November 20!

Another cheating day! I got out my camera to take pictures of some reimbursement forms for my health insurance company, because I don't have a scanner or a copier anymore. so, that's classy. Anyway, I found pictures that I took when I was in Oregon in May and never uploaded because I'm lazy. This is a picture of a girl who was at the Peter Iredale, which is by far my favorite shipwreck.

Trash fairies

Bear and I have some sort of hack routine for our weeks, because three days in a row with the same person can be tiring. Monday is eat snackylunch in a coffee shop (to practice being polite in public and also to try eating new foods), Tuesday is library day, and Wednesday is adventure day! Where we try new things, or go to a new place, or at least a fun place. Today we went to the new Playseum! It is brand new on Barracks Row and it is kind of expensive ($6 a person, even for the little ones) but holy wow it is so worth it on a hot day like today. Also I guess there is this other place called the Family Room where I have not been yet, because it has stairs that look intimidating. I am pretty sure these two places are making SO much money.

Baby Bear and I spent almost 2 hours there and went only to two rooms - the room with the bunnies and turtles and zebra finches, and then the room with the train table, and we pretty much spent the whole time in the train table room. Which means that if/when we go back, we still have the sand room, the painting room, the dress up room, the pizza-making room, the cupcake-making room, and the million other rooms to explore. it sucks that we could only be there for 2 hours, but, you know, lunch and naptime.

Big and Tiny were there, too! It was nice to see them because I haven't seen them for about a month and a half. Tiny is crawling! She's so cute. Tomorrow morning is when I get to hang out with Space Monkey! He's a winner.

The DC DPW fairies bestowed a lovely gift on us this morning - a trash can! We got a recycling can a few weeks ago. Now, hopefully no one will steal them again, or blow them up or put some stupid trash in them, and also hopefully the trash people will always take our trash! everyone that lives on our street puts their trash behind our house because we are at the mouth of the alley and the trash truck doesn't go down the alley, so there are always piles and piles of trash right behind the house. Sometimes the trash guys don't pick it up because it isn't always in cans, or other people put their stuff in our cans and, I dunno, maybe the trash people are all "man these people have so much trash I'm not gonna pick up all their stupid trash" when really it's the trash from, like, 4 or 5 houses at least. Anyway, thank you, DPW fairies!

that's not my blog!

Today is Stellina's 3rd birthday!! I went to the toy store today with BieberBear (who came out of the experience with a new toy helicopter, the lucky dog) and we got Stellina a card, Cloudette, and That's not my... coloring book! which I kind of want for myself. So she will get her presents on Thursday when I take her to camp and then I get to hang out with Space Monkey. I guess I am invited to her birthday party on Sunday but it is in Alexandria and it will have many 3-year-olds, so as much as I love Stellina I do not want to add to the chaos. I am thinking about it.

it is also Cleo's birthday (that's a link to Cleo's mom's blog which she hasn't updated in a while, because um... parenting is really hard work) and it is weird to me that I remember being so excited for Cleo's birth and I have seen lots of pictures of her and I still have never met her, but since Stellina is the exact same age, I actually remember the day of Stellina's birth long before I ever knew Stellina.

We had some squash plants but then I weeded around them and it turns out that the weeds were giving them shade and holding water in the soil, so now the squash plants are dead. RIP Squash plants. I do not think that this year we will have a water pipe burst to rescue the squashes, but ... who really knows. I am not super great at keeping plants alive. Over the span of my life, I have about a 75% success rate at keeping plants alive. I'm sorry, squash. Requiescat in pace.

Recipe for a delicious snack

Here is a recipe for the snack I made after I was done eating my ditalini pasta with homemade pesto!

Recipe for plum-peach-vanilla yogurt:

Step 1: take out the vanilla yogurt from the fridge that you bought a while ago but you've been too bored by to eat. Pour some of this into a bowl!

Step 2: take out the plum-peach jam that your mommy made from the cupboard and packed in your suitcase the last time you went home, pry open the jar. Spoon a generous amount of this delicion into the yogurt bowl.

