Complaint No. XVICMII

I finished most of my Christmas shopping.

I still have to find a xxxxxxx my brother wants, a xxxxxxx to go with the xxxxxxxxxx I got my sister, and a few xxxxxxx for my xxxxxxxx.

We're doing Christmas on Sunday, when Zoe gets back. :)

Earlier in the shopping season, I wandered into TJMaxx, and happened upon a few great things for holiday gifts. And... bought a few things for myself. There was a beauty of a box there for 10 bucks, and I collect boxes, so I added to the collection. And there was a perfectly perfect clock for my kitchen for 5 bucks.

FIVE BUCKS???

I picked a spot in my kitchen, jammed a nail into the wall, popped a battery into my treasure and hung 'er up and let 'er tick away.

It was a few days later when I realized why the thing was only $5.



I'm not so good with Roman numerals, but I had to laugh when I saw the IIII.

I won't be finishing my Christmas shopping at TJMaxx.

Determination

It was neat when Jacob realized, hey, there are toys under this paper crap!


The day comes and goes so fast. I hope everyone is at least 10 pounds heavier now, because I'm guessing I am.

Missing: MAGIC

"You better watch out,
You better not cry."

-- Santa Claus is Coming to Town



I absolutely love wrapping gifts. I love picking bows and stickers and tags... paper and bags and tissue paper...


After I finished up tonight, I thought about Zoe sleeping in a bed far, far away. I am happy that Santa will know to get her gifts to North Carolina, but there's something really big missing in her house here, and that is the anticipation that is Christmas with kids. That electricity that practically pulses through the house. Jacob will be here with me in the morning, but at 1 year old, he doesn't understand wrapping paper, let alone that some big guy is covered with soot after cleaning out our chimney.

When I talked to Zoe tonight, she was about to make cookies to leave for Santa. I could tell she would rather be doing anything else than talking to Mom at that moment.

I am truly happy for her, and happy that her dad will get to remember the glory of getting whacked in the head before the sun comes up to see what Santa brought. But this Christmas, I will be thinking of her, and wishing she was here to share the magic with Jacob.

And Mommy.

Good night, my little girl. Mom is hoping for all the best for you this Christmas.

Final countdown

"Since you been gone I can do whatever I want.
I can see whomever I choose.
I can eat my dinner in a fancy restaurant,
But nothing, nothing can take away these blues.
`Cause nothing compares,
Nothing compares to you."

-- Nothing Compares 2 U, Sinead O'Connor



I have been looking forward to this weekend in a bittersweet way... both my children will be elsewhere and I can finish my Christmas, er, holiday shopping. I can hang with my friends, I can run around unfettered. I can mop floors without waiting until some ungodly hour. Hell, I could get drunk if I wanted!!

But tonight as Zoe lay dozing in bed, I was washing her clothes and packing her things for a weeklong stay at her dad's. They are leaving at 5 a.m., and I am sadly counting the minutes until they pull out of my driveway.

I'm glad he came in early today and spent the night, because I think Zoe had some apprehension at the last minute, despite her excitement leading up to this big trip. They are romping around like old pals. Like two children, actually. :) I sound like a drill sergeant compared to her dad.

I know they will have a great time. But I already feel like I'm missing a limb. As I packed Zoe's things tonight, I found myself rearranging shirts with pants, switching out white socks with her favorite funky ones, wondering what her dad will think of the hot pink undies she loves so much. He may never even see them... she has become a modest young lady since he's last seen her, and while she was showering tonight with him here, she actually closed the bathroom door.

So I remembered to pack her robe. And while she seems so grown-up all of a sudden, I pulled down out one of her favorite baby blankies and tucked it in among her things. And then I started writing love notes and finding pictures to pack in her bags.

I decided that maybe this would make her miss Jacob and me too much, or be seen as some sort of sabotage, so I settled on one letter to her that wished her well with Daddy and Joy, that I hoped Santa would bring her great things while she was in North Carolina, and that I already missed her.

Very, very much.

¿Como?

We ate leftovers tonight... sour meat and canadles. It's this crazy traditional dish that my family... well, we could reunite the world if everyone loved it, that's how my extended family gets when someone is making it. They flock to it and make peace with one another as they indulge. There's no such thing as a bad canadle.

Zoe is somewhat familiar with them now, and likes them. But the "gravy" part she has issues with. She doesn't like onions, which this dish is chock full of. And meat. Cheap meat. It probably cost me $6.75 to feed 25 people.

Zoe keeps wanting to call it "bagels." This is another thing she has never eaten but probably picked up the word from school and has blended into her vocabulary to replace vulgar words like "canadles." I can just see her teacher saying, "Now, Zoe, that's nice, but there's no such thing as a canadle. Put the scissors down."

Tonight I asked her if she wanted her leftover canadles with or without the sour meat. Which is the "gravy."

"I want the gravy, but no meat. No la carne!" she shrieked. "NO LA CARNE!!!!!!"



After one of my rare, brief interludes where I stop in my tracks and look toward the sky to ask my mother just what the hell she was thinking when she had kids, I realized Zoe was, in fact, NOT speaking in tongue.

Is it just me, or did my kid just switch over to the smarter-than-your-parents category? Because I always thought it was EL carne.

Esta senora es muy estupido.

Jacob's first birthday party

Jacob eats sour meat and canadles, proving he hasn't been switched at birth. (Who else can eat
that crap but our family?) After a nap, it's time to sing and eat cake!





MMMMMMMMMMMM.

Zoe stretches her artistic muscle

She's been at it again, experimenting with different mediums. I thought this stuff only happened in chain emails.

Hibernation: thwarted

"I guess the winter makes you laugh a little slower,
Makes you talk a little lower about the things you could not show her.
It's been a long December, and there's reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last."

-- A Long December, Counting Crows


I was sitting at work today, and all of a sudden, I realized I was sweating. I had on only a shirt and a cardigan, but I was... HOT.

OMG, am I having hot flashes? Getting sick?

An hour later, everyone in the office was complaining. Oh thank god.

An hour after that, I was getting in my car for home. The first thing I did was crank the AC. I picked up Zoe and told her all about everyone melting at work, got home, did homework, convinced Zoe that sleep was a necessary evil, then got the garbage together because it's trash night.

I threw on my heavy clothes, went down into the cold garage and bundled all my rotting rubbish. And then, holding my breath, I opened the garage door, bracing for the cold.

But it was not cold. No, it certainly wasn't. It was... BALMY.

I'm sorry... did I not check my calendar? Is it NOT December? In Pittsburgh?

I went upstairs after more sweating, overdressed to take out the trash, and checked my most underused widget: the weather.

Sixty-fucking-four degrees.

For freakin' crying out loud. Do I have to shave my legs and wear shorts?? Because I was just bedding down for a long winter's nap.

Overheard at the courthouse

"Heyyyyy! How was your hunting trip?"

"Good. Real good."

"Did you catch anything?"

"No. I didn't shoot anything either."

Halftime break

My angel

Zoe and I went to get a Christmas tree this afternoon. On the way she was counting all the other cars with trees strapped to their roofs.

On the way back, she told me she had a rule about Christmas, and did I want to hear it?

"I think I should get six presents from Santa because I'm 6 years old."

"Does Santa know this rule?"

"No. I'm not telling him."

"Oh yeah? So what happens when you're 40?"

"I get 40 presents."

"Be sure to let your husband know that before you marry him."

"What?"

"Before you get married, be sure to tell your husband this rule. Because that's a lot of presents he'll have to buy." And all of a sudden, I bit my lip. Because, why would he be buying presents if Santa is bringing them???

But I was saved.

"Who's my husband?"

"Whoever you choose to love, Zoe."

"When I get married, then my husband is my family?"

"Yep."

"I think David. He played with me after lunch."

"So, ahhh.... you picked a nice tree, honey."

"Or Santa. I love Santa."

Breathtaking

I have been slightly involved with a project at work with some new technology that stemmed from a collaborative effort among Google, CMU and NASA. Basically, they developed a camera that takes panoramas, which are subsequently posted online, and... I really don't know how to explain this... you can "search" the panorama. You can zoom in and out. Something like Google Earth, only better. WAY better.

So they handed out a bunch of cameras, and we are among those testing it out. The views and the details are really phenomenal, and I can't remember the last time I saw something that excited me as much as this has.



Here is a link to the Pittsburgh stuff that is on there, or you can go to gigapan.org to see a sort of slideshow of examples and see stuff that has been posted from around the world.

It really is amazing, and the applications and potential for this are mind-boggling!

I thought girls used too much toilet paper

Say WHAT?

"We filled your head with wild ideas,
Our beliefs led you on.
We leave a trail that's always changed
To keep your hopes alive.
This surface may seem calm enough,
But underneath, underneath,
We made you feel the way you are is wrong."

-- Dream Thrum, James



Last night I was messing around with the links I very occasionally update for this thing that resembles a web site... and I came across a blog listed in another blogroll about internet dating. In Pittsburgh. It was pretty cute, had lots of anecdotes about different people's experiences. It went on a lot about Match.com: "Everyone is on it!" As if it were Facebook or MySpace. A whole lot curious, I checked it out.

It didn't take many keystrokes for me to figure out how it worked. And it didn't take me many more keystrokes to find this:


That's um.... my Tom.

