(Non)Winter (Non)Weather

I never figured myself for one of those crotchety old windbags who spends all her spare time complaining about the weather, and yet here I am, spending all my spare time complaining about the weather. In large part because the winter we've had has been so weird that I'm not even sure what season it is right now. It's 60°F outside right now. I mean, honestly. All the trees are starting to bud. I can see pollen in the air. I've had a sinus situation going on since August, when Hurricane Irene hit, and there is no foreseeable end in sight, because it hasn't been cold enough for long enough to kill whatever winter mold I'm allergic to, and now I'm getting smacked in the face with the spring stuff that sends me into my own personal circle of hay fever hell.

But that's not why I'm really gretzing.

   

We had snow back in October, right before Halloween. We were grossly underprepared, as per usual. Shae didn't have snow boots or a new coat or mittens or any of that stuff. She went out to "play" in the snow in her pajamas and galoshes that were a skosh too small. I was mortified, as you can imagine, especially because I had all my Christmas shopping basically done at that point, but I wasn't prepared for winter. The very next weekend, she got two new coats and a pair of snow pants from my mother-in-law, and two pairs of long johns from my parents, and some nice gloves from LL Bean that remind me a bit of my old Freezy Freakies from back in the '80s, and a nice pair of fuzz-lined boots that I deliberately bought a size too big so she could put on two pairs of socks and thermal underwear and still get her boots to close properly.

   

And then ... it basically stopped being winter. These pictures are from almost a month ago, February 12th, the last time it snowed in these parts. The time before that, it was the end of January. The time before that was ... Halloween. That's it. Three snows in one winter, if you define the winter as "whenever it starts snowing to whenever it stops snowing," as they do in Syracuse. I mean, I freaking HATE winter, but even I am like, "The HELL?" Now it's March, and today it's 60°F, and my Weather Channel iPhone app is calling for high temperatures of 60°F or higher for seven of the next ten days, with an average high of 58°F.

   

So why am I complaining, you ask? Aside from this upper respiratory clusterduck that I have going on? BECAUSE THOSE GOSH DARN BRAND-NEW BOOTS DON'T FIT ANY MORE, and she's only worn them TWICE. That's why. Stupid weather.

Blur

You guys, I DON'T EVEN KNOW.

I'm really sorry about all the weird lapses in posting but I am not myself these days. I knew that grad school was going to be hard, but what I didn't realize what that it wasn't going to be the classes that would kill me, but the scheduling. At least so far -- I have one class at the moment, and I love it, and I think I'm doing well, so I can't really complain there (although check back with me next week, after my exam tonight).

It's the SCHEDULE, you guys. It's killing me. Two days a week, I have 16-hour days (to which my mother is already saying, "Yeah, AND?"). I am not used to 16-hour days, at not least like this. And yes, it's only two days a week, but by the time I get home I'm usually so hopped up on adrenaline and caffeine and this buzz from learning that I can't get to sleep right away, and then I have homework and whatever on the other nights, and I have these really strange fever dreams and whatnot, so I don't really sleep all that well as a general rule, and so by the time 3:00 rolls around on a Friday afternoon, I am lucky if I am not passed out face-down at my desk, drowning in a puddle of my own drool.

You think I am exaggerating, but I assure you, I am not. Sometime after lunch on Fridays, everything is absolutely HYSTERICAL, to the point where reading a cheese wrapper has me in such giggle fits that I start hyperventilating. You guys, I DON'T EVEN KNOW. My entire life is pretty much a blur, right now.

= = = = =

Because I know what my audience wants, and it isn't a detailed re-telling of my first-world white-girl problems-of-the-week, here are some pictures of other things that have been going on. I'm sorry these are all Instagrammed cell phone photos, but you're lucky I even have time for this. I just want to spend my weekends either in my bed or eating pie -- or, ideally, both at the same time -- so that I even remember to take my phone with me is basically nothing short of a miracle, right now.

 

Swim lessons are still happening. Shae is doing great, although I think you can see in this picture that she is growing out of all her bathing suits right in front of us. STOP THAT, KID.

   

We found a nearly-13-year-old box of Cream of Wheat in the back of the cupboard. Sadly, this is probably not the oldest food item in my house. I'm pretty sure that I still have canned goods that were part of a gift basket from my bridal shower. Hey, you NEVER KNOW when you're going to need a 30-year-old can of clams to feed the zombies during the end times.

    

They did a chick-hatching project at school, and my husband just rolled his eyes at me when I said I wanted to raise chickens in the back yard. I mean, IT'S LIKE HE DOESN'T EVEN TAKE ME SERIOUSLY ANY MORE.

   

Chewbacca got a hair cut. Hipster child is unimpressed.

   

With under two months to go until Shae's big 0-5 birthday (!!!!!) (?????) (who the hell let THAT happen?!), we finally took the siderail off her bed ... the same day that we put these sort of super-smooth, "microfiber," kind of almost satiny sheets on her bed. It's like we WANTED her to slide right onto the floor or something. But so far she's managed to resist the law of gravity and stay put during the night. Tucking her sheets and comforter under the mattress like some kind of deranged ghetto sleeping bag is probably helping.

= = = = =

So. There you go. BASICALLY NOTHING IS DIFFERENT, except I'm like 482% more tired, and about 926% more likely to start randomly quoting Jack London stories at you with only the slightest provocation. (Or, in other words: it's a Wednesday, isn't it?)

Convergence Point

It's weird walking around campus on my way to class, and not just because I'm an ancient, elderly, crotchety old crone surrounded by nubile little 20-year-olds in their Uggs and their AE hoodies and their bare midriffs even when it's like 9° and their skinny jeans that are so tight that I want to run up to them like some kind of religious evangelical with illustrated pamphlets about the dangers of yeast infections. Because seriously.

