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Early this morning, I was awakened by Florian the Kitten, who discovered his ability to walk on the baby’s keyboard, thereby turning it on and playing a few notes. I was pleased that a musically inclined psychopath had not broken in and that at least one of the beings in our household will willingly practice piano. (The baby remains convinced that he can learn piano by just sitting in the same room as the instrument.)

That event out of the way, I took a moment to say, “I’m 33. I’m 33. I’m 33.” Because that is the age that I am as of this morning.

I then came to the unfortunate realization that my birthday present from Mother Nature was cramps. Thanks, Mother Nature. A someecard would have sufficed.

That gift meant that I responded to many happy birthday wishes this morning with a wan face and a withering smile. I went to a quick Pilates class though and it really helped, if for no other reason than the fact that we ended by laying on the floor in the fetal position, which is exactly what I needed to do.

I’m wearing a very cute dress that my grandmother gave me on Saturday. It’s from Anthropologie, or Apologetic as she calls it, because she does not like calling things by their actual names. (See also: my old boyfriend Clint, who she called Elwood, or the shop Divertido in Lawrenceville, which she calls Deuteronomy, or my buddy Frank, who she calls Stush.)

Pardon the bathroom picture. We don't have any full-length mirrors at home.

I feel the need to declare that, overall, I feel pretty alright, because I need to remember feeling this way for the times when I don’t. Like this morning, when I sent the baby upstairs to get dressed for school, only to find him 10 minutes later sitting on his bedroom floor reading a comic book. I was furious, which was perhaps an overreaction, but seriously, what the hell? Then, like an idiot, I tried to get him to walk me through his logic that led him to chill out with some reading material when it was clearly close to time to go.

“Well, you didn’t lay out any clothes for me…”

“So…that meant that you just weren’t going to need to get dressed today?”

“I don’t know.”

SIGH. Is there such a thing as the Terrible Tens? Because he seems to be in the midst. Oh, and the first person who says anything in the neighborhood of “pre-teen” gets punched.

But all of that nonsense aside, we’ve been doing a lot of our traditional fall stuff, including going to Trax Farm this past Sunday. Because October is always so busy for us, we always end up squeezing our farm trip in at around the last minute. And we always have to go with everyone else in the tri-county area who is working their annual trip in around the Steeler game. So there’s always a tense hour in the market part where you come face to face with how horrible the general population is at functioning in crowded spaces and steering grocery carts. Really, there ought to be a license for carts and things like, “Leaving your cart in the middle of the aisle while you gawk at the apple butter display instead of pushing it out of the way,” will be fineable offenses. (This, by the way, is the main thing that I hate about the Market District Giant Eagle in Shadyside. The customers’ idiotic navigation, especially in the horribly arranged produce section. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve almost hurt people’s feelings in that store. And, yeah, I take grocery shopping a little too seriously. I don’t have time for foolishness.) But we had a really good time, got our pumpkins and about 300 other precious autumn things. I had the presence of mind to be thankful that the baby didn’t put up a fuss when it was time to take his picture next to the huge wooden pumpkin, because I know in the next year or so he’s going to refuse and that will be when I become that woman who gets drunk and cries at the farm. But you guys. Look:

That’s from Sunday. And this? This is from 2005:

I can’t even. I’m doing this to myself a lot lately, which is admittedly kind of masochistic, because I can’t wrap my brain around the idea that he’s turning 10 soon. It’s just so…big. And I’m warning you now that I’m going to go all mommyblogger on your asses and put together a montage.

The other kids in our house, the furry ones, are doing pretty well, too. Florian the kitten is getting bigger everyday and is still a bit of a mad man. Greedo the cat is so chilled out by nature that this is kind of exhausting for them. I was getting concerned, but then went and spent an absurd amount of money on a cat tree. I think because there were no existing territorial issues for it, and it gave something for the kitten to attack, it seems to have made them much happier. They even hang out in it together sometimes!

