kdiddy.org

Sometimes, after dinner, I leave the baby and the husband downstairs to their own devices (I usually hear yelling and screaming within a few minutes but luckily I’m able to ignore that until the cops arrive) and escape to my/our bedroom so I can nerd out on my laptop. You know, because I don’t spend enough time on the computer all day.

When I do this, the cat always comes upstairs and joins me on the bed and goes through this ritual wherein he walks on my keyboard, kneads my back, then curls up next to me.

I enjoy this time together, except for the walking on the keyboard because he invariably sticks his butt in my face and I don’t like him in that way.

Also, I don’t live in a doughnut-shaped room. I think I had the fish-eye effect on in Photobooth or some shit.

I received email from an old friend today, a friend with whom I’m no longer really speaking for reasons neither of us can pin down. It was emotionally charged and spewing of issues. And it got me thinking about myself and my flaws and the ways in which I’m a shitty person. I thought it would be a good exercise to sit down and write out the ways that I fail at life so I could look at them, confront them, own them. But that’s a daunting task. Perhaps I’ll spread it out.

Flaw: I take the notion that we’re all alone in the world to extremes, and think that I can’t relate to a single person in the universe. I’m a unique and beautiful snowflake, dammit. I guess on some existential level, this is true. We all think different things and have different experiences. But it seems incredibly arrogant to translate that into an excuse to isolate myself.

Another flaw: I reference concepts like existentialism even though I haven’t read a lick of Sartre since high school.

I was just sitting here and decided I wanted to listen to Untrue because it’s amazing. So Windows Media Player opens up and I went to go back to my other program and hit “Enter” or something, I don’t know. Anyway, I accidentally maximized the “visualization” so my screen was filled with this psychedelic swirly stuff as “Archangel” started playing.

I became totally mesmerized and stared at the screen slack-jawed for a good minute before my phone rang, snapping me out of it.

And I wonder why I can’t get my driver’s license. Well, this kind of behavior and the fact that I can’t parallel park.

On our way into work this morning, I was absentmindedly staring at the car in front of us and I noticed that something seemed odd about the occupants. After a second or two I realized that it was because the passenger was not sitting in the passenger’s seat, but rather in between the driver’s and passenger’s seat. And she was moving around slightly. It occurred to me that the passenger was giving the driver some manual pleasure.

So, I very scientifically said, “Yo, I think that woman is giving that guy a hand job.”

And because we are a very mature couple, the husband said, “Really?!?!? Let me see if I can get a look.” Well, we were going to be changing lanes anyway. The husband signaled and went into the right lane and as we started to pass the other car, the husband not so subtly turned his whole body around and peered into the handjobmobile. “That was SO a hand job happening there!” he reported. “Niiiice!” I Borat-ed.

We giggled for a minute and then the husband pointedly asked me, “How come I don’t ever get hand jobs on the way to work?” The sister-in-law piped up from the back seat and said, “Um, I would really prefer if that did not happen right now.”

Fair enough.

I think I shall start a new feature called “Nicolette Grant’s Shush It List,” named, of course, for the Mormon badass on Big Love

This installment: voting motivations.

“Women will vote for Hilary Clinton because she is a woman. Black people will vote for Barack Obama because he’s black.”

Shush it.

There are plenty of Republicans who vote for Republicans because they are Republicans and plenty of Democrats who vote for Democrats because they are Democrats and I’m sure they could use an earful on how to choose a suitable candidate. That’s why we have those levers or buttons that say “Vote Democrat” or “Vote Republican” that allow a voter to do the handy-dandy straight-ticket voting.

As soon as they create some “Vote Woman” or “Vote Black” levers, then you can worry…and still shush it because that would be kinda rad.

Last night, Tracey, Angela, and I all geeked out in a group Gmail chat so we could collectively exclaim over Frontline’s report on The Medicated Child. Frightening shit, dude. I know that I don’t live these people’s lives, but it really sounded like doctors were pushing MULTIPLE prescriptions of serious drugs for tiny children because they were acting like…children. Somehow, pharmaceutical companies seem to have convinced millions that tantrums in 2-year-olds and mood swings in 12-year-olds are bipolar disorder and that we need to start kids on the drugs as soon as possible.

And the footage that they have of the doctors speaking to patients was surreal. Even when they’re aware that they’re being filmed, they still act distant and uninterested. They don’t talk to the child, only the parent. And within 30 seconds new drugs were prescribed or dosages increased. I remarked at one point, “All of these assholes should be doing commercials for Hydroxycut.”

It didn’t do much for my general apocalyptic attitude.

To compound that, I was startled awake in the middle of the night to the sound of banshees. It was actually this freakish storm. The wind was screaming past our house and the rain sounded like someone was throwing buckets of pennies on our windows.

My only (drowsy) thought: “This better not be a tornado. I am way too tired for that shit right now.”

Of course, we don’t really get tornadoes in hilly Pittsburgh that often, but if anyone is going to sleep through a twister, I would put my money on me. One time I had a dream that I slept through the apocalypse and when I woke up (in my dream) I looked around at the destruction and thought, “Typical.”

I wanted to post something here today but so far I haven’t been able to think of anything…besides this…and this. Meta.

ummm…Oh! I got my period a week early! That was fun, especially the part where I had to use the free pads in the bathroom and wobble back to my office like, “Hey! Do you like this twin mattress I’m sporting?”