No, that's not why things are strange, although my puffy down coat and my sensible shoes and my tendency to dress like my own grandmother are certainly not helping things. Mostly I am finding myself slightly wigged out because I keep running into people I know, people I haven't seen in a long time, and I just don't know who I'm going to run into next.

I picked this particular college for graduate school largely because their M.Ed. program is well-regarded -- my aunt, herself a teacher, is the one who recommended it -- and also in part because it is significantly less expensive than other programs I looked into, and while I may be insane, I am not stupid. Since I had to take out student loans in order to pay for everything, I couldn't really justify the higher price tag for the big deal, big name, big ticket, big city school.

Also: that other program was entirely online, and let's face it, I simply cannot be trusted to maintain my focus for any length of time when I am in such close proximity to LOLcats.

So in addition to quality, cost, and actually being in a classroom, the one other thing that I considered was location. This school is about halfway between my house and my parents', and when I have classes at night, I can get there from work in just about an hour. This is wonderful, because it means that my days don't need to be any longer than they already are. (My night classes go from 6-9 twice a week, so those days are basically 16 hours long, but at least I have time in between work and driving and class to sit down somewhere and have dinner like a civilized person.)

But one of the things I never thought to consider is that going to a local college means that there would be the distinct possibility that other people might be choosing the college for the same reasons. It's close to where I grew up -- which means it's also close to where I used to be on the Y swim team ... which may explain how it turns out that my former swimming coach from 20-some odd years ago is now my academic advisor.

It also makes it close to where a lot of my family lived at one time, and still lives ... which may explain how it turns out that one of my cousins, who I last saw 13 years ago when my husband and I were in marriage preparation class, is also a student there.

Now, it's highly likely that these things are just coincidences. I mean, I didn't grow up in that big a town, or anything. But what are the odds that of all the gin joints in all the world, so to speak, that I would run into two people from past like that within just a few days of each other? Is this place some sort of a convergence point for all the "lost memories" of my past? Who else is there that I might run into?

Nü Mäth

I’ve been doing some prep work for these standardized tests that I need to take as part of my grad school stuff -- the Praxis Pre-Professional Skills Tests, which are tests that determine whether or not you are smarter than a 5th grader, basically -- and I have to say that I don’t think there is anybody or anything anywhere in the world that is better at making me feel inadequate than the Educational Testing Service.

(BTW, here is the tl;dr version, if you don’t feel like listening to my first-world, white-girl problems: algebra and geometry give me hives.)

Probably it’s ridiculous, but I worry about standardized tests. I’m not entirely sure why, because I’ve always been a decent test-taker. I remember taking the Iowa Tests back in maybe second or third grade, when I was still in Catholic school, and then something else again in 8th grade, maybe, where a Fairly Big Deal was made out of the fact that I was one of the handful of people in my class who got a perfect score in the math portion, and I ended up getting my whole schedule reconfigured because the school wanted to move me up from the pre-algebra class that I was in at the time into a more advanced math class that some of the gifted kids were in, and basically my life was over at that point because I wasn’t in any classes with The Love Of My Life At The Time any more.

(And people wonder why I grew up to be distrustful of Authority.)

To this day, it bemuses me to no end that I’ve always tested better in math than in verbal. I still don’t know why. I am absolutely terrible at math, or at least I’ve always thought so. I can barely balance a checkbook. The only “F” I ever got in a class in my entire life was during my Freshman year at Syracuse, in Probability and Statistics II, which -- OK, yes, technically I might not have done very well on account of missing more than 50% of the classes, but this was during that one college semester when I had my existential crisis and dated three gay guys in a row and started chain-smoking Camel unfiltereds, and anyway, in my own defense I didn’t start skipping classes until well after I started failing them. (Also, the professor for that class was NINE KINDS OF TERRIBLE, and he wore white polyester leisure suits unbuttoned to the navel ALL THE TIME, I kid you not.)

Although, here is what I believe they call “irony”: I kind of use math all day every day since I have an “accounting-related” function at work, and I'm pretty good at it. But I don’t do much that couldn’t also be done by a potty-trained monkey with a basic understanding of Excel and an adding machine. (And actually, I’m not even entirely sure that the monkey would need to be potty-trained.)

I still have never used anything they attempted to teach me in trigonometry, though.

Anyway, when I took the SAT’s in 11th grade, the last standardized test I had to take -- which, by the way, was MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS AGO, if you are playing the home version of our game -- I did fine. Because my brain remembers bullshit that doesn’t matter like SAT scores, I can still tell you that I scored 1340 on my SAT’s (this was back during the Paleolithic period, when dinosaurs roamed the Earth and the SAT only had two sections and no essay and a perfect score was 1600) -- 660 verbal, and 680 math. It took me two tries to get my verbal score that high. Back then, and still now, I look at that score and I think, “Wait, what? WHAT?”

Because I absolutely STINK OUT LOUD at algebra and geometry, which if I recall correctly combined to make up about 148% of the math portion of the SAT’s.

And I was reminded about much I stink out loud at algebra and geometry when I took a practice Praxis test last night, where I was staring at these graphics that showed all these shapes floating in space and rectangles with cutouts in them and hypotenuses of equilateral triangles (which don’t even HAVE hypotenuses, I don’t think) (side note: WTF IS A HYPOTENUSE!?) and equations that involved fractions and variables and orders of operations and sometimes things were capitalized and sometimes they were not and there was a lot of ∑ and √ and πr² and DEAR GOD, ISN’T THERE ANYTHING EASIER THAN THIS I COULD BE DOING RIGHT NOW? Like studying ancient Sanskrit from a Latin translation? Anything?

