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When I got my very own rosacea diagnosis, the dermatologist did not say, “Yes, the persistent acne and blotchy skin is from rosacea…which, by the way, is a really nice way of saying, ‘You have tiny bugs shitting in your pores.'” He stopped at “rosacea.” If it hadn’t been for the internet, I would have spent the rest of my life slathering expensive prescription cream on my face, blissfully unaware of the horrors taking place on my microscopic levels. So, thanks Buzzfeed. I guess.

This is one of my nose mites, Fred. Say hello to the nice people, Fred.

And, you know, I long ago accepted that we’re all just piles of bacteria and nastiness moving through a soup of bugs and muck, but at least I previously hadn’t been thinking about our face bugs shaking hands when I kissed someone on the cheek.

Over the weekend, I launched a campaign to get the situation under control, which included ordering tea tree oil, which is supposed to help, and new mite-resistant pillow coverings. Then I announced that I was going to be washing our pillows.

“I saw it on Pinterest. What could go wrong?” I bellowed. I used these instructions, which are informative but I must warn you contains the concepts of pillows basically being sponges that double in weight over a year or so due to us seeping all of our face bug shit and life oil into them and oh wait I’m vomiting, brb.

And actually, the whole process was going just fine. I washed my pillow, the baby’s pillow, and a few spares that we keep for guests, and they all came out fluffier and much, much fresher than they went in. The husband’s pillow, for some reason, came out of the washing process smelling like a dog who had spent the afternoon swimming in the Allegheny. (For reference, my dad and I swam in the Allegheny once when I was a kid and my mom wouldn’t let us near the house for like a day and a half.)

I attempted to rectify the situation by washing it again with some baking soda and vinegar to no avail. So the husband is out trying to find a pillow today, probably with a stiff neck. He called me a little while ago to report that Target only had two down pillows that were both really expensive. He called me to update me on this in quite colorful language and I think he heard my sheepish grin over the phone. My defense of his pillow’s demise have ranged from honest regret (“I’m soooo sorry. Really. My intentions were good. I just wanted your pillow to stop eating your face,”) to butthurt (“MY INTENTIONS WERE GOOD, DUDE, WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME? I JUST WANTED YOUR PILLOW TO STOP EATING YOUR FACE. EVERYONE ELSE’S PILLOWS WERE FINE. WHY DOES YOURS HAVE TO BE DIFFICULT? YOU AND YOUR PILLOW ARE EXACTLY ALIKE YOU DESERVE EACH OTHER,”).

Hey.

So, I had a pretty great weekend. How about you?

Friday, we had some friends over for dinner for what I think will become a regular gathering. The wife of one of the husband’s oldest and dearest friends invited us and a few other oldest and dearest over for dinner at their house a couple of times. We all had such a good time together we figured we should make it a regular occurrence. The rough plan is to have dinner at someone’s house once a month. The husband has been rolling his eyes about the whole thing, whining that dinner parties are for yuppies. But he’d by lying if he told you he didn’t enjoy seeing his lifelong buddies regularly.

I’ve mentioned before that my very simple goal in life is to host Thanksgiving at our house, to be the default house where everyone arrives at when it’s time to celebrate something with family. I’m not at that point yet for a number of reasons, so smaller gatherings like this give me an opportunity to scratch that itch. When the husband offered to lodge some musician friends of his who were playing in town, I went buck wild preparing this delicious breakfast. Our guests expressed their bewilderment to the husband, who replied, “Yeah, she likes to flex on shit like this.”

Fair enough.

So, of course, I got all excited about feeding our friends and made apple and fennel salad, roasted broccoli, tomato sausage lasagna, and chocoflan. Everything was delicious, if I do say so myself. Our friends John and Sarah brought their two little ones, including their 8-month old who is just so scrumptious. He and I got some cuddles in which I needed so badly.

After a long week, though, I fell asleep pretty early. Or, more precisely, I fell asleep in the middle of changing the channel on the TV, all “52–zzzzzz.”

