nightmare ticket

I can always count on The Onion for a good laugh.

Obama, Clinton, McCain Join Forces To Form Nightmare Ticket

At the top of the platform is a military strategy calling for the phased withdrawal of .000006 brigades from Iraq and Afghanistan every seven months over the next 350 years. Universal health care would also be provided, taken away on McCain's birthday, and then provided again only to those wealthy enough to afford it. Abortions would be made available on every other even-numbered Friday from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m. EST to all women who can prove residency in Alaska or Nevada. And an entirely new immigration policy will be instituted, sources said, as soon as the candidates can stand to be in the same room with one another for more than five minutes.

musical stylings

j has developed a hankerin’ for the breakfast cereal I’ve been eating lately--Kashi GoLean, “a lightly sweetened mix of crunchy fiber twigs, crispy soy protein grahams, and honey-toasted 7 Whole Grains and Sesame Puffs.” Why he likes this stuff I don’t know. I barely like it myself--I eat it mostly for the extra protein. The first few times he ate it, I composed a little ditty:

I like the Kashi, yo;
I’ll never let it go
I like the Kashi, yo;
I’ll never let it go

Mistake. Now we can’t get him to stop singing it at the kitchen table, even when he’s not eating Kashi. Sometimes I can get him to substitute “apple” or “pasta” for “Kashi” when he's eating those things, but then he’ll just start singing about liking the Kashi, yo, and how he’ll never let it go. Then, when eating something else, he remembers how much he likes that Kashi, yo, and he wants to eat Kashi instead of whatever he's eating. Then he’s all like Kashi, please and I’m all like But you’ve had 2 bowls of Kashi already today and it’s not a good scene.

So I guess “I Like the Kashi, Yo” will go down with the other family-created hit songs of j’s youth, which include:


1. “His Name is [baby-j], and He’s a Baby” (sung to the tune of Copacabana),
2. “You Gotta Go Get the Duckies,” which is not to be confused with
3. “You Give Me Duckies,”
4. “Gettin’ in Your Business (A-Business!),” and
5. “Heat Up the Mommy Juice” (his cousin's response to hearing my mom sing this one as she prepared a bottle of my pumped labors? “That’s not mommy juice; that’s milk!”).

graduation!

Yesterday my mom, P, and I headed into the city for graduation. It was great. First, there was the full university commencement in the morning. Between P’s graduations and mine, this was--I think--my fourth time at the morning ceremony. The previous times usually involved rain. At P’s morning commencement, it rained so hard we soaked through several towels (I’m sure my in-laws have fond memories of this). I believe that I also ended up wearing a garbage bag by the end of the day to keep dry. At least, that’s what it looks like in the pictures. Maybe it was just a really cheap poncho. This time, we were prepared. I had heavy-duty ponchos and umbrellas for the three of us.

Despite our preparedness (or perhaps because of it), yesterday morning was beautiful and the rain held off until a few hours after the ceremony. What a relief! However, while we had planned for rain, we hadn’t planned for sun, so P ended up with a bit of a sunburn, despite buying an emergency baseball cap in the campus bookstore.

After the morning commencement, there was time for a quick sandwich and then we were off to the doctoral hooding ceremony that took place in the church. The doctoral ceremony was really lovely, made more so by the fact that my advisor, who has encouraged me for so long, happened to be a part of the ceremony as she introduced one of the college’s honorees. She was on the dais the whole time; I was only a few feet away from her while I got “hooded.”

In the line of graduates, I ran into a friend with whom I had done a project in class several years back, and met some other community college teachers I hadn’t known before. My aunt M was able to get a few hours off work to attend, and our friends D & B also made it through the (pretty long!) ceremony. I felt so lucky to have so much support there.

We had to rush off quickly after the ceremony for a number of reasons, and I was somewhat saddened that it all came to such an abrupt end. I am so happy to have finished finally, but it’s sad knowing such a large part of my life--I started there 11 years ago--is done. It’s not the school itself, really, since I know that I’ll be back regularly to work with my writing group, but this degree has been a goal for so long... I guess I already feel a little lost without it as something to work towards.

mother's day

Happy mother's day to those of you we didn't get to speak to yesterday. We had a pretty nice Mother's Day over here. P, baby-j, my mom and I all went to a local farm that has a really old, beautiful carousel and a train ride which--though we didn't know it until we were on the train--took us past several animals. There were llamas, ponies, and emus. But baby-j's favorite had to be the goats. He does a mean goat impersonation. Seriously: it sounded kind of mean. :) But its accuracy seemed to fool some of the other parents and kids into thinking there was a goat actually on the train with us.