Plus, when I yelled into the other room for help with something that I thought I actually remembered how to do -- yes, it’s cheating, but I wanted to feel like I was at least somewhere in the same state as the ballpark for a few questions that did not involve calculating a tip or determining the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow -- my husband answered back with this bit about how there is no such thing as cross-multiplication unless you’re an angry mathematician, and then he chuckled to himself for, like, two whole minutes.

ENGINEERS ARE NOT FUNNY, YOU GUYS.

So I know that I need to do a WHOLE LOT of reviewing for the math part of this Praxis exam. I guess this weekend I’ll check around in my parents’ garage and see if I still have any of my old Prob & Stats textbooks lying around, but I’m pretty sure that I sold those sumbitches as soon as I retook the class and finally passed. (A-, FTW!) If G has any old college math books, they’re probably for Calculus or Nuclear Fission or something else that’s above my level. My standard reference book, Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary, defines “polynomials” and “quadratic equations” and “cosine,” but it still doesn’t tell me what those words MEAN. I need to go back and re-learn how to solve for x, and try to remember what I know about 3-4-5 right triangles.

They’ll have to hold a gun to my head to get me to care about trigonometry, though.

Five Things I Am Curious About

1. We have all of the Shrek movies, all three of the original Star Wars triology movies, the first four Harry Potter movies, and all of the Toy Story movies -- why does my kid always want to start with the sequels, and never the first movie in any of the series?

2. Why is it colder inside my house than it is outside?

3. If onion rings are so delicious -- likewise for the Bloomin' Onion and other equivalent appetizer things -- and if green bean casserole is so damned tasty, why is it that French's french fried onions straight out of the bag are so vile?

4. Is there any smell in the universe more powerful that the peculiar aroma of microwave popcorn?

5. How am I going to resist eating the crispy skin off this rotisserie chicken until dinnertime?

Five Things About Last Night's "Glee" (S3E2)

Sorry it's been so long, but you guys: SO BUSY, and yet so boring at the same time. So let's talk about last night's "Glee" since everybody else is, OK?

#1. West Side Story is one of my favorite musicals ever, and watching the audition process took me back to a place I never, ever thought I'd want to go again: my freshman year of college. I absolutely hated college (most of it, anyway, definitely major chunks of those four years that weren't spent in a classroom), but one of the few things that I actually enjoyed was being a part of the inaugural company of the First Year Players at Syracuse University. We did West Side Story that year, and I played Anybodys, and it was seriously one of the best times I ever had in my life. Even if you include my falling desperately, helplessly in love with two different cast members and having my heart broken many times over because of it. West Side Story is so much fun to do and I am so glad I had the chance to be in that show - the 1961 movie version with Natalie Wood and Rita Moreno remains, to this day, one of my favorite films.

#2. I hope I am not the only person who mentions this on the Internet or in real life today, but even if you used color-blind casting for the William McKinley High School production, there is no way on God's green Earth that Mercedes could ever play Maria. Sure, she has the vocal chops for it, but she is just not the Maria type. And it's not just because she is the "big girl" or the "black girl" - she is just not THAT girl. I'm not entirely certain that Rachel is quite right for the part, either. If I were casting the show using students from WMHS New Directions, Maria would be played by Tina. Kurt would be absolutely THE most fabulous Riff ever, Mike would be Chino, Puck would be Bernardo, Finn would be one of the Jets (one of the ones in the back who doesn't do much dancing), Quinn and Brittany would be Graziela and Velma. In this scenario, Mercedes would be best cast as Anita, although she would have tough competition from Santana. Blaine, of course, would be Tony. I don't know what to do with Rachel, exactly - she's almost too much for West Side Story. She's really more of a Desiree Armfeldt from A Little Night Music (the part that was recently played on Broadway by Catherine Zeta-Jones).

#3. Oh, that whole adoption thing? Makes me think about things that I'm not entirely sure I want to think about. I wonder sometimes if Shae's biological mother ever wants to see her - if she even remembers that Shae exists. And I worry what would happen if that were the case. Knowing what I know about Shae's birth mom, I don't think it's likely that she'll ever want to make contact, but ... what if? Imagine I am Shelby Corcoran in this scenario - am I in any position to make demands? Can I say, "I won't let you see this person that you gave birth to unless you meet my standards of dress/behavior/lifestyle/sobriety"? Certainly I want to prevent my daughter from being exposed to the kinds of things I know she was exposed to as an infant (i.e., REALLY BAD STUFF, let's leave it at that). Our adoption is closed, and right now I don't have any particular interest in letting Shae's biological parents be a part of our lives, for better or for worse. Maybe I am overprotective or overly possessive or living in denial. All of these things are possible, maybe even probable. I shouldn't have to think about this stuff after watching a silly TV show with lots of singing and dancing in it.

#4. "Somewhere" and "Something's Coming" are my two favorite songs from West Side Story, full stop. I could listen to Lea Michele, Idina Menzel, and Darren Criss sing those songs all day, every day, for the rest of my life, and I would die happy. I do wonder if "Glee" is ever going to do the "Tonight Quintet," and if so, how and when, and whether everything is going to tie back to anything happening in the story arcs for the actual characters, and whether they'll switch up any of the voice parts, or whatever. (I can't find a good video of the song to show it in context from the musical, but go watch the movie version - I can't recommend it enough, and you'll know this song when you see it.)

#5. There were supposed to be five things on this list but I ran out of things, so HOORAY FOR "GLEE!" Or not, if you hate "Glee." I won't judge. I hate the Kardashians and the Real Housewives, so it's not like I don't have my own problems.

Bury My Heart in Hohman, Indiana

It all comes back to A Christmas Story, if you want to know the truth. It's possible that within A Christmas Story lies the answers to the meaning of life, the Universe, and everything, but at the very least, it is the mile marker on the Highway of Life that I use to locate my position in the cosmos.

At different times, I have experienced almost everything that happens in that movie except for getting to see first-hand the soft glow of electric sex gleaming in the window. I have lived the life of almost every character in that movie except for maybe Scut Farkus (and then I can't say with any degree of certainty that I've never been a bully in one way or another). I have been disappointed by mail-order decoder rings; and I've laid in the snow like a slug, that being my only defense; and I'm sure as hell that in the heat of battle I have woven a tapestry of obscenities that as far as we know is still hanging out in space.

So I've been Ralphie (still am, most of the time), and I've been The Old Man (still am, some of the time), and I've been Randy (still am, when it suits me) -- I've even been Flick with my tongue stuck to the metaphorical flagpole more times than it is probably dignified to admit to, but there you go -- and now I've gone for the superfecta by becoming Mrs. Parker and giving my kid soap poisoning.

Yes, that's right: I had to wash my kid's mouth out with soap.

I am not particularly proud of this particular bit of discipline, but it is what it is. Definitely not my proudest moment as a parent. The good news is that it wasn't because of cussing, at least not yet -- I'll have to cross that particular Bridge Too Far when we get there, I suppose. But in a way, this issue was worse, because it turns out that one of the multitude of bad habits that my kid has picked up from her friends in school is spitting when she gets angry.

Not the "good" kind of spitting, either. This is not the spitting for distance and accuracy that my friend the former Marine taught me how to do when I graduated from high school, being able to spit an empty Coke can off a picnic bench at 50 paces, the kind that ended up landing me a part in West Side Story when I was in college. This is nasty, feral-llama type spitting, and I absolutely won't stand for it. To me, spitting on someone is the most disrespectful thing you can possibly do, a Jerry-Springer-style dis, dirtier even than uttering the F-dash-dash-dash word. It's gross and filthy and Not Allowed, not ever.

I warned her, of course. When I last got a report of this behavior from her teacher, I told her that the next time it happened, I was going to wash her mouth out with soap. I even threatened to go out and buy a bar of Lifebuoy especially for the occasion, because there is no sense in doing punishment if it's going to be half-assed. I almost didn't make it through, when the school's director heard me referencing A Christmas Story and barely suppressed her laughter. But that was weeks ago, and it hadn't happened again, until Tuesday.

In the heat of the moment, I had to go with Dove Gentle Exfoliating, because that's what we had in the house. I told her: don't bite down, and don't lick the soap, and you'll be okay, but it would be gross, and anway, I said this would happen, and so this was what I had to do. She cried and fought and whipped herself into a right frenzy, as you might have expected. But she was a trooper, and she did her time (ten seconds, and it will go up by ten seconds every time we have to do it again, which I hope it never does), and I really want to believe that she has been rehabilitated, although I suppose we'll see, won't we? Even Ralphie became quite a connoisseur of soap, didn't he?

And, just like Mrs. Parker, I did take a taste afterwards. Soap is ... not tasty. So I hope we never need to do this again.

Going Full Griswold

OH MY GOD YOU GUYS. My new next-door neighbors -- the ones on the detached side, not the other half of our double -- have PUT UP THEIR CHRISTMAS LIGHTS ALREADY.

Seriously, I am not making this up. They only moved in three weeks ago or so. (That house has had more residents than Spinal Tap has had drummers, for serious.) We don't know their names yet. They have not introduced themselves. Clearly they don't understand the way the on-street parking works on our block, because they keep parking next to that one telephone pole that everybody knows is supposed to be my spot. And then I come home from work last night, more than a week before Thanksgiving, and I see this:

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT MESS? I have nothing against Christmas lights, of course. I mean, we don't really decorate the outside of our house, primarily because I am a lazy-ass, but also because our house is kind of a pit and what's the point? You can't really polish a turd, you know? We don't live in the worst house on the street -- that honor is reserved for the house at the other end of the block that is totally dodgy -- but we definitely have a leaky front porch and a water pressure problem that makes it difficult to power-wash the moss off the steps, and so inadequate lighting is beneficial. Kind of like smearing Vaseline on the lens for an aging actress. But in theory, I don't mind when other people decorate.

How does anybody even know where their Christmas decorations are already? My husband puts our boxes of lights and ornaments away, and I have zero idea where they are. A couple of Longaberger baskets have been on the mantle for the seven years we've lived in that house. And I just won a tinsel snowman at a bitch bingo. But if I got challenged to some kind of decorating slap-fight right now, the only things I'd be able to pull together are the Lionel train and some random assorted tchotchkes that never got put away last year, like so:

Okay wait, the colored glitter balls are new. I got them at Target a couple weeks ago, because they were in the $1 section, and I was trying to decide if I wanted to go with colored ornaments this year or not. (We are. I think. But not too many, because I really like my classy elegant understated Martha-Stewart-style tree with the silver, gold, white, and clear color scheme, and I can't just jump headfirst into all these crazy colors because what if I don't actually like them? And what if they aren't trendy next year, and I can't replace them? Then what? I am telling you RIGHT NOW, I am NOT doing a black-silver-and-white tree, ever, because I am STILL bitter about the 1981 Super Bowl.)