Step 3: MIX INGREDIENTS

Step 4: ENJOY

Pairs well with toast coated with a moderately thick layer of plum-peach jam. Also pairs decently with a glass of water and various vitamins and supplements.

As I surrender unto sleep

Thanks, Eric Whitacre, for the song stuck in my head this morning.

Yesterday I finished a four-day, three-night marathon with BiebzBear. His parents went on vacation, and his other babysitter had him one day, and grandma had him part of another day, but goodness. it is much different to not have a 5pm end-time in sight and instead know that you have three more days. Highly effective birth control. he only woke up once during the night on each of the first two nights, and then slept 11 hours the third night, which was preeeetty excellent.

Then I went straight from there to Stellina and Space Monkey's house! They are great. Space Monkey is huge already, but really he is still pretty tiny. Neither of them had napped, and Stellina had already gotten a bath by the time I got there, so both of them were super exhausted and ready for bed. Of course, bedtime still took an hour and a half, but that's not so bad. Stellina fell asleep either before I left her room, or just after, because when I checked the video monitor, she hadn't moved from the same position she was in when we were singing "Baa Baa, Black Sheep." Space Monkey was up for a little while longer, and we had some good sleep-on-the-shoulder time after he was done with his last bottle. He's just so warm and wiggly and perfect and if you grab his toes and smile at him he breaks into this ginormous grin and spits bubbles. Also as a side note, I really do love the Miracle Blanket. Space Monkey can kick out of the feet bucket but man it makes him calm.

I had a long conversation on Thursday with Stellina and Space Monkey's mama about how we don't know how to have normal, grown-up, intellectual conversations with people anymore. I can think critically about infant and child development, especially now that I am reading all the books, but it is getting harder for me to wrap my brain around certain things now, like explaining how all the things in that Alanis Morissette song aren't actually ironic, and also that race is not a real thing but is just a social construction. There is only so much room in brains! And mine is getting filled up with feeding times, nap coercion, and poop. So that's kind of what's happening with this blog. Sorry.

Remember that Stellina is blognamed Stellina because at 14 months when I met her she loved to walk around the kitchen in counter-clockwise circles? She will be 3 years in 2 weeks and when we went out in the backyard yesterday the first thing she started doing was walking big counter-clockwise circles. Also she can dress herself and speak in whole sentences and peel her own bananas, even though the way she says banana is more like the French word for pineapple (ananas), and I blinked and wonder when that all happened.

Hello Little Sproutlets!

DC WASA came and fixed our water leak, and dug up the front yard. I got an email from a Roommate NorCal while I was in NYC last Friday about how the Squash Monster was okay. I came home that night and looked at the squash all dug up and hanging out on the dirt and wondered what Roommate NorCal had been smoking. Squash Monster pretty much not okay.

Then on Monday, DC WASA came back and brought us "topsoil" and so I skipped ballet class and all other previous obligations and attempted some hack gardening. I was too lazy to go get mosquito spray at Rite Aid (which is two blocks away, so maybe I was just too broke), and it was about 90 degrees, and remember that our lawn had been a pond and we have the lovely shelter of a ginormo Squash Monster. The next day I started to count my bites, got to 15, realized I was halfway down my first leg, and gave up. Anyway I dove into the plant and cut off the parts that were very clearly dead and rearranged the bits that looked like they might be okay still. I dug a hole and put the okra plant in the ground with a tomato cage around it, and took off all the dead leaves which was all of them, and harvested the 6 inch okra dudes, because no one in my house pays attention to stuff like that. Then I dug some weirdly placed trenches and poured in some flower seeds just to see what would happen.

Because we don't have a giant water leak any more, OR a spigot at the front of our house, I have now assumed the responsibility of massive watering duty. This means filling up a huuuge bucket at the spigot in the back of our house and then hauling it through the house to the front, where then I fill up the watering can and water twice a day.

Here is the status on plants at our house.