Also, there were ostriches!

the garbage mystery

Someone who shall remain nameless (ok, it was me) accidentally placed a garbage bag of “regular” garbage in the recycling can last week. It went out with the recycling last night when P took it out in anticipation of the Friday morning pick-up.

This morning, the bag was ripped up and lying in our yard, the contents half-eaten. This is not the mystery. Obviously some kind of animal got to it: a raccoon, perhaps, or maybe a really ambitious squirrel. However, what is a mystery is *how* the bag got on our yard, a full 10 feet away from where P placed the garbage, behind a fence, AND--since our yard is raised up from the driveway--elevated 3 feet. Based on the evidence of the crime scene, it appears that the bag was moved prior to being assaulted. So how did this happen?

P seemed to favor the raccoon hypothesis, but that would mean that the hypothetical raccoon would have taken the bag up the five concrete steps it takes to get into our yard and then have had to make a couple left turns with it before the attack. I’m thinking it was either a human who tossed the bag into our yard as a prank (but why would anyone do this and leave the rest of the recycling where it is?) or... I hate to even think this... a bear. (They are not uncommon in this area; see here.) But then, the bear would have had to toss the bag into the yard and eat standing up in our driveway. Or maybe the bear and the raccoon worked as a team: the bear tossing the bag into the yard, high-fiving the raccoon, and then moving on to assist another local animal in its quest for high-quality garbage.

The yard swans that we inherited from the previous owners (pictured here) must have seen it all.

Or were they the culprits?

cover art

Oh, my: I just found this page of "covers" online from The Onion Magazine, featuring the following magazine covers.







In other news, this is my 200th post(!) and I've been keeping this blog for over two years now. I really can't believe it's been that long.

food reading

I received a fascinating email today from a co-worker with images from Hungry Planet: What the World Eats by Peter Menzel. If you haven't seen it, some of the images from this email can be found here:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5005952

Apparently, this story ran in November of 2005, so I'm more than a little behind on my reading.

P and I were most interested in--but not surprised by--the amount of processed foods found on the American photo, especially compared to the other countries.

I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle a few months back, which was an inspiring read. So I'll have to add Hungry Planet to my to-read list for this summer, in addition to In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, which I recently discovered but have not yet read. Any other recommendations for my food reading list?

yoga, please

j has taken to grabbing my hand and demanding “yoga, please!” at least seven times a day. We have a routine: first, I stretch out into child’s pose and he runs around me. Then, he demands that I get into cow pose, then cat pose, and then cow pose again so he can climb on top and bounce up and down. Then I do the pose pictured here, only imagine it without the wall, pillow under the back, and cloth over the eyes. And add a giggling two-and-a-half-year-old balanced on top of my feet.

No, this is not the kind of yoga you’d get at a local class, and I wouldn't exactly call it relaxing. But it’s pretty fun for both of us, and it really seems to calm j down at the end of a long hard day at pre-school.

feminist for obama

This post will not be about why I support Barack Obama for president, but rather, why I (and other feminists) should be "allowed" to do so. Though it's a couple months old now, I found this article interesting:

Anti-Hillary Sentiment On The Rise Among Leading Feminists

I especially like this quote:

Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," and Kimberlé Crenshaw, professor of law at UCLA and Columbia, declared that the pro-Clinton feminists "interrogate, chastise, second-guess and even denounce those who escape their encampment and find themselves on Obama terrain. In their hands feminism, like patriotism, is the all-encompassing prism that eliminates discussion, doubt and difference about whom to vote for and why."

I would be happy if either Clinton or Obama were elected; I think both are good candidates. And I am disgusted by the often deplorably sexist treatment of Senator Clinton. But it angers me when I am told I'm "not a good feminist" because I support Obama, as if feminism is this monolithic thing that requires I vote for the female candidate. (That's why in general I prefer "feminism(s)" rather than "feminism," but mainstream media outlets don't have the time, I suppose, to detail all the different kinds of feminisms that exist: radical, Marxist, poststructural, etc.)