Plus, WHAT THE HECK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO WITH THIS HALLOWEEN PUMPKIN? We still have it, in its original unadorned form, from when we went apple picking. Wasn't that 100 years ago, already?

Anyway ... now I am wondering if My Anonymous Neighbors have just thrown down the gauntlet and challenged me to a decorating contest. They already have a LOT of lights up, and they keep adding. My only defense is going to be to go Full Griswold on them, and I don't want to do that if I don't have to, because my very favorite outdoor decoration is my lighted Moravian star (mine is not pictured, BTW), which pretty much sets the world standard for simple and classic holiday decorations. I love my Moravian star, and I don't want to see it sullied. But you BETTER BELIEVE that I will throw down if I have to.

Oh, be quiet, you.

The Geekest Place on Earth

OH MY GOD, YOU GUYS, THERE IS A HERSHEYPARK iPHONE APP.

The sweetest place on Earth just got nerdier. And just in time for the annual company picnic tomorrow, too! That little Kiss in the app icon holds so much power. For one thing, there is a park map.

Look, I am totally directionally challenged, and even more so when I am surrounded by eleventy thousand people and screaming children and heat and humidity and the heady seductive smell of freshly-made kettle corn, so it's nice to know that I can click something and the GPS locator will GPS-locate me and tell me where the bathrooms or the Ferris Wheel or the smoking sections are. Because COME ON: amusement park in July? On what is always one of the hottest days of the summer? If I could, I'd be chain-smoking.

Truth is, we'll be spending most of our time in the Boardwalk area, and then in the picnic area where we'll be getting lunch, but Shae's going to want to go on some rides -- she loved them last year, and I'm sure this year will be no different.

We'll be able to find out which ones are appropriate for her height range. I think this year she's eligible for an upgrade. (I'm still not even a Jolly Rancher, and I am 36-goddamn-years-old.)

When we see something that looks cool, we can verify that it isn't going to be too exciting. No Sooperdooperlooper, at least not yet.

And then click that little crosshairs to find the ride on the map.

And then we're back where we started. We'll be able to do the same thing for shows, too. And we can find out if any rides are out of commission for the day, and also we'll be able to conveniently locate the smoking sections. Which I might have mentioned, but COME ON.

... And Now A Word From The Voices In My Head

There has not been a whole lot going on in my life these days, and the weather just finally turned nice starting today, so while I was trying to invent some blog content for today, I decided to send some questions to myself via the pretty little Formspring box over yonder, and then answer them, and post the answers here. I submitted the questions yesterday, and then the Internet broke or something, I don't know, it was all technical and involved wires I think, so I wasn't able to answer myself until today. Overnight some of the answers changed, except for one. So that question goes first, and then the rest are in pretty much random order.

Can we see pictures of the infamous backpack?
     No.

So how come nobody is asking you any questions?
     I don't know. I blame the previous administration, the unusually high pollen counts, and the fact that I am butternuts crazy. Also, probably nobody even knows what Formspring even is. I'm not sure I do, and I'm the one with the stinkin' widget on my blog.

Would you rather be a famous musician or a famous actor?
     Who says I can't be both? Oh, but wait -- do we consider "kazoo players" to be musicians? And do we consider "comediennes" to be actors? Because that's what I want to be -- a world-famous kazoo-playing comedienne with her own musical variety show. And while I'm dreaming, my first and most favoritest guest will be Kristin Chenoweth, and she will be on my show at least once a quarter, and she will sing and I will play the kazoo and we will dance, dance, dance and it will be AWESOME.
     C'mon -- you KNOW you want to watch that show. The cast of "Glee" will be our house band, and we'll have a dunk tank.

{Ed. Note: The above question was a random, Formspring-generated question that popped up while I was waiting for my anonymously-self-submitted questions to appear in my inbox. It's completely coincidental that the question which immediately follows is tangentially related.}

If you could be on any TV show, past or present, what show would it be?
     Since this is my own fake question, I am going to amend it thusly: "... TV show, past or present OR FUTURE, what show ..."
     Because the show I would be on does not yet exist, because I just invented it in my head last night while I was watching "Glee" to relax from my nerdrage over something stupid that happened in World of Warcraft.
     (Yes, I still play that game. Because virtually blowing stuff up and melting off faces from time to time is FUN, yo. Don't you judge me.)
     Anyway, if I could be on any TV show, it would my own rockle-branded musical variety reality show. (See above question, also.)
     Plus there would be monkeys. Monkeys in the dunk tank.

What is the funniest thing you've seen on the internet this week?
     Oh, man, it was the thing with Twitter, Temerity Jane, and the "baby rabies." Probably because just the term "baby rabies" is hysterical. Admit it. {Ed. Note: That linked TJ blog post does not actually contain the words "baby rabies" -- that shows up in the comments -- but anyway. It's a long post, and maybe not all that interesting to most, but I thought it was a great piece. And the comments are classic.}
     I know what the phrase is actually referring to, but in my head I picture an army of tiny little mammals -- baby humans, bats, puppies, raccoons, etc. -- in their diapers, toddling around, foaming at the mouth, trying to snuggle you to death.
     And it's just a whole lot of fun to say it over and over again: "Baby rabies, baby rabies, baby rabies, baby rabies."

Really? You're not going to let us see pictures of the backpack?
     Okay, FINE. Here.

This is a comparison of the new backpack (on the right) with the old backpack. As you can see, the new one is taller and a bit thinner, but it's "deeper" and it also has all kinds of straps and stuff so that it will stay up if Shae ever takes it hiking or something. The penguin bag is more of a bookbag.

And here is the backpack in action. Well, in "action," since we put it on over our pajamas. You can see that it's a perfect size for her -- maybe a leetle on the big side, but she'll grow into it. It's got a lot of zippers and gewgaws and whatnots and a compass in the stock and this thing that tells time. Oh, and a whistle. She already loves it and keeps all her "cool stuff" in it, like her map that I printed at work.

And her paper-towel-tube spyglass. (She uses the toilet paper tubes as megaphones, but she calls them "saxophones." Haha.)

Anyway, if you ever have a totally random question that you want me to answer, you can always leave it in the comments, or you can type it in that there Formspring box over there and I'll answer it for you. Or, I'll try to. Or maybe I'll make something up.

Pennsylvania and Some Homemade Pizza Pie

Who knew that there are no Christmas songs that mention pizza? What kind of nonsense is that? There are songs about Grandma getting smooshed by livestock and Santa losing his ever-loving mind and Swiss Colony frickin' beef logs, but not Christmas pizza? Seriously, what is wrong with the world? Honestly, you'd think this was a religious holiday or some such balderdash.

Anyway ... we have like 3 pounds of assorted shredded cheeses in the refrigerator, because HEY YOU NEVER KNOW -- don't you judge me! -- and we're running out of room for essentials like hundred-year-old jars of cocktail onions and warehouse-club size vats of dill pickles, so we've decided to start, you know, using some of it. And since we can't really get a decent pizza in our little town, we decided to make our own.

I have a bread machine that I got for my birthday a few years ago, so technically we could have made our own dough, but we went the Boboli bread shell route because we figured (correctly) that it would be quicker and easier. Also, we wanted to give Shae a shot at "cooking," and even for a hyperactive toddler, it's pretty hard to screw up "painting" pizza sauce and sprinkling cheese on top of a ready-made circle of bread.

And it turned out to be a pretty darned good pizza, too. I mean, it's not gourmet wood-burning brick-oven pizza made from imported organic semolina and maiden-made fresh goat's-milk cheese or anything, but it was easily as good as frozen Ellio's, which everyone knows is the food of the gods. And Shae was pleased as punch that she got to "cook dinner," which was the point of the whole exercise, anyway. And then we watched "The Year Without A Santa Claus" and G and I wondered what the hell drugs the Rankin and Bass people were taking back in the '70s.

So, you know, typical day in our house.

Who-ly McWhat?

Dear Rooney Family and other Pittsburgh Steelers investors:

There is not really a delicate way to phrase this, so in my typically brazen Philadelphia style, let me just come right out and say it -- Steely McBeam is kind of a dork (even if he does look an awful lot like the great and powerful Coach Cowher) and I think you need a new mascot this year.

Your mascot for the 2009-10 season should be someone who is so steeped in the culture of football that they want to see touchdowns at baseball games.

Someone who is all about the fundamentals and who will keep on practicing, even if the only ball of any sort in the house is a Sesame Street kickball.

Someone who is so polite and gracious that after they kick your tuchus on the field they will make you a cup of sweet delicious invisible tea.

Come on, Steelers ownership team, don't you want to replace that dorfwad of a mascot with the cutest little girl in the world?

But if you can't be convinced, we'll at least settle for lifetime free tickets. Or, if you insist on driving a hard bargain, we'll take box seats just once. You know you want to.

Thanks in advance!
xoxo Your Very Favorite Fans,
rockle and Shae.


PS -- It wouldn't be too hard to convince us to change her name to Jeromina Bettisa, either.

Tempted

Oh, this kid ...

Yesterday turned out to be a nice day, even though they were calling for crappy weather. (FORESHADOWING!) After we ate our Father's Day Brunch at my parents', we went to my grandparents' to hang and cause our usual array of trouble.

My Anonymous Mother waited, lurking, stalking, and the very second that I fell asleep on the living room floor (we were watching golf -- don't you judge me!), she jumped right in there and snatched my kid and forced her practically at gunpoint to get in the pool. Forced, I tell you! Gunpoint!

I mean, look at the terror in her eyes! She is horrified! (Shut up, this is my story, I'll tell it how I want.) And of course the poor kid is absolutely mortified because the weather was supposed to be crappy (see above) so I didn't pack a bathing suit. That's right: my mother forced my kid to go skinny dipping* on a hot summer day.

Luckily I was around to document the scene (I believe I called it "fuckery" right in front of my grandmother); otherwise I would never have gotten this shot of my poor kid, half frozen (the water is still cold), breathless (she just go-go-goes like the Energizer Bunny), soaking wet. Call the U.N.! Violation of the Geneva convention!

Oh, well this makes it better. Never mind. Carry on.


* Not actually skinny dipping. She had on a swimmie-diaper. But she was otherwise butt-nekkid, which she thinks is hilarious. "Lookit, Moomy, I nakey!" I hope someone had sunscreen!

21st Century Digital Boy

Skype, people. It is t3h r0xx0rz! Last night Shae, G, and I had a video phone call with my sister and newphew, and it was AWWWWWWWWWWWWSOME. So much so that we're looking into a webcam for my parents.

Technology is amazing, yo.

25 Things

So, I got tagged for one of those things on Facebook, and I don't actually have 25 Facebook friends with whom I can share this, so I'm just putting this stuff out here on the blog for God and everybody to see. You're welcome. Here are 25 random things about me:

1. I think a piece of one of my wisdom teeth chipped off today -- it didn't hurt, but I'm afraid to go to the dentist to have it looked at.
   