Squash Monster: ALIVE! Flowers blooming! I think I saw one fruit today that might still be growing, but I would be super surprised if we got any fruits. It's still nice to know that it is alive.

Okra: Almost certainly dead. I'm gonna give it until I go home next week to rehabilitate, and if it's not alive and doing things by then, that is okay. No one knows how to harvest okras on time anyway.

Flowers: sproutingggggg! I do not particularly care if we get real flowers or not, I just want to have plants in the yard because right now we have dirt and a sickly squash and a dead okra. I have sproutlets, and they are alive.

Soon my bike will have yellow housings for brake and derailleur cables, and it will look so fly. I have been going on and on about yellow housings for so long that the bike shop [personified] just got sick of me talking about it and ordered them. when that happens my bike will be looking fly like this but I have yellow water bottle cages (and a black saddle) so even fly-er than that one.

Squashtopus

I am not very good at posting because my August got insane crazy, as my Augusts seem to trend!

Here is a funny thing.

Once upon a time in June, we thought our squash plant was going to die.


Now it is trying to eat the house. And the neighbors' house. and the dead tree, and the fence, and the everything ever.

Yes, that is one single plant. A SINGLE PLANT. ONE. JUST ONE SQUASH PLANT. it's gone all hydroponic on our asses.

I'm gonna debauch the hell out of this blog post

Last night:


I went to a barbecue at the house of a coworker of my roommates, where there was brick, and a fire escape, and pretty lights. We decided it didn't look like New York, but a movie about New York instead. It was delicious and fun and I smell like mesquite still, which is funny now but was probably really obnoxious at all the bars last night.

Oh, except I'm kind of sad because I just put clean sheets on my bed and now they smell like barbecue smoke. I can't be too upset at myself, though, because even if the thought to shower had crossed my mind when I got home last night, I wouldn't have been able to accomplish becoming clean, as I was far too focused on the cricket that I was absolutely convinced was under my bed. The cricket! It was there, I swear to David DeJesus.


I have had excellent times in Augusts in the past few years. This marks the second year in a row that Maeg has called me from a wedding the night before she moves back to DC and conveys all the ridiculousness that has happened so far at the nuptial party for one of her one hundred fifty three thousand three hundred and forty cousins. This year there was fountain swimming, none by Maeg unfortunately.

oh, wait, sorry, that's not how many cousins Maeg has, that's how much water we got billed for by DC WASA as a result of this little baby:



That's right, the spring, the source of life, the reason for our $1505.66 water bill and 153,340 gallons of water sitting in our front yard. For some perspective, China reported its giant oil spill as being 400,000 gallons. (Also, holy smack what is with all the oil spills. Sorry, Earth, I think we're beginning to get the picture...) (and, couldn't we have had one more dollar's worth of water in that 33 day billing cycle, so that our bill, which we received on Friday, August 13, was $1506.66?!? That would have been too much)

Yesterday one roommate and I were standing on the platform of the NY Ave metro station, watching some dudes bike past us on the MBT , and one guy yelled something to the effect of "Hey stop being such lazy asses! Get a bike!" which I thought was situationally hilarious and also infuriating. Someone came up with the idea that back before that idiot started to ride, someone yelled that at him once, and so now he thinks he's the shit and wanted to pay it forward to try and make himself look cool. How many combined hours in the past six weeks have I spent on my bike or at the bike shop or drinking with the guys who work at the bike shop? Hey entitled douchebag, I'm taking the fucking metro so that I won't bike drunk, because biking drunk is FUCKING STUPID.
And, let's talk about how biking is a policy of choice and not everyone can afford a $1500 Bianchi and the time to leisurely ride the MBT, because some of us have $1500 water bills to pay, and cooler plans than you for Saturday night.

A Man Among Boys

It's a great day. Not only did I wake up because of an awesome storm, I woke up with enough time to get coffee before work! which was great. Also, I got great news from one of my baby mamas. Stellina was in a great mood because she had slept for 13 hours. Also, our air conditioning is working again, which is great. And I just downloaded this great new app that makes you do math before the alarm will turn off, so it's supposed to be real great for awful awful wake-up times, which is every wake-up time ever.

