kdiddy.org

I’ll be honest. I wasn’t totally sure that the Penguins could pull it off. Having to go back to Detroit for Game 7 after every appearance there in these playoffs was a total disaster had me thinking that last night could be another heartbreaking loss. But the team that played last night was a totally different team that played there a couple of nights ago, when we lost 5-0. Everything came together. They played well, they were focused, and, yes, we had some luck on our side.

And they won. They won. It was thrilling. Getting to see Sidney Crosby hoist the cup was awesome and watching him hand it off later to Mario Lemieux was almost too much. I only have vague memories of the last time that the Penguins won and Mario was the first to lift that beast over his head, mostly of hugging my parents in our living room and banging pots and pans outside. Last night was nice and clear, though.

As I’ve said before, I don’t care that it’s “silly” to be emotionally invested in my sports teams. There’s happiness and joy there. That’s a good thing.

We walked to our main drag last night and watched some of the celebrating. We left when the cops showed up in case things took a turn, since we had the baby with us and I would really like him to wait until he’s older to get teargassed for the first time. But things remained rowdy but peaceful. I could hear the cheering from all over the city for hours. It practically became my lullaby as I drifted off to sleep, so happy to call this goofy city my home.

Do you watch the Momversation episodes? If you’re not a parent, I can understand not really being interested, but if you are, you might want to check them out, despite the somewhat nauseating title. (I mean, seriously, because I’m a mom, I need to add a “mom” prefix to all nouns? “Well, let’s see, today I needed momceries so I went to the momstore and got mombread and momilk and mombutter.”)

One of the most recent episodes, “Are You a Stressed Working Mom?” was of particular interest to me, seeing as how my picture is in the dictionary next to “stressed working mom,” though you might not have recognized that it was me due to the blur caused by my rushing out the door and that red halo around my head caused by my stressed out hair.

That episode has already sparked some criticism, which was communicated very well, respectfully and succinctly, by the lovely Miss Zoot.

Before I get further into this, I want to make it clear that we are all operating on the fact (yes, FACT) that all mothers who are active participants in the lives of their families work their asses off. Whether you are a stay-at-home mom (SAHM), a work-at-home mom (WAHM), or a mom who works outside the home (MWWOH?), you are dealing with stress, performance anxiety, failures, and successes. Just because they may take different forms doesn’t mean that one is more important than the other. If you do not accept this fact, then please retreat to your alternate reality. Earth will miss you, no doubt.

I also want to state that folks who do not have children also face many of the same stresses, all of which deserve an equal platform, but I think we can all agree that things are just really different when you do have kids. Plus, since I had my son at such a young age, my entire professional life has been as some form of a working mother, so my perspective is entirely shaped by this fact. Cool?

Anyway, back to the video. It’s not like I expected the full spectrum of issues surrounding being a mother and having a career to be represented in a seven-minute video, but I did feel a little shafted because there are HUGE issues that just weren’t addressed. As far as this video being a good conversation starter for mothers who work primarily from home in their chosen/desired professions, then it hit the mark, and that’s totally valid.

But me and Miss Zoot and the legions of women whose working/parenting lives don’t look like those of the panelists weren’t really in there, which is too bad because bringing up that discussion would have unfolded the experiences of women who deal with really thought-provoking issues that affect ALL mothers EVERYWHERE. Like, wage gaps and inadequate benefits. Dealing with the prejudices that co-workers and bosses might have about mothers. Even just getting the culture of work to accept and celebrate that many kick-ass women have children and still desperately desire to have a career, especially when that career isn’t always one that can be done from home. Plus other stuff like the gap of child care between parents and how that burrows into gender roles that have been around forever.

These are not easy conversations to have but it’s important that they happen.

Perhaps most importantly is the conversation surrounding how exactly one accomplishes all that needs to happen and one of the moms, Lisa Belkin, in the Momversation asked about compromises, and I perked up, all ready to hear about, “Oh, yeah, this shirt has never ever been folded.” But it was more about career compromises which is another, “Oh TOTALLY!” aspect of this whole thing.

See, here’s where I’m coming from: I work full-time at a job that is good, but not exactly ideal for me and my career aspirations. I am the sole provider for my family as my husband has been working on his BS for the past several years and had the awesome timing of finishing college exactly when the economy made that dramatic, cartoonish bomb-dropping sound. I’m attending grad school part-time and as part of my requirements I’ve started working on an internship on a super-part-time basis. I also continue to free-lance write, though I’ve had to limit how much I put myself out there for projects simply due to a lack of time.

