kdiddy.org

There are crappy days, and there are really horrible days. Then there are the days in between, days like today, that you know you’ll survive but they’re pretty awful in the meantime.

Yes! I’ve been waiting for this to turn up on the intarwebs.

At the end of last week’s episode of Big Love, Daveigh Chase’s character Rhonda, who has recently “liberated” herself from the evil grips of polygamy only to spread hate and deceit elsewhere, sings the country classic, “The Happiest Girl in the U.S.A.” on a TV show. Rhonda seems to have just started to realize that her self-serving actions toward the Henricksons and their friends may not be totally forgivable and as she sings the song it takes on a very wistful feel. Adding to that, the song plays over shots of some decidedly unhappy girls. Also, Chase’s voice is quite beautiful and I got chills a few times listening to her sing this.

On Saturday, I got a little piece of mail. It came in a security envelope, the ones that require you to tear off strips of perforated paper along the edges. Inside was the baby’s school bus schedule.

Ever since then, the reality of this big transition has really been racing through my head. I was telling a friend last night that we really have to start working our way out of this summer routine that involves staying up kind of late and taking advantage of the fact that school is out by leisurely arriving at my quiet office. The baby gets the bus at 8 a.m. and so I am going to have to make sure that he starts going to bed an hour or so earlier. I am going to have to start going to bed much earlier. Watching movies until 1:30 a.m. is probably not going to cut it anymore. I’m also going to have to start doing really responsible, adult things like pack our lunches the night before and making sure that all backpacks have everything that they need. Juggling work, the baby’s school, the husband’s school and my school is going to be a real challenge and I would be lying if I said that I wasn’t slightly terrified.

I feel like we’ve been kind of skating along up until this point, dabbling in only the bare minimum of responsible habits. The baby growing up and starting kindergarten and really moving into the realm of Big Kid is forcing me to really knuckle down and do the things that I know I should instead of just letting them slide in favor of some self-indulgence.

It might be a little easier if the baby was just totally gung ho about the whole thing, but he’s a little nervous. Last night, we were talking about the bus and he asked if I was going to go with him. I explained that I wouldn’t be and he got a little upset but I said that there would be other kids on the bus and some of them would be nervous, too. But when they get to school his teachers will meet him and they will show him where to go. I think we’re both struggling to let go of the idea that I’m just shooting my kid into the unknown with no real plan. Millions of kids start kindergarten every year and mine is going to be just fine.

To top it all off, we were watching Big Love last night (I said I was a bad mom!) and the baby said that Nicki was his favorite character. I asked him why and he said it was because she’s pretty. I asked him if he thought she was the prettiest, meaning the prettiest on the show and he said, “No, Mum, you’re the prettiest.”

Alright, I have to go melt into a puddle somewhere.

Gmail tells me that I am currently using 412 MB (14%) of my 2890 MB.

412 Represent.

First off, many many thanks to the bunches of you that subscribed to the feed on LJ. Secondly, thank you so much for the comments that you’ve been leaving over there, but may I make one tiny request of you? If you are going to comment, please click through and leave them on the entries here at kdiddy.org proper. Leaving them on the entries that come through the feed via LJ is cool, but I don’t get any notification of them and sometimes I miss them. Plus, there aren’t too many people reading over here so I could really use the company!

Gracias!

I drank too much coffee this morning so after doing about an hour’s worth of work in 10 minutes, I decided to go to the gym to work off some energy. I felt perilously close to gnawing on my desk, see. After I was done working out, I made my way to the locker room and when I got to the door I could hear some chanting inside. The hell? I went in and found that the ROTC students were sprawled on the floor in front of my locker row and were doing some leg kick/ab exercise with the whole, “1 2 3 HUH!” thing. What was even better was that their senior ROTC officers were standing over them and screaming in full Lee Ermey style, berating them for constantly giving up and that until they did it perfectly they were going to keep doing the same thing. I stood there for a few seconds, unsure of what to do. I figured tiptoeing through the cadets and saying, “Sorry for disrupting your hell week but I simply MUST get a shower. That treadmill’s a killer!” might not go over so well. So I just went back to the gym and worked out for a few more minutes. Thanks, ROTC, for forcing me to burn 100 more calories…I thought of you when I ate a burger at lunch.

