kdiddy.org

Have you ever seen one of those holiday movies where the lovable but dysfunctional family gathers to celebrate and then a huge fight ensues…many tears are shed and stunning secrets revealed, but at the end they all recognize how much they love each other and smile over coffee? The best example that I can think of right now is this Holly Hunter movie called Home for the Holidays. It's a pretty great flick, although I've only seen it once or twice really late at night on cable.\
Anyway, my Thanksgiving was kind of like that, minus the heartwarming resolution at the end of the day. My mom and I had a humongous psychotic fight. My grandmother decided to join in. The boyfriend was unfairly picked on and caught in the crossfire. I spent most of the day in the bathroom. So fucking cliched and disappointing. Worst of all, I didn't even get to pig out that much. I had one measly plate of food and I could barely taste it because I was crying and shit.\
Sometimes I really feel like family isn't worth all of the fucking bullshit.\
Oh and a little while ago, the baby fell in the kitchen and got a fat lip.\
I really want to run away.

Currently: half-heartedly writing a CD review for Pulp (I don't think half-heartedly even covers it, more like every ten minutes or so I hit a key. It's taken me about 24 hours to write 100 words. I think I suck at this.)\
\
boiling two pots of sweet potatoes.\
\
doing a load of laundry (duh).\
\
rubbing my eyes.\
\
attempting to arrange a group trip to the Oaks Theater tonight to see The House of Yes.\
\
….\
\
You know what I really like about the audio posts? When I was little, my mom had this really dear friend named Lauren and she lived in New Jersey. At the time, neither of them had long-distance on their phones (this was back in…umm…1982 or 1983?). They wrote each other from time to time but were kind of sad about the fact that they couldn't call each other on the phone whenever. So, about once a month, either my mom or Lauren would get out the tape recorder and just start talking. The tape (or tapes, as was the case on more than one occasion) was then carefully wrapped in paper towels fastened with scotch tape, dropped in a business-size envelope, marked “Fragile” and mailed to the other person. The person who received the tape would listen and then respond with their own tape. For some reason, I always thought that this was the coolest thing. \
I remember being about 3 or 4 and sitting with my mom at the dining room table while she recorded a tape. She asked me if I wanted to say hi to Lauren. Being 3, I didn't totally have a grasp on how all of this technology worked, so I began speaking to Lauren and waiting for her to respond because I apparently had confused the tape recorder with the telephone. But I loved receiving tapes from Lauren and hearing her sigh about problems with her husband and hearing her kids play in the background, the hisses and pops of the tape, and the way her voice sounded so warm.\
My mom lost touch with Lauren a long time ago, but one day last summer I was going through some old cassettes at my dad's house. I found one of those tapes from Lauren but haven't listened to it yet. After hearing these audio posts it makes me want to hear all of them and it makes me wonder if somewhere Lauren still has these tapes of my mom as a young mother and me as a toddler telling her all about what we had done that day.

I always liked Etta James' version of “At Last.” How can you not, right? It's sweet and romantic and sexy and encompasses all of the good stuff about being in love. I had always entertained fantasies of having my first dance with my husband to that song. However, I just saw a commercial for Michael Bolton's latest assault on the artform of singing and “At Last” is one of the songs that he shreds with his vocal cords of ass. Between this and X-Tina Aguilera fucking butchering the song a few years ago, I'm going to have to put it out of the running completely. Sorry Etta. It's nothing personal.\
\
Edit: Jesus, I can't believe I forgot: “No, there was nothing wrong with that name until I was about 12 and that no-talent assclown started winning Grammys…Why should I change? He's the one who sucks.” –Michael Bolton in Office Space, eternal source of wisdom and more quoteworthy than Confuscious (sp?).