So my compromises are numerous every single day. I don’t sleep enough. I stress-eat. At around 8 p.m. I am completely out of steam so I don’t do things like prepare my coffee maker or the baby’s lunch for the next day, opting instead to watch TV. I hardly ever clean and when I do it’s simply to take the house down a notch from total squalor. On Sunday, I exercised for the first time in many months.

And these are all just the things that I’m willing to admit to right now.

As luck would have it, I have to get back to work since I took the time to write this while I was eating lunch. But that’s my contribution (momtribution?) to that aspect of the discussion.

About a month and a half ago, the husband and I ventured out on what some might call a proper date. We were going to the drive-in and looking forward to watching the Pittsburgh-centric Adventureland. Dreamy.

We ended up pushing our bashed up car out of the Sonic parking lot so that we could trudge to the boring old regular theater and see the movie, which was only okay.

We made a second attempt at our drive-in outing on Sunday and I’m happy to report that we were successful. We went to Dependable and saw a double feature of Drage Me to Hell and The Last House on the Left, both of which were fantastically campy and perfect for drive-in viewing. Er, well, I think the latter was supposed to be more disturbing, but it wasn’t.

Anyway, I highly recommend this method of movie-viewing. It’s generally cheaper and it’s more laid back, though it’s admittedly better for movies that don’t rely on expensive sound systems and whatnot. If you’re interested, Wikipedia has a list of active drive-in theaters.

I really liked the whole atmosphere, since the the screens are out in the woods and on a nice night, like Sunday was, it was really relaxing. Plus, you get to snark on the movies as much as you want and people don’t need to shush you.

I would advise taking some insect repellent. We were lucky enough to emerge unbitten, but a few gigantic mosquitoes were hovering, including one that one made me gasp. “That looks like some West Nile Virus right there,” I moaned. “Oh shush,” said the husband. “Besides, how do you know he’s not from the East Side?”

I kind of hate him.

First:
The baby’s school instituted this new 6-day school week schedule this year. So the various classes that they don’t have everyday (ie, library, gym, music) are on different days every week. There’s no, “gym is on Mondays, library is on Tuesdays,” etc. Gym will be on, like, days 1 and 3 and library is on day 2 and so on and somewhere around the third day of the school year I got completely lost.

From my end, the schedule has been a total failure but I haven’t heard about them returning to reality where school is Monday through Friday and things make sense. So yesterday the baby got a notice for an overdue library book and owes them $18. I’m really angry about it, even though the baby and I signed this agreement thing saying that we understood library policies and blah blah but fucking seriously? Look, I’m sorry that I have to do these pesky things like “have a job” and “go to school” to “better my life” and not sit down every morning to figure out if Monday is actually the first day of the week or the third but I guess me learning this twisted math is worth $18. Jerks.

Second:
I’m a pretty healthy person. I mean, I don’t have any chronic illnesses or anything seriously wrong with me. And yet I have to see a general practitioner once a year for a physical (theoretically), an eye doctor once a year because I can’t see for shit, a gynecologist once a year to keep my, uh, motor running, and a dentist twice a year to keep me in solid foods (also theoretically). All of these appointments have to happen during work hours, which means at least five times a year I have to figure out a day when my work and school schedules aren’t completely ballistic and try to match that up with the doctor schedules which, if it’s even possible, are more ridiculous than the baby’s school schedule.

Mind you, these are just MY appointments. I can’t even think about the baby’s pediatrician, dentist, and allergist, and the two or three OTHER places that he has to go to for tests for the allergist, because if I think about that right now I may very well break something. (Happy place. Happy place.)

I’ve not successfully made it to a single doctor’s appointment yet this year because I have to make them so far in advance that by the time the appointment comes around, I have some other school or work obligation and I can’t make it. I’m pretty sure my dentist doesn’t even want to speak to me anymore and I’ve been trying to get in with my GP to get a physical because a) my parents recently jumped on my back about that because I now have Very Serious Cancer in my immediate family history and b) I want to get my learner’s permit renewed in the hopes that I can finally get my driver’s license. I get the impression that the husband is tired of driving me around because at least once a week he says something along the lines of, “You really need to get your fucking license.” (The fact that I’ve not passed the test yet is a whole other rant because I see the fucking nimrods that are allowed to just drive around legally every day and it makes my blood boil and I really need to just ask the asshole driving along at 20 MPH in the left lane the name of the assclown who licensed him. Ass.)