I forget what movie we were in the theater to see (Sunshine, mayhaps?), but we caught the trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie, The Darjeeling Limited, which will be out in late September. Can’t wait!

Around 3:30 this morning, I was jolted awake by a gigantic thunderstorm. It seemed to be one of summer’s last hurrahs and was completely unapologetic about the shocking brightness of its lightning or the magnitude of its thunder. The baby crawled into bed with me just as I’m sure hundreds of other babies sharing our weather did the same. We held each other as the rained pounded down and it sounded like it was in the room with us. The wind howled so fiercely that I was sure it was a banshee warning me of horrible events to come. The thunder shook the house and made the baby gasp.

After a good half hour of this performance, the storm settled and the baby started to twist and turn. The husband told him to go back to bed, since our little full-size bed is barely big enough for the two of us, let alone a squirmy kid. I couldn’t go back to sleep so I went downstairs and tooled around on the computer for a little while. Just me. In the dark. And no one is online at that time of night so it really compounded the loneliness that I’ve been feeling.

I finally retired back to bed and drifted somewhere between nightmares and wakefulness.

Life is bumming me out.

Last night, MikeBee and Missy came over for a little visit and noticed that HBO was replaying the season finale of John from Cincinnati. They mentioned that they had just watched it and found it weird but really intriguing. I said, “Yeah, I really like it. I don’t understand what’s going on but it’s still pretty great. But I just know that they’re going to cancel it so I’ll be like ‘eh! Aw!'” indicating that they’ll leave me hanging with a bunch of interesting loose ends and no hope of any resolution, much like when they cancelled Carnivale after two seasons even though it was totally fascinating.

A few hours ago, Mike and I had the following conversation via text message while he and Missy were on their flight back home to San Francisco:

Me: They cancelled John from Cincinnati. ARGH. I knew this would happen.
Mike: ROFFLE. I am sitting on the plane LOLing right now…
Me: I am cursed with psychic powers. Why must I be so prophetic?
Mike: You’re “Kelly from Pittsburgh”
Me: Meet the Jetsons
Mike: ROFFLE I don’t know Kelly instead

Sigh. I’m bummed. I really liked the show. Indeed, it was very weird and it was never clear what was going on, but the overall spiritual theme of it was really pulling me in and all of the actors in it were amazing. There was also this one scene in the episode from a couple of weeks ago in which all of the main characters are drawn to this impromptu barbecue at the motel and John has this long monologue. It was really beautiful and theatrical. And the scene in the second (third?) episode when the doctor tells Cissy and Mitch about Shaun’s accident was so totally heartwrenching. Rebecca de Mornay’s performance killed me.

Farewell, John from Cincinnati. You were swell!

I’m waiting for the coffee to kick in, so while we’re waiting…

Karl Rove is resigning. Ho. Lee. Crap.

You’re in a funk and feeling shitty, but just when you start lamenting your lost youth and declaring that you have no purpose or direction in life, someone like Chanelle and her “career” grabs your attention and makes you feel just a tiny bit better about yourself. Sure, I may be a sucker for going to school and working when there are plenty of people making millions doing shit like this, but…eh, maybe I’m just a sucker.

At Phipps the other day I encountered some sensitive plant which, I think, is just one of the coolest things on the planet. I took a short video of my encounter with it and I present it to you as a sort of Moment of Zen kind of thing.

Someone tell me how my grandmother was able to obtain my work phone number. Now she calls me all the time and is currently getting pissed at me for not knowing my son’s measurements, even though said son is currently not even in the same building as me.