A Falcon good time

I went to Homecoming with my sisters and some friends yesterday.

After many, many hours of walking around in the sun (and a beer or two from the BG News alumni tent) —

— and a couple of Pollyeye’s breadsticks, I arrived home feeling like a little kid who had been at the zoo all day. *Clonk! ZZzzzzzz*

Very fun. And I got express permission from Emmy, Katie, Dani, Jenny and Rema to put that group shot on Supafine, which was basically the whole reason for this post. Hi, girls!

October 5, 2008 | Filed Under auto-categorized | 4 Comments

It’s nice to see you

One of the more fabulous aspects about moving to Pittsburgh is the amount of time I am getting to spend with people I like (with the sad exception of my husband, who has a lot of lesson-planning dues to pay at his new school, although we have painted side-by-side every weekend since we closed on the new house and I suppose that will have to suffice for the present).

Recently I had the opportunity to meet one of you Supafine readers at a coffeeshop in my new town, further cementing my fervent conviction that I have the coolest and smartest readership in all of Blogtown. Just this afternoon I got coffee with my BFF and old college roommate, a social event during which I laughed so hard and so long that I may have developed a brief fever. At this very instant I am surfing the web, reading Sarah Palin’s greeting cards and watching NUMB3RS in a cheesy Dorito fog of happiness at my parents’ house in Ohio, my children asleep upstairs. Tomorrow I am going to the Homecoming hoopla at my alma mater, BGSU, with my sister and another old college friend. We’ll be visiting the BG News alumni tent and bugging my other sister for a few hours (she’s a freshman living two doors down from the dorm room I lived in as an obnoxious post-adolescent).

All these little joyful meetups would be impossible to undertake if I still lived eight hours east of here. So I’m very glad we moved. I’m glad that my kids are finally able to keep my five siblings straight. I am glad that I’ve gotten to see my folks more in the last month than I had the whole year previous.

I do kind of look forward to getting my husband back, though.

October 3, 2008 | Filed Under daily grind, sappy crap | 2 Comments

The gripping conclusion of our heroine’s tale

All right. I can’t leave that bit about the pants up there at the top of the page. Ugh.

Epilogue to the Sad Pants Story

I drove back to the mall, by myself. I reveled in the simple freedom of taking the escalator, unencumbered and light as a feather without two tots and a stroller. I smiled inwardly, remembering the kind Pittsburghers who had earlier in the day stopped to help a bedraggled young mother — me — get her two squirmy children and umbrella stroller up and down the escalator, politely ignoring the big yellow sign depicting a stroller and the big circle cross-out thing that means USE THE ELEVATOR, MORON. Down Escalator Samaritan was a young lass evidently on her way to her shift at Ann Taylor Loft. Up Escalator Samaritan was a middle-aged man, possibly a civilian contractor or maybe former Armed Forces, who had three grown children and had just returned from Asia, or someplace far away, because he hadn’t been to the mall in three years and didn’t know where the elevators were, but definitely remembered “those days,” and swore it wasn’t a problem at all.

Then I strode briskly to the Gap, and bought yet another pair of Long and Lean jeans in size 2 ankle. They fit pretty good. The end.

October 3, 2008 | Filed Under minutiae | 1 Comment

Tripping sensuously over my pants

… to steal a line from New Zealand’s fourth most popular digi-folk paradists.

Hee. But seriously, though. Evidently I have finally lost the baby weight, because my jeans from last fall — a size 4 Old Navy abomination of denim — are falling right off my hips. I have to hold them up with one hand when I’m out shopping. But pushing the stroller and holding on to Owen leaves no hands left to hold up my pants, so my quest for Mom Jeans begins anew.

I dragged both boys throughout Ross Park Mall yesterday, hissing at Cormac not to touch things and explaining ad nauseum to Owen everything about everything. (“Why is that man—”) It was not a good scene. After three hours and a side trip to Plato’s Closet, I had tried on at least 15 pairs. And I figured out the problem: you never know what will happen to your jeans once you get them home. If you wash them, they shrink up to your calves. If you wear them, they start to droop and bag. Unless you count on them shrinking or drooping and they refuse to do either, leaving you with an expensive pair of pants that didn’t fit in the dressing room and don’t fit you now.

I went so far as to quiz the Gap clerk on shrink factors and inseam lengths. I need a 30.5” or a 31” inseam. My choices are a 30” inseam or a 32” inseam. The shrink factor, she said, was a quarter to a half an inch. If I get the 30” they will shrink a half an inch and leave me high and dry, but if I get the 32” they will shrink a scant quarter inch and leave me swimming. And my sewing machine is in storage, so they have to fit right off the bat — I can’t hem them myself.

I know this is high drama, and that you are on the edge of your seat, but come on. I’ve been on this planet for nearly 29 years (tomorrow!) and I have yet to find a pair of jeans to fit.

