Tuesday's crisis

A conversation at work:

"Why is she so crabby today?"

"I think she broke a nail."

"Oh. My. Gawd."

A fucking joke

Joe STILL has not given me the court-ordered money he's supposed to give me for day care for August. It's now onto October, and I'm supposed to be all nice and sweet and give him the bill for September.

Sometimes I think, what's the point? Why subject myself to 300 reasons why he shouldn't give me the money to help pay for his son's care?

His latest reason is that I took off days in August and he doesn't want to pay for them.

They are days he PHYSICALLY PUT HIM IN DAY CARE. Two days of which we both attended legal proceedings together.

While we are sorting this shit out, I've been putting day care on my credit card. We're talking almost $800 a month. While I'm paying interest on this shit now, he gets to pay it back to me at $100 a month.

NICE GIG.

I wonder what he will come up with for not helping to pay September's bill. Because I'm not in bankruptcy yet? That I smell so bad I deserve to rot in hell? That the day care is personally responsible for the mess in Darfur?

I got a great link today from someone who seems to get just when I need a little comic relief. Let this be over soon.

There's always next week

"My time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite
That's chokin' on the splinters."

-- Loser, Beck


Tom and I went to the preseason Pens game against the Sabres on Friday, and it was pretty exciting to be up that high in the nosebleed section... with my fear of heights and all that. When I finally started paying attention to the game instead of worrying about everyone potentially tumbling out of the balcony section, I really enjoyed myself.

It was 5-5 and with 28 seconds left in the game, Buffalo scored. Tom jumped up. "Let's go."

OH NO. HE'S THAT KIND OF SPORTS FAN. I bet he doesn't watch the credits after a movie or linger at lunch because he didn't put much in the parking meter.

Trusting his instinct, and the instincts of about 25% of the people in the arena, I left with him. As we were winding our way down, wouldn't you know it... the Pens scored. I can't remember if I smacked him before or after I raced back inside.

The goal was too late, apparently right at the buzzer, and I probably saved my ticker some unnecessary pumpage via adrenaline, so I guess I should be thankful.

Then the Steelers flopped today. My picks sucked for the week too. I'm down and out.

Driving me crazy

Joe dropped off Jacob to me this evening at the day care because he took the day off. He handed me a shopping bag that had a couple of full bottles in it. As I was walking away with the bag and the baby, he told me, "I want those bottles back."

THE BOTTLES I BOUGHT??? Part of the vast collection of baby things that I and my family provided that remain in your home? The shit you wouldn't share for the benefit of your son when I left? None of which you or your family provided, unless we count that Christmas ornament your parents so generously presented to him upon his birth??

Because that's exactly what a baby needs when he's born. Something to hang on a dead tree.

Yeah, right, asshole. You'll see these bottles again when I see my green vase -- the one still sitting on your nightstand -- on my living room shelves. I'll also require my ironing board back. My Rubbermaid straws would be nice too. My Turkish spices and seedling collection can stay with you, and you can keep the brakes I put on your car and even the Best Buy gift card I bought for your brother that you refused to let me give to him because it was "too much." I will, however, require you to turn over the blanket my aunt knitted, the towels another aunt sewed, and all the other things on loan from my family that were NOT intended to benefit you. Yet you hold them hostage.

But now I have your bottles. My bottles. Jacob's bottles. Two stupid Gerber bottles worth a few bucks. One small step.

[Insert my best evil laugh here.]

NFL: Now Freedom Lives

"I got a peaceful easy feeling
and I know you won't let me down."

-- Peaceful Easy Feeling, The (Not Philadelphia) Eagles



I am not ashamed to say that I have various NFL themes in my iTunes collection. When it is, say, mid-April, I plug in the speakers after everyone is sound asleep and just blast them until I can't take it anymore.

It is like eating your favorite calorie-filled indulgence. Or watching the climax of a horror movie you've never seen before. Or sex.

It's something you can only take for so long when you think no one is looking.

But when football season finally rolls around... it's like... life is normal again. I ease into it pretending not to care about preseason, and then I oscillate the first few games about hosting parties and really watching the game... but when it gets cold, I know I'll have my Sundays booked and my NFL pages bookmarked.