I would go to the bike shop and order new pedals because I HATE the pedals I have now, they keep stabbing me and I keep almost dying trying to get them upright because they don't have tabs. I ran into a curb during such an attempt yesterday, fell, and skinned my ankle? that's possible? So now all the skin on a patch of my right ankle is gone and I have 7 (seven!) gashes on my calves, and yeah I look mega hardxcore but, really, I'd rather have better pedals, ones without stabby bits even though the stabby bits are good for when it is raining. But I don't have any money! So that is not a thing I will do today. Which is a great day!

This blog is about my injuries more than I would like it to be.

Thursday Morning Wake-Up

Fifteen minutes before my alarm was set to buzz and ring and generally suck, this is what woke me up:
Except that at 7:30, that delightful purple bit was ever so slightly to the west, meaning directly over my house. There were more lightnings with immediate thunder (so, the impression that lightning was RIGHT on top of us, and I think the science says that means the strikes were within a mile, and I did see one bolt hit a building at Gallaudet) than I had ever witnessed, the rain was pouring in the window through the screen and onto my laundry, and my cats were sitting by the window, watching the storm.
Though, I think that might have been because there was not only water pouring in the window but also somewhat cool air, and seeing as how our house's air conditioning broke yesterday, along with all the outlets in one of the bedrooms (??), I think they were just trying to get a little bit of relief.

In re: sharks

I sat in the front of the first metro car tonight while I was headed home, and watched out the front window, which is usually too reflective to see through. Going on the track between stations was like some perverse Disneyland ride - perverse because Disneyland has a higher safety record than WMATA. it did make me want to go on Indiana Jones 15 times in a row.

Happy Shark Week!

Speaking of shark, my new platform pedals that I switched to on my bike are made of shark. The stabby bits on them keep biting me and then I am awkwardly bleeding and people are constantly informing me that I am bleeding and asking if I am okay.

HEYOOOO CALIFORNIA
now, onto appeals, and all the way up to the Supreme Court, so we can get this ridiculous one man-one woman bullshit kicked out of the country. No mans! No womans! All people!

Step on it, Velma, step on it!

A very successful final Screen on the Green for 2010. I miss it already!

This lady photobombed my picture of the sunset through the trees by smiling and looking cute.


Bonnie and Clyde sure do get real dead at the end of that film. Real real dead.

Silver Jenny Dollar

I went to Annapolis today! It was kind of like this:


Maybe tomorrow I will upload the thrilling video I took of some boats and stuff.

Matt Lauer was shaking his head

Sometimes I forget how great Girlyman is, and then I smack myself in the head for wasting time listening to other, lesser music.

I am a border collie when it comes to listening to music. I listen to one artist / band over and over until I get sick of them, and then I go to another artist, and listen to that over and over, etc. This happens with Neko Case, the New Pornographers, Girlyman, Rhett Miller, the Old 97s, Michael Jackson, Glee, Chuckanut Drive, and sometimes Dar Williams too. (Side note, you should listen to all of these things, except Glee, omg Gleeeee it's so bad) Right now I'm taking a break from the NPs to have this song infiltrate my brain, or rather to listen to that song repeatedly and wonder how Girlyman infiltrated my brain. Also, that whole album.

OH ALSO one of the other ones that I cycle through is Lady Gaga. of course.

Anyway the point is I am not very good at mixing things up.

Um so yeah, this is an example of me trying to get any work done at all at the Eastern Market Starbucks and FAILING MISERABLY. it's so cold here and there is just so much free internet and so many amusing bougie white girls to watch and did you know that a dirty chai frap tastes just like gingerbread??

there is a girl here in a pink and white striped boatneck 3/4 length sleeved shirt, and also snakeskin gladiator sandals, and also high-waisted shorts that are navy blue with tan diamonds on them, and her pink shirt is tucked into her shorts, which is a thing I don't understand. It is maybe one of the weirdest fashion choices I have ever seen. Power to her for wearing sleeves in 8109283 degrees Celsius. Amusing white girls.

