I'm in love with a stripper

Okay, so I'm not normally the kind of person who proseletyzes about products, particularly cleaning products, and if you've ever lived with me (Eric) or visited my home, you know why.

I'm not a particularly clean person. Not that I'm disgusting or anything, I do the necessary minimum, but I've never been one to, you know, put the mini-blinds in the bath tub with some Clorox to get them their sparkling white-y whitest. (It took me a while to come up with an example of what a seriously clean person might do, so if that is a ridiculously lame and/or improbable example, well, there you go. I don't know what I'm talking about in this arena.)*

I'm also a terrible procrastinator, but that's an issue for another post.

Put these two tendencies together and you understand why I'm panicking at the thought of selling our house. We've signed with a real estate agent and she came over to our house two weeks ago to walk around with me and kind of point out the things we needed to clean up/organize/pack before the first open house. She originally wanted to have the first open house on the 28th (this past Sunday!) but as we walked around, she said, "Oh, you're not going to be ready by the 28th. Let's push it back to February 11th."

And thank god we did, because there is no way we would have been ready by then. KB has been doing his best to help out, picking up here and there when he comes home at night, but it's mostly up to me, and I am not good at this! All the little half-done projects that I've been meaning to get to (spackle that hole in the wall, put all those recipes back in the binder, go through my clothes to decide what to donate to Goodwill, vacuum the cat hair off of the roman shade above their perch) are now looming with the urgency that only comes when total strangers will be invading your house to decide if they like it or not. ACK!

So I've been stocking up on cleaning supplies and those Rubbermaid storage bins like mad, but the coolest thing I've found has got to be:

The Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.

This thing is truly astonishing.

Exhibit A: My 50+ year old some-kind-of-plastic-surface kitchen counter after being wiped down with a regular kitchen sponge and Simple Green, our cleaner of choice. Looks okay, right? Not blindingly clean, there's that stubborn cup ring that never comes out, but good enough for government work.


Exhibit B: Same counter. Can you tell where I've wiped with the Mr. Clean Magic Eraser?


Exhibit C: Now can you tell?


Exhibit D: Now I've cleaned the whole thing.


I said God DAMN!

I'm going to go back to the store and buy out their supply of these things. (The only drawback that I've found so far is that the pad tends to disintegrate pretty quickly, but it was only $2.50 for two of the things, so what the hey.)

Maybe, just maybe, with the help of my bald, earringed savior, we'll be ready for the open house in (less than) two weeks. ACK!

Thanks for reading.

*Ooh! I just thought of a better one! I'm not the kind of person who takes the burner cover thingees off of the stovetop and cleans around and under them to get all the gook that builds up in the crevices around them. That's what I should have said. I never do that!

And you know that you're the only one to say O.K.

So Nolan and I joined Gymboree.* There's one right nearby, in a shopping center next to a grocery store that I never go to (right by the Great and Evil Wally World).

I went to a first birthday party there for a mom-friend's kid in November. It was pretty awesome, as far as these things go. It's basically a big padded room (I knew I would end up in one of those eventually) with lots of modular climbing equipment - ramps, ladders, slides, tunnels, cushions - and lots of things to throw around in said environment - balls, scarves, hoops, inner tubes, bubbles, etc. It's toddler paradise.**

Now, when I went to this birthday party, I was like, "Hey, this place is pretty cool." but I wasn't actually considering joining a class. It's $200 for twelve weeks, for pete's sake. But recently, I've made a scientific observation of sorts concerning Nolan's behavior:

If Morning Nolan is given a chance to run around like a madman and burn off a lot of energy, Afternoon Nolan (a.k.a. Post-Nap Nolan) is a much happier, much mellower kid. He wants to read books and drink milk. If there is no morning Energy Dump, Afternoon Nolan morphs into Captain Crankypants, and the rest of the day is shot to hell - he wakes up crying from his nap and things go downhill from there.

So, given this (admittedly lacking in rigorous statistical support) observation, and given that the weather lately, unlike earlier in the winter, has been FRICKIN' COLD, limiting the possibilities for outdoor, playground-based Energy Dumps, we joined a Gymboree Class. The class itself is only once a week on Tuesday mornings, but the Extra Added Bonus is that they have open Play Gym every weekday afternoon for a couple hours, which means when Captain Crankypants makes his appearance, I can whisk him off to Gymbo the Clown's*** house and let him work his anger out in a healthy, mom-approved way. Two hundred bucks divided by twelve weeks divided by five weekdays per week is roughly $3.50 a day, and there have been some afternoons when I would have paid $3.50 a minute to have someone take him off my hands, so I think we're getting a bargain.

And now, the story at the heart of this rambling post.

We went to the aforementioned Open Play Gym last Friday. Not this past Friday, when KB had to stay home from work because I was permanently ensconced in the bathroom with effluvia coming from both ends, no. The Friday before the Great Plague of Ought Seven, this was. (Can you tell I'm writing this post at twelve-thirty in the morning? You can, can't you?)

When we got to the playroom, there were already a couple other toddlers and their moms/guardians hanging out, running around and hooting. Nolan and I took off our shoes (rules of the house) and joined in.

We quickly became acquainted with a young boy named Khrystian, mostly because he ran up to us the moment we came in the door and said, "Hi! What's your name?" before scampering off again. I know "Khrystian", and not "Christian," is his actual name, because he was wearing a name tag on his back (another rule of the house) and because his mom must have said his name about thirteen thousand times in the hour and a half we spent there.

Now, what I learned later but did not know at the time was that just prior to our arrival, Khrystian (Gah! How it galls me to even have to type that bastardized name!)'s mother had given her son and another toddler named Ethan some peanut M&M's. This in and of itself would not have been a problem (aside from the potential for a sugar-induced mania) if Khrystian's mother had bothered to ask Ethan's aunt (his guardian at the time) if it was okay. This she failed to do. And, as fate would have it, Ethan has a peanut allergy. Oh yes.

So shortly after our arrival, Ethan started to cough. And gag. And generally seem to be feeling not so hot. When the information that her nephew with the peanut allergy has eaten peanuts comes to light, Ethan's aunt is...strangely unconcerned. She seems more put out with Ethan for having the allergy than with Khrystian's mother for giving him the peanuts. She allows Ethan to continue playing. (!)