But I do have this little nugget to pass on: If you go to Plato’s Closet, there’s a kindly old man working there who will humor your children, and also the Citizens of Humanity jeans are only $45. They don’t fit me, either, but I figure somebody out there should benefit from my trials.

September 25, 2008 | Filed Under auto-categorized | 10 Comments

The world is going down the tubes, but I feel all right

So hey! The American economy is sinking like a pair of eyeglasses dropped over the side of the boat during the “It’s A Small World After All” ride at Disney World. But that’s OK, because Iain and I (and my father in law) are making progress on the interior of our new house … which we bought before the markets truly tanked, which means … probably bad things for our mortgage. (Not Lehman Brothers-bad, but I bet we could’ve gotten a better rate, dammit.)

There’s still a chance we might finish the work and move in before (American) Thanksgiving.

And the price of gas is spiking again, just when I’m close enough to visit my family on a semi-regular basis. But that’s all right, at least my dollar goes farther when I only have to travel three hours, rather than nine, to get to Ohio.

And, lucky me, I drained my 401(k) before the giant market fumble. I’m a winner all around!

p.s. VOTE OBAMA. McCain broke America once already (and that’s just this week! “Free market” my heinie!).

September 22, 2008 | Filed Under daily grind, house, news, politics | 5 Comments

GLARGLE. Please send reinforcements or, failing that, a reliable wi-fi connection

So hey! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING has changed. Well, Cormac’s lip healed, OK, there’s that. But everything else is dreadfully, awfully, the same. Our “new” house still smells like moldy old breath and we are still living with relatives. Owen likes to pass the time by asking me to describe his toys, which are all still boxed up in storage and many of which he hasn’t seen since June. As for myself, it’s been so long since I sewed anything that I’m afraid I will have forgotten how.

Rick Sebak documentaries on WQED have been nice for occupying our minds and hours, but it’s a weak condolence prize when my new house sits empty, bedraggled and unfinished for lack of time and childcare. We have yet to sand the hallway and third bedroom and then stain and seal those floors, plus then we need to replace the staircase (!), patch and prime and paint all interior rooms and wait for it to dry in this constant drizzle, and maybe THEN we’ll be ready to start bringing over truckloads of our cheap but beloved possessions from the storage unit. Oh hey, lovely story about the storage unit: APPARENTLY somehow, and I won’t speculate how this might have happened although I’d dearly love to do so, somehow a bottle of floor varnish (ironic! or whatever!) sprung a leak and leaked over a bunch of our stuff, coming to rest in a puddle under our brand-new Macy’s mattress that was the cause of so many marital tiffs over the last, oh, five years. I can’t get past the boxes to see the damage, but I’m afraid I might cry when I do.

Many small occurrences are making me question myself: Either this move to Pittsburgh is the smartest thing we’ve ever done for ourselves, or hands-down the worst. At this point I feel like it could go either way.

September 12, 2008 | Filed Under auto-categorized | 6 Comments

Land ahoy!

Hi! I bought a house last Friday and Owen started preschool and Cormac split his lip open on the granite fountain in the backyard and Iain is up to his ears in lesson plans and we are still living with my in-laws but we are here, we are still here, somewhere.

Perhaps by the end of the month basic renovations on the new place will be done and we can move in and resume normal activities. Meanwhile, I’m thinking of you guys as I wash dishes by hand and read the Post Gazette and twitch a little bit.

September 3, 2008 | Filed Under daily grind | 5 Comments

Further dispatches from beyond the Alleghenies

My car topped 100,000 miles this weekend.
They’re tearing down the Commodore building, the 19th Century red brick facility I went to Junior High in, in my hometown, and I am disproportionately angry about it.
Mackie is putting my iPod up to his ear and saying “hello” right this second.
I brought Owen to a preschool orientation last night, which pretty much blew my mind. There’s nothing of the baby left about him, nothing at all.
My in-laws are surprisingly pleasant to live with. Wait, that came out wrong. What I mean is, I am surprised that living with one’s in-laws can be so pleasant. I knew they were nice people, but you know how it is when you move in with someone, anyone: you wait for the other shoe to drop. So far it has not.
I just read a collection of essays by Sarah Vowell which made me very sad that I do not live in Chicago and can’t write essays.
Owen, despite a solid nine months of pirate mania, is staunchly informing me that he would like to be a firefighter for Halloween. This does not detract from the ongoing pirate mania, but rather makes it more confusing for his mother.
I was awakened at 6:50 a.m. by, of all things, a tornado siren, which made the possibility of falling back asleep a joke. Furthermore, there was no tornado.
Pittsburgh’s North Hills appear to be able to reroute geography like an alien in a Douglas Adams book. No matter which way you turn or which direction your compass takes you, there is Route 19.
I will never understand hills. Nor will I ever understand roads that are not laid out in an even grid format. This is what growing up in the Northwest Territory will do to a person.
I have, and have had for a week, a hangnail on my left thumb.
It’s a special treat for my kids to play in the dirty-clothes basket.
I’m in the mood for vodka sauce.
When Mac isn’t playing in the dog’s dish, he’s unraveling my yarn. I wish he’d decide what animal he wants to be.
From the Unfair Files: I’ve encountered two roofing crews in the last two days. One was a pack of very strong-looking Amish guys in straw hats and blue pants putting the roof on a barn at a farmer’s market. The other is a pack of fat, belching, U-shirt wearing men putting the roof on the neighbor’s house. The fact that I didn’t have sunglasses at the farmers market, much less dark mirrored ones behind which I could gaze at length at the hot Amish roofers with nary a qualm, hurts my heart. And the fact that I can hear the boorish burps of the men next door from within the house hurts my heart also. Life is so very unfair.