Anyway, it would be so totally rad if I could have like a Doctor’s Day where I maybe take the morning off of work, go to ONE building and see all of the necessary doctors in one day.

I just had to reschedule my physical because I can’t get to the appointment in time because of class and transportation and I’m just so fucking sick of taking care of shit like this.

There’s also the matter of all doctors nowadays maintaining multiples offices and what the fuck is that about? Now I have to remember that my dentist is only in my local office on Tuesdays and Thursdays and my GP is in my local office only on every third Friday. Because half the time I get an answering service and what exactly is the point of those? All the answering service can do is say, “They’re not in today and I can’t do anything for you.” Why not just get an answering machine that says, “We’re not here. We are at one of our 16 other offices rescheduling those suckers for September 2035 when hopefully they’ll already be dead and we won’t have to deal with them anyway. Call back on the full moon, but only after you’ve planted an asparagus spear and three fingerling potatoes under the south-facing eaves of your house?”

In these darker moods, it seems like life is just a huge pointless circle of shifting obligations and deadlines and I feel like an absolute tool for participating in any of it. I’ll just let Scarface speak for me.

I’m still working on my recap of our trip to Detroit, even though each day that passes makes it more irrelevant but whatever. It’s my blog, I’ll post what I want and you’ll read it and you’ll like it. In fact, next week I might post about Valentine’s Day and how wack it was. If you don’t read it, that just shows how uncommitted you are to this relationship.

In fact, this isn’t working out. It’s not you, it’s me. It’s what I’m going through. But let’s have angry and weepy break-up blog sex real quick before I help you find your Wii games. Jerk.

…

Anyway, I have this vague sickness going on and it’s weird. It hasn’t knocked me out and only makes me feel really crappy every so often. My throat is sore but not killing me and I’m getting what can only be described as hot flashes. I must have that throatal menopause that I’ve heard absolutely nothing about.

Last night I went to bed pretty early and when the husband came up a little bit later, he found me drenched in sweat and panting. And I imagine he resembled Bill Murray in Ghostbusters when he said of would-be girlfriend Dana Barrett, “Okay…so…she’s a dog.”

He popped a thermometer in my mouth and I didn’t have a fever, so I don’t know what happened.

…

I’m kind of not watching the Penguins game right now because I am HIGHLY concerned at this point and instead have been attempting to take a picture of the baby and the cat with whatever photographic devices in reach (ie, husband’s iPhone, my laptop). They fell asleep next to each other on the couch, but with the cat’s butt perilously close to the baby’s head and god damn if that ain’t one for the baby book shameless mommy blog.

“And here’s the time that the neutered cat teabagged you…”

…

All of this is to say that I’m not totally “with it” right now, so bear with me. Oh ALSO I have to do a “field observation” for my class on Friday, so I’m going to watch the staff at Starbucks interact from 9:30 to 11 a.m. And you know what my sophomore classmates said when we decided on that time? They said, “Hmm…well, yeah…I guess I can get up that early.” ISN’T THAT THE MOST PRECIOUS THING YOU’VE EVER HEARD?

The beds at the motel that we stay at in Detroit are very old and become instantly U-shaped when you lie down on them. My back and legs have been stiff ever since we came back and it’s making me feel really old.

Also, I’m watching this home improvement show, Moving Up, and losing my shit at this one couple who bought this GORGEOUS old Craftsman house with all of these pristine original fixtures and are like, “This wood is too dark. We’re going to paint it white like a bunch of wack ass landlords so that it can look like we’re renting.”

It’s hitting a sensitive spot because we have a big old Victorian Pittsburgh house with a lot of original wood and while the previous owners were good about keeping the first floor wood fixtures, they painted the second and third floor fixtures when they turned it into an apartment. When we bought the house, we ran out of money for home improvements pretty quickly and have just been making do for the past few years, biding our time until the husband was done with school and able to get a decent job. We’re finally able to do a little bit of finishing work to the third bedroom and in the course of discussing that we were thinking about what we would need to do to get the hideous matte paint off of the trim. Seriously, if you own an old house and the wood is in good condition, LEAVE IT ALONE.

So, through a weird twist of events, I’m attending BlogHer in July and I figure since I’m going to a blogging conference, I should probably do some of that there blogging that I’ve heard so much about. (Aside: I’m obviously going through some pretty serious writer’s block and I’m trying not to freak out about it but…I’m freaking out about it.)

We were in Detroit over the long weekend for the DEMF (Detroit’s Electronic Music Festival for you squares). This was my sixth annual trip there and, as usual, there were many hijinks and good times and a few episodes of drama.

We drove there somewhat early on Thursday with our friends Adam and Carleton. We talked a lot about Pittsburgh and the state of music there currently (nutshell: fucking grim).

When we got to Detroit, our first stop was Archer Record Pressing. Adam had to pick up the latest release from Technoir and the husband was picking up the first release on the label that he recently started, Love What You Feel. The record is by a guy who goes by the name of Disco Nihilist and do you like how I don’t write here regularly for months and then I pop up with this entry about records and Technoirs and disco nihilists? You love me.

Anyway, Archer was a really REALLY neat place. We were too late in the day to see any actual records being pressed but the guy that owns/runs the place gave us a tour and a brief explanation of how records come to be.

That’s the husband checking out one of the records. It may not look like it, but I could tell that he was really excited to finally be holding it in his hands. He had worked really hard on it and it was something that’s he’s been wanting to do forever, so it was cool to capture this moment.

We stopped at this place, Simpson’s Records, which Carleton told us about. It’s been in business for over 40 years. Detroit has a TON of independent businesses. Because it’s so spread out and public transit isn’t very good, these businesses operate in markets/neighborhoods that consist of people of very limited means that need to attend to all of their shopping within walking distance (at least, this is what I could gather just from observing). So, these small businesses usually double or triple up their services. Simpson’s sells gospel records, candy and snacks, and you can get your taxes done there. We also passed a barbershop/barbecue restaurant, which sounds gross but I can assure you that the barbecue was outside, away from flying hair.

Carleton is from the Detroit area, so we drove him to his house before making our way to our motel. His mom is currently kicking cancer’s ass and she and I talked about my dad’s recent struggle. Then I made a cancer joke and I think, uh, it might have been too soon because she just kind of looked at me and I felt like the world’s largest jackass.

After we were settled in our room, we went in search of a place to watch the Penguin game. Weirdly enough, Hockeytown was closed. I don’t know what kind of managerial genius you have to be to decide to be closed during the Stanley Cup playoffs. But I had checked the PG’s list of Steeler bars and already had a back-up place that was likely to be Pittsburgh-friendly. I didn’t see any Steelers paraphernalia there and the bar itself was pretty butt, but they were showing the game and they were nice enough to turn off the Stevie Ray Vaughn garbage that they were blasting so that we could hear what was going on.

Friday was full of record shopping at Melodies and Memories and picking up various characters as they arrived in the city. Frank flew in from NYC, Kenny took the train from Ireland (not really), and another friend…we’ll call him Hot Mess, flew in from Atlanta. Incidentally, the husband had described Kenny to me as his Irish doppelganger and that turned out to be a creepily accurate description. Lookit:

Kenny, by the way, was rarely without a drink in his hand the whole weekend and never appeared to be the slightest bit intoxicated. He’s kind of my hero, especially considering my poor performance later on that evening, which we’ll get to in a bit.

We met up with other various members of the Pittsburgh/Pittsburgh-friendly crew for dinner at some touristy but semi-decent Tex-Mex place in Greektown and then started to prepare for our first night out on the town.

Since we had some time to kill we drove around Detroit for awhile, checking out various parts of the city that we’d never seen despite all of our trips there. You probably know that things in Detroit are not great. We saw a lot of heartbreaking poverty and so much evidence of the glittering Seventh City that Detroit used to be. The population is now around 800,000 which is roughly four times the size of Pittsburgh. So it still seems huge to me. But when you see all of the abandoned buildings, you realize that at some point not that long ago, all of those huge buildings were needed to house and employ all of the residents. And now they just sit there, neglected and unnecessary. It really hit me just how many people left, out of fear or necessity.

We also saw some of the most gorgeous mansions sitting on the most pristine lawns, just a few steps away from burned out houses, which are the playgrounds for children whose parents may or may not be watching over them.

Remnants of wealth and a healthy middle class represent the entire life cycle of capitalism in one city block. It’s heartbreaking and beautiful, because out of this, nothing is left but life and survival and tears and thoughts and joy. And as the festival always teaches us, wonderful music is born from that pain and joy.

Later, Hot Mess showed up at our room wearing a Corona tshirt and swimming trunks and bearing a bottle of cheap champagne. He was soon followed by Kent, our buddy who we hadn’t seen in two years!

The “official” kick-off parties weren’t really tickling our fancies but the husband had heard about a house music night at a club not terribly far from where we were staying. I was already kind of tired before we went out, so Kenny and I went to the party store two doors down where I procured some vodka and Red Bull. The elixir was effective…perhaps too effective. See, the vodka gets you drunk (read: rowdy), while the Red Bull wakes you up (read: hyper). Rowdy and hyper. Really not a good combination.

Since it’s getting late in the day and this post is shaping up to be rather epic, I’m going to slap a “To be continued…” here. But, here’s a preview:

My new photography technique is unstoppable.

Dudes! Double-yoo-tee-eff is up with still not being able to write here on the regular?

Spring semester is officially over and I’m happy to report that I did very well, grades-wise. However, I’m taking a summer class and that started Monday. It’s only six weeks long and it’s the last required course that I have for my MA (just one more elective in the fall!).

The class itself is fine. It’s an organizational behavior course through the business school that is mostly made up of undergrads. I am the sole humanities dork. The rest of those guys are in engineering and chemistry and computer science and iwillmakemoremoneythanyouism.

There are many hilarious bits in this whole thing. Like how someone actually snickered when I stated that I was a professional writing person. And today when we were talking about these principles of human resource management that touted such crazy notions as paying good wages, not treating them like shit, etc. The instructor asked what the overarching philosophy was of the principles and the undergrads were pulling out big words like…uh…”derivative” or something. And I raised my hand and said, “Uh, that employees are people and not batteries?” My classmates got that look of faint recognition on their faces. I hope I didn’t blow their minds too much.

There’s also a vague (so far) anti-union feel to the readings, which isn’t at all surprising. I’m just mostly amused by the language used. Like, “Such-and-such manager was successful because he was able to communicate with the labor people.” I get the impression that these young business students are, perhaps indirectly, taught that people in unions are all barbaric assholes who want nothing more than to harsh your capitalist mellow.

Me, my mom, and my dad, circa 1992

I am not union and, because of my line of work, probably never will be. But many of my family members and friends are and it’s a little troubling to think that their future managers are being brought up with this attitude. I’m not saying that all unions are perfect and I’m not saying that there aren’t plenty of assholes in unions. Just…you know…remember that these are PEOPLE (there’s that word again) that we’re talking about.

ANYWAY, I was going to tell you all about this little confrontation that I had with the manager of this bar that the husband was playing records at on Saturday, but I’m almost over it. And, yes, I wrote angry and vulgar couplets about him and his mother and it made me feel better.

We’re going to Detroit this weekend for the music festival and I kind of agreed to take one of the quizzes online at 10:30 on Friday morning, when I will most likely be hungover from our first night in Detroit and post-Penguins festivities, so that should be cute.

What do these folks have in common? They were not appreciated in their time. Case in point:

Me, flushed with the excitement of my next great business idea: You know, I’ve only done a quick Google search, but I don’t think there’s a Jeopardy-themed bar called “Potent Potables.”
Husband: …
Me: Don’t look at me like that. It’s a fucking fantastic idea.

Haters. Whatever. The Penis Mightier.

That’s my buddy, Tracey. Today is her birthday.

I would have a gift for her, but I spent all of my money on pretty dresses, which is all Tracey’s fault because she got me hooked on sales sites.

I, of course, hope that all of Tracey’s birthdays are rad, but I hope that this one is particularly so because my buddy has had some rough days and she certainly deserves some sunshine. Aside from the rough days, she deserves sunshine because she’s an amazing friend who always makes me laugh and who has, on multiple occasions, talked me down when I’ve been upset. Even during my most psychotic outbursts, she’s always made sure to listen carefully, let me vent, and help me to think of a solution. Whenever we’ve been lucky enough to be in the same city, she’s plied me with drinks, bad TV, and good conversation. And I honestly don’t think that I’ve ever met someone more fiercely dedicated to the people that she cares about.

Happy birthday, mama.