kdiddy.org

Ladies and gentlemen, we have…finished a room in our house.

There are, of course, a few details remaining. We need a window treatment and that dresser is actually the baby’s changing table/chest of drawers from when he was but a wee thing and, well, he’s kind of outgrown it. But, yes, this is the first room that I really consider done. Our laundry room is mostly done, but it has an addition off of it that will need to go and I anticipate that causing a few new swear words to be invented.

You say you’d like another angle? Well, alright then.

Perhaps the coolest part is that we were finally able to import the ceiling fan that he had in his room at my mom’s house.

I know that that isn’t the greatest picture, but my cat was intent on photobombing. See:

And thank dog, because trying to spin my day of laundry into a blog post is a task that would make Rumpelstiltskin throw his hands up in defeat.

A funny thing did happen this morning, though. My word-of-the-day email from m-w.com came through and it was “ennui.” I was surprised to see that I had been pronouncing it incorrectly for many years. It’s ahn-WEE, no en-YOO-i. I took a few minutes being retroactively embarrassed of all of the times I may have used it in front of someone who was either too kind or too smug to correct me. Then I spent the rest of the day trying to make a joke out of the situation, coming up only with, “I’ve been pronouncing ‘ennui,’ incorrectly. Meh. I’ve got to change.”

ba-dum-dum-ching

I could have gone out and heard some good music, but I was feeling super reclusive. I mean, more so than usual. So, I’m twirling my desperately-needs-to-be-washed hair and earlier I cleaned the bathrooms. Otherwise, it’s pretty much like…

By the way, that keyboard is VERY LOUD AND IT’S REALLY HARD TO HEAR THE MATRIX OVER IT GODDAMMIT.

One of the things that I sort of committed to doing and have been pretty successful at so far is getting more sleep. I’ve always considered myself a night owl and up until recently, I’d been doing a fair job of functioning on little sleep. This was often out of necessity, what with school and all, and out of sheer defiance, my reasoning being that I had so little time to just do what I wanted, that I was damn well going to stay up until 2 a.m. on weeknights watching TV.

But a combination of my schedule easing up a bit and, I think, just getting older made me start falling asleep earlier and getting into a better rhythm. I’ve going to bed by 11:30 most nights for a few months and it’s pretty fantastic. I can’t say that my mood is greatly improved because there are a lot of other factors at play there, but I’m at least not as tired and can get up earlier.

I’m also noticing that my dreams have been getting weirder.

Last night was a particularly unrestful night of sleep. I was woken up by the husband climbing into bed after his DJ gig and reeking of stale cigarette smoke, by the cat who was looking for the perfect position around my head and kneading the pillow and pulling my hair in the process and purring incessantly, two or three sneezing fits that were probably a result of the cat sleeping on or around my face, and a nightmare.

The nightmare woke me up and when I finally settled down enough to go back to sleep, the narrative of the nightmare picked up roughly where it left off and I think there are few things more upsetting in life than not being able to shake a bad dream.

This particular nightmare was obviously influenced by me joining the viewership of the new series V and by dousing myself in super-depressing stuff like The Road. But it was a classic anxiety-horror dream in which the world was being colonized by aliens and as eye-roll-worthy as that plot would normally sound, my kid was involved and it took a turn for the terrifying.

All of the children were taken from their parents and surreptitiously replaced with doubles. And what made it weirder was that the doubles didn’t know that they were doubles. The child who had inhuman insides clung to me as he got sick and called me “Mum” and when he spotted my actual son in whatever holding area he was in, he whispered, “There’s a little boy who looks just like me!”

It was terrible, holding and nuzzling this creature who was a perfect facsimile of the person that I love most in the world, realizing that he was not, in fact, my child and that this creature would eventually come to destroy me and everyone else in the world, including my actual kid.

When I fell asleep again and the nightmare returned, it was later in the ordeal and the husband, who was very ill at this point, and I were desperately hiding. But some horrifically loud machine started pulling at the building that we cowered in. We didn’t scream, though, because neither our child nor his sinister double were with us, indicating that we had already lost everything.

When I woke up, I realized that I had accidentally shut off my alarm and slept in a little, which meant that it was a little too sunny and quiet. I couldn’t shake the dream for a long time, and when I stood with the baby at the bus stop, I had to keep blinking to understand that the world was still more or less the same as it was yesterday.