What I really, really want for Christmas is a thick, heavy shade for my bedroom window. You see, our neighbor across the way has a super-sensitive motion sensor on his 6,000,000 watt floodlight. So anytime the stupid cats from next door go carousing through the neighborhood, a very bright light shines right into my eyes every 10 or 15 minutes. This is especially not fun when you're battling insomnia. And no, I can't just turn over because then I'm face-to-face with the boyfriend and his Dorito Breath of Doom.\
I've been very good this year so if you could bring that for me I would really appreciate it. And if it's not too much trouble a pony would be nice, too.\
Sincerely,\
Kelly Delaney\
\
…\
\
So, yeah, I've been up since about 5:45. I thought that I was going to get a really great night of sleep since I passed out around 12. Two things foiled that. For the past couple of months I've been having this problem with the boyfriend: we watch TV for a little bit before going to sleep. I pass out but he stays up to watch more. Inevitably, a few minutes to an hour later I wake up to find the TV still blaring and the boyfriend dreaming away. I nudge him and say, “Turn off the TV.” He replies, “Mmmrph?” And I repeat, “Turn off the TV.” He groans like this is the most absurd request that he's ever heard and starts fumbling with the remote. Usually I have to grab it off of him and turn it off myself since he seems unable to execute simple tasks when shaken from REM sleep. More often than not, he has no memory of this in the morning. So when I suggest that he just go to sleep when I go to sleep he looks at me like I'm crazy. Obviously, this happened last night. I was not happy when I woke up to hear some British people fighting because the wife had been sleeping with a “colored” American man in their barn while the husband was off fighting WWII. I can only wonder why he was watching that.\
The other thing was that the baby started crying around 5:45. It took me a minute to process this because I was having a dream that his hands were covered in syrup and he was pissed about it. By the time I fumbled around and found my glasses and got to the hallway he was silent again. I found myself staring at my mother who was getting up for work. She waved at me and told me to go back to bed. So now I'm wondering if I was having some kind of lucid dream and he wasn't crying at all. Who knows.\
Anyway, back in bed I did my usual routine: start worrying about everything in life even though there's nothing I can really do about it at 5 a.m.\
I'm off to pour myself some coffee. It's a pretty day today. Too bad I'm going to be exhausted throughout it.

I know that I've been going on and on about this stupid crib tent and how it's been stressing me out. I keep telling myself that at least this is my biggest worry. I know a lot of people have two-year-olds who are dying or sick or would give anything for their child to have the ability to climb out of his crib. A lot of two-year-olds will never walk or move. A lot of two-year-olds have parents who don't even care if they live or die. A lot of two-year-olds go to bed hungry, beaten, and unloved. A lot of parents worry about how they will feed their two-year-old, where they will find a warm place to sleep for the night, and how they'll ever make it through another day.\
This is a slightly crap time for us right now, but in every way that matters we're incredibly blessed.

So it's a little after 3 on Monday afternoon. If you haven't noticed, this is the first time that I've been able to update since Friday. Very frantic weekend but nothing productive. Saturday we went out to Brookline so that the boyfriend could visit all of his music stuff and his family could visit with the baby. After that we went out to Oakmont for their Light Up Night and so my grandparents could visit with the baby (read: so my grandmother could cluck all over him and tell me what a horrible mother I am for not wrapping him in polar fleece and astronaut gear once the temperature dips the slightest bit below 60 degrees). When we got home around 10:30, we skipped bathtime and went right to struggling with the crib tent. I was totally at my wit's end. Much crying by both mother and son. I finally gave up, gave him a big hug and kiss, and left the room. He screamed, I went into my room where my mom and boyfriend were watching TV and told them that I was headed downstairs to kill myself. Apparently they believed me, since the boyfriend showed up with a slightly concerned tone in his voice and gave me a neck rub Vulcan death pinch. I think he was just worried that I was going to do the deed before I took us out for Indian food like I said I was going to.\
Sunday was mostly about stinky men watching football while I chased after a pyschotic toddler. The best part was that he didn't take a nap at all that day and I had an article to write for Pulp. blahblahblah. I was very frustrated.\
Today was more struggles with the crib tent, but I'm happy to report that a nap is now happening.\
I'm pretty worn out and the reason I know that is because when I started this entry I had about fifteen things that I wanted to mention but now I can't remember any of them.\
\
….\
\
\
Carnivale was really great this week. It had slowed down the past couple of weeks and I was getting a little concerned, but last night it really picked up again.\
\
durrrrrrr\
\
drool