2. Because, after living with my Type-I diabetic father for 25 years, I kind of really hate needles an awful lot.
3. Also, I am afraid to be judged by a masochist who spends every day poking at people's gums until they bleed.
4. If I ever had to choose between giving up Mountain Dew forever, or death, I am pretty sure that I would choose death.
5. With absolute 100% certainty, I can say that I never want to meet my daughter's birth parents, and I never want her to want to meet them, either.
6. I once told a Navy recruiter that I was a flat-footed lesbian Communist so that he would stop calling me, and I will never regret that.
7. Toys that make noise make me batshit butternuts crazy, and I really want to smash the Cupcake's "Chicken Dance Elmo" doll with a sledgehammer.
8. All other things being equal, if my husband were a Republican or a fan of either Notre Dame or the Dallas Cowboys, I don't think I would have married him.
9. We didn't have our wedding pictures put into a photo album until 2007 -- 8½ years after we were married.
10. I know even without the benefit of therapy that I developed a sense of humor as a self-defense mechanism, to cover for being insecure about my looks.
11. Also, I learned to cook as a back-up plan, in case being funny and having big boobs failed to ever get me laid.
12. Honest to God, I think Barbies are evil, and I am not-so-secretly thrilled that Cupcake's Christmas "fashion doll" is in pieces all over the living room.
13. If I ever win the lottery, the first thing I am doing is leaving the country and buying a house near the beach on an island somewhere.
14. The last time I went to church completely voluntarily to pray for anything was when I was in 11th grade -- the last 18 years have all been for show.
15. I believe that this is part of the reason why I haven't gotten pregnant, but I am too proud to grovel before anybody, including God.
16. Yes, I am aware that my relationship with the Creator is pretty fucked up, and I am pretty sure He knows it, too.
17. Grammar, punctuation, and especially spelling are important to me, and I judge pretty harshly people who make stupid mistakes in business emails.
18. I don't believe for one second that Ben Affleck deserved his Oscar for "Good Will Hunting," and it will always piss me off that he has an Academy Award and I don't.
19. The thing I dread most about parenting is the day that I have to explain to the Cupcake how and why she came to be our daughter.
20. I am terrified that when that day comes, she will start to hate me, and that I will never be able to get her to love me again.
21. If we had everything to do all over again, I think I would have asked for a bigger engagement ring and a smaller wedding.
22. Some of the parents at Cupcake's school kind of skeeve me out, and I am doing everything I can to get her away from their kids.
23. Not once, not ever, not on one occasion in my life did I ever smoke pot, and every once in a while I regret being so paranoid in my youth.
24. Before I die, I would like to spend an entire vacation at a nudist resort or, at the very least, I would like to spend time on a nude beach.
25. The idea of a Brazilian wax intrigues me, and I wonder what "it" would be like afterwards, but I am terrified that I would be laughed right out of the salon.

There you go. 25 things about me I bet you wish you never knew.

Long Strange Trip

Jumping Jesus on a pogo stick, I have been awake for a looooooooooong time. Got up at 4:30, snoozed, got to work at 5:30, farmed the cubicle wastelands, then had an adoption class, which was kind of OK, but it ran late. We are just now getting home and before I shuffle off to bed, possibly to keel over from exhuastion, I have to start installing my Wrath of the Lich King expansion, because: DUH.

So a couple of random observations:

• Didn't the Italian Chicken Sandwich at Burger King go away for a while, and then come back? I remember getting it in the 80's, possibly up until the early 90's, and then it like disappeared or something. Now it's back. Had one for dinner. It was good, but of course Chicken Parm from a divey sort of local pizza joint is always better. (Hello, Frank's!)
• And didn't there used to be a French Chicken Sandwich, that was kind of like Cordon Bleu, with Swiss cheese and ham? Or am I just making shit up again?
  
• According to my sister-slash-babysitter, she has seen my house more times this week alone than she has in the almost 5 years I have lived here. I have no reason to doubt her; it's just one of those things.
• Anything will pass for a blog post when it's 10:30 and you're tired and you're trying to get in under the deadline.
  

Quickies

Um ... got bored, updated my template, added some goodies, will post actual content later, follow me on Twitter if you want and maybe be one of my Blogger stalkers, tip your waitress and bartender, the end.

Cooking for Dummies (or, What to Feed an 11½-Month-Old [Not That She'll Eat It {Or Maybe She Will, Who Knows?}])

One of the things we're having the hardest time with, kid-wise, is mealtimes. I will be the first person to tell you that I have ZERO IDEA what the hell to feed a baby. I mean, we know that she takes three 8-ounce bottles of formula a day -- although she usually ends up wearing about 6 of those 24 ounces -- but beyond that, we are completely clueless. Her previous foster family told us "she eats table food," but that's such a weird and generic statement that it could mean anything, really. And it's not like we can feed her what we eat, because by and large G and I eat junk. (Yes, we are working to change that, but it's really hard to give up Little Debbie Snack Cakes cold turkey, you know? Don't you judge me.)

We're trying to use our judgement and her signals to determine what to feed her, when, and how much. I will say this about the Cupcake -- she is not a finicky eater. Not usually, anyway. She eats very well, and she'll eat pretty much anything. Not that she ought to, mind you. Parmesan garlic mashed potatoes + "tender chicken and stars" jarred food + formula with iron = REALLY NASTY STINKY DISGUSTING BABY POOP. Whoo, boy. And that is saying something, because baby poop as a general rule is pretty rank and vomitous.

