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Things got quiet around here because a lot of stuff was going on. Things like my son turning 8, and a cousin’s baby shower, and me getting my Master’s. Also, I made cupcakes.

I couldn’t sleep last Friday night for whatever reason, so I puttered about making the cupcakes for the baby’s rollerskating party the next day and scanning pictures from when he was born. I wish someone could tell me how this:

becomes this:

Which isn’t to say, “How does this innocent baby become a red-eyed, knife-wielding psychopath who is shameless enough to wear a Steelers jersey on the day that said team loses to the Oakland fucking Raiders?” But rather, “How does that tiny squirt become this young guy?”

On Sunday, I went to a baby shower with my mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and grandmother-in-law that was very…Pittsburgh. It was in a fire hall (aka “fahr hawl” aka the event area of a VFW). The buffet featured fried chicken and rigatoni, which are staples of showers, weddings, and really any large gathering of people in Pittsburgh. And someone brought their Virgin Mary statue.

Mary just chilled in the middle of the table and I didn’t even think to ask why she was there, but apparently this particular Virgin Mary cries. So. I guess she was the entertainment.

Anyway, we went to my grandmother’s afterward and had a family birthday party for the baby. One of his favorite gifts was a “real” tie. He has several of the kid versions that zip up, but wanted the real deal.

Yesterday, I gave my final presentation and though I’m not officially certified yet (weirdly enough, certifying graduate degrees is part of my job so I’ll be certifying myself), I am done with my Master’s degree.

It was kind of anti-climactic, but my relief and joy is palpable. With the presentation successfully put to bed, I posted to Twitter and Facebook that I was done. The amount of heartfelt congratulations that I received made me cry a little, because everyone was so truly happy for me.

Calculating from the first day that I took a class until yesterday, I’ve been working toward this for 1,199 days. I honestly can’t believe that I made it. Around 10 a.m. this morning, right after I finished my informational exit interview, I suddenly felt very tired, as though I had been walking for many miles, or perhaps the abbreviated nights of sleep and weekends suddenly caught up with me.

I’m so glad that this accomplishment and celebrating another year of my son’s life comes at the end of a rather tumultuous year. After many months of mucking about, feeling broke and ineffective and unlucky, suddenly change seems possible. New year, new joys, new heartbreaks, new careers, new anything.

After we picked up the baby from school yesterday, we went home and I changed into sweatpants while the husband gave the baby his first lesson in tying a tie.

I made some macaroni and cheese and while the husband went to play basketball with some friends, the baby and I cuddled on the couch and watched the Food Network. We went to bed early, no reports to write, no research to conduct, no deadlines to meet. Just accomplishment and a moment to breathe.

One of my quirky pet peeves is inefficiency. Specifically, inefficient packaging. As insignificant as a concern as this may be, I think it will start to have significant consequences as people rely more on e-commerce and shipping in terms of costs, both financial and environmental.

So, for the baby’s birthday, I ordered (shh, don’t tell) this safety knife set because he always wants to help me cook and I want him to have 10 intact digits. Like I said, I’m quirky.

Today, the knife set and the other gifts that I ordered arrived and I gleefully set about opening boxes. I couldn’t quite remember what was due, so when I got to the biggest box, I wasn’t sure what was inside.

I offer my foot for scale, if that helps. I wear a size 8, 8 1/2.

Another shot of the impressive box, complete with my stained shirt. (My grandmother gave me four shirts for my birthday. I’ve worn three. I’ve also stained three. Eff my life.)

At this point, seeing the cooking.com tape, I’m figuring it’s the knife set, but I’m not yet concerned about the size because I didn’t check the dimensions when I ordered it. Maybe that makes me a bad consumer. I don’t know.

Ooh, looks enticing.

Dig, dig, dig. “Any minute now,” I say to myself, “I’m going to reach the gift. Sweet!”

Eventually, I reach China this:

I know what you’re thinking: SRSLY?

Srsly.

I estimated this to be 27 feet of Fill-Air. TWENTY-SEVEN FEET. All for this.

And, look, I get it. I ordered this around the busiest shopping time of the year. I can only imagine the fatigue that the shipping staff of cooking.com and amazon.com were experiencing and I’m sure they were experiencing packaging challenges that would make me barf. But this is really ridiculous. It’s inefficient and wasteful and frankly I expect better.

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.

I don’t know why I’ve been hesitant to mention it, but my dad, who just a year ago was recovering from surgery to remove a malignant tumor and gearing up for six months of chemotherapy, was declared to be officially in remission a few weeks ago.

Thanks to him for fighting, thanks to the doctors and nurses for helping him to fight, thanks to his body for cooperating, thanks to cancer for fucking off, and thanks to whatever decided that he needed to stick around some more.

This morning, I was looking at myself in the mirror and thought that maybe I should institute a Negativity Jar for myself. It would be like a Swear Jar that some people have, where they deposit some amount of money (a quarter or a dollar or whatever) every time they swear, the thought being that it’ll prevent them from swearing so much or at the very least help them to set aside some fucking money. You’re familiar with the concept, I’m sure.

Anyway, the Negativity Jar would require me to deposit some money every time I had a negative thought in the hopes that I would start being more positive. But then I realized that, while most of my negativity is my just my usual charming self, a lot of it has to do with the fact that I don’t have very much money and if I start paying the Negativity Jar, I’m just going to get pissed that it has all of my fucking money (score one for Swear Jar).

