1) Procure DVDs of The L Word. I left off early in season 3, right around the time Jenny started shooting people with a Taser. And I just saw a MAJOR spoiler in a friends’ LJ and I realize that I need to get up to speed.
2) Get belligerent at my TV screen during the Super Bowl.
3) parent, do laundry, get caught up on grad skool and whatever.
I’m going through a very rough patch with my mom right now. She and I have always had a close, but very rocky relationship. Without spewing too much personal stuff, I’ve always felt that she had boundary issues that were only made worse when I got together with the husband and had the baby like five minutes after saying, “Yeah, sure, we can hang out or whatever,” to him.
I honestly feel that it’s way beyond the normal, “My mom is a pain in my ass,” stuff. Someone told me last night that I look bad in the situation, like I’m just being mean to my mom because I’m a nasty person, and that really sucks. I think what everyone is seeing is that I never stand up for myself, so when I do, I look like a humongous bitch. Or maybe I just let things go too long and when I finally do say something, I can’t help but explode.
In any case, something drastic has to happen, or else I’m moving to a little cabin in the mountains or some shit.
In less emo news, my co-worker is going through a break-up, which has allowed me to tap into one of my favorite “genres” of music…break-up songs. Some of my favorites: “Not Gon Cry” by Mary J. Blige, “There You Go” by P!nk, and “Song for the Dumped” by Ben Folds Five. Yours?
The baby is at the doctor with the mother-in-law to find out what the deal is with this cough that he’s had forever. They’re guessing bronchitis and gave him a breathing treatment and some Prednisone. Poor kid. I talked to him for a second on the phone and he told me, “Prednisone tastes nasty.” I promised him some candy.
I talked to my dad for awhile last night and re-realized something I’ve known for awhile: my family is batshit insane.
re: Angela’s MamaPop post
me: “The band’s Web site, www.nkotb.com, which had been dormant, is now back up and running”
new kids on the block had a website?!?!?!?
Angela: EXACTLY
me: dude, if they tour, we’re so going
i mean, my god, it’s been 15 years since i was last at a new kids concert
I THINK I’M DUE
Then I wondered what that puddle was around my feet and then I realized, “Oh! That’s my youth…and maybe my dignity mixed in there.”
But then later I heard that it was all a rumor, so whatever.
On our way home from a rather, “I’m gonna be THAT kid in Wal-Mart*,” trip to Wal-Mart:
The Baby: Mum’s superhero name is WeirdGirl
The Husband: Oh, yeah? What is Mum’s super power?
The Baby: Um, her powers are throwing up, fainting, and throwing herself in the river.
The Husband: Oh, yeah?
Mum: Whatever, man.
Like, seriously? Those are my super powers? I give birth to the kid, nourish him with my own body, and I get the super powers of a Harlequin romance character via Virginia Woolf?
*grabbing stuff on the shelves, yelling, and of course the non-stop talking
Aside from my culinary misadventures on Friday evening, about 6,000 other ridiculous things happened in those 24+ hours.
In the morning
The husband and I set out toward work/school and soon discovered that there was massive traffic jams on Pioneer and West Liberty due to a fire in the Fort Pitt tunnels. Our alternate route was also clogged with traffic and we sat in the same spot for about 45 minutes. The driver of the car in front of us had left his keys on his back bumper, so we alerted him to that, and I spotted a yinzer with a really fantastic handlebar mustache. When the traffic finally let up, we saw that a car had rammed into a school bus and the car behind that one swerved to avoid the wreck and ran into a guardrail. I got to my lab class 30 minutes late and sat down at a computer to discover that some jackass had switched all of the keys around on the keyboard. I discovered something interesting about myself: I know the QWERTY row and the home row, but that bottom row is all murky for me.
After dinner
We took the baby to the mother-in-law’s house so he could hang out there because the husband was playing records at a club downtown as part of a gallery crawl. My sister-in-law and I apparently become violent once we cross the threshold into downtown, because our plans for future visits to the cultural district involved machine guns. Just sayin’.
The husband started playing records and was in some kind of mood. Artsy types in Pittsburgh don’t do much dancing, but prefer standing around, sipping $13 “martinis,” and arguing.
Jwan was there, smelling his heavenly beer.
The sister-in-law and I made our way to the bar and made friends with this fabulous boy tending the bar who poured with a heavy hand. While waiting for my drink, a guy leaned over to me, jerked his thumb toward the husband and slurred, “What do you think of this DJ?” Bolt guffawed and walked away and I said, “Oh, I think he’s awesome.” If I were quicker on my feet I would have said something clever like, “I think I’m going to sleep with him tonight,” or “I think I want to have his baby!” I asked the guy what he thought and he replied, “I have my doubts.” Fair enough. I grabbed my drink and spent the majority of the evening bobbing my head and talking to various people that I haven’t seen in a couple of years.
I commented that the worm at the end of the event’s logo kind of looked like an “nj” and snotted that we weren’t in New Jersey.
I had four of these. One could argue that this picture was taken from my perspective at this point, in which my head was resting on the bar. You’d be half-wrong.
