kdiddy.org

Yes, I did just quote Evenflow for the title of this post. For a few seconds I felt 13.
Ever since my last post I've been imagining my grandmother's “I told you so” sessions at the funeral of my boyfriend if he were to be tragically cut down in a drive by shooting in E. Liberty/Garfield/whereever black people live. I, of course, would faint several times in between throwing myself onto the coffin while wearing a black suit, one of those pillbox hats with the little veil and clutching a white hanky. Perhaps Jimmy Cliff could stop by to sing “Many Rivers to Cross.”
Wow. I have gotten absolutely nothing done yet today. My dad stopped by so that I could type a letter for him to his insurance company. They made some bullshit charges to him so now he's trying to get them to take it back. That took longer than I anticipated and afterward I realized that the baby was probably starving since I was. We had one of the strangest lunches ever. I had a fancy salad that was really just an absurd combination of low POINTS foods while the baby had a Healthy Choice hot dog, some strawberries and some tapioca pudding. Whatever. All of the food is still sitting out in the kitchen turning sour and my laundry from last night is sitting in the washer turning moldy. I am a shitty housewife. I should get a job. later.
Alright. I really need to go do something.
flingin flangin.

I have the whole house to myself today. Well, obviously the baby's here but my mom is in New Orleans until Monday and the boyfriend is at work until 7. It's almost 11:30 and my immediate plans are to have another cup of coffee and sit in my pajamas a little longer…and maybe take a dump. The baby already has. I'll go change him. Wait there…

Alright, I'm back. Diaper changed, dump taken, second cup of coffee poured. I just discovered a bug bite on my leg. I hate discovering those shortly after I've gotten out of bed because it means that a bug was in bed with me last night and that really creeps me out. Anyway.

It's been such a long time since I've been able to sit down with LJ with no potential interruptions. *makes out with monitor* I've missed these long posts.

Ugh, where was I?
So, last night my grandmother and I got into this rather amusing argument. She and my mother, whether justified or not, seem to think that I am either a) perpetually 9 years old, b) mentally retarded, c) a terrible terrible mother or d) a spoiled rotten brat who is entirely ungrateful for all of the things that people do for her. Possibly a combination of all four.
Let me back up. My grandmother grew up here in Lawrenceville which, according to some, is the ghetto but it's really just kind of poor and doesn't have very good taste in lawn ornaments/holiday decorations. To many, it is indicative of all that is wrong with Pittsburgh: too working-class, too many Steelers fans, not enough artsy fartsy, not enough young people. Pittsburgh does have ghettos but from what I've been told they are not nearly as bad as those in L.A., NYC, D.C., Detroit and the like. Pittsburgh just isn't a major metropolis so its good and bad points just aren't on the same scale as those of a bigger city.
Anyway, my grandmother has this very old school, small minded mentality which tends to irritate the fuck out of me. She moved out to the suburbs of Oakmont the first chance she got so now I get a little annoyed when she claims to know all about the current problems of the big bad city when her only interaction with it is riding through on the bus on the way to spending thousands of dollars at Saks.
Mind you, I love my grandmother and I'd be totally fucked without her but that still doesn't mean that her personality quirks aren't grating.
She suggested yesterday that the boyfriend and I go out to Oakmont for lunch tomorrow (Saturday). I informed her that the boyfriend would be working at the record store all day. The conversation then went something like this:
Grandmother: What record store?
Me: 720 Records.
G.: Where's that?
Me.: East Liberty.
G.: Oh my god.
Me.: *sighs, knows what's coming.*
G.: Kelly B., he has to get out of that job.
Me.: Gram, he wants that job. He likes it there.
G.: I know, but that's a baaaaaaad area.
Me.: Gram, it's really not. They have a nice business district there.
G.: That's Garfield!
Me.:….How can it be Garfield? It's East Liberty. Those are two different neighborhoods.
G.: I know but he has to go through Garfield to get to East Liberty.
Me.: Yeah, for like 5 seconds. Besides, Garfield isn't that bad either.
G.: There was a shooting there last night!
Me.: That was on Kinkade St. The boyfriend stays on Penn Ave. to get to E. Liberty.
G.: Kinkade St. is Penn Ave.!
Me.: How does that work? A glitch in the space-time continuum?
G.: Kinkade is off of Penn Ave!
Me.: Penn Ave and Garfield are being gentrified anyway. It's not nearly as bad as you think it is. You just watch the local news too much.
G.: You don't know about the city. You don't know how it is.
Me.: Gram, how much can you know about the city when you've lived in Oakmont for the past 25 years?
G.: I take the bus through there all the time.
Me.: Ok, that's really not enough experience to “know what it's like.”

And so on. Then we started arguing about the name of East Liberty Presbyterian Church. It is certainly called East Liberty Presbyterian Church and apparently used to be called Mellon's Church and that proved that I didn't know what it was like to live in the city. Anyway, I don't try to pretend that I know what it's like to live in E. Liberty or Garfield or Homewood or the Hill District. I have a feeling the actual residents of those places would be very offended by my assumptions and conclusions drawn from watching WPXI News and a John Singleton movie or two. Bottom line: if the boyfriend is ever involved in a drive-by shooting my grandmother is going to take great delight in saying “I told you so.”
So yeah, then my grandmother tried to tell my mother that I shouldn't be alone in the house all day and what was I going to do? Um, same things that I do when I'm here by myself every other day? She of course ended the conversation by telling my mother to remind me to lock the screen doors to “keep the drug dealers out.” Man, I wish a drug dealer would just walk into my house some time. I could use some.
My, this entry is getting long. You don't care do you?
I'm not sure what's going on tonight. I think today I'm going to do some housework since it's not very warm outside. I don't think a walk with the baby would be very fun.
Speaking of the baby, he's getting kind of annoyed. I'll be back later.

I think I've settled down today. I got a pretty good night's sleep, despite being awakened around 3 a.m. by the boyfriend watching some really obnoxious movie with a pop punk soundtrack and laughing really loud. A lot of times if I get awakened in the middle of the night I have a really hard time falling back to sleep. Luckily, that was not the case last night.
Stacey called me yesterday around 4 to find out how the test had gone. Poor Stacey. As soon as she asked me how it went I burst into tears once again and started sobbing about how dumb I was and blahblahblah. I don't think she understood too much of what I said through all of the snot and trembling lips but she promised to come over when she was done with work.
Then I talked to Shanley on the phone who was full of “Cheer up, bucko”s and provided me with some much needed laughs.
When my mom came home she was already in a bad mood and started berating me for being so mopey over something so trivial. Jesus. I have one bad day and suddenly she's telling me what a shitty spoiled person I am. Then she started trying to feed me all of these Dr. Phil, Chicken Soup for the Soul, one-liner life lessons that I absolutely hate.
Anyway, Stacey came over and waited while I bathed the baby and put him to bed. Then we headed out for coffee/dessert/dinner for Stacey. We went to Crazy Mocha on Liberty but they weren't serving food anymore. So we ended up at Tessaro's next door. Stacey got this big sandwich and I just got a Guinness since I had already eaten. Luckily I had some WW points saved up. I couldn't find the nutrition facts for Guinness online so I don't know exactly how many points it is. oh well. It's probably like 20.
We had good conversation about a bunch of stuff and I admitted that I had been feeling not myself over the past couple of days.
My insurance card came in the mail yesterday so I think I'm going to get off of these BCP and try something different. I think me and synthetic hormones just don't mix.
Hey! guess what the baby just did….
I'll be back

yeah, sorry about that. I'm just having a rough couple of days. I just want some sleep and to not have to spend money on dumb shit.
meh

I have my driving test in a little less than three hours. I'm going to poop my pants.

A few quick notes about the Matrix:
Decent.
Very confusing.
There's a rave/orgy thing in Zion that goes on for way too long. It was seriously making me uncomfortable because I found the whole thing very dumb. During the rave/orgy, Trinity and Neo are off in their room having sex. This also made me giggle and went on for way too long. Call me gay but I've really never had any desire to see Keanu Reeves' butt.
Cornel West is an alright actor. I was surprised. However, I think the boyfriend and I have reached a new level of dorkdom when we're the only ones in the movie theatre cheering for one of our favorite philosophers like he's a rock star or something. All of the Trenchcoat Mafioso around us, including this kid sitting directly behind the boyfriend who had the worst lisp I've ever heard, were wondering what the hell we were getting so excited about.