I don’t subscribe to any theories about dreams having real meaning. But they do come from the subconscious. And, if we are indeed made up of the same material as the stars and the planets, making us as much a part of the infinite as the Sun and the Moon and the bizarre and wondrous nebulae, perhaps dreams are just our brains running through all that is possible, having a break from our daily rational existence in what is probable.

My mom likes to tell the story of the time her mom left her in the care of her Uncle Franny one day. When my grandmother came home, she couldn’t find my mom or Uncle Franny. Panicked, she searched all over their neighborhood, and finally came upon them in what used to be Sufak’s Round Corner Hotel. My very young mom was sitting on the bar while Uncle Franny enjoyed some beers.

Tonight, fifty-some years later, the husband was DJing at a club in that same neighborhood. The baby is fascinated with the husband’s DJing career and already has his own record player and a vinyl collection of his own. He can’t wait until he’s old enough to go to gigs with the husband and embark on his own DJing career.

Whenever the husband has a gig, the baby asks if he can come. The answer, of course, is always no because said gigs are always at bars and nightclubs.

Tonight, since my sister-in-law and her boyfriend are in town, we all went out to dinner before he had to be at the club. He suggested swinging past on our way home and letting the baby in for a few minutes just to see what it was like. The baby was thrilled.

After we had finished eating and paid our bill, we made the short drive down to Butler Street. The baby got apprehensive right outside, so I had to kind of push him in. Inside, he spotted his dad at the turntables and walked up to him, much to the bewilderment of the bar’s patrons.

We were only there for maybe five minutes. But the baby could hardly contain how thrilled he was to be there and to see what his dad does when he leaves the house with huge crates of records.

When we left and got in the car, the baby announced, “I’m going to tell all of my friends at school that I went to a night club last night!”

Mom of the Year.

As a sort of birthday-slash-I-know-your-life-is-semi-wack-at-the-moment-so-please-cheer-up present, my mom helped us with the financing of some new carpeting. I have never been so physically attracted to something that just lays on the floor and smells kind of weird.

We ripped out a bunch of carpeting when we first bought the house, mostly in the name of ridding ourselves of the dried cat pee smell. But new carpeting wasn’t really in the budget. So the areas of hardwood flooring that were still in decent shape got some area rugs and the areas that weren’t got a steam clean and the stinkeye. Particularly because the existing carpeting was U-G-L-Y.

I remember at the closing the previous owner boasting how nice the indoor/outdoor carpeting was and wanting to punch him because…no. It’s not nice. Ever. Unless you’re living in a college dorm at a state school and need something that can stand up to Pabst vomit. The portions of the house that didn’t have the dark blue indoor/outdoor crap had this burnt orange shaggy stuff that was just depressing. The pile on the stairs had long ago been mashed down so it held on to every mote of dust and fuzz in the air. Vacuuming it was a total waste of effort and I felt like a total idiot every time I wasted an afternoon on it.

I’ve been really bad about taking official before and after pictures of our very slow remodeling, but here’s what I can offer in terms of B&A of the stairs.

Orange stairs of doom, plus my cute kid.

And now?

Can you hear the chorus of angels?

I don’t have a before picture of the hallway, but here’s one of our bedroom:

That’s the same indoor/outdoor junk and unfortunately, due to budget constraints, we couldn’t put new carpeting in this room, but you get the idea.

Cue the chorus of angels, please:

Now, finally, here’s the biggest transformation. The smallest bedroom was a total wreck and was the first one that we really tackled with gusto. We ripped up the carpeting, tore down the walls, insulated it, put in some wiring (I think), put up new dry wall, installed new wood trim, painted, stained…and it only took us four years! I think we’re good candidates for Extreme(ly slow) Makeover: Home Edition.

So here’s the official before and the room is at a weird angle so it’s hard to get a full shot:

Here’s a during shot:

Angels, please!

Now all that’s left for this room is covering the vent and outlets, getting a window treatment, a light fixture, and moving the baby in there. It might actually happen this weekend.

Screw Mayan prophecy, this is truly the sign that the end times are upon us.