The husband and the baby are playing Connect Four in the next room, which sounds all wholesome and nice, but the baby doesn’t really get strategy yet and the husband does not have any patience. In another minute, they’ll no longer be on speaking terms.

We have yet to go serious grocery shopping this month and my god I don’t want to. At all. Serious grocery shopping means making a list and then driving and then spending two hours in Wal-Mart. Not really in a rush to do that.

Do you ever have one of those mornings where you think, “Nothing. None of this is working. I must quit everything?” And I recognize that that statement sounds very woeful, but I’m coming from a very frustrated, irritated point of view in which my willingness to give a shit has simply ceased.

See, the husband’s classes started up again today and suckily enough he has a 9 a.m. class on Mondays and Wednesdays. 9 a.m. classes don’t go over very well in our family because a) we’re not morning people, b) the baby’s bus sometimes doesn’t arrive until 8:30, and c) we live in a cheap part of town, meaning we sacrificed convenience and are usually faced with horrendous traffic. Added to all of that is the fact that one of the main boulevards in Pittsburgh is closed for the next year for repairs, so our usual morning commute clusterfuck has been replaced with the new ’08 model clusterfuck: The Motherf@($*#((%@)$%*%))@!!!!one! 3000.

This morning, we gritted our teeth through the traffic which was way worse than usual, probably because all of the Pitt students are back in the mix. By the time we got to Oakland, it was about 8:58 and I still needed to be dropped off at work. So the husband was already seething and muttering about how we were going to have to radically alter this routine before Wednesday. We pulled up to a red light at the intersection of Forbes and Craig, right in between Starbucks and Kiva Han, the cool indie coffee shop where all of the English and film majors and white Zapatistas go and say cool things like, “Yeah, me too.” *

So, we’re sitting at the red light and all of the artsy and academic types that populate Oakland are blearily shuffling on the sidewalks, absorbing the Mondayness of it all. And the light changes to green. And then this fucking shithead starts to cross the street. Very. Slowly. And he had timed it so that he was walking right in front of our car as the light turned green. And he has his Starbucks cup and his backpack and his floppy hair and just totally did not care that it’s 9 a.m. on a Monday morning and people have to be places because he only has to drink coffee and be a shithead. The husband laid on the horn because what the fuck?

Then. That kid. Spit. At. Our. Car.

The husband rolled down the window and screamed a string of obscenities at him. Ordinarily, I would have tried to reign him in a bit but that kid totally deserved it. And all of the artsy and academic types looked up, startled, and were probably irritated with us but whatever.

The 9 a.m. class. The traffic. The closed boulevard. The Starbucks-spitting shitheads. The lack of apostrophes.

I want them all to die.

Happy Monday!

* Louis C.K.

So, the Steelers lost last night, ending a rather tumultuous season. But what an exciting game! Indeed, it is frustrating to see how the team’s collective insecurity prevents them from soldiering through. It’s like they don’t think they can beat a team if they’re not completely crushing them, when they so can. As soon as their opponents put up a fight, they get shaky. But they rallied in the fourth quarter and even though the outcome wasn’t as great as it could have been, it was fun to watch.

I will admit to being a tad relieved about not having to stress through games anymore. I’m certain I gained a few gray hairs during the Super Bowl a few years back and last night, as I tried to get my hands to stop shaking, I thought, “Yeah, I don’t miss this.”

Anyway, psychotic football fangirl crap aside, the final season of The Wire premieres tonight. I’ve been anticipating and dreading this day for a year and a half. I can’t wait to see how hard this season is going to rock but I’m extremely sad that in ten weeks it will all be over.

I’m not exaggerating when I tell you that The Wire is the best show ever. Sure, the writing is incredible, the acting is all amazing…all of those basic criteria are blown out of the water. But what makes it really wonderful is it’s simple statement of the world that we live in, how we have all failed, how we try to succeed. In this fantastic article, actor/director Clark Johnson says, “You don’t want to preach to people, but you want them to think about why things are the way they are, the history that is there as well as the possibilities.” The show certainly offers up its own ideas of how things got to where they are and what would need to happen if things are ever to change, but it does it carefully enough that the viewers are able to consider those possibilities and still develop their own opinions about it. The folks behind The Wire and the people and situations it portrays may not agree with other assessments, but through the show they are heard and considered, which is saying a hell of a lot more than most “dialogues” about the current state of affairs.

This season focuses on the media, which should be of interest to everyone. Considering what a sad, sad state the media is in today, when we need it more than ever, I don’t know how we can’t watch art like this.

At the very least, consider the fact that the man who took this image:

took this image 35 years later, to the day:

Frighteningly similar political climates between then and now. But in those days the biggest image of the year was of the horrors of our foreign war. Last year the biggest image was of a perpetual child in grief over being punished.

Perhaps this year we can start giving a shit.

You know what’s kind of frightening? Slipping and falling in the shower. I know because I just did it. I stepped weirdly, I guess, and then my feet were doing this tap dance of panic and then down I went. I remember thinking, “I hope I don’t break my neck or become otherwise incapacitated, especially since I’m home alone. Then I’ll have to lay in the shower whimpering until someone comes home and finds me naked and with extremely pruney fingers and toes.”

Luckily, I managed to only bump my knee. But Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are now making Walter Matthau/Jack Lemmon-esque old man movies about squeezing the most out of life. That’s kind of depressing to me.