It is too hot to get work done at home, and everywhere else is too air-conditioned.

A roommate and I went on a bike ride yesterday and it was like 15 miles (or, at least, over 10, and I am rounding up because it was so hot) and I got a new stem on my bike, and it is so great and I never want to get off my bike but my butt hurts from riding and also I need a little bit of a break from being drenched in sweat.

Today is Stellina's birthday! She is two now. Later I will write about our trip to the bike shop last week, which was super fun and great.

THIS HAS BEEN A SUPER INFORMATIVE AND INTERESTING POST THANKS FOR READING GUYS

West Virginia to the north

People who are my sister will now be attacked by this image for a third time (first email, second Bookface), but it is too amazing to not share a lot:


Today was rainy, so Stellina and I couldn't go outside really, we have been having crazy crazy thunderstorms, so she attacked my bag, and put on my extra shirt (NatsTown) and socks (argyle), and then my shoes and bike helmet, and went through my wallet and dragged around my Timbuk2 a bit and generally impersonated me. The shirt is a unisex medium, so, huge on me, extra ginormous on her. The bottom of it dragged on the ground and the sleeves covered her hands all the way before I rolled them up a bit.

She turns 2 on Sunday. Already if you ask her how old she is, she says "Do! Do!" which seems to be the only number she knows. I got her a couple of books, one called Baby Giggles (the kid is absolutely obsessed with babies), and then Maisy Goes to Preschool (Stellina will be starting preschool in the fall, and I will miss her but I don't want her to be scared), and also Elmo's ABC Book (if you thought she loved babies, she loves Elmo even more, and also she will need to learn the alphabet soon).

Another really important thing that happened today was that I bought my plane ticket to go home for a bit in September. Now I need to make a comprehensive list of all the things I want to do in Portland and Seattle! It will come up very very quickly I know, and I am so excited but also I will be sad to be gone from here for so long. I will miss my cats and my bike and my kids and my city. Mid-September is a great time of year in DC.

I am having a problem with my bike. When I get on it I do not want to get off. I don't care where I go, I just want to ride around and look at stuff and get totally lost and just spend time going fast or going slow and swerving to avoid potholes and stopping at stop signs and running red lights (of course when it is safe to do so) and getting angry when people drive or park or walk in the bike lane, which I learned some things about today. I guess my bike continues to be an extended metaphor for my current place in life, though I don't think that metaphor is the correct literary device, please help.

The day before yesterday my roommate and I converted his bike to a single-speed after his rear derailleur broke to unfixable proportions (that is not a fixie pun, his bike is not a fixie), and then we decided to ride to Screen on the Green, which was much more fun than I expected it to be. Both the ride and the movie. Halfway through the sky opened up and it started to flood, complete with lightning right on top of us. Roommate was terrified of the lightning so he dropped his keys and phone and wallet in the middle of the ground and then just kind of ran in a circle and then just stood there looking sad and confused. Then we decided we probably weren't going to die and so we danced in the sheets of rain until it stopped and we were soaked all the way.

And so, we rode home on the wet streets, which were nearly empty in the dark, and we went up a huge long hill at the Capitol, and roommate's bike doesn't have gears, and I can't change gears yet because I have to have two hands on the handlebars or I will die (my shifters are on my frame, not handlebars), so we sang Livin' On A Prayer at the top of our lungs to get to the top of the hill. The Hill, I guess. The view of the Capitol as we rode east on Constitution was breathtaking, or maybe it was just that I had just ridden up a crazy crazy hill without being able to downshift.

Then when we got home we got fried chicken and mac & cheese and ate it sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor.

A Few Things That Are True.

Prince Phillip is now five. As we were coloring yesterday and I was listening to him ramble on and on about something that only a five-year-old would think of, I asked him if he'd ever heard of Axe Cop.