August 26, 2008 | Filed Under daily grind, pittsburgh | 4 Comments

Moving on. Have a piece of Settlement Pie

Thank you, everyone, for all the very kind words on my last post. My up-time is very short these days, but I hope to be able to thank you all personally soon. It really means a lot to me.

And now for something completely different.

Good bye, blue house:

We closed on you yesterday. You were perfectly adequate. Also, you are where my babies came home from the hospital, where they cried through the night and where they got their first teeth and where Owen learned to walk. I am going to miss the place where those memories were born.

Hello, new house:

Picture of new four-square house here, which I took down after a while

You look beat to hell and you have a funny smell about you, but you came at a good price and you are in a killer neighborhood. In less than a week, Iain and I are going to buy you and scrape out your insides and paint you: you will be “redd up,” in the local vernacular, and then a week or two after that we are going to move in and a whole slew of new memories will be born.

August 23, 2008 | Filed Under house, pittsburgh | 7 Comments

Still fighting it

The last week has been emotionally wretched.

Last Thursday I attended the funeral for my cousin Jake, who was five years old when he was killed in a car crash in New York state. My brain still can’t wrap itself around the fact of it; I feel as though my head is an empty room with a one-way mirror, and behind that one-way mirror is something so terrifying and awful that I can’t look directly at it. It’s an awful reality no matter what, but the fact that he was my cousin, and that he was so close in age to my son, makes it monstrous.

Last week my family and I drove to Peekskill, N.Y., to be with my extended family, to represent the family at the wakes, and to stand with the rest of the town in grief and to pay our heartsick respects. The whole town seemed to rise up together for this, and I seemed to be related in one way or another to every person — and there were hundreds. It made me feel a part of that town, in a way, despite the fact that I never lived there.

It also made me feel separate: the fact that I never lived there. I am related to them, share an ancestry and genes with them, but don’t share a history. My mom and dad moved away to follow their fortunes before I was born. Now that part of the family and I share some history, but it’s history of the worst sort; it’s the worst thing to come together over. A morbid family reunion. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” we would say to each other at the wakes, forcing a laugh: aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, first cousins once removed …

And now the time for immediate grieving is over, and I am back at my mother- and father-in-law’s house in Pittsburgh, and I am still not feeling like I have come to grips with anything at all, except for one thing. Last Wednesday, I sat with “Aunt Tina,” my aunt Nancy’s sister, at Nancy’s house between wakes, eating New York Style pizza and sharing memories about Jake. She told me this: she unabashedly spoiled that boy every day of his life, and gave him whatever he wanted. Coca cola was an especial favorite of his — he called it Red Soda — and she never held out. “And do you think I regret that now?” she asked me. Her eyes were watering. I shook my head. “I don’t regret spoiling him for one minute,” she said. “Not for one minute.”

It’s a funny thing to take to heart, but I did. At my parents’ house for a visit, in memory of Jake, I allowed Owen to have Cocoa Puffs for lunch and a Spongebob Squarepants marathon all afternoon. Then he had Doritos for dessert and ran around the house in his pajams or even in the altogether, shooting imaginary pirates with a toy pistol, for hours on end. Normally I would require proper clothes, a healthy meal, and a minimum of imaginary ordnance fired, but if you could see how happy those little things made him! They are his Red Soda.

I don’t know if Jake died for a reason. It’s so nonsensical, so utterly unfathomable, that I think you kind of have to believe that he did. For my part, I have to thank him, and Aunt Tina, for a timely lesson: my kids aren’t pint-sized burdens, they’re bundles of joy. Wiry, slobbery little packages of happiness. And I’ll enjoy letting them gorge themselves on sugar and less-than-PC games if it means logging a few more of those toothy grins in my lifetime.

August 20, 2008 | Filed Under sappy crap | 18 Comments