I just want you all to recognize that I made the extreme sacrifice of peeling myself off of the couch and trudging over to the desktop to write a post. The wireless router in our house died so I can’t use my laptop and I started to tap out a post on my iPhone until the little voice in my head whispered, “You are stupid.” For all of its loveliness, the iPhone is not quite a computer. Whenever they work out the holographic projection of a keyboard and a display, then it is so on.

Prior to this, I went to the kitchen to first finish cleaning up and make myself a cup of tea, when the husband chose that moment to barge and declare that he was making popcorn. He also suggested that I cut up some pomegranates, because he knows how much I like squirting purple juice all over the kitchen. What a doll!

Anyway, I finally have my tea. And I need to have you guys over at some point because I made a Bundt cake this weekend that I think is pretty yummy but the husband and the baby aren’t interested.

This actually brings me to the, erm, point, such as it is, of this post. The Bundt that I made is a Pumpkin Apple Spiced Bundt and I got the recipe from The Food Librarian. She is doing 30 days of Bundt cake recipes and I’m going to type Bundt here just to bring the Bundt count of this post to a healthy six. The 30 days of Bundt cakes are part of her participation in “I Like Big Bundts,” (sung to the tune of Sir Mix-a-Lot’s seminal composition, “Baby Got Back”) leading up to National Bundt Day on November 15th. Did you know there was such a thing? The Food Librarian is rad in general, so I recommend checking her out, Bundt or no.

Every time I see the accompanying graphic of two Nordic Ware Bundt pans suggestively posed, I start giggling and can’t stop. Also: BUNDT.

Anyway, I find myself in the awkward position of being responsible for consuming the Bundt that I made, because I feel like going to work and saying, “Here’s a 3-day-old Bundt that I ate half of. Can I have a raise?” is kind of rude. So, please come over. My jeans beg you.

I still have 3.5 hours left on this day to make my daily NaBloPoMo deadline!

I haven’t written until now and don’t have much to report because I was crazily busy at work today.

However, two items of note for this particular date:

Twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall came down.

I remember at the time not totally understanding what that meant, but I remember my mom calling me into the living room, telling me that I needed to come watch what was happening. I’ve never forgotten the collective expression of joy on the faces of the people. It’s really weird to think that my kid will never know of such a thing as West Germany and East Germany.

Also, 9 years ago, a handsome young man appeared at my door with a VHS copy of Pi rented from the Blockbuster across the street. Our plan was to watch the movie and hang out. We watched the movie. And hung out. And eventually made out. A lot.

The husband whined that I needed to pick either our relationship anniversary or our wedding anniversary because it’s hard for his man-brain to remember both. I picked the wedding anniversary, but didn’t realize that I was agreeing to not ever mention this anniversary. So I violate some terms. Any time I’ve mentioned it today, he’s barked, “Stop being celebratory!”

No.

A serious downside of NaBloPoMo is having to write on Sundays like these, during which nothing happens. I’m nursing a sore neck after having a spasm yesterday morning while sneezing (just go ahead and let the stupidity of such an event wash over you), watching The Godfather II with way too many commercial breaks, and drinking a Mexican Coke. Aren’t you glad I shared?

You know what you should definitely not do if you’re fighting some sadness? You should definitely not read The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The husband saw me starting to read it the other night and said, “Uh, didn’t you say that you were feeling depressed? Then you really shouldn’t read that book.”

“Yeah, I know. I kind of feel like wallowing in it, though.”

“I’m just saying, I started reading that right around the same time that I started reading a book about the troubles in Belfast and I chose to stop reading The Road because it was so much more depressing than the Belfast book.”

I didn’t listen, though. It was a fairly quick read, but the past couple of nights, I would put the book down and try to go to sleep and think, “Well, yes, this may have been a terrible idea.”

I finished it last night and freaked the baby out a little by bursting into tears after closing it. Interestingly, I feel a little bit better today. Even if I could kind of relate to some of the panic that the father feels about taking care of a child in a broken world, I’m obviously not facing the horrific bleakness that they were.

I’m actually in between coats of polyurethaning the stain in the baby’s bedroom-to-be (which we’ve been working on, on and off, for four years). So, you know, I’m just sitting here, waiting for the pink elephants and the birdies and stars to dissipate. Fumes are fun!