Prince Phillip: Axe Cop? Who is Axe Cop?
Me: You don't know Axe Cop?
PP: Nooooo who is Axe Cop?
Me: *recounts first episode of Axe Cop*
PP: But that's made up, right? Axe Cop's not real.
Me: I don't know, what do you think?
PP: Dinosaurs died a long time ago, Axe Cop couldn't fight them with any kind of weapon. They died in a big snow.
Me: But Axe Cop can fight anyone who is a bad guy.
PP: Only police can fight bad guys.
Me: Axe Cop is police. That's what "cop" means, it's another word for police. And police are good guys, right? They fight bad guys. And Axe Cop is the best at fighting bad guys, he fights them all the time and he never sleeps.
PP: Yeah. but Axe Cop isn't real.

I am guessing I will not be getting the plot for a guest Axe Cop strip out of this five-year-old.

this site just told me that DC is 95 degrees Celsius, or 203 degrees Fahrenheit. Also tells me that DC is like Yavin 4, which I am not sure I agree with, because it is not really that humid. It is totally 203 degrees though.

I don't update as often as I'd like anymore, partially due to the increasing amount of uninteresting things that happen to me. Every time I want to write an update, I can never think of anything really worth sharing.

I could write about fighting with Captain Bananio both yesterday and today about how even though he is almost two (!!!?! when did he get so big), he still needs to nap in the afternoon, and it is less than ideal to wait for a complete and utter meltdown at 5pm so that he can then fall asleep on my shoulder as soon as I pick up the boneless screaming blob from the floor.

I could write about begging Prince Phillip to watch Sleeping Beauty so that I could try to get CB to sleep, and reminding him that this time last year it was his favorite movie in the world. He was utterly uninterested and wanted to watch Diego Saves Christmas, but really he just wanted to cut up his Highlights Magazine with scissors. He also wanted to spell my name over and over on the Magnadoodle which we both thought was pretty great. He has learned a lot of stuff at school. SCHOOL!

I could write about the little girl that approached as I was clipping CB into his stroller today to go get PP at "camp" (it's really summer school, but shhh). She immediately asked, "What are you doing?"
To which I replied, "What are you doing?"
"No what are YOU doing?"
"Well, what are you doing?"
"Nooo, what are YOU doing?"
"I don't know, what does it look like I'm doing?"
"Clipping him into his stroller and putting his hat on." At this point her lady caretaker/mama caught up and said to me, "Wow, you know how to answer that question!"

Yes. I work with kids.

And holy mayonnaise, do they grow up quickly.

Any more than I needed her too?

It is time for partyz.


Someday my roommate will find out that I put a picture of him wearing an apron with no shirt on the internet, and he will make me take it down.

Until that day, please feast your eyes on this piece of wonder. By that I mean the goat ribs on the grill.

Leave it there for safekeeping

Certainly one of the greatest nights of my life.

(my new bride)

Themselves in Rockband / Guitar Hero? version. They made jokes about how AC Newman was only 85% of ... himself. On the song that he wrote.

(The New Pornographers at DC's 9:30 Club - June 23, 2010)

Things For Which I Am Eternally Grateful, episode II

Kisses from babies.

Free stuff at baseball games.

Popsicles in summer (not serial killers, though).

Beautiful women.

The flea market at approximately New York Ave, NE and Florida Ave, NE, and also the wholesalers around there.

Fresh mangoes. $7 a box!

My ticket to the New Pornographers show! which is 27 hours in the future from now!

Kisses from babies. Back me up on this one, they're just that fantastic.

Things To Which I Am Morally Opposed, episode IV

The neighbors having a disgusting pond of water in their front yard, which really is just a massive breeding ground for mosquitoes

Things that make my feminist brain hurt

People who care about Elena Kagan's sexuality, or anyone's for that matter

Busting a hole in my ballet slippers 7 minutes before the end of class, placing me in the inconvenient situation of having to dance on Thursday with a giant hole in my shoe before my new ones arrive in the mail

This, which I absolutely know I signed up for: