course, Biggie Smalls.

We took the baby to the Regent Square Theatre last night to see the original 1954, Japanese Gojira, aka Godzilla. The baby loves Godzilla movies because there’s a big monster who smashes stuff, but the screening last night also served as a platform for Remembering Hiroshima.

It seems that many Americans are still surprised to learn that the original Godzilla was actually a very serious film and commentary on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings during World War II, and on the neverending nature of the arms race and destroying The Enemy. In the film, there are two scientists: one who holds the key to destroying Godzilla, even though further H-bomb tests will simply create another monster somewhere else, and another who wants to study the creature and learn from it. Though how one would go about capturing a seemingly indestructible dinosaur and studying it, we don’t know.

Pthpthptthpthpth. I intended to go on here about the empty notion of triumphing over evil and how it’s still VERY relevant today(*cough*everywhere in the Iraq such as therefore *cough*) but frankly, I’m not up for it and I get the impression that the only audience for my philosophical rants are those two or three crickets that happily chirp away and the one or two of you who bother to say, “Nuh uh.”

Anyway, the baby obviously wasn’t that interested in the post-film discussion, but I think it’s good to at least give him the opportunity to hear these things.

If you aren’t already keeping a list of things that I demand that you check out, you should start one and add the following items to it: Bill Burr’s latest stand-up special, Why Do I Do This?, and Chris Rock’s latest special, Kill the Messenger. The husband and I often describe Burr as, “The red-haired, white guy on Chappelle’s Show who was one of the commentators on the Racial Draft.” We’ve actually seen him live a few times through those underselling, free-ticket deals through the Improv, which is cool because I think he might actually blow up a little bit fairly soon. Rock’s special isn’t as good as his earlier ones and seems to slack off into recycled material and generic “Let me tell you about the nature of black and white women,” schtick, seasoned, I would guess, with bitterness over his marital problems, but whatever. Dude is still hilarious.

Started this post last night:

I’m avoiding doing my homework because, well, it’s homework and I don’t wanna. Also, I made some chili earlier and cut up some kind of hot pepper from our CSA box to put in it. As you’re probably aware, the oils from hot peppers stay on your hands for awhile and I was, uh, digitally adjusting…something in my nostril. Now that delicate membrane is all burny and, according to the internet, vegetable oil will cut that spiciness.

I’m actually being very academic this week. On Friday, I’m going to a lecture with Scot Brown about funk music from Dayton, OH.

Ahem. Where I was going with that is I went to a lecture by Steven Greenhouse yesterday evening. Greenhouse is the labor reporter for the NYT and wrote a book called The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker. It was a very timely lecture, considering all that’s been going on in the past week.

I will state right now that I could probably be accused of a bias. My dad’s been a postal worker for forty years and has always been a union member. Unions are good, not just for blue collar workers but for all workers, and contrary to what I hear most people my age and younger saying, they are definitely still needed nowadays.

While I have gripes with my job, just like anyone, I realize that I am pretty lucky. I have guaranteed paid time off days, good insurance, excellent job security and it’s paying for me to get my master’s. But it’s really mind-boggling to think of myself as lucky. Aside from the possible exception of tuition benefits, time off and insurance should not fall under the category of luxuries. But they do for millions of Americans.

As Greenhouse spoke last night, he would expound on a point and would make projections about what he thought would need to happen in order for American workers, blue and white collar, to have more rights and not get screwed over so much, and then would apologize for moralizing. But it is a moral issue.

I am not an economist. I am fascinated by economics and took a few classes in college whenever I could, but I will be the first to own up to the fact that I will never fully understand how we keep this machine running. But I think on a very basic level we have people who want money and things and power and then there are people who just want to live a decent life and not get stepped on. And, yeah, I think there’s something severely messed up with the moral compasses of people who will stop at nothing to get more.

Greenhouse said that as preposterous as the Wall Street bailout sounds to those of us who will pay for it, he believed that it was necessary in order to avoid a tremendous collapse. I think he’s probably right. So I’ll hand over my share. But, I think we should be honest about what it is. It’s welfare. It’s cash assistance. And you know that I believe in welfare.

So now that the richest among us are receiving it with the full support of the government, I demand that no broke person be given shit for the pittance that they receive. The next time that I pay for groceries with an EBT card, don’t glance at my selections and judge my character. The next time that I go into the hospital and have a baby and use my Medicaid, don’t bitch about “paying for my mistakes.” Don’t get all indignant about your tax dollars and don’t gripe about the irresponsible behavior of “those people.” Because what we’re seeing on Wall Street is the ultimate in irresponsible behavior and it’s not just fucking with the lives of one person or one family, it’s fucking all of us. We’ll pay for it. We’ll fix it because that’s what we need to do. Now hopefully that minuscule percentage of your tax dollar that goes toward social services won’t seem so outrageous. Because it isn’t.

And now back to our regularly scheduled pictures of not-jizz and innuendo-laden homework.

Last night, we watched the Steelers beat the Browns and immediately afterward, the power went out. Our windows were open so we heard the entire neighborhood go, “AWWWWWWW MAN!” It is indeed fortunate that the power went out after the game, as opposed to right in the middle, because then there might have been riots. But still: no post-game. Grr. We also didn’t get to watch True Blood, Entourage, or Mad Men and we didn’t get to finish watching The Seventh Seal, which we started watching the other night but we both fell asleep in the middle of it. I mean, it’s not like we knew what was going on, but it’s still awesome and I want to see all of it. I guess I never noticed how little I’ve heard Swedish being spoken, but it’s pretty rad since to my Latin-based ear it all sounds like gibberish and very…like…”I am Death-schnurgen. Do you play chess-schnurgen? Bork bork bjorn borg.”

I imagine that if I have any Swedish readers I’ve completely offended them and I’m sorry. But yinz talk funny, n’at.

The wind was pretty intense last night but I didn’t realize how much it messed things up until this morning. There was already a mess on the main street because a building that caught fire a few weeks ago partially collapsed, but now there were trees everywhere, no traffic lights, gutters and siding and shingles scattered all over. And the baby’s school had a 2-hour delay so we had to drop him at my mother-in-law’s house. But I wonder how people who don’t have family or trustworthy babysitters nearby manage when there’s something like a 2-hour delay and they CAN’T be late for work.

Oh, this is completely unrelated but we went to see Burn After Reading on Friday and it was pretty great. It’s been getting bad reviews but I think that’s because the Coen Brothers blew everyone’s minds so much with No Country for Old Men that people forgot that they make goofy movies all the time. Granted, Burn After Reading isn’t their BEST movie ever, but I can tell you that any time a whole, crowded theater cracks up at brutal killings…well, you got something special on your hands. Shit. I might make that into a Hallmark card.

*Okay, so, I know I’m a cornball but I am once again referencing Joe Rogan. He has a bit in his 2005 (a whole two years before Idiocracy came out, which is pretty wild since it’s basically the same argument) special in which he talks about how people are getting stupider, but we all think we’re smart because we use things that smart people have made. “If I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet, how long do you think it would be before you sent me an email?” Perhaps the best example he gives is what we do when the power goes out, which is just sit and wait for it to come back on. And last night, I couldn’t help but think about that, especially as the husband and I stumbled around breaking our toes on our furniture and downloading flashlight apps for our iPhones, for fuck’s sake. Totally helpless.

…and so you did. So fucking sad.