A few minutes pass. I quickly discover that Khrystian is a pain in the ass. Or, to be more accurate, Khrystian is a high-energy, seemingly intelligent kid who needs some close attention and firm discipline to really guide him, and Khrystian's mother is a lazy slag who would rather stand by the door and drink her Diet Coke than play with her son (or keep him from walking all over the other kids). He keeps taunting Nolan with his smuggled-in contraband toy car (am I the only one who reads the rules?) and intruding on every activity I try to engage Nolan in FAR AWAY FROM HIM so Nolan will stop crying for the friggin' car. I am losing my patience with this kid and his do-nothing mom. (She occasionally yells at him from the other side of the room things like, "Khrystian! Give that car to me right now or we're going home!" but she never actually follows through on these promises. This kid is going to be one hellacious teenager, I'm guessing.)

Suddenly, a cry of dismay goes up from the other side of the room - Ethan Of The Peanut Allergy has vomited. All over one of the slides. Yuck. Of course, all the toddlers have to check it out, and Ethan's aunt comes running over and proceeds to scold the kid for vomiting on the slide. Nice.

The Gymboree supervisor, an RN, comes over with the industrial size package of Clorox Wipes to clean up the mess. She hears that Ethan Of The Peanut Allergy has ingested peanuts and becomes alarmed. She asks the aunt if she has an Epi-Pen. Sure, says the aunt. It's at home. Great. The RN insists that Ethan's aunt take him to the doctor right away. The aunt says she will call the pediatrician as soon as they get home. The RN looks at her like, 'Are you friggin' nuts, lady?' but very politely says, "I am going to call an ambulance. I suggest you wait in the lobby with Ethan until they get here." And she walks out. I cheer her in my head.

Poor Ethan tries to get up and continue playing, and his aunt actually YELLS AT HIM for wanting to play! She grabs his arm, shakes him, and says, "You cannot play! You're sick!" and hustles him out to the lobby.

Another mom in the room and I make eye contact above our toddlers' heads with that little widening of the eyes that means, "What the fuck?"

The ambulance comes. Six, count them, six strapping EMTs (all hubba hubba men) come in to check Ethan out. He's breathing okay and seems pretty calm, but his face is bright red and he's coughing a lot. They take him into the ambulance with the aunt, whose main concern seems to be what a crimp this is putting in her day.

Nolan and I continue playing and trying to avoid Khrystian the Annoying until Play Gym ends (with no further incident) at 5pm.

I later learn from a mom-friend who works at Gymboree that Ethan was given an Epi-pen during the ride to the hospital and another one upon arrival, and that he's doing fine now. The aunt has been schooled in the necessity of always carrying an Epi-Pen with her while looking after Ethan, although she seems to believe that it means she can allow Ethan to eat peanuts if he wants to as long as she has the Epi-Pen.

And I thought I was a bad mother. Bah! I'm Mother of the Decade compared to Ethan's aunt and Khrystian's mom.

Thanks for reading.

*Actually, Nolan was not consulted. I joined the friggin' class and he goes where I go. I said "Nolan and I" because it sounds more diplomatic, as if I gave him a choice. Ha!

**Have you ever heard George Carlin's bit about how toddlers are basically like monkeys on acid? It is so painfully true. They careen about frantically, flapping their arms, pooping their pants, and screaming, and then their gaze is suddenly halted by some tiny random object that they focus on until they trip out and start running around again.

***No shit. This is really Gymboree's mascot. Every time the Majoring-in-Early-Childhood-Development-college-sophomore (I'm totally guessing here) who teaches the class mentions "Gymbo the Clown" I get visions of Courtney Love working the pole at Jumbo's Clown Room and I shudder. Not the best frame of mind for interacting with your toddler.

Once upon a looking for Donna time

So Nolan had his first haircut this weekend. I was sort of putting it off and putting it off because I kind of felt that I was not conforming to the mainstream by not cutting my little boy's hair. Like, "Screw you, gender stereotypes! I'm gonna let his hair be as long as I want!"

Although possibly it was just laziness and not wanting to deal with him screaming and fighting in a hair salon, too.

But the upshot is, I was looking at some Christmas pictures of him recently, and he looked like a raggedy white-trash scruffian whose momma didn't care enough to do what needed to be done with his hair. Plus he was waking up in the morning with mini-dreads in the back from going to bed with wet hair, and those were a pain in the ass to comb out, de-tangling spray or no.

So I asked some of my mom-friends, and they all said either take him to the barber shop your husband goes to (not an option for us, as KB is one of these guys who just break out the Wahl in the bathroom every few weeks) or go to a specialty kids' haircutting salon.

And thus, at 10 o'clock on Sunday morning, we found ourselves with a number of other hapless parents at the Snip-its Salon in Hingham, Massachusetts, trying to get the kid's hair cut in time to go home and watch the football games.






They were pretty good there - they have plenty of toys and things for the kids to play with (Nolan found a Thomas the Tank Engine quite enthralling)and there are lots of LSD-trip colors and video screens to bring on the grand mal seizures. We told them it was Nolan's very first haircut, so they saved a lock of hair for us and gave him a little certificate. He actually did surprisingly well - he stayed in the chair and didn't fuss too much for most of it. It was only at the very end when she tried to blow-dry some of the hair off of him that he freaked out - he did NOT like that at all. But then a sour apple Dum-Dum pop was procured, and all was well again.

My little baby's not a baby anymore! He's a boy! A boy with a haircut!

Thanks for reading.

Woke up this morning with the cold water

My dad's dog Jester died on Tuesday.

His "real" name (from the breeder) was Runlow's Majestic Jester. He was a big, friendly, goofy Chocolate Lab. He was fifteen years old, which is pretty damn old for a Lab, but it was sad news just the same. He had gotten quite debilitated in recent months, had a big lipoma on his ear and was slow getting up and lying down, but my dad said he still seemed to be enjoying life - he liked to eat, he liked whizzing in the grass, he still got excited about treats.

Then he developed a really bad sore on his side that started leaking serosanguinal fluid, so Dad and Ann took him to the vet. The vet was all, "Well, we can perform this surgery and then put him on a course of antiobiotics..." and they just said no. He was too old and had been through too much. So they had him put to sleep.

My dad called to tell me Tuesday night, and I could tell he was trying to keep it together and not cry, but he was obviously having a hard time and was trying to cut the conversation short. I wanted to tell him that it would be okay if he cried, that it wasn't the end of the world if he cried about his dog dying - he'd been my dad's companion for fifteen years and was a member of the family, so it's only natural.

But I didn't say that. I guess Dad was raised in that long-ago time when it was decreed that men must not cry, and he didn't want to show any weakness. So I said the usual things you say when a beloved pet dies - that he had a good life, that he was a good pet, you took great care of him, he loved you, all that stuff. Which was all true.


I'm glad we got to see him one more time - we visited at the end of September last year. Nolan was very fond of sucking his thumb while stroking Jester's soft silky ears.

They're going to have him cremated and bury his ashes under a tree out in the yard.

He was a good old dog.

Thanks for reading.

I'm going to the river, get me a tangled rocking chair

I was reminded last night (not for the first time, let us say) of the uselessness of my brain's tendency to retain random pointless bits of information.

It was late afternoon. KB had made a pot of tea* and I was trying to open a new carton of milk. Here in the Thptpth household we have two kinds of milk: Nolan's milk, which is whole milk, and KB's and my milk, which is 1%. Nolan goes through about a gallon a week, while KB and I put together only use our milk for coffee, the aforementioned tea and the occasional bowl of cereal, so I usually only buy the cardboard half-gallon carton of 1%.

So I was trying to open the new carton and couldn't quite get it. I had successfully peeled back the two sides of the spout and was trying to push them together to get the point of the spout to "pop" forward, but the sides were structurally unsound and just kept collapsing. Each successive attempt to push them in only created new fault lines in the cardboard, making it more and more impossible to achieve the desired goal.

After a few minutes of fumbling I began to contemplate switching to the other side of the carton and trying to open that one. I realized that for some reason the other side of the carton was being labeled in my mind the "illegal" side. And then a word popped into my head: "Lactomangulation." Which is not actually a word, but a sniglet. You remember them, yes? Rich Hall? Not Necessarily The News? "NNTN" was sort of like the proto-"Daily Show." Well, if you had HBO on all the time growing up in the 80s like I did, you would remember. And in my head, verbatim, I had the entire definition of "lactomangulation," which is: "Manhandling the "open here" spout on a milk carton so badly that one has to resort to using the "illegal" side."

Why? Why would my brain decide that this particular bit of information is not only pertinent, but important enough to hold onto for the twenty years since that show went off the air?

(Here are a bunch of them if you'd care to read.)

And there are more that I remember that aren't even on that list!:

Banectomy - the surgical operation you perform to remove a bad spot from a banana.

Gazoonting - using your face to fold back the center of the newspaper because your hands are both occupied trying to turn the page.

Potentater - the prized largest french fry in a carton of fast-food fries.

Minutater - the smallest french fry in an carton of fast-food fries.

Jujuspection - holding your candy up to the light coming from the movie screen in order to determine what color/flavor it is before eating it.

Succubeebish - the gooey gel-like substance surrounding the actual food in a can of cat or dog food.

Cellostatic - the mysterious force that makes saran wrap stick to itself so thoroughly that it is impossible to use.

I'm just sitting here trying to remember more of them and they keep popping up. I ask you. What valuable information is missing from my brain so that these infernal non-words can continue their residence in my grey matter? What possible use could they be?

Sigh.

Thanks for reading.

*Do not snigger. Have you ever had a REAL pot of tea? Made with actual tea leaves instead of tea bags? The difference is astonishing. I used to laugh along knowingly with that Paul Reiser bit about how tea always SOUNDS good ("Hmmm, caramel apple cinnamon tea!") but when you drink it, it still tastes horrible, until I had actual brewed tea from leaves. It's kind of like always having had Sanka and being told it was "coffee" and then drinking real, freshly-ground-Peet's-Major-Dickason's-Blend coffee. Get yourself a tea pot and try it out, whydontcha?

I try so hard not to get upset

Well, now I'm in trouble.

KB and I were driving in the car with Nolan. I was behind the wheel. There was this cab right up on my rear bumper - apparently the driver felt my speed was not sufficient and wanted to express his displeasure by crawling up my tailpipe. So when the road finally widened to two lanes, he of course zoomed around us at high speed. Naturally, I shouted, "Asshole!" as he zipped by.

Not two seconds later, we hear a little voice from the back seat pipe up with, "Aaaaahoe."

Shit. He's such a little mynah bird these days.

KB gave me a look like, "Evil wench! Why dost thou corrupt my progeny so?" (Although, to be fair, what he actually said was, "That's not cool, Booby.")

Which was nothing compared to how I felt inside. Yeesh. What kind of a lousy mother cusses in front of her kid? This kind, apparently.

So I've resolved to try even harder. My new replacement word for tense car situations is going to be "Dude!"

I even managed to use it last night coming home from yoga, even though Nolan wasn't in the car with me. My light turned green and I started to go through the intersection, but then two college boys in an SUV decided their light wasn't red enough for them and went through it. I slammed on the brakes and yelled, "Duuuuuuuuuude!"

Hopefully it will take.

Thanks for reading.

Sooner or later, your legs give way you hit the ground

So it's official. Starting July 1st, we're going to be Princetonians.

KB got offers from Princton and Montclair, and after about a week of hard thinking and talking and hashing out the pros and cons of both places, we decided on Princeton. We were very lucky, because both of these places had all of the big requirements for us: Good public schools for Nolan, close to family, reasonably close (with public transportation) to a large city with lots of cultural offerings like museums and concerts, and a diverse makeup of the population. After that we figured everything was gravy. So we got to choose based on things like whether we'd be able to walk to a downtown area on a Saturday morning to pick up coffee and a bagel. Awesome.

The Princeton group seems like a good fit for KB, too. They've got a great relationship with the hospital and the doctors who refer their cases - as KB likes to put it, you're not just a "doc in a box," locked in your dark room staring at a computer screen all day. Plus all the people that we met there seem like totally normal, real, no-bullshit people. They have lives outside the office and are involved in the community big time. We both just got a really good feeling about everyone there - unlike another practice (one that did not end up offering him a job, btw) where one radiologist spent the entire dinner talking about her collection of 6 classic Mustangs and how many limited edition Star Wars nutcrackers (I shit you not) she had in her "media room." No thank you.

It's a big relief, just knowing where we're going to be - I feel like I can finally start making plans. Of course, now the hard work begins, too. Selling this house. Finding and buying a house in Princeton. Packing. Aieeeee! Plus Kaybles is going to be working his ass off (not that he's got much junk in the trunk to start with) the next six months studying for the oral board exam in June in addition to all his regular responsibilities at work and his moonlighting gigs. So it's going to be a tough six months or so coming up here. But I figure as long as you know it's for a limited time, you can do anything.

And I'm glad the uncertainty (or this particular brand of uncertainty, anyway) is past.

How about you all? Have a Happy New Year? Having any trouble remembering to write "2007" on your checks?

Thanks for reading.

You take it on faith, you take it to the heart

Aaaaaaaand we're back.

Remember how in my last post I said how happy I was that we were flying down to NJ because I couldn't do another long drive? Yeah. I jinxed it. The Philly airport was fogged in pea-soup style Thursday night, and our flight was delayed four and a half hours. So we got into my mom's at 2:30 in the morning Friday. Uch. Nolan was all wound up the whole night, he had more energy than either of us - he was running around Logan airport in his dinosaur PJs wreaking havoc. We were about ready to bag it and go home when they finally boarded the flight. I guess it could have been worse - we could have been stuck sitting on the plane for four and a half hours like the previous flight to Philly was.

But the weekend itself was good. Everyone we met at the Princeton group was awesomely normal - down-to-earth, honest folk. They're heavily involved in the community, and everyone seems to have lives outside of work, which is great. I think if KB got a job offer from either this group or the one in South Jersey, we'd be happy. We saw lots of great neighborhoods with walkable, cute little downtowns and great public schools.

I got a little spoiled, I think, because my mom watched Nolan both Saturday and Sunday while KB and I did the real estate tours and the meet-and-greets with the radiology folks. I got to have adult conversations without being interrupted seventeen times, I got to sit down and eat an entire meal that wasn't lukewarm, and I got to drink alcoholic beverages. It was pretty sweet. So the transition back to real life here was a tough one. It was like, "Oh yeah. Just me and Pint Size here all day, by ourselves. Fabulous."

He's getting very defiant, my little man. It's like someone whispered in his ear while he was sleeping "You're supposed to be a toddler now, kiddo. Enough with the sweet compliant baby attitude - you gotta start individuating, man! Let's hear some rebellion!" And he listened.

It's not just the saying, "No!" all the time (although he's excellent at that), it's more that he's willfully disobeying me, like, all the time. He'll look right at me and keep doing whatever it is I've asked him not to do, and when I go over to remove him from the forbidden item (like our Christmas tree) he laughs and squeals like it's all a big game. I think (alright, honestly? I know for a fact) I inherited a bit of a temper from my dad, and I get worried that I won't be able to control myself when Nolan's pushing my buttons like that. Not that I would ever hit him, that's not it, but that I'll yell and scream and say things I really don't mean and scar him for life.

*sigh*

I gotta check out what some of the parenting books say on discipline. I guess this is going to be my parenting M.O. - play it by ear until you run out of ideas, and then consult the oracles for help.

So now we just have to wait to hear from the radiology groups. Hopefully we'll have an offer (or maybe, hoping against hope, two offers) by the end of this week. I think KB feels good that we've done as much as we can to make a good impression on these groups, and now we just have to leave it in their hands. Yipe. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Thanks for reading.

Lottery or car crash, or you'll join a cult

Welp, we've got one more trip down to Dirty Jers, and then (hopefully, possibly, maybe) that will be the end of the job search. KB will (hopefully, possibly, maybe) get an offer from one of the groups that we liked in an locale that we liked and that liked us.

And then we'll know where the heck we're going to be moving to in six months or so. Hopefully. Possibly. Maybe.

So we're flying down tomorrow night (thank god the group is paying for our trip - I don't think I could do another six-hour drive) and coming back Sunday night, and KB will have done two second interviews and I will have done two real-estate tours and two getting-to-know-you dinners and my mom will have had some serious Nolan quality time.

Wish us luck!

Oh, and we finally took our holiday picture. Huzzah!



Thanks for reading.

Y'all are brutalizing me

The Christmas card onslaught has begun. We haven't even taken the friggin' picture yet for our cards (ack! Less than three weeks!) and we've already received six cards from those early birds who are, you know, organized and shit. (Including one from my friend in Portugal. I think she must have sent it in October or something).

The one that threw me was from one of my aunts - it was a perfectly ordinary Christmas card, written and addressed by the mom who signs all the family's names, but the stamp on the envelope says "Stop Family Violence" and has a stereotypical kids crayon-style drawing of a stick-figure house and sun, but with a sad, frowning kid in the foreground.

I'm sure my aunt bought the stamps for a good cause - probably some portion of the proceeds went to charities that fight domestic violence or something like that - but, yeesh. Nothing says Christmas like Family Violence, I guess.

Thanks for reading.

But the fire is so delightful

It finally snowed yesterday. Yay! I say "finally" only because this entire fall has been unseasonably warm, in the 50s and 60s, and while that's not entirely unpleasant, per se, it does seem a bit odd. Kind of fills me with a vague sense of unease, a certain wrong-ness, like maybe there's something to this whole global warming thing. Ya think?

Speaking of a vague sense of unease*...we spent the weekend after turkey day with a side branch of the extended family tree, and there were some major inter-family fracases (fracasses? fracasees?) happening while we were there. Major to the tune of us being woken up at one in the morning by people downstairs screaming "Don't you dare! Don't you dare!" and loud thumping noises and someone at the top of the stairs screaming, "What the fuck is going on down there?"

What the fuck indeed. To be honest, it was sort of refreshing, in a way - my own family is probably filled with just as much resentment and ill will as this particular family is, we just tighten our assholes and keep everything bottled up and seethe quietly to ourselves (or complain behind each other's backs), whereas these people just let it all fly. I was sort of taken aback that they felt no compunction whatsoever about fighting (at one in the morning! drunk!) in front of the relative strangers that we constitute to them, and that no one bothered to mention it the next day when we all convened for pancakes in the morning, preferring instead to go breezily about their day as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but I was also sort of envious that they felt free enough to just...scream at each other.

Aaaaand we were down in Dirty Jers the week after that (last week) for one more round of job interviews. KB met with four more groups, three of which he's really really jazzed about, so if any of them offer him a position, we'll probably end up taking it (and if more than one of them does, we'll have some major decision-making to do). It was an exhausting week, with rounds of "meeting the group" dinners and real-estate agent tours of towns every day, not to mention the fact that the whole family came down with the plague. Actually, Nolan was fine, it was just KB and me who were on death's door. He even was forced to cancel one of his interviews to stay home (at my mom's) on Wednesday, he felt so crappy. It was really a bummer, since we were all just sick a couple of weeks ago. But we got to see Nana (my mom) and Nolan learned how to say "Hello?" to the telephone, and we saw my grandfather and my aunt and cousins, so it wasn't all work. Nolan and I spent a LOT of time in the car with the real estate agents, plus the five hour drives down and back with KB, so we're all happy to be home again.

And now, let the usual time of holiday franticness begin! Take a family holiday picture! Soon! So we have time to order Christmas cards online! And mail them out! Hurry! I've started looking for presents in all the catalogs we got in the mail while we were gone, and I realized that, without exception, every single one of them is labelled something like, "Last-Minute Holidays 2006" or "Order by Dec. 22 for Christmas delivery!" or "It's Not Too Late!" And I think, "It better not be too late, motherfuckers, I just started!"

Thanks for reading.

*Nice blend, Fozzie - thank you, Fozzie!

Just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in

So I know you've all been breathless with anticipation for the next installment of The Development Next Door. I can feel the keen excitement vibrating over the ether. Truly.

But unfortunately, there's really not much to report.

We had a community meeting at the neighborhood church last Wednesday night, which was supposed to be a forum where all the people who live on the street could express their feelings about the proposed re-zoning. I don't know what we were thinking - if you'll recall my last post on the subject, my ineffectual tirade against people who don't care enough to attend a City Council meeting - I don't know why we thought holding another meeting was the answer. Which is a roundabout way of saying nobody came. Or not nobody, exactly, but very few people. The developers came, of course, and brought their lawyer with them, which I didn't think was really in the "neighborhood meeting" spirit, but then, they didn't ask me.

There was much arguing, and much interrupting of each other, but it remained mostly civilized and well-behaved, if with a seething undercurrent of animosity. Our awesome City Councillor had the flu, so it was truly amazing that he even showed up to run the meeting, which he did.

The developers and their lawyer pretty much monopolized the discussion and tried to make the issue that they stood to lose a lot of money if the street was rezoned, and how unfair it was to them to do this. They kept talking about what a nice project it was going to be and how good it would be for the neighborhood ("We're not going to cut down ALL the trees..."). Whether that's true or not, I don't really think that's the issue. Our little street can't support five more townhouses - we don't have the sewer and water resources, we don't have room for the traffic increase, and we can't afford to lose the green space. The whole point of re-zoning the street is to keep ANY future development, no matter how well-intentioned, from happening, because the street (technically, it's not even a street, it's a Lane - we don't even have sidewalks) can't support it.

But this developer couple (it's a husband and wife team - the husband is Chinese and an architect/engineer, I guess, and the wife is Caucasian and a duplicitous pain in the ass) are trying to make people feel sorry for them, because they have been so greviously wronged, you see. The bought the property, which was advertised to them as being Residence B and thus capable of being developed, in good faith, and NO ONE TOLD THEM that the city was thinking about re-zoning it. This despite the numerous flyers I peppered the neighborhood with and the numerous letters the City Councillor has sent out. You see, they don't get the mail there. They bought the property, but they don't live there. They're not ever planning on living there, even if they get to build their five condos. And yet they still have the audacity to address those of us who live on the street as their neighbors.

So anyway. Nothing much was decided or accomplished at this meeting. I said I thought it was disingenuous of the developers to pretend that they were trying to make the neighborhood a better place when what they were really about was making money. The pain-in-the-ass wife said that they would be lucky to make even a very small amount of money on this project, and then later in the meeting the husband let slip that they stood to make in the vicinity of $200,000 in their worst-case scenario. So I guess that's not much money to them.

(Side note: Two people in the neighborhood who are on my "side" in this issue have spoken to me in seperate conversations about the developers and, during the course of the discussion, referred to the husband as "The Chinaman." Each time that happened, all I could think the rest of the conversation was, "Dude, Chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature...")

The meeting where the City Council has to vote on the re-zoning proposal is December 4th, which is coming up quick. I don't know if anyone else on the street is planning on stepping up and making some noise, but I'm guessing probably not, judging by the lack of attendance at the neighborhood meeting. If people aren't willing to walk half a block to the church to talk about this issue, they're probably not going to write letters or make phone calls to the City Councillors. *sigh*

The other sort of blech thing is that I told our City Councillor that we were probably going to be moving next summer. I felt dishonest not telling him when it's virtually a certainty - a lie of omission, basically. And of course I got all worked up about it and started blubbering when I was talking to him. Poor guy. He had the flu and just wanted to go home and go to bed, and here's me sniffling and snupping and generally getting way too emotional. He was very understanding and said he was sorry to hear that we would be leaving. I tried to tell him what a great public servant I thought he was and just ended up blubbering some more. I hate that I do that. I felt like I was in 10th grade again trying to talk to Mr. Kathan the Scary Physics Teacher about my test grade. Ugh.

So that's that with that. I guess we'll see what happens on the 4th.

Thanks for reading.

Fat bottom girls, you make the rockin' world go 'round

This is awesome.

Tell 'em Penn says hi.

Thanks for reading.

Thursday night your stockings needed mending

So I've been at this mom gig for almost a year and a half now.



The pay is for shit, but the non-salary benefits are pretty awesome. I don't know about my boss, though. The language barrier's been a big hurdle for us. He's a bit of a tyrant at times, and I'm not sure he appreciates how hard I work for him. He never gives me any kind of feedback on the quality of my work, so I'm always sort of winging it. And the overtime! I feel like I never have a day off.



But I guess I'll keep at it. You know how bad it looks on your resume if you leave a job after only eighteen months.

REASONS I FEEL ABLE TO ASSERT THAT I AM NOW, OFFICIALLY, A MOM:

1. I have cleaned out my jeans pockets while getting undressed to go to bed and found Goldfish cracker crumbs.

2. I have stepped barefoot onto a Lego in my child's darkened room and had to stifle the urge to scream in pain so as not to wake him.

3. I have had my "morning constitutional" with my child sitting on my lap because he won't leave me alone in the bathroom for even a minute.

4. I have found the lost sippy cup rolling around on the floor of the car and opened it to discover days-old milk well on its way to becoming some sort of feta-like cheese.

5. I have spit on a tissue and used it to clean my child's face.

6. I have used the five-second rule to determine whether to allow my child to eat food that's fallen on the floor.

7. I have endured the looks of old ladies in the supermarket while my child throws a screaming tantrum because I won't let him have a particular item (in this case, a balloon. Damn floral department.)

8. I have cleaned up boogers, poop, pee, puke, tears, blood and pretty much any other human effluvium you can think of except for the one that's exclusively the domain of males and we're not even gonna go there because my boy's only a toddler, for Christ's sake.

9. I have sternly told my child, "No!" and then walked into another room to release my stifled giggles because whatever it was he did was incredibly cute, but I didn't want him to see me laugh 'cause that'll just encourage him.

10. I have unapologetically told a disapproving (male) passenger on a plane that it was not within my power whether my child cried or not, but it WAS within his power whether he was a dick or not.

REASONS I AM NOT YET SURE I CAN ACTUALLY CALL MYSELF A MOM:

1. I have never yet had the opportunity to say "Because I said so."

2. I have never yet been to the emergency room. For my child, anyway.

3. I have not had to make an asparagus costume for the school play that's tomorrow.

4. I have not had to stay up until 2 a.m. waiting for my child to come home from a party.

5. I have not had to talk to my child about sex, or death, or God.

6. I have not had to teach my child to drive.

7. I have not had to watch my child walk away from me on the first day of kindergarten and resist the powerful urge to grab him up, cradle him in my arms and run shrieking into the wilderness to live like Walt Whitman and hide from the evils of society.

8. I have not had to shush my child while riding public transportation when he asks, "Why is that lady/man/person so fat/dirty/smelly?" and try to quietly explain to him while throwing apologetic smiles at the fat dirty smelly person.

9. I have not had to buy any cookies, candy, wrapping paper or magazines to support my child's sport, school club, or scout troop.

10. I have not had more than one child and have never had to endure the eternal "Mine!" and "He's touching me!" dramas.


I'm sure there's lots more, but ten seemed like a nice round number, and those were the ones I thought of.

Thanks for reading.

Don't sleep in the subway, darling

Overall, I was pretty pleased with the results of last week's elections. We didn't exactly stay up til all hours biting our nails and waiting for the results of Virginia and Montana to see if the Democrats would take the Senate in addition to the House, but we did manage to sit through a couple hours of CNN's "America Votes 2006" coverage, which is saying something for us. I can't watch any "real" news anymore without cracking up at the self-important music*, the swooping camera effects, and the pompous commentators. Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert have finely-tuned their parody/satire/fawning copy of the straight news so well that everything on CNN feels like a joke to me.

I was, however, bummed that Question 1 didn't pass here in the Bay State. Apparently, all the big liquor stores contributed a lot of corporate money to the "No" side of the debate and tried to scare people into thinking their kids would be in mortal danger from all the drunk drivers sure to be on the road after buying their beer at Shaw's, instead of having to WALK NEXT DOOR (oh, the humanity!) and buy it at the drugstore. *sigh* I really don't care too much one way or the other, but it would have been nice to be able to get wine at our Trader Joe's, for pete's sake. Having grown up in a state where they have DRIVE-THROUGH LIQUOR STORES, for the love of christ, I can't see how having wine available at grocery stores is really such a big deal.

I'm glad the Democrats did so well. I don't think they really had as much to do with their victory as the Republicans did, though. I saw Bill Maher on Larry King talking about it, and he put it best:

"What Democrats have to take away from this -- and I think they already have learned this lesson -- is that it wasn't really a victory for you. It reminded me of the World Series. The St. Louis Cardinals didn't really win, the Detroit Tigers lost it. Every game I tuned in, the Tigers were throwing the ball over the infield, over people's heads. The Cardinals just stood on the field and won.

That's sort of where the Democrats are. Let's see if you can win an election against a party that hasn't disgraced itself so horribly in every single way a party could disgrace itself."

When we found out Rumsfeld had resigned, KB and I actually high-fived each other. As if we had something to do with it. Like when your favorite sports team beats a rival and you say, "We won!" You didn't do anything. Your team won and you watched them, that's all.

But I'm still happy.

Thanks for reading.

*Have you seen "Broadcast News"? If you haven't, drop what you're doing (or at least open a new window in your browser) and add it to your Netflix list, for the love of all that is holy. It is one of the most quotable movies EVER, and worth watching just for the very short segment where Marc Shaiman (and some other guy) play the News Theme Writers who are pitching a new theme song for the news to the producer. It's hilarious.

Who put the ram in the ramma-lamma-ding-dong?

Hey, kids!

Happy Halloween from me and my little monkey. We ARE planning on doing the whole trick-or-treat thang this evening, and I will let you know how it goes. We will, of course, confiscate any candy Nolan receives and eat it ourselves, like the mean horrible parents we are.

He is a pretty amazing little guy, I have to say. He's talking a LOT, both gibberish and perfectly understandable words. His current fave is "no," said in a sort of adenoidal dragged-out whine, like, "Nnngoooooo..." which he says in reply to any question, whether he actually means "no" or not. He's also fond of "ball," "balloon," "bird," "bubble," and "bear," so I guess he's got the "b" sound down pat. "Mama" and "Dada" are perennial favorites, particularly at 6am when he refuses to recognize daylight savings time and is ready to get up for the day.

He came up with a new "word" that he uses to mean "here is another thing just like this one" when pointing to objects. He'll point to one star, for example, and say, "Gah!," which is "star" in Nolan-ese, and then I'll say, "Yes, that's a star," and then he'll point to another star and go, "A-diddle-diddle," and I'll say, "Yes, that's a star, too." It took me a while to figure out what he meant, because it was a word for a concept rather than a noun. Clearly, he's a genius.

He also snores and talks in his sleep, which is hilarious and adorable and makes my heart feel all squeezy in my chest.



As you can see, he's a monkey for Halloween (at a party last Friday a couple people thought he was a mouse, hence the addition of the prop banana). We're heading over to some friends' neighborhood to trick-or-treat with them, so we won't be home to answer our door, but I'm not too upset about that since we only ever used to get two or three groups of people anyway.

I hope you all have a happy and safe Halloween!

Thanks for reading.

It has to start somewhere, it has to start sometime. What better place than here? What better time than now?

What the fuck is it with people in this country?

(Warning: Broad generalizations ahead.)

People just don't want to get involved, god dammit.

(And yeah, I know, I've been non-blogging for almost a month and I need to 'splain where I been and what I been doing, but I'll get to that later - I don't have time for that right now, I'm pissed off.)

Here's what's going on:

The whole development thang.

Yes, I know, I KNOW that's all I talk about. But it's preying on my mind, people!

In the short term, we - we meaning KB and I and our immediate concerns about developers building in this neighborhood - have scored a victory. As I talked about in my last post. No one will be building in this neighborhood for almost a year, thanks to a city-wide moratorium on building in Residence B-zoned neighborhoods. So we're free and clear. We're gonna be moving when KB finishes his residency in June of Ought Seven, so we'll be well outta here before that happens. (Where we'll actually BE is another post altogether. One thing at a time. Patience, grasshopper.)

So we're fine. Nothing's gonna affect us; no big construction vehicles will be growling up the street while we're here, waking Nolan up from his nap; there will be no before-and-after surveys of our house to determine if the foundation was damaged by any blasting in the area.

But I continue to work on trying to get the neighborhood re-zoned, from Residence B to Residence A, which would mean no more multi-unit developments.

Why?, I hear you ask. Why bother if you're not going to be living there in nine months? Why fight for a street that you won't be living on when the changes you're fighting for actually take effect? That's a good question.

And I'm not sure I know the answer. I guess the short answer is that I still care about this street. This is still the place where KB and I got married in our backyard. This is still the hill I lumbered up while nine months pregnant with Nolan, walking back from work. This is still the street where I've made friends, talked with my neighbors, taken Nolan for walks, been startled by raccoons, where we've lived, dammit! Just because I'm moving away doesn't mean I don't still care about what happens in the future.

So I've been trying to help our awesome city councillor get the street re-zoned. But it seems there's some opposition, mainly from the developers and land speculators who have bought property on the street and plan to tear down the houses on the land and build condominiums. And these people have money. And laywers. And they stand to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars if the zoning changes go through. So of course they're fighting with all they've got.

But I've been diligently going around the neigborhood, handing out my little flyers, trying to get people to go to the City Council meeing and the Planning Board meeting and Speak. The. Fuck. Up. And people say they will. People say they really REALLY don't want more developments on our street.

And yet they don't come to the meetings. Or they do come, but they don't stand up to be counted.

There was a Planning Board meeting last Wednesday night. KB and Nolan and I were in Dirty Jers for some more job interviews, so we couldn't be there. I told our Councillor I wouldn't be there, but that I would draft a letter to the members of the planning board for him to read at the meeting. Then I walked around our neighborhood and spoke to a number of people about the importance of this meeting and the fact that I wouldn't be there, so some other people needed to step up and attend.

So here's what I'm pissed off about (You mean you have a point? Huzzah!): People told me they were going to go to this meeting. I personally spoke to six people, five of whom told me they would be at the meeing and would SPEAK UP about their support for the re-zoning (and one of whom was going to be out of the country at the time, which pretty much trumped my out-of-state excuse). And yet I hear from my city councillor that exactly one person spoke up. One. Out of all the people on my street who say they are so opposed to new developments. One.

And yeah, one person can make a difference. One person is important. But tonight, at the City Council hearing (where they were supposed to vote on this issue but instead continued it until the next meeting because it is such a contentious issue) the numbers counted. The opposition showed up with a signed petition from five residents of the street, which is all they need (20% of the property owners on the street) to make it even harder to pass the re-zoning.

And nobody else from "our" side showed up but me. And KB. Which really, REALLY bummed me out.

(Pause for breath.)

And now, the broad generalization. I think people in the U.S. think of politics as a vocation. A job. Like, "What do you wanna be when you grow up, Timmy?" "I wanna be a plumber!" "How about you, little Billy?" "I wanna be President!" "Awwwwwww, isn't that cute? Little Billy wants to be President! And maybe you will someday, Billy. Maybe you will." And if it's not your job, if you're a plumber and not a politician, you should just stay the fuck out of things and mind your own business. We don't try to tell the heart surgeon how to hold the scalpel, and we don't mess with the politicians when they're passing their bills and molesting their underage pages (sorry, I couldn't resist).

But here's the thing. Politics isn't a job. It's not just for the politicians. Everybody has to get involved in politics or it doesn't work. The decisions that the politicians make affect everybody, not just other politicians. I know it doesn't seem that way sometimes, but it's true. And people in the U.S. get all bogged down with their own individual lives - who's gonna take the kids to soccer practice? - what am I gonna make for dinner tonight? - does this skirt make my ass look fat? - that they forget that the public arena is important, too. (I have now written the word "politicians" so many times it's starting to look weird to me.)

I had this friend in graduate school (who I still consider a very dear friend, I just don't get to see him much anymore) from Argentina who used to piss me off royally when I first knew him. Every time there was some issue in the department, some disagreement, he would argue with incredible passion. He would say inflammatory things and make sweeping judgements and get really really worked up about things (or so it seemed to me). He would accuse the administration of the school of conspiring to make our lives difficult and basically raise hell. Because where he comes from, everybody knows you have to get in there and have your say or you're going to get trampled on. No one is guaranteed to have any affect on the outcome of decisions, so people know they have to MAKE their voices heard if they want to be heard.

And it's not like that here. I don't know if we take things for granted, or we don't see the connection between our own individual actions and larger society, or what, but we tend to keep our heads down and our mouths shut. We don't care about what happens to our neighbors or what is for the greater good, we just care about getting what's ours, and fuck everybody else.

And not like I'm all high and mighty Miss Social Change 2006. I only got involved in all of this because I didn't want to live next to a construction site for the next nine months. My initiative was totally motivated by self-interest. I have no illusions about that.

But these people, these people who live on my street, my neighbors, they SAY they don't want anymore developments. They SAY they don't want to have big trucks on the street and water runoff problems and more traffic and less green space. But they aren't even willing to show up at a city meeting and SAY what they want. Because it might interfere with their watching the ball game. Or doing the laundry. Or whatever the fuck.

And that just makes me sad. Why don't we care enough?

Am I just being totally naive?

Thanks for reading.

Hit the fuckin' road and piss up a rope

Dude!*

We totally won! The developer guy gave up! He's going away! Huzzah!

We went to a meeting last night of our town's Conservation Commission, where the developer was supposed to find out whether the Conservation Commission's rules applied to the land next door where he wants to build. We went around our neighborhood with flyers on Sunday to try to get some people to show up, because we thought this could be a big deal - at the very least, if the guy had to follow the Commission's rules, it would delay his project for a while, and at best it could cancel it altogether. (There's a stream that runs down the back of all the property on our side of the street that may qualify as "wetlands" according to the Massachusetts General Laws).

So we showed up expecting it to be another battle in a long drawn-out war. There were a couple people from the neighborhood already there, and when they saw us they came over and said that the chair of the commission had announced that Loser Developer had withdrawn his petition for determination of applicability. And we were like, "What does that mean?" He's stalling for time? He's thinking he doesn't have to abide by the commission's rules? What?

And we were sort of standing around in the hallway outside the hearing room discussing it when Loser Developer himself came out and told us he wasn't going to pursue the project anymore. He said they didn't think it was worth putting any more money into it because they weren't going to be able to build as many units as they needed to make a profit. Plus he said, and I quote, "I don't wanna fight the neighborhood."

That's me! That's us! We're the neighborhood! He doesn't want to fight us!

Sweet!

We totally made a difference.

So our city councillor was there, too, and after the developer dude left, he gave me a hug and said how lucky we were that it turned out this way, that situations like this don't usually turn out so well. He's sponsoring a resolution in the city council to re-zone our entire street to single family houses only, which would mean no more developments ever (yay!), so we're still going to work with him to get that passed - there's a hearing for that next month.

So my first foray into local politics has turned out well! Not only is the developer going away, but I got to meet lots of people in my neighborhood and feel like something I did had an impact. Even better, we didn't have to use the lawyer to get the result we'd hoped for.

It was hard for me to do some of that stuff - walking around knocking on people's doors and trying to convince them to be on my side is really REALLY hard for me. Getting up and speaking at that Zoning hearing was hard for me. Not freaking out and backing down after the guy came to my house and threatened me was hard for me. I feel like, at the advanced age of 32, I've learned something about the value of working hard for an issue you care about. If I'd done nothing two months ago when we first found out about this, it's very likely that they would have gotten their zoning variance approved and they would have already started construction (in my first conversation with the developer's local flunkie he mentioned starting September 15th). And I'd be miserable.

But instead I managed to do the things that were hard for me and overcome my vast reserves of social anxiety because I really didn't want this development to happen. It's funny - I was saying to our Councillor - I've never gotten involved with anything like this before, probably because nothing had ever impacted me personally before. But now that I've seen a little bit of how city politics work (and I'm sure the encouragement of a good end result helps, too) I feel like I want to keep doing things like this. KB and I have said that, whenever we end up where we're going to end up, we need to get involved big time.

The big loser here is the real estate speculator who bought the land from the people who used to live there. He was the one the developer was going to buy it from, and now that they're not going to, he's kind of screwed. I don't feel bad for him, though - if that's how you make your living, you've got to be prepared for some elements of risk, right?

Thanks for reading.

*And by "dude," I mean, of course, my tens of loyal readers.

The first time I smoked...guess what? Paranoid.

So I had a birthday last week. I am now officially well into my 30's and fast approaching the time where, when I sell my first screenplay, the trades will not call me a "tyro" screenwriter anymore. Sigh.

Nolan and I were down in NJ the week before last, and, as predicted, there was plenty of drama. It was hard to be away from KB for a whole week, but we did get to see a lot of family and eat lots of food, so it wasn't a total wash.

Then this past week my friend Rose was here visiting, which was awesome. We took Nolan to the aquarium on Monday, which he enjoyed thoroughly (although not, perhaps, as much as his mommy did). But the big hit for him was the balloon he got from Cheers, where we had lunch. They didn't let us take it into the aquarium (I guess because if it popped and got into one of the penguin exhibits a penguin could eat it and DIE), so we had to check the balloon, which was tied to Nolan's sweatshirt, at the coat check. So when we came out of the aquarium I had to give the coat check guy my little ticket and say, "It's the balloon," which I thought was nice and dada-esque.*

Tuesday night KB and Rose and I went out for my birthday, and I was reminded of how little tolerance for drinking I have these days. Out of practice, I guess. I was totally hung over the next morning. Yuck.

Both Rose and KB left Wednesday - Rose for NYC and a wedding, and KB for New Jersey and a job interview. So Nolan and I were on our own for the rest of the week, which I guess we should be used to at this point, but which still kind of sucks.

Then Saturday we're all flying to Omaha to visit Pappy and Grandma for a week. So we'll be gone again, but hopefully for a more restful visit. They volunteered to Nolan-sit for one night so KB and I could have a date night, which will be nice. When I talked to my dad yesterday he asked, "Do you want us to fill up the hot tub for you guys?" and I thought, "Is this a trick question?"

So. Yeah. That's the cliff notes version of the last two weeks. I've got another Development Next Door thing this Wednesday night - the Conservation Commission is having a public hearing regarding whether there is Conservation Commission jurisdiction on that property. So I'm hoping to get lots of neighbors to show up again to speak against the development.

And I need to get Nolan's fifteen months old pictures out. Already, the querying e-mails are coming - "Where are the new pictures?" So it seems like I've got a lot on my plate.

And now I'm old. Older. Alas.

Thanks for reading.

*I thought of that Salvador Dali quote, or rather, Penn and Teller's rephrasing of that Salvador Dali quote, "So little of what might happen, does happen." Which they took to mean that Dali was wondering why, when he orders dinner, he's never served a flaming telephone book. (I'm totally paraphrasing from "How To Play With Your Food"). I thought this situation was pretty similar - give a coat check guy your claim ticket and you get a balloon tied to a child's sweatshirt.

I told the witch doctor I was in love with you

Going to drive down to Dirty Jers with Nolan tomorrow - my mom is flying up here from Philly, we're picking her up at the airport, and then we're all three driving back down to her place (can you tell this is her first and only grandchild? The things she's willing to do, I swear.) Let's hope we don't encounter too much of Hurricane John or Tropical Storm Kristy on the drive. (Kristy? KRISTY? It sounds like we'll be attacked with huge hair-sprayed bangs and frosted eye shadow instead of weather.)

So we'll be gone for a week. KB is staying here in Beantown as he has his first big board exam on Friday the 8th. He'll have a week of bachelorhood and old-fashioned cramming for his test. It will be good in a way that we'll be gone so he can focus, but we're going to miss him a lot.

Nolan and I will stay with my mom and visit lots of family, so there will be plenty of potential for conflama* because of all the various goings-on with the fam. My aunt on my dad's side is visiting my grandparents with two of her sons (and apparently some girlfriends? Or something?) from Spokane, and my stepsister and her boyfriend have also moved back to the East coast from Ohio and have been staying with the same grandmother but have now been booted out because of my aunt's visit and are staying with my other aunt and uncle for a few days while they look for their own place to live. Everybody clear on that?

So prolly no posts for a week or so. Unless I get really bored one day at my mom's.

Thanks for reading.

*I actually used that word on the phone with my aunt, Dru, and she was like, "What? Con-what?" I forgot it's not really a real word.

UPDATE: Okay, I just want to point out that I'm not really an idiot - I just didn't realize Hurricane John was in the Pacific Ocean and thus there was really no chance that we'd run into any John-related problems driving down the East Coast. Apparently, it was Hurricane Ernesto (or what was left of him) that gave us all the rain and wind and giant tree branches crashing down onto the Merritt Parkway 40 feet in front of us that we just barely avoided. My mistake. (By the by, why is the hurricane in the ocean off of Mexico named John, while the one on the East Coast is Ernesto?)