My kid is seriously off his rocker.

Edit: I failed. miserably. I'm in a horrid mood. I don't cope with failure well. At least my son hasn't given me any black eyes today…yet.

Oh shit. So fun. And so much hilarious drama, I don't know if I can even get into it right now. But for a quick overview, picture some very good music, a tasty salad, several drunk people, a cup of animosity, a shitty writer for the PG, clout with the bartenders, and a beligerent Akil and you have only the very surface of a goofy Tuesday night.
I want to go into detail but I can't right now. I tentatively promise a full report tomorrow.

Toddlers can be downright assholes.

…and didn't already read me exclaiming about this on the hamm list:
http://www.pragmatism.org/library/west/
Cornel West is going to be in the new Matrix movies. I think that's wild.

Breakfast: French Toast that Aunt Jemima made and grape juice for the baby; English muffin with Polaner All Fruit and coffee for me. It was a very international breakfast.
Headed in here to check email and allow the baby to have his morning defecation. The baby opens the desk drawer and empties it of its contents. My feet are now surrounded by old greeting cards, unused DSL filters, random snapshots from last summer, old cable invoices, two pens, a Duplo, and an advertisement for the original American Pie. How much do you think I could get for that on eBay?
The baby has also figured out how to open the printer cabinet where I'm storing all of my cds until I can find a better storage system. He is constantly going after the DJ Shadow “Dark Days” CD. I don't understand why that is.
Email highlights: invitation from to join something called Friendster. This was the second such invitation. The first time I got it I think I thought it was a dating service but I was wrong. So I joined up and by clicking on Crisbee's friends realized that about 90% of the people I've ever met in life are already on it…including the boyfriend! He just joined, though, which explains why he hasn't mentioned it to me. He listed himself as “In a relationship” on his profile, which is good for him because otherwise he'd be dead now. ;-p He only has two friends, Kelly Downlow and this other chick who makes me uncomfortable because she's very, “I'm-flirtatious-I-flirt-with-everyone's-boyfriends-it-doesn't-mean-anything-I-know-way-more-about-music-producing-DJing-guy-stuff-than-you-do-did-I-mention-I'm-bisexual-into-three-ways-and-like-to-be-videotaped?” and that bothers me.
LJ comments are always fun.
Email from Shanley. He's in rare form today. Very funny, very long email, just the way I like 'em.
I have a bunch of annoying chores that I need to get done today, including writing thank you notes (*rips hair out*) and getting various things into some state of organization.
My mom is really on my nerves today. I'm not sure why. One reason might be because I cooked some asparagus last night but didn't get around to eating it. So this morning she threw it out. whore. Another reason is that she is going to New Orleans this weekend but is not “allowing” me to go to Richmond while the boyfriend is at DEMF. I get this sinking feeling that I'm not ever going to be able to just do anything I want, within reason. I'm going to always need my mother's permission. That's fucking depressing.
*flails*
Alright, well the baby has finally pooped so I guess I'll go take care of that. Don't envy me.

My Live Journal's first birthday is coming up on May 20th. I'm expecting gifts.

No I'm not. dummy.

Crazy dream the other night: that the boyfriend bought me this half-assed restored sports car with a horrible orange paint job. I was concerned about how the baby's car seat would be restrained, what with the car not having any back seats and all. All present (representations of the boyfriend and Stacey although not actually them) told me to quit being stupid and directed me to the shitty tether attached to the bucket seats that were supposed to restrain my son. Also, the convertible roof was this shitty vinyl material, not unlike the shade on my son's stroller.
I just don't even know.

My dad got his job back. All the details of his back pay and whatnot haven't been ironed out yet, but this is a huge relief. Hopefully my dad will go back to being a somewhat normal individual and not the bundle of nerves he currently is. Hey! Maybe he'll even settle down long enough to figure out how to check his voice mail once and for all! Woooo!