By the time I was done thinking of all of this, I owed these hypothetical jars about 300 bucks each.

So, yes, Thanksgiving is upon us and I am, indeed, thankful for being upright and having a chin that I can still hold high and the people who I love do, too. I think dealing with me the last few months has been especially rough on those closest to me. Recognizing that my basket case act might be tiresome, I decided that I needed some perspective. I sought it out in a way that was entirely novel to me.

I met up with my buddy Jennie, and she did me a huge favor and did a Tarot reading for me. Now, I am quite possibly the biggest skeptic in my ZIP code and I didn’t set out to make all of my decisions forthwith from the reading. I just…needed something different.

I’m sure I’ve mentioned my thoughts on spirituality and religion and all things mystical before. If I had to classify myself, I would say that I’m a puzzled agnostic. I don’t play well with others, so organized religions are out and I just don’t buy the concept of God as it’s already laid out. But I do think that there’s something connecting us, the something that enabled us to develop empathy and understand cause and effect and whatnot. And it’s that something that helps us to identify things in others and if there’s any scientific explanation for why things like Tarot readings hit pretty hard to home, aside from them being broad enough to be interpreted, it’s that.

If nothing else, it was a relief to hear my troubles explained by someone other than me. Articulated in a way that I’ve been too upset to achieve. And it reminded me that nothing, not even shitty periods in life, lasts forever.

Perhaps the best part of my Tarot reading was after it was over, when Jennie and I just talked about things that were on our minds. But major arcana and Negativity Jars aside, I know things will get better somehow. And for that I’m thankful.

I’m short on time today, but I wanted to toss these two, unrelated bits at you.

Bit the First:

When we were leaving Wal-Mart on Sunday night, someone was standing by the door giving out free kittens. No lie. I heard “free kittens,” and my head snapped around and the guy doling the fuzzballs out locked eyes with me, pointed at me and then pointed at the kitten he was holding. NOT FAIR, MAN.

We seriously considered it. Or at least, I seriously considered it, if you are of the mind that, “KIIIIIIIITTENZ NOM!” qualifies as such. But, ultimately, we went home kitten-less, our reasoning being a) we don’t know where those kittens have been so they might be riddled with disease or zombies b) we really don’t need a kitten right now and c) our cat would hate us.

Bit the Second:

Another lovely feature of my awesome kitchen is our dishwasher. Now, I’m glad to have a dishwasher at all. And considering that the one we have is from the first Reagan administration or somewhere thereabouts, it’s in fantastic shape. It’s one of those “portable” dishwashers that isn’t hooked up hard to your plumbing, but is freestanding and can be wheeled over to the sink and run from there.

Because of the way our kitchen is laid out (stupidly), the dishwasher sits across the room, opposite from the sink. When I want to run it, I have to swing it around, hook it up to the sink, then thread the power cord behind the oven to the only nearby outlet.

Every time I swing the dishwasher around, I bump it into the oven. Every time. And the other night I was going through this ridiculous routine and sure enough, *smash.* Suddenly, I thought, “This is the one activity that I probably have in common with people who do lots of steroids or PCP. Somewhere, some asshole is throwing the dishwasher at the oven, just like me.”

Here’s the after to this before:

And, no, the books are not piled up out of frame, they are now stacked in the handy little nook of the nightstand.

I think the fact that the books are crooked bothers me only slightly is a sign of serenity. Go me.

I am (still) having a rough go of it, emotionally. Today, when my mom came to pick up my kid to take him to Oakmont’s light-up night, I was crying a little bit because it seems I have a daily quota these days. She told me to do something that made me happy while they were gone, like laundry.

On the surface, this might sound horribly condescending. “Buck up, wifey! You’re neglecting your womanly nature by pursuing a career and having thoughts and stuff. Take a valium and dust and you’ll feel right as rain!”

Unfortunately, there are no valium here. But it is true that in fits of rage or depression, I’ve pulled myself up slightly by taking action in the one area of life that I can control. So I decided to tackle the area by my bed.

I have, I think, an understandably shitty attitude toward cleaning my house. Its run-down and just dirty looking, no matter what, so even basic maintenance often seems pointless. Combine that with the fact that I’m naturally a messy person and things like this happen.

See if you can spot your favorite book! And I’m sure Tracey will be touched to see the pictures of M scattered in with the debris.

So, I’m about to go to town on this sucker and will be back in a few hours (hopefully) with an after picture.

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.

So, I had this really crappy headache all day yesterday. One of those that’s, like, on the side of your head. And after work we went to a pizza party for the baby’s soccer team and, surprisingly, a room full of screaming kids didn’t really help. When we got home, I took an inadvisable number of Aleve and gulped a glass of ginger ale before calling it quits and going to bed early, probably before most farmers and senior citizens.

Consequently, I forgot all about posting and have therefore failed at NaBloPoMo. I’m so irritated.

In much more important and serious news, one of our own, Anissa, suffered a stroke yesterday afternoon. I met Anissa at BlogHer this year and she is amazing. She’s a young wife and mother who’s been through a lot in life and we need her to get better. Please think good thoughts for her and her family and if you are interested in helping more, go here for more info.