Florian is quite the love bug and usually sleeps next to or on me, which is fine, except for when he gets the itch to gallivant in the middle of the night at the expense of my slumber. Last night, I became momentarily aware that he had scrambled across my forehead and had some bleary thought of, “Kitten. Scratch. Face. Ow. Register pain in morning.” I had completely forgotten about it until I saw myself in the mirror and noticed the little spot of dried blood. At this rate, I’m going to start looking like Omar from The Wire. Or, perhaps, Michael K. Williams dressed up as Omar dressed up as King Richard for Halloween or something equally ridiculous.

I have no idea why that picture exists, by the way. I just know that I’m eternally thankful that it does because the mere thought of it makes me giggle. This morning, for some reason, that scene from Forrest Gump where Jenny is throwing rocks at her molesting dad’s house came to my mind, because I’m such a naturally cheery individual. I thought about how the line, “Sometimes I guess there just aren’t enough rocks,” would make a great caption for a picture of, say, Whitney Houston smoking crack. But then I pushed it out of my head, figuring if I could dream it, then someone on the internet has already made it exist and I’m not breaking any new ground there. This is both sad on many levels and one of the reasons that the internet is so great.

Anyway. How are you doing?

I finally managed to snap a picture of the little maniacal furball in our house.

As Sara noted, he looks very genteel, but looks can be deceiving. He’s either up and running all over the place or passed out, and he doesn’t pass out before going through an elaborate settling in ritual that usually results in bodily harm. Or rather, harm to my bodily.

When he snuggles, he’s heavenly. But he’ll attack me via flying leap and I have scratch marks all over me. I’m too embarrassed to admit that I’m getting regular beatings from a 3-pound kitten, so I’ve just been telling everyone that I’ve been in a knife fight.

We had another busy weekend, so I decided to take the day off of work on Friday to hang out with the dudes, since the baby didn’t have school. We mostly chilled out all day but did manage to check out the Alex Ross exhibit at The Warhol, which was just so, so rad. You should go.

However, I realized on Sunday night that I probably should have taken Monday off instead, since the husband and I had to be out really late. The husband and two of his friends started this…musical group? Band? I’ve also seen the term production trio thrown about. I’m not sure what to call them. But it’s the three of them and a bunch of synthesizers and keyboards and doohickeys and whatnot and they make dance music. They call themselves Pittsburgh Track Authority and things have really taken off for them in the past couple of months, with their tracks getting signed for release by dance music labels. Here’s one of their most recent compositions:

They had their debut live performance on Sunday at the Shadow Lounge as part of the VIA festival wrap-up party. They were all pretty nervous about it in the weeks leading up to it, since it was a week after the main festival and on a Sunday night.

As it turned out, a TON of people showed up and I don’t think I’m biased in saying that PTA’s performance was the highlight of an all-around fantastic evening. They were preceded by Smooth Tutors and ELQ and followed by Dam Funk. People were dancing the whole time, but seemed to really get into it for PTA. I was so, so impressed with their music and was so incredibly proud of the husband for getting to experience that after so much hard work and so many setbacks. Plus, you know, it’s always exciting to get a post-performance kiss from the hot guy on stage. 😉

Since I knew we were going to be out so late, I had to get lunches ready for me and the baby and decided to bake some cookies while I was at it. I made a batch of Martha Stewart’s pumpkin cookies with brown butter icing (going to write about them for Foodie Parent tomorrow) and toted some of them to the show in my uber-housewife covered pan/container thing that I got from The Cake Pan Lady. Frank, who was in town for the show, cracked up at me bringing treats to the dance music show, like, “Here boys! Brought you some goodies! Have a good electronic music performance! Make sure you use the potty beforehand!” It might have seemed absurd but let me tell you those cookies were gone by the end of the night, devoured by the performers and various attendees with much groaning in delight.

Local blogging phenom JanePitt does these pretty hilarious recaps of Steeler games which feature her witty and hilarious captions on pictures from the games. She calls them “What They’re Really Thinking.”

A few weeks ago, I got an email with a link to pictures of me crossing the finish line at the Great Race. I was pleased because my mom wasn’t able to find me from where she was watching and I had been slightly bummed that there was no record of my moment of, uh, triumph. I’m not planning to buy any of them because the pictures aren’t that great, but I did take some screen caps. I present them to you as my own version of What I Was Really Thinking.