The Friday Five, 20 minutes too late:\
\
1. List five things you'd like to accomplish by the end of the year.\
\
Uh, the end of this year? yeesh. Okay…\
a) Make crafty gifts/cards for Christmas\
b) Make/buy a really great gift for the baby for his birthday\
c) Have more of a solid job lead\
d) Write and read more\
e) Figure out some kind of preschool for the baby\
\
2. List five people you've lost contact with that you'd like to hear from again.\
\
a) Paco (he's one of my best friends, but we've barely spoken this year)\
b) Stacey (my best friend, but she's been so busy that I only get to speak to her about once a month if I'm lucky)\
c) Some dancer friends from high school, but only to say hi and see what they're up to.\
d) Mary Elizabeth Benson, very good friend from Richmond Ballet\
e) can't think of a fifth one\
\
3. List five things you'd like to learn how to do.\
\
a) knit\
b) be more patient with my son\
c) drive (well, I know how to do it, but I'd like for the state to recognize that fact already)\
d) speak Spanish fluently\
e) speak another language fluently\
\
4. List five things you'd do if you won the lottery (no limit).\
\
a) Buy a really great old huge Pittsburgh house for my little family and restore it to its original grandeur\
b) Invent the VW Passat Wagon Hybrid\
c) Travel\
d) Charity of some sort\
e) Amass the greatest collection of books, movies and music ever seen.\
\
5. List five things you do that help you relax.\
\
a) tool around on the computer\
b) hug my baby\
c) look at pictures\
d) drink tea\
e) read

Bedtime with the crib tent did not go as well as the naptime with the crib tent…not by a LONG SHOT. I felt very, very helpless. He would act all flipped out and scared when I would put him in the crib and zip up the tent. However, I was worried that if I took it off he would climb out and wander the house while I'm asleep. I could take the tent down put a gate up at the door to his room, but he can climb over that, too….at least I think he could if he really wanted to. I can't bring him into bed with me because he just won't do that. He'll sit still for a minute but then he either gets out of bed or starts flipping out and crying.\
The boyfriend and I went into his room with him and told him how cool his tent was and how we wished that we had one, too. We put him in there and sat next to him for awhile and talked with him and his animals. He seemed okay with everything, but when we left he got really upset. I didn't know what to do. He ended up crying for about five minutes before falling asleep. I hate doing that to him, but I really felt like I was at my wit's end. He's such a good baby so when he has these moments of irrationality I just don't know how to deal with it. Luckily, my mother wasn't here. Whenever the boyfriend and I are trying to work through some parenting challenge my mom has a way of screwing it up. Last night he was being weird about who he wanted to put him to bed. I would rock him for a little bit but he would cry for his dad. His dad would rock him back and forth and then he would cry for me. We would both try to put him to bed and he would cry for our next-door neighbor, which just wasn't an option. Eventually, the boyfriend decided to be the one to put him to bed. The baby, of course, cried about this. My mom thinks that anytime he's crying means that something is very very wrong when it was obvious to us that he was just being a toddler and was tired and cranky and didn't know what he wanted. My mom basically accused me of child abuse and I told her not to EVER use that word in reference to me again unless she really meant it. Sometimes I don't think that she believes in us as parents and that really upsets me. It also really bothers me when she gets home from work and acts all exasperated with the baby like she's been dealing with him all day and I haven't. The other night she snapped at him for some little thing. I said to her, “Mom, please don't snap at him.” She then said to me, “I DIDN'T SNAP AT HIM.” It'd be nice if I could deal with an adult every now and then.\
I'm also getting really frustrated with my short-order cook status. Practically every meal I have to make two or three different things to please everyone and it's driving me crazy. What a spoiled bunch. Of course, I guess I bring this on myself with my insistence that everyone eat somewhat healthily. Otherwise, they could all just make crap for themselves. Why exactly am I so concerned with keeping these people healthy?\
\
…\
\
This entry hasn't been much fun, has it? Sorry, just had to get some crap off of my chest. I really need to clean the bathroom. The boyfriend is at Club Havana and my mom is at her friend Nora's. Would cleaning the bathroom by myself at midnight on a Friday night be horribly pathetic?\
\
…\
\
I'm really craving sweet stuff this week. It's getting on my nerves.

So, due to the baby's latest feat, we went to Babyland today and bought him a crib tent. I was a tad concerned that he would hate it, but he's pretty cool with it. He was very excited when I was assembling it and putting it on his crib. Now, he's napping peacefully and I'm in a much better mood than I was yesterday. I'm actually a little jealous of the tent, as it has that mosquito net quality and I've always kind of wanted one of those for my room.\
\
Our digital cable was upgraded to include On Demand yesterday. On Demand is basically a scaled-down version of TiVo and so far I really like it. I was able to watch, pause, rewind and fast forward some old episodes of Six Feet Under. They have a video channel, so last night we watched some old Bauhaus and KMFDM videos and felt goth. It ruled.\
\
Durrr…my train of thought derailed. Damn apple dip.