Here's the original Ensler/Crenshaw post:

Feminist Ultimatums: Not In Our Name

The feminism we fought so hard for and benefited from was not to make us blind to the complexity, but to help us see beyond simple formulas and body politics.

Ok: now I really need to get back to doing some work.

family portrait

This was my attempt to depict our family. Though it may be hard to believe, it took me a mere 2 minutes to draw (that's pretty much all I have before baby-j wrests the crayons away from me). You'd think that P would have taken such time constraints into consideration when evaluating my work, but no. He took issue with the pointy-ness of the goatee, the curliness of the hair, and the accuracy of the eyes. "Are you criticizing my art?" I asked. "I just question the realism of your interpretation," he replied.

He did make me and baby-j the most fantastic after-school, pre-dissertation-defense snacks last week. I just got the pictures off my camera.

Here's mine:


And here's baby-j's:

defending

Well, the defense is over, and it went well--much better than I thought it would! I had a wonderful committee; all members had helpful and positive feedback on my dissertation.

I have tried to imagine what it would be feel like to be done with the defense after so many years in school. I thought I would feel ecstatic, running up and down the streets, wanting to jump out of my skin. Instead, I feel somewhat numb. It just hasn’t really sunk in yet that--once I hand in the final copy with the minor revisions I need to do--it is over. I’ll be interested to see how I feel once it does sink in.

cars, kitchens, and cousins

Lots of changes going on in the last few weeks. Even with the changes and being completely stressed out about next Friday, I feel like we’re getting back to some sort of normalcy after the craziness of the last four months. First, we got a car to replace P’s dad’s car, which has served us well over the past three and a half years... however, the cost of work we’d have to do to keep it running was enough to justify getting a new car.

I took a picture of the Probe before it went away to its resting place, which I imagine is filled with grassy fields and flowers and other Ford Probes with which this one can romp.

*lighting a memorial candle*



Also, our kitchen is done. Well, almost. P has been touching it up here and there, leaving the paint cans in the pantry in case the urge for a touch-up strikes. Though we’ve had several contractors in here over the last month (cabinets, floor, counters, etc.), he’s been painting and nailing crap into walls and doing various other odds and ends. As usual, he rocks. His shoes are big ones to fill.



We have a calendar of the cousins on our fridge. baby-j enjoys admiring it. And speaking in duck and frog.

a date

Well, I submitted my dissertation to the four members of my committee this morning.

And I have a date now for the dissertation defense: Friday, April 18. That is less than three weeks from now.

Excuse me while I go hyperventilate.

easter

I am trying to finish my final dissertaton revisions this week, so allow me to let some recent pictures do the updating around here.

weird Easter photo of my dying tulips:


baby-j searching for eggs:


baby-j getting some direction:


a satisfied baby-j after finding eggs:


and finally, baby-j eating his last breakfast with the old kitchen floor:


That's it for now. More writing to come when I'm not writing.

spring longing

I got these tulips at our local store; they're shown here in the newly painted (thanks to P) kitchen.

We got a chance to get outside this past weekend and do a little bit (a VERY little bit) of yardwork. I trimmed the two enormous bushes next to the entrance of the house since they were hanging over the walk and making it difficult to walk past them. Then I cleared a path underneath and between the two bushes so it would be just big enough for a certain two-and-a-half-year-old to run through and use as a hiding spot.

can you dig that?

Just so I don't forget baby-j's latest poem, I want to get it down here. It is--of course!--accompanied by lots of foot stomping and circling around the room.

Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?
Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?
Pootchie, Pootchie Sandwich:
Can you diiiiiiig that?

(repeat for several minutes)

kitchen update

Ok, so I suck at blending photos together. But here's an update of what the kitchen looks like now, several days after it was demolished. We're still in progress, as you can see, but at least we don't have appliances and boxes of cabinets in our living room. We are waiting on a floor, countertops, some paint, and a sink. The sink is really crucial, since we're still operating out of the bathroom sink. In case you didn't know, there are many, many problems with the bathroom and the kitchen being in the same room.