I understand now why people are always so alarmed when they see me post-exercise. Even when I assure them that I’m fine, that I’m better than I look, that my face just gets really, REALLY red, they’re convinced that I’m suffering some kind of coronary event. Looking at this picture, I can see why. It seriously looks like my face is about to melt off.

As I mentioned in my previous post about the race, getting coffee immediately afterward was a priority. I get headaches if I don’t have coffee in the morning because I’m an addict and I don’t really care about changing that at this juncture. The husband does not drink coffee and likes to position himself as some kind of superior being because of this. Which is fine. Standing over me like that puts him in a great position for a ballpunch. (Bitch.) I did not drink coffee prior to the race because a) I didn’t want to risk peeing my pants by Duquesne University (I’ll leave that to the undergrads) b) I think it’s probably bad for your muscles or whatever to have caffeine immediately prior to strenuous activity and c) I am not really, uh, talented at waking up early so there just wasn’t time for any coffee.

My official time was 38:28 which is objectively not great. The guy who won clocked in at 15:15, meaning that by the time I pulled in to the finish line, he was probably already at Starbucks drinking up all the pumpkin spice lattes. But I was pretty thrilled with my time, considering about a year and a half ago it would have taken me hours to finish. I did, however, get a little edgy on the way to the end and tried to pass up a few people who I thought I should be able to beat, considering their age and stuff. I realize this makes me kind of a jerk, but oh well.

I was not entirely successful.

No disrespect at all to this dude, but when he trotted past me, I realized that I really shouldn’t be struggling to keep up with someone who is probably 20 years older than me and doesn’t look to be in amazing shape. I wasn’t in the greatest health when I was a dancer (smoked cigarettes and didn’t eat), but I could move vigorously for extended periods of time. It really bugs me that I let that go.

However, on the gloating tip, I was far from the last one to finish. I sincerely praise everyone who came out that day and just went for it, but it was encouraging to realize that I wasn’t the slowest one there.

About five years ago, the three of us got the urge to add a pet to our family. We wanted a dog, but realized that we weren’t really the best family for one. We’re gone a lot of the time and wouldn’t be able to give a dog the attention and maintenance that it needs. So we decided to get a cat. I was skeptical, because I’ve never particularly liked cats. But we adopted Greedo and he’s been a beloved member of our household ever since.

The past couple of months, the husband and I talked about maybe getting a kitten, but were very hesitant because we didn’t want to change the household dynamics or Greedo’s wonderful personality. But on Friday, I absentmindedly followed a link to PetFinder from a friend on Twitter and started poking around at the cats up for adoption just to pass my time on my lunch break. I came across a boy kitten, only 10 weeks old, who looked like what we imagined Greedo would have looked like when he was just a wee thing.

I informed the husband that we would need to go to the Humane Society cat adoption at the PetSmart in the North Hills after work.

“Why?” he asked.

“Because that’s where the kitten is,” I said.

“What kitten?”

“Our kitten. That we’re getting. Tonight.”

The husband was resistant, sure that Greedo would be traumatized. However, when he got to hold our kitten for the first time, a grin full of defeat spread across his face.

We took him to my mother-in-law’s house first so everyone there could see him and delighted in watching this fuzzball of energy bound around the room, curious about everything and purring constantly. My mom brought the baby there after his piano lesson and I got the extremely cool experience of surprising my kid with a new pet.

When we took the kitten home, Greedo was not excited. There was some hissing and some big tails before we isolated the kitten in the bathroom per the shelter’s instructions. The husband was being all doomy and declared that they would never get along and the kitten would have to go back. The baby started crying, agreeing with the husband’s assessment. “Look, guys. They’ve only known each other five minutes. They just have to get used to each other.”

We didn’t get to play with the new kitten that much during his first few days home. Friday and Saturday nights we were out at the VIA festival, not getting home until the very wee hours of the morning and having to get up at 8:30 for soccer both days.

Saturday afternoon, I had to take a nap if I was going to make it through another night of music and another early morning soccer game, and took the kitten into the spare room with me so that he could be isolated from Greedo but not cooped up and lonely. I woke up from a delicious nap to find the kitten snuggled up against me. He felt me stir and nuzzled into my neck, tickling me a little bit and just generally melting my heart.

“Greedo is going to have to get over his hang-ups about the kitten because I’m pretty sure we just bonded,” I declared.

Once Greedo had an opportunity to watch the ridiculous antics of the kitten as he hopped sideways and zoomed on tiny legs and jumped from tall heights with little to no regard for his physical well-being, he seemed to appreciate how entertaining the kitten was and began to slowly warm up. Which is good, because I’m in love.

He’s named Florian after one of the members of Kraftwerk. Don’t you think of 1970s proto-techno German electronic music when you see kittens?

I’m really not exaggerating when I say that practically every weekday morning comes with some event, large or small, that makes me think that I must be on The Truman Show or something. Usually it’s absurd traffic jams or the school bus company failing at their raison d’etre. But occasionally things will happen like my elderly neighbor will wander outside on a frigid winter morning or something else equally notable.

On Wednesday, the baby and I made our way to the bus stop, still reveling in the recent switch to a new bus company that does these crazy things like “show up” and “transport children to school before 10 a.m.” We noticed a news van and a group of people gathered on the corner, plus some police cars. I asked another mom at the bus stop what was going on. “Um, apparently there’s a hostage situation,” she said.

Uh. What?

She, of course, was sketchy on the details but heard that there had been some kind of domestic dispute and the husband was supposedly holed up in the house with some weapons.

This obviously worried me, since there was a SWAT team present. Were there other people in the house? Was the situation going to go nuclear before I could put my kid safely on the bus and hightail it back to my house? Was I a total idiot for staying there regardless?

The situation ended up being resolved several hours later in a most ridiculous fashion. After the wife had initially left the house, the husband, probably realizing that the police would be coming, left as well. So the police and the SWAT team were standing outside, shouting surrender orders through a bullhorn, firing tear gas and flash bang grenades. We got to hear one of those flash bangs go off, which was super startling and prompted me to get my “INCOMING!” duck and cover ready to go. They also sent in a robot to suss out the situation, after which point the family dog finally surrendered to police. The police finally called the guy on his cell phone and found out that he was two blocks away.

Now, obviously, he needed to be arrested on the domestic violence charge. It’s also possible that he’ll face firearm charges since they found several guns in the home, including an AK-47.

Ice Cube on a good day, during which he did not have to employ his AK-47

It’s not shocking to me that people possess illegal firearms and that those firearms are hopefully way more gun than they need. But it really freaks me out that this guy had a small arsenal and lives just a few steps away from a preschool. Not that there would be any good place for him to live with such things, other than in a cabin that he built himself somewhere in the woods.

My stance on guns and gun control has evolved over the years. I used to be firmly anti-gun, supported all strict gun control measures, and would have gladly supported any candidate proposing to ban them altogether. But I came to understand many people’s justification for owning them, whether or not I agreed with them. I’ve remained a supporter of gun control measures though. There will always be underground methods for obtaining any item. That shouldn’t stop us as a society from regulating how they’re traded above ground.

I just really have not met anyone who has felt that they really REALLY needed a gun outside of hunting who wasn’t a) kind of an idiot about it or b) up to some dirty business. Like the friends who live waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere and own guns to protect their home from crackheads. I mean, I don’t know why a crackhead is out in the woods but maybe you need to move to, like, a populated area so you’re not defending yourself on your own. And, yes, there are shooting sprees and attacks and all of these things, but unless you’re actively training to respond to such a situation often, you’re probably not going to save the day just because you have a concealed weapons permit.

After our house was broken into, we did the inevitable mental circus of “what-if” scenarios. We were extremely freaked out that the burglar had entered our home while we there, asleep, and were just so, so thankful that he was only there to steal things and not interested in hurting anyone. I really and truly don’t care about my things and even if the dude had announced that he was going to be taking every last thing in my home, I would have let him with the understanding that he not lay a finger on any of us. I have insurance, you know? Plus, more importantly, stuff is just stuff and neither a single thing in my home nor my pride is worth any bodily harm to me or my family. But we did wonder about what if it had been a break-in with the intent of doing harm to us. How would we have defended ourselves? The truth is, I don’t know. And we did seriously considering purchasing a gun. But I just couldn’t bring myself to be okay with it. I didn’t want a gun in my house. I didn’t want to constantly think about the fact that my family and I, like everyone else in the world, am just one (statistically unlikely) coincidence away from some horrible fate.

Unless that guy in my neighborhood was about to start a revolution but had to beat his wife first, which seems somewhat improbable, he was just some sociopathic jackass who thought he was bad enough to need an assault rifle.

One thing that my brain keeps having a hard time wrapping itself around, much like a stripper on her first night on the pole, is that there won’t come a moment where I just feel like an adult from that point on.

I’ve been working a lot this year on mindfulness. That is, being present in what I’m doing at the moment instead of constantly living for some future life that I think I need to achieve that may or may not come to fruition, regardless of my efforts. On the one hand, it motivates me to push myself further. On the other, much uglier hand, it causes me stress and anxiety that is later followed by deep regret. (ie, If we had known that pursuing more education would not only not help our financial situation but actively make it waaaaay worse, the husband and I would have just enjoyed life, spent more time with the baby and UGH HERE I GO AGAIN FRETTING ABOUT STUFF I CAN’T CHANGE FAAACK.)

I also do this thing where if I have a bad day or a bad week, to me it’s not just one of those things that happens, it’s indicative of how I’m not an adult, how I’ve never matured to a point where I can just take care of myself and my family, how I’m too stupid and irresponsible to do what I need to do to not have a frantic period of time.

This morning, for example, I woke up and looked at my phone for a second. My iPhone is my alarm clock and I usually hit the “snooze” button a few times before waking up for real. And I usually take a few minutes to look at my email or something, not because I’m sooo important or sooo addicted to email, but getting my brain engaged helps me to actually wake up and get moving.

This morning, however, I looked at my email and then fell asleep again at some point. (I apparently engaged in some sleep-emailing, which is like drunk-texting but dumber, as I forwarded an ad about Barnes & Noble’s Columbus Day sale to some very confused person in my contacts list. Sorry if that was you.) I only woke up a little bit later, around the time when we should have been leaving the house to go to the baby’s bus stop. To my credit, I stayed relatively calm when, in my less graceful days, I might have started yelling at the baby and the husband to GET MOVING RIGHT FUCKING NOW OH MY GOD WHHYYYYYYY IS THIS HAPPENING BEING LATE IS THE WORST CRIME OF HUMANITY AND WE’RE ALL GUILTY.

Despite my calm exterior, however, I spent the rest of the morning engaged in an intense self-flagellation-by-inner-monologue session, belittling myself for not being like a real grown-up and not only getting up early, but going to bed at a decent hour so I can get enough sleep. I also don’t regularly prepare for my mornings by getting stuff like lunches and clothes ready to go the night before because I always reach this point in the evening where I just need the day to be over and I think about basically starting the next day already and it makes me want to cry and write run-on sentences.

I’m also dealing with a lot of bills and student loan matters right now that I feel absolutely powerless to control and I want so badly to be able to hand the whole matter over to someone and be like, “Deal with and/or pay these for me.”

And I say to myself, “Real adults get enough sleep, pay their bills on time, don’t have a ton of debt, get up early, exercise, have lunches and coffee ready to go, don’t make their kids late for school, never have dirty hair, dress appropriately, and they might be tired but they suck it up and do what they have to do, and YOU are not an adult until you do all of these things every day.”

I’ll have a streak of a few days where all of these things fall into place, but then something will knock me slightly off kilter and it all seems to fall apart. And I don’t understand why I can’t just MAKE it happen.

My future, seasonally-depressed self is going to kick me in the face for saying this, but I’m really digging this chilly, rainy weather we’ve been having. I think because it’s the only time when it’s not only accepted to stay in your house under a pile of blankets and watching TV, but it’s actively encouraged.

I always get to a point with seasons where I’m ready for them to be over. When we have a few lingering warm or cold days at the end of a season, it angers me. Yesterday, which was kind of miserable, actually put me in a really good mood. It just felt like everything was in its place. I put a pot roast in the slow cooker in the morning. When we got home, the husband made some mashed potatoes. I donned sweatpants and an ugly sweater, then we gobbled down pot roast until we were sleepy. It was a perfect early autumn dinner.