All of our "resources" (our parents, plus other parents we know, plus all the parenting books and magazines that we have been able to scrounge up) have been telling us that around this age, kids want to eat what their parents are eating, or something like it, anyway. But they also want to do a lot of things on their own, which means we need to come up with "finger food" versions of our dinners. Like, the other night, G and I had chicken parm and spaghetti for supper, so we fed the baby some toddler pasta and sauce plus a cut-up chicken nugget, and she did great. Other times: well, not as such, no. Sometimes I really think all she wants to do is chew on her Crocs.

I also think we're having trouble because we are getting close to a growth spurt, if we are not already smack dab in the middle of one. Cupcake eats like a horse in the mornings, and she will eat all sorts of concoctions that I cook up for her. She has oatmeal for breakfast almost every day, and I mix it with whatever strikes my fancy when I am "building" her meal -- leftover fruit dessert or pudding from the night before, mashed bananas, applesauce, yogurt, jarred food that has other kinds of grains in it (i.e., rice cereal with pears or so-called cinnamon raisin granola -- all of which, by the way, looks and smells EXACTLY like applesauce, so I don't know how she can tell the difference).

Since she isn't really fussy, that gives us a chance to be creative and try something new almost every day. This is the closest I've come to "cooking" for the Cupcake. Today I combined oatmeal cereal, kids' vanilla yogurt, jarred mango, and diced toddler peaches, and let me tell you, she nommed that mess right up. (I would have, too -- it smelled just like a Rita's mango gelati.) She loves fruit of all kinds: we've had mango, papaya, bananas, apples, pears, blueberries, strawberries, apricots, and "mixed fruit" so far, all with great success.

But when it comes to dinnertime, we can't always figure it out. We had Tuna Helper for dinner last night, and she had some kind of jarred chicken stew with Goldfish crackers and Cheerios and I swear to God, I never thought we were going to get her to stop eating. She didn't leave so much as a crumb on her high chair tray. Tonight? She ate maybe 10 radiatore noodles and a dozen spoonfuls of her mixed vegetables, hardly anything at all, and then she started thrashing around and throwing everything on the floor and just generally giving us a hard time. And we can't figure out the rhyme or reason to it.

All we know is, we must be doing something right, because the kid is a pooping machine. Lawd sakes and boy howdy.

Doers of Dorkcraft

If the on-line gaming community or MMORPG'ers or whatever the hell they call themselves ever does a Google search and they end up on this blog, I expect a flaming raft of shit for things I might have said in the past that were not entirely (or, ahem, even at all) complimentary of what passes for a "hobby" in those circles: namely, sitting in front of a computer for countless hours at a time, vacant and vapid and vacuous, clicking oneself into oblivion while perpetuating what to the uninitiated such as myself appears to amount to nothing more than a giant electronic circle jerk.

But that was all before I became an on-line gamer myself. Er, sort of, anyway.

My very first MMORPG experience came via a friend on the SDMB, my very favorite source for almost all the information I need. We were in a thread about the late un-great TV show "Pirate Master" (blech on a stick, by the way) and somehow I ended up checking out and ultimately joining this awesome game called YoHoHo Puzzle Pirates. (I link to it on this blog, over there on the left, in case you find that you are interested.)

Although I should backtrack a bit and say that I partly joined, at the beginning anyway, out of spite. G is a gamer, and his friends are gamers, and he spends hours at a clip playing games that I don't understand and will never be good at. Counterstrike, and Team Fortress, and I don't even know what the hell all else. He got a special set of "cans" so that he can lurk up there in his den with his headphones on and talk to his buddies and have fun without me while I sit on the couch and pout, all lonely and with nobody to fetch me juice from the kitchen because I'm too spoiled to do it my damn self.

And I'm not a big fan of shoot-'em-up games, anyway, because I am highly suggestible and get nightmares, plus I don't really see the point of blowing other people's virtual heads off. Why? Are there prizes for winning Counterstrike? Does that game even have a story? I mean, some of the stuff that comes out of on-line gaming is hysterical and fantastic and I love it, like "im in ur camp killin ur dudes," and also "the cake is a lie," and the occasional "Leeroy Jenkins" -- but even then, I have to use my Google-fu a lot so I don't look like a giant clueless tool (any more than usual).

But Puzzle Pirates is altogether different. For one thing, the game is mostly puzzles (duh), not shooting -- although as you get better at it, you can progress to games where you have to shoot things. Cannons, mostly, at other people's ships. And the puzzles are all based on things that hypothetical pirates would really have to do: bilging, sailing, carpentry, shipwrightery, rumbling, sword fighting, drinking, carousing, playing spades. (Well, OK, maybe the spades are more purely hypothetical than other parts of the game, but still.)

And also, there are the people. I have been lucky enough to have only dealt with really nice people in my experience with the game. I'm sure YPP has its fair share of jerks and buttheads, but so far so good, for me. Only once has anyone made me cry, and I'm pretty sure that was a 13-year-old kid. My crew has been awesome, patient, teaching me what to do and how not to behave, and just generally not caring if I "level my druid" or not, as long as I show up and have a good time and help other people have a good time. I even placed in a couple of contests, including one where I wrote about Mother Teresa in an adventure with pirates. (Total fiction, of course.)

So ... not to make this long story any longer, but I think I finally understand what all the fuss is about. I know that hardcore gamers probably think that the YPP people -- "puzzlins," I believe my husband called us, once -- are lametards or whatever. And, exactly: whatever. (I don't care how lame he thinks I am, anyway, since I know what's really on his iPod.) I'm an old woman who never did this kind of thing before, and because I got my foot in the door in an environment where I felt safe and comfortable and encouraged, I am willing to try other games too. Which is kind of the point, right?

My heart will always belong to YPP, whatever I do, because that's where Pondera is, and my people, who know strengths and my skills and my language. (LOLcat.)