Saturday, my dear friend Emily was getting married. We, of course, were running a few minutes late and when we got to the church, Emily and her attendants were lined up and about to go down the aisle. I panicked and RAN down the aisle with the husband behind me hissing, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!” When he caught up to me, he said, “What is WRONG with you? There’s a side entrance!” Ugh, I am such an ass.

The ceremony was beautiful and I was so happy to witness Emily marrying her true love. When I got to say hi to her afterward, she said that when she saw me in the door of the church, that was when she started crying. “Oh my god, was it because I was late and busted down the aisle like a total moron?” Thankfully, that wasn’t the case. But Emily remembered how thoroughly I flipped out with joy when she told me that she had gotten engaged. It was pretty special, since how often do you get to feel that genuinely happy for someone?

I attempted to look nice:

At the reception, the kid was refusing to dance which seemed weird to us, so we kept telling to get his booty on the dance floor.  I eventually dragged him out to dance to “Shout,” explaining that it’s basically required to dance to that song at weddings. He was still unenthusiastic, to put it mildly, so I grabbed his hands and threw them in the air for him at the appropriate intervals. He screamed, “NOOOOOOOOOOO STOOOOOOOOOOPPPPPPPPPPPP” the whole time, which I think confused our fellow revelers. However, about five minutes later, he was on the stage, requesting songs from the DJ and dancing like the holy spirit had gotten him.

The kid had a soccer game the next day, which ended in a tie. Our team was up 4 – 1 until suddenly their defense fell apart. So, he was upset even though he had scored a pretty magnificent goal. He was sulking, so I took action.

Kid was upset that his soccer game ended in a tie. Followed him to the car saying “penis” kind of loud. Cheered him up. Parenting win. #fb

— kdiddy (@kdiddy) September 9, 2012

Crude? Sure. Effective? Oh, hell yes.

* Tip o’ the hat to Khalil Gibran, whose words have always felt just right.

The baby started playing baseball five years ago, when he was but a wee thing.

BRB, weeping.

As luck would have it, he’s had the same coach, Coach Eric, every year, an eternally patient man who has helped to foster a bunch of gangly babies, including his own son, into a team of ballplayers. Always by Coach Eric’s side was his wife, Lisa. The two of them basically kept the entire Little League program in our neighborhood running, organizing teams, ordering tshirts, running the concession stand.

Lisa had always been a sweetheart and she joked easily with the baby. I can remember last year when we showed up to pick up his uniform shirt and there were only two left in his size. She said to him, “Okay do you want number 10? Or 11? Or 10? Or 11? Or maybe 10?” The baby and I both giggled before grabbing 10. (Or maybe it was 11.)

This past season, I was on one of my dreaded days of concession stand duty. “Dreaded” because it always comes at the end of a very long day and because it requires me to do arithmetic on my feet, which is always embarrassing for everyone present. I happened to be working with Lisa and though I was usually uncomfortable interacting with the other parents (for admittedly dumb, self-imposed reasons), Lisa made me feel at ease. We chatted about rats and ridding our house of them and schools and kids and such. I liked her, I decided. She was a truly good person.

Lisa passed away on Monday. She had a stroke in late July and had been in a coma ever since. She was 39.

A stroke.

39.

Hearing the news affected me much harder than I would have expected. I couldn’t stop thinking about her older son, who is the baby’s age, and her younger son who is about 5 or 6. I couldn’t stop thinking about Coach Eric. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how much it must have upset her somewhere in her fading heart to know that she had to leave them.

The baby, the mother-in-law (who knew Coach Eric from before), and I went to the funeral home last night to pay our respects. Coach and the boys were holding up remarkably well and after extending my sympathies to them I stepped over to the picture display. Lisa beamed from some of the best moments of her life. Dressed up for her prom. With Eric at their wedding. Dancing with her dad at the reception. Holding a newborn son. Meeting Hines Ward. (This is Pittsburgh, remember. Those kinds of events are a big deal.) I started to lose it. I couldn’t imagine not being with the baby and the husband from this point forward. I couldn’t imagine being this age and proceeding through the rest of my life without my spouse. I couldn’t imagine working so hard to find the people that I love most in the world and making them mine, only to have that horribly changed by fate.

I know people do it all the time but I just don’t know how. I’m sure they don’t either until they find themselves doing it.

The biggest mistake that I make with things like 3-day weekends is opting not to relax and/or putter around the house but instead pack a ton of activity into it. Like on Saturday, when I participated in the Run for Your Lives Zombie 5k.

When I first found out about this race, I posted it to my Facebook and got a few enthusiastic responses from friends who said they would do it with me. But that didn’t pan out and as the event approached, I became increasingly anxious about doing it by myself. Regular races I’m fine doing solo, but I knew this would be a mostly silly activity meant for friends to do together. I thought about people taking pictures of each other at the end and got sad about the idea of me wandering away from the finish line alone. I once again checked in with Facebook and found out that my buddy Brad was going to be doing the race, too, and starting at the same time as I was. Perfect!

Run for Your Lives was basically an all-day zombie-centric festival. People could participate in the race and then camp overnight while participating in other zombie activities and seeing some bands. It took place out in Butler, which is only a few miles away from Evans City, the spot where George Romero filmed The Night of the Living Dead and The Crazies.

Butler County Welcoming Committee

After making my way through all of the entrance stations, I was relieved to spot Brad and his friends in the crowd. Like many other groups there, they had made special tshirts for the occasion that referencedShaun of the Dead. After wandering around for a bit and taking an ill-advised sip from the “potable” water fountain (it was potable in the sense that it didn’t give me any intestinal distress, but it tasted like metallic dookie), we were finally able to line up in the corrals. After some smoke poured down on us, we were able to make our dramatic entrance into the actual race field. The first unofficial obstacle was the ridiculous hill…and then the ridiculous hills that followed. The first mile was seriously all uphill, which nearly killed me.

A few zombies were scattered through the woods but they were easily dodged. Then I finally came upon the first obstacle: two mudslides. I wasn’t paying close attention to what was happening to the people in front of me because I was waiting for the go-ahead to slide from the staffer at the top. But the muddy pool at the bottom was six or seven feet deep and I was surprised to find myself suddenly underwater. I emerged, gasping, with muddy snot dripping out of my nose and then marched up to the second slide. That one was just a tarp covering a hill and my butt became intimately familiar with all of the various sticks and pebbles poking through it. I soared down yelling, “OW OW OW OW OWWWW GODDAMMIT!” until landing in another muddy pool.

Mud became the central theme of the day. I army crawled through mud underneath real barbed wire. I attempted to jog with water-logged shoes through muddy patches of ground while dodging zombies. I crawled through another mud pit underneath a wooden obstacle. I went through a field of live electrical wires in a muddy shack. I hurled myself over walls into mud patches. I tiptoed through a muddy maze in a dark shack furnished with zombies armed with Super Soakers. At the end, I spotted Brad who pointed at the last obstacle: a mud pit covered with an electrified fence. “Kelly!” Brad said, pointing at the fence. “This really hurts!” he informed me far too cheerfully. I squished through and suddenly felt someone seemingly club me over the head, causing me to bite my tongue. Alas, there were no clubbing zombies, just an electric shock to the skull.

I completed the whole thing in a little over 58 minutes and did not make it out “alive.” It was really, really hard but so fun. There are a few really good first-person videos online so far.

One of Brad’s friends took a picture of us in all of our muddy glory.

Later, at home, I peeled off my clothes and took one of the best showers ever in life. I found mud in places where mud should never be. If they have it again next year, I think I’ll participate. It’s too absurd to miss.

It’s so weird to me how, during any given week nothing much seems to change. But when I drop out of life to go be near where the land broke apart eons ago, I come back to a home that seems to have grown and changed so much in my absence. The Madagascar Dragon plant is suddenly huge and lush. The cayenne pepper outgrew its modest mason jar. Some forgotten piece of fruit begat 1,000 tiny flies that my kitten tries valiantly to catch. Intimidating pieces of mail arrived instructing me to go to a hearing to appeal my property assessment. I have to go and explain to some strangers that I haven’t given my house the makeover that I intended to and beg them not to believe otherwise so that my house doesn’t become yet another dream that was too big for me.