Seeing that it’s going be creeping back up to 80 this week is making me really irritated. This is not how it’s supposed to be, understand? I have very specific visions of how life is supposed to go at this time of year and short sleeves don’t factor in them! Everything must be perfect! I will project my anxiety about my lack of control in my life onto things that no one controls! Brilliant!

Anyway. I decided to jump into the Bridge to 10k program. I had purchased the iPhone app months ago, but just wasn’t really sure when exactly I would do the runs. Each one takes at least an hour and it’s kind of tough for me to find an hour plus showering and dressing time during the day.

I headed to the gym during lunch yesterday and decided to just go ahead and do week 1 day 1, since it was relatively short and I wanted to get a feel for the program.

Everything was fine until shortly after the second running interval started. It was at that time that I realized that I needed to use the bathroom. Soon.

I struggled with deciding what to do, thinking perhaps I could hold it for a little while longer. In the meantime, I adopted new jogging methods that allowed me to cross my legs in some manner. I also made faces that communicated the storm of discomfort and panic that was raging in my brain.

Finally, I smacked the big red stop button and zoomed to the bathroom. I have to tell you that sitting on a toilet with sweaty legs is not the most…something. It’s just…not.

I debated for a minute about whether or not to return to the treadmill or just call it a day, but knowing that that week 1 day 1 portion of the app was unfinished was going to drive me crazy. So I went back.

4.35 miles in about 53 minutes, with a bathroom break in the middle and a few walking breaks as prescribed by the program. Ideally, I’d like to finish 10k in an hour. Though, really, I’d like to just finish. We’ll see where I am in six weeks.

Normally, I like my Sundays to consist of sleeping, eating, and watching movies and football. This past Sunday was nearly the opposite of that.

I got up at what we here on the internet like to call o’dark-thirty and went to Oakland to participate in the Great Race 5k. This was kind of a big deal for me, because it was my first “real” race. The Race for the Cure was fun and it was a good experience, but I couldn’t do much running. This time, people were actually there to race and while it was still a fun atmosphere, I could tell that there was more intensity in the air.

I got kind of nervous the night before and considered backing out, but by the time I got to the starting line and had time to stretch and warm up, I felt ready to go. I had whipped together a playlist on the shuttle to the start and it ended up being totally perfect.

When the starting gun went off, there was the initial stutter of everyone trying to go, but it cleared out pretty quickly and we were off.

I was surprised at how good I felt. The first jog I had done since injuring my toe had left my legs feeling kind of crampy, perhaps from favoring my left leg, and I was worried that I would have more of the same. But my legs felt fine. My only real discomfort came from the long-sleeved shirts that we were issued, which felt good at the beginning but oppressive about halfway through.

I walked for a bit near Duquesne, deciding not to wear myself out on the small hill, and a few more times for a few seconds while drinking some water.

I pulled into Point State Park at around 38:28 and I was pretty pleased with myself and my time. I was surprised to find myself feeling pretty emotional, even tearing up for a second. I started jogging kind of on a whim over a year and a half ago, because I needed to do something about my physical and mental health. Jogging led to a slow revamping of my diet, which led to a rekindling in my interests in yoga and Pilates. The cool thing is that I consider more challenges and don’t get discouraged because I won’t be the best at them, but excited because I can just go and DO them. All of this is to say that I might be doing some rather foolish things over the next six months or so.

That's my "I'm about 10 minutes away from a caffeine headache," look.

Crazily enough, the Great Race was the first of several big items on my to-do list for Sunday. I still needed to get coffee (see: aforementioned impending caffeine headache), get the baby’s soccer pictures taken, watch the baby’s soccer game, send the baby off with my dad to the Pirates game, do something with the 5 pounds of chicken in my fridge that were thisclose to going bad (ended up making the most massive batch of chicken noodle soup), wrap the husband’s birthday gifts, go to the mother-in-law’s house for the husband’s birthday party with the totally awesome birthday cake in tow, birthday it up, watch the Steelers game, watch Boardwalk Empire.