Being from Pittsburgh, the Steelers are kind of a tradition. How could they not be? If you are from here, you know exactly what I mean: we dress our kids up in jerseys -- NOT knockoffs, either -- and frame our license plates in black and gold. We buy Iron City even though it tastes like shit, and we spend 15 bucks every time a new Terrible Towel is issued. We'll spend a week in an online forum debating team jerseys (and now helmets) and we'll watch the game among friends and act as though we could coach better.

What have we done with ourselves since February?? We were a patient city, kind to each other, biting our bottom lips as though we didn't have anything to talk about except for the weather and directions to PNC Park.

But now.... ahhhhhhhhhhh. All is right again. The city is awash with pride and Browns bashing and hyping Big Ben.

My big concern this week outside of planting bulbs and fertilizing my lawn is picking the Philly game. Any thoughts?

sirschy@hotmail.com

For the birds

I drive past the National Aviary every day on my way to work, and this weekend we finally got the chance to go. It was exactly what I thought it would be: Lots of birds. Lots of bird poop.


Flamingos!


This was not at all staged. OK, it was. But Jacob loved the close-up view of the birds.


Gus: A very vocal pheasant.


Some other bird.


Feeding the lorikeets.


The best boyfriend ever?

Endurance

When I was a kid, I wanted my ears pierced SO BAD. I wanted to wear makeup and heels and get my hair permed too.

My parents sent me to Catholic school until eighth grade, so the makeup and heels were not an option. But around age 12, my mom relented and let me get holes in my lobes.

It hurt. For a week. Then done.

When I hit high school, I got the perm. And I thought better of it after about three years of maintenance. Hey, it was the 80s. I had IOU sweatshirts, banana clips and a Walkman too.

When I hit college, I wanted a tattoo. I made my roommate get one instead, under the guise of photographing it for a journalism class assignment. I have no idea if she ever showed it to her mom. After all, she dropped out our third year, drank the entire semester and paraded strangers through our tiny apartment at all hours, without telling her mom about that.

But my first year of college, I was in a coed dorm, and I happened by an open dorm room on the first floor one day on the way to the elevators... there was a little screaming and a lot of laughter. I paused at the door. There was my future college boyfriend piercing the nipple of a male friend.

So.......

Not long after, I abandoned the tattoo idea and got a piercing at the top of my ear. This is not an unusual thing by any means, and in fact I interviewed a great deal of pierced people before I embarked on the $10 endeavor. Very few reported regrets.

I regretted it for the first... three years or so. The infections, getting it ripped out by unsuspecting hairdressers, having the left half of my head full of split ends after my hair repeatedly got stuck in whatever jewelry my inflamed piercing tolerated at the time.

After that, I sailed free. A little flare-up here and there, but after many years with this stupid hole in the top of my ear, I didn't let that bother me.

Around my first trimester with Jacob, all my earrings made me itch. I took them out. I hadn't put them back in. Until last night. After a year and a half with nothing weighing down my cartilage, I found that the one hole I struggled so hard with since 1992 had betrayed me.

Anyone who has ever had the ambition to do the whole potato and ice thing knows just about what I went through trying to get that hoop through again. And HOW BAD IT HURTS TODAY.

I about want to lop off the whole left half of my body. But dammit, I'm a mom now, of two, I still listen to Primus and though I wear fake Birkenstocks instead of the real thing, I am only two sizes bigger than those days, I can afford to keep Ramen noodles out of my cupboards and my journalism teachers were all wrong, wrong, wrong. I won't ever raise mice again for the fraternity snakes, nor sneak a microwave into somewhere it's forbidden. I won't ever get that sunflower tattoo, or keep earthworms in my flowerpots. Or agree to split a phone bill with anyone.

Or drink Mad Dog 20/20. The orange one, at least.

BUT WHEN I AM WRINKLED, WHEN I AM BURIED, THIS EARRING WILL STILL BE IN MY EAR.

How to make a happy Saturday

Start with some fire bricks.



Build a circle and level it off.



Some adhesive helps.



Assemble some wood and burn.



Enjoy the results.