And my son, my baby, is thisclose to starting fifth grade.

In many ways, taking a vacation at the tail end of summer is the best way to do it. The weather is pretty cooperative. The earlier crowds have already come and gone and reentered real life weeks ago. And I feel like I’ve really squeezed every last drop out of summer.

I can’t really afford to take us on big vacations, so we always graciously tag along to the lovely places that people invite us to. (Diddy Family Motto: What we lack in money we make up for with good music, sparkling personalities, an endless game of punchbuggy, and weird arguments. Take us on your vacation today!) We go to the lake with my grandparents and every few years we go to the Outer Banks with my dad.

It was especially cool to be with the baby this time. While we were at the lake he spent most of his time with his cousins, but at the beach he was with us the whole time. He’s 10 and is at this weird point where he’s still very much a kid but is really trying out not being a kid. He’s not intimidated by adults and readily joins any conversation. But his lack of skills like small talk and telling jokes that are actually funny betray how young he still is.

Early in the week, some lingering phobias about jellyfish and sharks bubbled up inside of him. He was never a big tantrum-thrower when he was younger, so I never developed any real skills for effectively calming him down. I found myself trying to stay upright in the waves crashing at my knees and saying, “Stop. Stop. Please stop. What are you doing? Stop now,” as my kid thoroughly lost his shit for about five minutes. But I reminded him that throwing him into the gaping maw of certain death isn’t really my thing.

We rented sea kayaks for the week and the baby went out in his own little kayak with my dad and the husband. As he was rowing out to sea one time, he grabbed his paddle and pumped it in the air triumphantly. Out there he saw dolphins and schools of fish. When he came back and I was helping him out of the boat, he said, “I had so much fun today!” Such a simple statement but it was so happy and sincere that I’ve been replaying it in my head ever since.

My skin didn’t exactly survive the week. I got sunburned. Twice. And got a real burn on my arm while sticking it in the oven to check on breakfast that I was making. I heard *sizzle* and realized, “Oh, shit, that’s my flesh!” I also got a few tiny jellyfish stings and about 20 nasty mosquito bites. I also did a number on my knee while bodysurfing one day. I started to emerge from the water all, “Fuck yeah, I’m a badass,” when another wave was like, “NOPE!” and smashed me into the bits of shell and rock. I shrugged at the raw blotch on my knee until I sat down and observed, “Oh. I am bleeding.”

I gasped in wonder so many times. There was a meteor shower and we were far enough away from light’s pollution that I actually got to see them flying through the sky. It’s so strange to look up at that black cloak of old light and to suddenly see it move and dance. I got to see a dolphin swim away in a business-like manner about 20 feet away from me and gently paddled my way through a thousand swirling fish.

I also started to write the story of my vacation in the style of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: We were just outside of Corolla when the seasickness kicked in. I’m not out on the water often enough to remember that I get seasick. And being out in a tiny plastic boat is not the most ideal time to recall that fact. I did not, in fact, spew but I carefully warned my companions that if that was going to happen I wanted to not deal with the possibility of accidentally diving right into my chunks and/or watching fish eat them.

The best thing about vacation is the feeling like you can break some rules. Nothing major, like insider trading or anything. But you’re already not at work and aren’t expected to do much more than lay around all day. That kind of permission is so freeing. On Saturday, we were supposed to be out of the house by 10. And we just…didn’t. We knew that the new guests wouldn’t be there until 4. So we found a place to park the car and walked right back down to the beach. We swam in the now very chilly Atlantic (I like to think it was sad that we were leaving) until the sky turned dark grey and began to open up. We ran back to the house and peeked around corners to look for signs of people who might care. We scrambled into the outdoor showers and crafted a simple alibi in the event of capture. (“Why are you trespassing and using these showers?” “Oh. I’m so drunk!”) We toweled off fruitlessly in the brief downpour and then drove north up that narrow strip of land, the opposite direction than we should have been going to go home.

The old lighthouse beckoned to us, leading us into the safety of stolen vacation. The baby and I decided to make the climb up to the top. He charged ahead fearlessly, while I became anxious because of my inadequate footwear, certain that it would trip me. At the top, I looked out over the developed land that used to be barren when I was his age. He stuck his head through the safety railing to get a better view while I felt the need to keep one hand on the side of the structure.

We’re on vacation this week, and it’s been funny to watch how easily we settle into new routines. Every morning, cousins and parents and other assorted relatives gather at the cottage where my grandparents are staying for Danish and coffee. Then it’s to the lake or staying indoors to get a break from the sun, which is what I did yesterday. At dinner time, cousins and parents and other assorted relatives once again gather at the grandparents’ cottage for cheese, crackers, and adult beverages before it’s time to eat. Then there’s usually Olympics or Pirates games to watch and card games to be played.

Aside from the extremely old mattresses in our cottage (I just can’t deal with those and risk messing my up my neck) forcing the husband and I to sleep on the living room floor, where I came face-to-face with a millipede the other night, causing me to go through a rather elaborate process of covering it with paper plates, screeching, and eventually murdering it with a Kleenex box, we’ve settled into this temporarily nothing-but-pleasant existence.

EXCEPT FOR YOU! YOU GO TO HELL! YOU GO TO HELL AND YOU DIE!

The baby is having a blast hanging out with his cousins, dipping into a kind of free-range childhood that he just can’t get at home.

I let him pack his own clothes and he seems to have brought a collection of tshirts that are all either wrestling or monster truck themed. He’s fitting right in with the locals.

The other night, I mentioned a co-worker whose last day of work is today (Happy Trails, Em!) and I realized how strange it was to talk about the 9 to 5. Like, what is it? What do I do there? Occasionally, blips of real life will scuttle across my brain…I wonder if the mother-in-law remembered to put our garbage out or if we’ll be overrun with fruit flies when we return…I wonder if my plants are still alive…I wonder how our cats are doing. But they’re easily brushed away when I push off of the floor with my foot and set the porch swing going again.

PS: I wrote some funny (I think) stuff this week. Check em out on Act Classy and MamaPop.

I went to Baltimore last weekend to hang out with Tracey and Charlie, which was nice but incredibly short. I brought workout clothes with me, knowing that Tracey had a treadmill, because my schedule had been kind of wacky last week. The only flaw with this plan was that I did not take into account that those two would keep me at a pretty steady level of inebriation all weekend. Every few minutes, it seemed like Charlie was standing in front of me with a plate of grits and something boozy. Not a bad way to live life, I must say.

Saturday, we were going to go to Amy’s for dinner and it was getting to be about time to get ready to go. I sucked down the last of my Bloody Mary, stood up, and said, “Where’sh your treadmullll?” I don’t necessarily recommend jogging while tipsy, especially not on a treadmill, which is really disorienting. There are a lot of buttons and screens to interpret. Plus, the whole 15 minutes I could stand being on there, I was thinking, “Oh my god, I’m going SO FAST! This is insane!” and I was at, like, 3.7 miles an hour or something.

At Amy’s, Ezra fed me cantaloupe and Baby Ike took his first steps. I had forgotten how thrilling that moment is, since with older kids they accomplish big things seemingly all the time. But remembering how amazing it is to see a little guy have things just click between his body and his mind was so, so cool.

Speaking of my older kid, he’s still regularly cracking me up. He attended an Ultimate Frisbee camp a few weeks ago. (And since it was a really nice program I’m going to go ahead and give them an unsolicited plug on my well-established blog: Camp Spirit of the Game.) He had a really nice, full day of playing Frisbee, eating lunch and watching a bit of a movie, swimming, then more Frisbee. He got a really nice shirt to wear for the week and if that weren’t enough, the camp sent us these great pictures that their resident photographer took. This one was the cutest:

So many points and angles to this kid.

This one is my favorite:

A big aspect of the game was learning about sportsmanship and every day they had a key attribute that they would focus on. We were supposed to discuss these with him at home. The first day, I was asking him about camp and he was all worn out and whatnot. “What was your sportsmanship word of the day?” I asked. He replied, “Enthusiasmmmm.” But he said it in the most unenthusiastic way possible. Like the word just kind of fell out of his mouth. He’s just ready to absorb life lessons in a hilarious manner.

This morning, on the way to work, we were talking about Hoosiers because we watched it last night. I mentioned that they used to play the locker-room-speech-slow-clap scene at Pirates games and everyone would get all riled up.

The husband didn’t remember them playing that, but did remember seeing the “We Will Rock You” scene from Cheers at Pirates games, and told me to pull it up on YouTube.

And then, of course, we fell into a Cheers wormhole on YouTube, which isn’t the worst way to spend a morning commute. (But wow isn’t life weird now?)

After that last scene ended, the kid asked me, “Mum, now play that one where, um, the, uh…………….uh the girl is at……uh…..Disney? And it’s like….tragic?” The husband and I just sat there with our mouths hanging open because neither of us knew what he was talking about. “Can you, maybe, take a minute and try to form a coherent request?” When he trips over his words like that, he reminds us of George Michael in Arrested Development, when his dad insists that he doesn’t have any problem communicating and he replies, “What? Yes. Maybe? I don’t know. Okay.” My darling little Bluth.

So, hey. How’s your summer going? I feel like we haven’t really talked about it much.

Ours is pretty good, but a little too busy for my tastes. I mean, we’re busy in a good way. We go a lot of places and do a lot of fun things, but I need a lot of time to just be at home and be an introvert, which is annoying because that is no fun for anyone and I have, like, a family that wants to hang out with me and I’m like, “No, I need to sit here and watch My Big Fat American Gypsy Wedding or I’m going to cry in public.”

I was beginning to feel like I hadn’t actually been home in months and the resultant disorder was beginning to really upset me. Understand, I’m a messy person and generally exist in a moderate amount of chaos, but I do have a breaking point that is somewhere well below Hoarders.

Generally not how I operate.

But last Friday I had an unexpected day off from work with nothing planned. I was excited because that meant that I would be able to get some stuff done around my house. The only problem with that plan was that it was 100 degrees on Friday. And we don’t have air-conditioning.

I was determined, however, and strapped an ice pack to my neck so that I could vacuum and tidy up and fold laundry with at least some degree of comfort. I ended up sweating profusely anyway but at least my entryway was clean and free of winter coats finally.

The sister-in-law was in town and on Saturday she agreed to help me make a second attempt at that goddamned cake. This time things went slightly better, but omens began raining down upon us when a thunderstorm showed up and the lights began to flicker just as I was getting ready to put the cake layers in the (electric) oven.

“I just need the power to hold out for like 15 minutes,” I pleaded.

Sure enough, 15 minutes and 2 seconds later, the power went out. The cake layers were fine but we needed to wait for a bit to make the icing. The main issue there was that it was still 100 degrees and we no longer had the ceiling fans to move the swampiness around. It was gross.

When the power returned and we had made the icing, we packed up various cake elements and headed to my mother-in-law’s for dinner, swimming, and air-conditioned cake assembly. Infuriatingly enough, even with the air-conditioning, the cake was a total mess again. Though the individual components were all pretty delicious. I know that I can’t really get too angry, considering that I stupidly attempted the cake on two of the hottest days of the year. Feh. Baking failures really gnaw at me.

Onward.

We watched the 1990 Total Recall on Sunday night and I remarked during the part where Ahnuld and Melina are sucked out into Mars and their eyes are bulging out that that was what the sister-in-law and I looked like during the power outage.

Sucked.

We were amused at how prophetic that movie’s vision of the future was: hand blenders, tablet computers, TVs integrated into the wall, controller-less video game exercising, 3D ultrasound. Well, that last bit is what I kept thinking about when Kuato came onscreen. I’ve always found those 3D images of in utero babies more than a little odd. I mean, they’re cool and all and perhaps I’m just jealous that those weren’t around when I was pregnant 800 years ago, but the resemblance is uncanny to me.

(I really wanted to post a picture of 3D ultrasound here but knowing my luck someone would be like, “That’s my baby!” and I’d have to leave the internet for suggesting that someone’s fetus resembled an underground mutant rebel leader of the future. Like that’s not a huge compliment. God.)

Anyway, the heat finally broke the other day and it’s been pretty nice. I think tonight the husband and I will go to the drive-in to see the Magic Mike/Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunterdouble-feature because obviously. And I will maybe make some moves on him.

This encapsulates our interactions so perfectly I can’t even stand it.

A few weeks ago, the husband and I were at Wal-Mart exploiting workers, further diminishing the low rung of the middle class that we exist on, and stocking up on groceries. As we made our way past the clothing section, the husband stopped to take a look at their tshirts. He lazily flicked through the tshirts on a sale rack when suddenly his eyes lit up.

“Kel. You HAVE to get this shirt.”

He held the shirt up for me to see: a patriotic monstrosity the likes of which I’ve seen on people with too little intelligence and too many votes. It was on sale for $8. It was glorious. Taking in all of the elements of the shirt was almost too much for me and I actually teared up a little bit.

Before I could protest or accuse the husband of illicit drug use, the shirt was in our cart. We giggled while checking out and the husband made me promise not to reveal it until 4th of July.

Yesterday, he reminded me at least three times to wear my shirt and when I finally put it on there was much rejoicing chortling.

It was the bright spot in what had been shaping up to be a frustrating 4th. I had spent my morning working on a cake that I had been wanting to attempt since last 4th of July. The cake layers had turned out beautifully, but I ran into some serious trouble when trying to apply an ice cream layer between them. It was simply too hot in my house and the bottom layer of cake ultimately ended up swimming in ice cream soup. I kept trying to forge ahead and save it but it kept getting worse and I ended up dramatically throwing the whole thing in the trash. I probably could have salvaged one layer, and I felt really yucky for throwing it all out, especially since it contained one very expensive vanilla bean. I’m going to attempt the cake again this weekend, probably in the air-conditioned environs of my mother-in-law’s house because I must vanquish it. Much like in running for me, failure in baking is not an option. Obviously, I get really intense about weird things.

Anyway, I kept forgetting about the shirt until the husband or the sister-in-law would look at it and crack up. We went to Dormont for fireworks, which are always pretty decent for a smaller neighborhood, and watched a group of teenagers get arrested for throwing lit sparklers at each other. The baby was really, really disappointed that they didn’t get tased, because he apparently got a taste for that after seeing it happen to someone during a Super Bowl victory celebration on Brookline Boulevard. Also because he is Mommy’s Little Sociopath.

I have off work tomorrow, which I’m just so excited about since having a holiday in the middle of the week turns those of us with a tenuous grasp of maturity into whining brats who don’t wannaaaa gooooooo.

Other matters of biznass: today is your last chance to enter my Pilates giveaway. I also posted some sage advice for Claire Danes, who is up the stick. Call me, Claire! We’ll talk

(Awkward throat-clearing: I don’t do giveaways very often because I’m not a serious enough blogger to get a ton of pitches from companies. But when I do host one, I like it to be something that benefits a local Pittsburgh business. I also picture my usual Daria self being all “GIVEAWAY YAY PEPPINESS!” and that makes me feel weird. I have no idea what the point of this “disclaimer” is. I just felt the need to talk it out. Thanks for listening.)

So, if you’ve been reading for awhile, you’ll know that about two years ago I took some initiative and started working toward making myself physically healthy again. For years, and particularly when I started graduate school, my health was not a priority for me. I didn’t exercise and had really yucky eating habits which, if I’m being honest, I’ve always had even when I was “in shape.” But that’s a whole other post.

After finishing my MA, I realized that I had spent the last several years focusing on my brain and stuffing knowledge into it. And that was satisfying, but it came at the price of completely ignoring my body. I wanted to start focusing on my body, especially since I had entered my 30s and knew that taking care of myself was going to be more important than ever.