The baby’s soccer game went really well. He scored what ended up being the game-winning goal and did a really great victory run. There are a lot of things that are really cool about being that kid’s mom. One of the coolest is seeing things start to click into place for him. Score soccer goals? Totally doable. Play Beatles songs on the piano? Got it, though there will be some angst first. Learn Spanish? On it. Understand math? Please. Read books and start to realize that they’re more than just words on a page? That the stories are there to help you understand the world and your place in it? Obviously!

He’s going to be 10 soon. Last night, after some bickering escalated into shouting on my part, I took awhile to cool off. Later, I asked him to come sit with me for a bit and he let me hug him for a long time as I apologized for yelling the way I did and saying mean things (and then “reminded” him that he owed me an apology, too, for being a jerk in the first place). I looked out of the corner of my eye at his head resting on my shoulder, his cute little ear poking up. It used to look just that way when he was a baby, too.

Did I ever tell you the story about how I hate my cat sometimes?

The story starts on Friday night when the baby (along with his lovely parents) hosted his first slumber party. His two buddies came over after soccer and the baby came home after piano and three of them were off. They had such a great time. The husband and I just kind of sat back and observed them, occasionally handing them food and drawing our hands back quickly. “Man. We’re such parents,” I kept saying to myself, rapidly reaching my quota of deep thoughts for the day.

In the morning, I slowly heard their still little voices gradually wake up in that uber 9-year-old boy way. “Murrf…Grunt…Pffft…Hey…Hi…I slept good…I KNOW RIGHT I LOVE VIDEO GAMES AND DIRT AND FARTING YOU’RE AWESOME WE SHOULD HANG OUT MORE HAHAHAHAHA POOP!”

They had slept in and were perfectly fine entertaining themselves as I rolled out of bed and down the stairs. I made yummy pancakes that they gobbled down. The baby said, “Isn’t my mom a good cook?” and I became mush.

I tried to get them out to the park but they were too busy reveling in their boyhood friendships to get ready in time. The two friends went off and the hum of an average Saturday sounded all around us.

I set about puttering, putting some bedding in the washing machine and getting another load of dirty dishes ready to go into the dishwasher. Our portable dishwasher needed to be unhooked from the faucet, unplugged, and spun back across the room to its resting place so that I could empty and refill it.

GASP

In spinning the dishwasher around, an action I’d performed a thousand and twelve times before, I made a miscalculation in the physics of the situation. The chaotic possibility that I would perform this action with just the right sets of variables in posture, stance, and force meant that the sharp metal corner of the machine would swipe through the air just so. That corner would meet the top of my left big toenail at just the right moment in time and place in space. In the king-of-the-mountain battle between the metal and my toenail for rights to that piece of space-time continuum real estate, the metal won.

It was not immediately evident to me what had happened. I stared at my foot and slowly evaluated the damage.

“Ow. Oooh. Uhhh. Ow. Ow. Ow. OH FOR THE LOVE OF CHRIST.”

I hopped up the stairs and into the bathroom and informed the husband that, “I *#*#%#@ UP MY FOOT *#(%)*)$!” as I dripped blood all over the floor

Then I burst into tears. “I’m suppohohohosed to run a 5k in two weheeheeheeks!”

We went to MedExpress and were in about in about 45 minutes. A tetanus shot and some soaking instructions were my souvenirs. The nail might not make it but my Chariots of Fire dreams remained alive. As we drove away, the husband continued our neverending game of Punchbuggy and reflexively punched me right where I got my tetanus shot upon seeing a VW Beetle.

The husband went out that night and I opted to stay home. I crawled into bed and tried to deal with the increasing throbbing in my toe. Despite downing some Aleve, I couldn’t find a comfortable position and decided that the best course of action would be to watch Mad Men episodes and whimper.

The cat jumped up to siphon body warmth from me and began the awesome process of walking on my feet to find the perfect spot.

“No, cat. No. Please. No.”

I gently moved my feet around and he followed them. I didn’t want to make too sudden a movement because he has a tendency to attack body parts moving around under the covers. I texted the husband for moral support. He replied, “Gatooooo.”

Uh. Indeed.