I went to the bathroom as things were winding down and was in a stall next to a girl who was working at the event, who couldn’t have been more than 19 years old. I realized that I didn’t have any toilet paper, so I reached my hand underneath the stall divider and said, “Hey, could you spare a square?” A moment of startled silence followed before she finally replied, “Uh, I’m sorry. I don’t do drugs.”
I nearly died laughing and explained that I needed toilet paper. When we exited the stalls, I asked her if she ever watched much Seinfeld…you know, when she was a baby. She hadn’t but we parted on good terms. After washing my hands, I looked to my left and discovered a drink that someone had abandoned on the sink. Score!
I sauntered out to the main area and found Bolt. “Look! I found a drink!”
“Awesome! I found a Blackberry! Someone left it here. It’s mine now!” Awesome! Bolt, undeterred that the Blackberry was password-protected, stuffed it in her purse (Edit: we returned the Blackberry to the bar the next day) and we split the drink, rationalizing that if it had rufies in it, we were with the husband so we should be cool.
On our way home, we realized that there was an important stop that we needed to make:
The O has hoagies.
The O has Runts.
But that’s about it for candy.
We feasted on fries at home and I passed out on the couch. I woke up in bed the next “morning” (read: 12:30 p.m.) and wondered why I was so sweaty and why my chest felt so constricted. I don’t remember much about actually going to bed, but I managed to remove my bra. But instead of removing the shelf-lined camisole I was wearing, I just put another one on top of it.
Dang. Belly is full. I made Apricot-Stuffed Pork for dinner. One fatal flaw of this recipe as it is: roasting the potatoes and brussels sprouts for 15 minutes before plopping the pork in the middle for 30 minutes results in burnt potatoes and brussels sprouts. At least that was my experience. I also tend to blame my culinary fuck-ups on my electric oven/stove.
I also need to clean my oven. Dig if you will, the picture of me frantically flapping my oven mitt at the billow of smoke while trying to get the fucking ceiling fan on and shouting, “Everything’s fine! Really!”
I rock at all things domestic.
Last night I read “Politics and the English Language” for class and one of the metaphors that George Orwell was already sick of way back in 1946 is “toe the line.” This irritates me because “toe the line” is one of my favorite metaphors ever. It makes me think of petulant people in black catsuits staring at a line in the sand in some version of nowhere. In my vision, these ne’er-do-wells mischievously tap the line with the tips of their toes much to the dismay of the people who drew it.
How can anyone hate “toe the line?” Look how much fun I’m having with it!
There’s also that scene in Three Amigos where Ned draws the line and says, “Men or mice?” At least I think that’s how it goes.
Also, for your consideration: CNN is the new National Enquirer. The 00s are the new 80s. The new recession is going to kick the asses of all previous recessions on American Gladiators.
Eh, whatevs.
One of my professors has a really interesting research area: Pittsburgh Speech or Pittsburghese as we call it. Last year, she asked me to help her with some podcasts that she was doing for her website.
Being a native Pittsburgher, I’m rather fluent in Pittsburghese, but the teachers that I had as a child made a point of encouraging us to be aware of our speech and not to slip into the dialect. I generally speak (or try to, anyway) in a relatively neutral tone of voice, but can turn Pittsburghese “on” when I want to.
Or when I’m drunk.
In any case, you can hear me on the podcasts for “nebby” and “dahntahn.” Check it aht.
(The following post is brought to you by my fatigued and disjointed brain.)
I didn’t get around to posting yesterday, but it was the anniversary of Roe v. Wade. Happy Choice, ladies! *raises glass*
The Oscar nominations have been out for only a day, and already I’ve lost money on them. On our way home from the movies Saturday night, post-There Will Be Blood and pre-barffest, we were talking about how Daniel Day-Lewis has GOT to be a shoo-in for Best Actor this year, especially since he didn’t win for Gangs of New York and that’s kind of how the Oscars roll (see also: Washington, Denzel). And I started whining about Sweeney Todd, which I really did not like, and said that I bet it would win Best Picture because stupid shit like that happens all the time. The husband disagreed and we bet $5 on it.
Well, Sweeney Todd wasn’t even nominated. But I put another $5 down on both Johnny Depp winning Best Actor and Atonement winning Best Picture, because even though the latter looks like a boring pile of The English Patient leftovers, sweeping period romances tend to fare well. The husband thinks the Coen brothers are going to win big. I hope they do, but I have serious doubts.
I really suck at gambling.
I do think Javier Bardem is going to win Best Supporting Actor, and rightly so because he was amazing. And I will hump the TV during his acceptance speech because I lurve him, despite his frighteningly large cabeza (see also: the husband’s head).
Dave Eggers is coming to my school’s Visiting Writers Series in a few days and all I can think of is this one great line from Californication, which went something like, “It could be a piece of shit or a heartbreaking work of staggering genius…There’s a difference?”
I tried to watch Smokin’ Aces last night and it was one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. I actually managed to sit through a whole hour before giving up on it.
I know it’s stupid, but I’m really bummed about Heath Ledger. I guess I’m thinking of his daughter. That’s got to be so confusing for a little kid that age. You see Daddy all the time, and then suddenly you don’t.