I started the Couch to 5k program and began paying more attention to the food that I was eating, how much, and when. I also took advantage of the fact that I worked on a university campus that offered fitness classes and started taking yoga and Pilates. I gravitated toward those because they were familiar to me. When I was a ballet dancer, Pilates became a big part of our routine. Dancers are obviously very strong, but there are often areas that are prone to weakness, particularly the abdominal and core muscles for women. Much like any physical structure, a body with a weak core won’t last very long. Pilates also worked on areas like the legs, feet, and back, which are overused and prone to injury. Just like how athletes cross-train, us dancers supplemented our ballet with Pilates to help us get stronger and avoid getting hurt.

Working on my core strength is even more essential for me if I want to avoid hurting my neck again. My posture was getting worse and worse because my core was getting weaker and weaker, so I’m more mindful than ever of getting those muscles in shape.

I’ve stuck with running, yoga, Pilates, and healthy eating (with plenty of indulgences, of course) for a little over two years now. I don’t know that I’m skinnier, but I’m definitely healthier. And I’d even dare say that I’m healthier than I’ve ever been in my life. By the way, if you’re at the site and can see my little Daily Mile widget on the left or if you follow me on Twitter, you’ll know that yesterday I ran six miles. So…yeah. Pretty proud of that.

A few weeks ago, the cool people at the Verve 360 Wellness Salon and Spa in downtown Pittsburgh found this humble little blog and commended me for my efforts toward fitness. They offered me the opportunity to come and take one of their Pilates classes and to give a free class to one of you lucky people, too. On Monday, I took them up on their offer.

Verve 360 is in a gorgeously renovated building downtown, with the salon on the first floor and the spa areas on the second. After checking in, I met Linda Williams, my instructor for the evening. After I got dressed, Linda took some time to find out what my experience and level of fitness was and learn about any injuries or physical difficulties that I had. She explained that we would be doing a Pilates chair class, which I had no clue about. She showed me their equipment, and I recognized the Cadillac, but hadn’t used in a number of years. The Pilates classes that I take at work are all on a mat on the floor, so this chair thing was totally new to me.

What was immediately wonderful about the class was that it was just me and two other people. Verve 360 keeps their classes small so that you are guaranteed personal attention. This is crucial for something like Pilates, because even though you can learn the basic movements and do them on your own, to get the maximum benefit you really need someone with a trained eye to tell you what adjustments you need to make.

Our class was an hour long and the exercises focused on all parts of our bodies, strengthening them while gaining a better understanding of how they all work together to create movement and balance. The chair, like most Pilates apparatuses, had springs so that you could adjust the tension and, therefore, the amount of work that your body had to do to complete a movement.

I don’t have a picture of the actual chair that I used because I was too busy climbing all over it, but it was just like this.

At one point, I had my feet planted on the bottom part of the chair and my hands on the seat and needed to lift the bottom half of my body up by engaging my core, butt, and leg muscles. Mentally, I didn’t know how I could do it, but I took Linda’s advice and stopped thinking about it. Then, with a grunt, I was pulling myself up in a way that didn’t seem possible just moments before.

Linda was able to keep an eye on me through each set of movements and let me know what to adjust (“Ribs in, shoulders down, legs turned out,”). It was so fantastic to have someone there to remind me of what I need to think about so that when I do Pilates on my own I can incorporate those adjustments into my practice.

As you can probably tell, I’m pretty evangelical about Pilates and would love for one of you to get to take a class at Verve 360. Whether you’re a seasoned athlete who would like a little extra personal attention or a total newbie to exercise, you will get so much out of this class. So, if you’re in Pittsburgh or the continental US and are planning on being in Pittsburgh some time soon, leave a comment saying why you’d like to try a Pilates class at Verve 360 (or just leave a comment, I’m not picky). You can earn an additional entry by tweeting about the giveaway and leaving a comment here letting me know that you did so. And you can earn even one more additional entry by sharing this giveaway on Facebook and leaving another comment here letting me know that you did that.

The winner will be chosen at random and announced next Thursday, July 5th. Good luck! And thanks to Verve 360 Pilates Pittsburgh for providing the prize!

(Disclaimer: I received a complementary Pilates class from Verve 360 in exchange for hosting this giveaway.)