I don't think I ever explained why we are getting a new kitchen (and why we knew we'd get a new kitchen when we decided to buy the house). I mean, really, the kitchen didn't look too bad before. Well, it's all about the oven. It was tiny--really tiny. So tiny that I couldn't fit a cookie sheet in there. We'd had an oven like it before, when P and I first moved in together and lived in an itsy bitsy 300 sq. ft. apartment in Manhattan. It took him something like 18 hours to cook a Thanksgiving turkey in there since you couldn't close the oven door with the pan inside. So we decided that we had to have a regular-sized oven, which mean pulling out at least the surrounding cabinets in order to fit, and if you do that, you kind of want the upper cabinets to match, and then, well... you know how it goes. You start out small, and pretty soon you find yourself in the bathroom kitchen, making coffee above a potty seat and removing the Band-Aids so you have space on the shelf for the peanut butter.

kitchen redux ‘08

The past two weeks have been busy. P took a 5-day conference trip to Kansas City, after which he flew home, spent an hour here at home to pack again, and we all drove to Michigan for his grandmother’s funeral.

So I could blog about how sad we are (we are), how rough the drive was (it was), how sick we are (we are), how high baby-j’s temperature was earlier today (way too high), and how much coughing we’ve all done (too much). However, I’d prefer to write about the other crazy thing going on: kitchen redux ’08. The day after we returned form Michigan, the cabinets were delivered, and this afternoon, the contractors demolished our kitchen.

This is what the kitchen looked like this morning:

And this is what it looks like this evening:

Since we won’t have a kitchen for more than 3 weeks, we needed somewhere to prepare baby-j’s lunches (P) and to make coffee (me). It’s a good thing the bathroom has a bit of counter space: P and I devised the “kitchen annex,” which is located both in the bathroom (yes, that's a toddler potty under the coffee maker)...

...and in the bedroom...


So come along--won’t you?--and let me bore you with tales of demolition, discoveries of 1960s artifacts in the walls, and futile attempts to stop baby-j from entering the construction zone. I think it’s a much better subject for blogging than all the stress, illness, and gloom that has been hovering over this family for the last few months.

a new 'do

Even though baby-j has been follicly challenged for much of his 30 months here, the hair has grown pretty rapidly over the last few months. In the last few weeks, I've surreptitiously hacked off some patches here and there, usually while he was running away from me. However, it's started looking a little like... well, like his mom had hacked off a few patches here and there while he was running away from her. So today we headed to the local salon in town to chop some of it off until it comes in thick enough that he can grow the nice, long hippy hair of which P and I dream.

It went surprisingly well, and it looks decent enough. He was relatively calm as I held his hands down, probably because he was distracted by his reflection in the mirror. The stylist couldn't get the trimmer anywhere near him before he starting squealing and trying to jump down from the chair, so we all decided to keep the experience a good one and try the trimmer again next time.

Oh, and that's our new fridge in the background. We are renovating our 1970s kitchen one piece at a time. Until we get the cabinets and the contractors in here, we'll continue to have this stove, dishwasher, and microwave in our living room with nowhere to go. The stove in the living room is currently holding some plants, a table lamp, and some baby wipes.

ten years

A decade ago, Jared the Subway dude finished losing all that weight. If you’ve passed a Subway shop anytime in the past month, you know this already.

A decade ago, I was in my first year of graduate school. Pleasegodletthisbethelast.

A decade ago (tonight! February 22!), P and I went on our first date. Though we met in the 1980s during our adolescent years, we got back in touch after P spotted me walking down an NYC street with some friends. In a speech my father gave at our wedding, he said that P and I met when I was “walking the street in New York City”--which is true enough, I suppose, but it had just enough of a hooker vibe that it has been (and will be) repeated often. Case in point: when I reminded P that it's been 10 years, his first words were “oh, yeah... the day you were ‘walking the street.’”

Today was a snow day for all three of us, and we were treated to a reprisal of baby-j eating snow and screaming to be let into the car. When he’s a teenager, I’ll have to remind him how much he disliked being snowed in and how he desperately wanted to go to school.

Anyway, I got some pictures of the morning. It felt good to do this again, snapping away as both my husband and son refused to smile and rolled their eyes at me. I haven’t done this in a month--far too long.

Here’s a tree so enormous I can’t believe it fits in our yard.

Here’s baby-j snacking on snow. Overheard: “Tasty!”


Here’s baby-j in the car with nowhere to go. After 20 minutes, P finally pulled him out.

And finally, a creepy-looking picture of another tree in our yard: