June 2008 Archives

I have been waking up in the night with very random, clarifying thoughts. Like suddenly realizing that an odd last name of a new retail contact at work is the same as the odd street name in a new address of one of our papers. I realize this means nothing to you, but it was like puzzle pieces fitting together at 3:00 am. Last night, Maude Newton, she who blogs about literary stuff, popped into my head for some reason. What I thought was this: could "Maude" be her real name? Could one really be a literary blogger if one's name was, say, Kaitlyn? Of course, one could, but maybe one would change one's name to something more bookish and fitting, like Maude. A Wikipedia check this morning tells me her first name is really Rebecca.

Thank god I'm coming up with shit like this instead of brilliant child care solutions or can't-lose money-making schemes.

You know what makes me mad? Popcicle stick jokes. Most of the time, they're just of the typical bad joke variety, but lately there have been a lot of infuriatingly nonsensical ones. It used to be my least favorite was, "What goes 99, clump, 99, clump?" Because the answer is "A centipede with a wooden leg." But if you think about it, what the hell is 99 supposed to sound like? You can't combine a general number with a descriptive sound and pretend they are the same thing. That my friends is a lazy joke, dependent on the listener to fill-in all the missing parts and laugh based on the idea of a joke.

But now! Now I have a new least favorite: "When is it time to go to the dentist?" Answer on stick: "Tooth thirty." Do you know why I hate this joke? Because they fucked up the punch line. This is a classic joke and the answer is supposed to be "Tooth hurty." Which sounds a lot like 2:30. Har har. It's not a brilliant joke, but it works because it is punny. "Tooth hurty" describes the ailment and reason to go to the dentist, as well as sounding like an actual time of the day you would go to the dentist. "Tooth thirty," on the other hand is nothing. Beyond using the word "tooth," there's zero substance to the joke. Plus, "Tooth thirty" is awkward to say. It makes me want to stab out eyeballs with popsicle sticks, or at the very least call some popsicle stick joke hotline and complain. I'd boycott the product, but can't resist the lure of banana and root beer flavored treats.

I think we've solved the swimming pool problem: my brother's apartment has two pools. I predict much floating this weekend.

The baby was kicking very hard last night, but on both sides of my stomach simultaneously. I can only conclude he is training to fight ninjas in there.

We were just watching the Olympic trials, though, so it's also possible he was inspired and wanted to test out his flexibility.

Isn't he talented already!

This weekend I had a lovely massage, a Mother's Day gift from J. I think all my weekends should include a massage. Apparently, you just lie there in a nice-smelling room with relaxing music and someone rubs all your sore muscles away. Brilliant!

The plan was to go swimming afterwards, but that fell through when our hot spot turned out to be populated solely by very tan 20-somethings who were lounging on all the available chairs and watching each other. The new plan is to find a hotel with a spectacular pool and seek out a cheap room rate one weekend night. People will all chip in, lay by the pool, watch crappy cable movies in an air-conditioned room, and maybe even order up some room service junk food. Sounds perfect to me.

I am starting to have fantasies about going into the doctor's office and having her declare that their calculations were way off and I am at 40 weeks NOW and, hey, I'm ready to have this baby straight away! I figure this must be a common third trimester thing, right when you start feeling trapped by your body. Usually when I feel a little heavy or bloated, I can just eat healthy for a few days and kick it up a notch at the gym and I'm back to feeling great again. While I decided that the summertime bbq diet of deviled eggs, potato salad, cake, and potato chips could certainly be scaled back, the gym workout gets increasingly difficult each time I go. I'm not doing anything too strenuous, just some eliptical, floor exercises, and stretching, but it does feel weird for added exercise to have the opposite effect of making me more worn-out and sore rather than stronger and healthier.

On top of all that, you know what's really bothering me? That Cindy McCain apparently doesn't have any original cookie recipes. Look, most of the things I bake come from cookbooks or recipes; I only have a few things that are "original," and even those had a head start with an established recipe. It's the execution of the whole thing that rubs me the wrong way. No one checked to make sure the recipe she was going to submit wasn't, say, a recipe on the Hershey's website? Or if these were truly a favorite of hers, couldn't she just admit it was a Hershey's recipe that she tweaked a little and gone with that? Frankly, the whole thing was just done sloppily, which makes me feel the same way I would about someone who stole an essay off the internet and turned it in for a grade. If you're going to fake it, at least put in a little effort to cover your tracks so it takes more than a lazy google to find you out.

I'm trying to decide if my feminist baker mom would be on board with me or upset that I'm more bothered by this than the fact that the presidential candidates' spouses' contribution to the campaign are boiled down to a cookie competition in freaking Family Circle magazine.

Also, can someone please bake up these two cookies and bring them to me? The, uh, baby would like to do a taste test.

There's the one gas station in town that always has ludicrously higher gas prices than all the other surrounding stations. Like $.20 more per gallon than one a block away. It's on a very busy street, not right off the highway or before a toll area or in a secluded spot. It never ceases to baffle me that it stays in business doling out gas for so much more than their competitors. And there are cars that stop there! Who are these people? Even if you saw the sign and assumed that all gas prices must have jumped that high, wouldn't you at least drive to the next pump--again, a block away--to verify that prices had indeed skyrocketed since the last time you checked? I can only conclude that this location somehow magically aligns with the exact spot where people run out of gas and can coast in on fumes. Either that or the store is a drug-dealing front and the high prices keep everyone away who isn't there for "gas."

That reminds me of my favorite store that only could have been a front for drug-dealing. In Brooklyn, there were a lot of them. Of course, I had no concrete proof, but what else is the guy doing running a severely understocked 24-hour convenience store? In any case, this place was a shoe store. Except they only had one wall of shoes, displaying only the right shoe. Each shoe had its own little shelf, and each was shrink-wrapped. The clerk sat in the back of the store, behind a plexiglass window. Of course, this store was open 24-hours, too. Eventually, they got rid of the shoes and switched to calling cards. They must have had people coming in actually trying to buy shoes.

Aside from feeling a little sad that I'm missing the 4th of July Nathan's Hot Dog competition this year, I'm feeling pretty happy about not being in New York right now. You know how much I miss the heat and humidity? Ha ha ha. The temperature's creeping up here, but it's still nice and cool once the sun goes down, with nary a hint of ocean in the air. I think this is what they call "spring."

The baby has taken to getting hiccups fairly regularly now. I knew that would happen, but I expected it to be more of a whole stomach sensation, when in fact it's like a little twitch low in the abdomen. It's fun knowing where his little head is. I'm getting poked and kicked quite a bit, but don't usually have a reference point for what body part might be doing the jabbing. But now I'm pretty sure it's his wiggly legs.

Our car's air conditioning has been slowly dying since last summer. We brought it in to be checked out and the diagnosis is not good. Apparently there are several leaks and some assorted other things that would take some $700 to straighten out. It's a decent car for a 1990 Buick, but there's no way pouring in that much money to revamp the air conditioning would be a wise investment. I'm a little scared of the summer now. I think I will have to purchase one of those handheld electric fan things for emergencies. Like when it's summer and I have to get in the car.

Even though the serious heat hasn't set in yet, my mind is already in some summer lethargy. I'm perfectly content to lie around with my root beer floats or root beer popcicle and read US Weekly with the first season of Human Giant going on in the background. In fact, I'm kinda sad we're out of root beer popcicles and US Weekly.

The Flobots, they continued their ascent into fame as they appeared on Leno.

Even though I was adequately warned, I didn't believe I'd cry so quickly. But it's futile to resist. These short comics about the earthquake in China are equal parts amazing and devastating.

In case you need a pick-me-up after reading a few of those, you should head to Krispie Kreme for your free donut.

We have begun painting the nursery. We don't have a crib or anything yet, but the kid will have some nice walls to look at. We were mostly inspired by this pic.

We also painted the office and bought some curtains and trimmed the trees and fixed the sprinkler system, so all-in-all, we're coming out looking like very responsible homeowners these days. Well, we still have to order shades for the living room so we can take down the grubby canvas cloths pinned above the window, but we've picked out the supplier and color, so here we come, more-finished-looking house!

I saw the "Sex and the City" movie this weekend and I have to say it is a sorry time not to be drinking. I met up with Heather and some of her friends at a lovely bar in the afternoon where sun was pouring in and she had just discovered that cranberry juice mimosas were the best thing ever. Everyone was pretty drunky mcdrunk by the time we made it to the movie, and I would estimate they were in similar company throughout the theater. While some people paid homage to the movie by getting a bit sloshed beforehand, others dressed the fuck up. We're talking strappy stilettos and summer dresses and big fancy bags. To go sit in a darkened movie theater in. Which I found hilarious. But then I mentioned it later to J and he reasoned that it was no different than the nerds pulling out light sabers or storm trooper masks when heading to a new Star Wars movie. And that those girls could never ever make fun of anyone else who dressed up to go to a movie ever again. But I can. Haaaa...stiletto nerds!

Things that can impede my sleep:

--Heat

--Having fan on so that it makes curtain flutter over forbidden-to-Max windowsill, causing Max to obsess over getting into said windowsill

--Having other window open, causing Max to leap into and out of it over and over and over throughout the night

--Eating Oreos directly before bed, causing baby to swim laps in my belly all night; he's gotten very good at the flip turn

--Max alerting us every time he finds a suitable present to bring us: foam pieces, tissue, leather scraps, and as of this morning, an eye patch. There was no sign of a blinded pirate stumbling around, so that one's a bit of a mystery.