It took me I-don't-know-how-long to figure out what I was actually looking at. But.... that's the guy who told me he wasn't ready for a relationship. The guy who still emails me and tells me he misses me and loves me so. Who tells me his kids aren't ready for him to date, but don't wait for him. The guy who wants to meet up at Chuck E Cheese and let the kids hang out.

On a dating web site. And photos he posted to it included ones he took for me while we were together.

So while I'm sitting around here for weeks living like a recluse, moping, mourning the loss of my precious relationship, thinking this guy and I love each other so much but we can't be together, I suddenly realize that he has been feeding me a fuckload of bullshit.

It was kind of natural for me, I think, upon learning this, to want to KICK THE LIVING SHIT OUT OF THE NEXT MAN WHO CROSSED MY PATH. I was feeling rather charged up.

So, I called him. He lied a little more, hedged, dodged, then finally said, "I'm so embarrassed. I didn't want to hurt you. But I never really loved you."

Why did he say it then? Why did he bathe my son and cuddle with my daughter? Why did he talk about which school district we'd live in? Why did he talk about rings and a wedding and let me bond with his family?

Either something's not adding up, or I'm way too livid to think straight. Either way, I wrote a nasty email and sat on it for a few hours. I called Aimee, who has always been a kind of I-am-woman-hear-me-roar kind of girl, told her my story, and she said, "Send the email. Who cares if he doesn't care, it will help you feel better."

I hit send. After I respectfully deleted the line about the crappy sex.

And now I am going to put this behind me, let it go, not speculate on how much of our relationship was a complete lie, say goodbye to The Best Boyfriend Ever and celebrate that I didn't waste any more time with The Man With Jelly For A Backbone.

It's about time

I was (really, regardless of anything implied in the post below) going through some mail that has been piling up, and I came across this:



Yes, I now actually OWN something of value.

OK, I own something.

I feels all growed up.

When the hell did I start caring about sports???

Basketball: Huh?

Baseball: Pirates suck.

Hockey: Pens are sweet.

Football: What I wouldn't give to be in that Steelers locker room, mmmmmmmmm.


OK, I'm going a little nuts about the Steelers this season. It's hard not to when the air within 300 miles of me is completely saturated with black and gold. Not to mention I work within spitting distance of Heinz Field.

I swear, I have NOT been sitting here all night doing all things Steelers; I really have been doing something, um, else, when I came across this really awesome kewl fuckin' sweet-ass gem of a web site:

I HATE THE NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS.


I spent the evening merely reviewing my Sunday plans and options.

A weighty issue

A little more than a week ago, Zoe and I went out shopping after work/school, for picture frames actually, but we ended up with a living room set.

But that the fact that I spend too much money when I'm down is not the point of this story.

After this particular shopping trip, we were out at Robinson, and I wanted to go to Don Pablo's. I was in the mood for Mexican.

"No," Zoe said.

"No? But they have tacos!!!"

"Eat N Park."

Grrrrr. So, I relented, because I had just dragged my kid on an impromptu trip through a furniture store and barked at her anytime she looked at anything, and because a salad bar was probably a lot healthier than the enchiladas my stomach was screaming for.

I tried to navigate to the Robinson Eat N Park, came pretty close but completely miscalculated the busy corner it was on, and convinced Zoe we needed to go to the Eat N Park close to our house.

"There it is, MOMMMMM! You're PASSING it."

"The one by our house is better."

"OK."

So, it's pushing 8 by the time we get to the restaurant. We are hungry. We are seated, and we fill out every single game on the kids' menu and no one has even so much as taken our drink order. And I'm pissed.

I'm the kind of pissed where, if I do actually try to accost a waiter and get some food, I might be frothing at the mouth.

So I explain to Zoe that we are NOT giving these people our money, scoop up my hysterical child, and proceed to the Wendy's a few blocks away, where the service really wasn't much better. I could hear the employees swearing at each other in the back, our order was messed up, and the cashier was rude as all hell.

"We don't got any more potatoes. And we're outta cheese."

THEY WERE OUT OF CHEESE, FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. And there wasn't a clean table in the place.

I thought I had put that evening behind me, but today we were driving back from the grocery store, and just as we were passing the infamous Eat N Park, Zoe says from the back seat: "Do we have a waiter?"

"A waiter??" And I could feel all that ill will rising up in me again, and thinking she was going to ask if we could eat there again, I was trying to keep the venom under control and come up with a script that didn't include swear words.

"Yes, a waiter," she says. "Do we have one?"

"What do you mean, a waiter?" I ask, buying time.

"A WAITER, Mom. Like the thing Pap Pap has. You step on it and it tells you your weight."

I could feel my pursed lips relax. "A scale? No Zoe, we don't have a scale."