Welcome back, BPR
An important part of this weekend was Friday night, when Iain and I spent several hours drinking beer and talking on the back porch. It was the official reinstatement of the Back Porch Ritual.
No baby, no chores, no worthless reality television sucking at our eyeballs. Just us, the stars, a pack of Parliaments and some Labatt.
Better than a date, really, because the entire point of Date Night [wha?] or Couple Time [huh?] is the talking, the bonding, and the feeling that you’re the only two people in the universe. We don’t need to see a movie or shuck out beaucoup bucks for dinner for that. We just need a couple of camp chairs — check! — and a baby who knows how to sleep through the night — double check! — and we’re golden.
At the Gunpowder
Three-day weekend!
My parents and my youngest three siblings are at Superfresh right now, picking up lunchy items. We’ve spent last night and today passing the baby around and taking pictures. Grandpa and Grandma seem in their element, and Owen’s getting over his stranger-danger freakouts again. He napped for shit yesterday and was therefore cranky and easily spooked, but he seems to be doing better today. My parents got to witness his peculiar eating habits, in which he screams like a banshee if you try to burp him, and gulps down his food as if it were his last meal.
Also last night we got some ice cream at Baskin-Robbins — there isn’t a Tastee-Freeze for hundreds of miles in this state — and Iain and I got to watch The Incredibles after we put the baby to bed. What a good movie. I love Pixar flicks.
Today we’re going to take a stab at heading out to Gunpowder State Park. I’m praying that the beautiful weather and long weekend doesn’t give everybody else and their brother the same idea. I thought it’d be nice for Owen to go hiking again, and to show my family a side of Baltimore that involves more than the Ikea Multi-Plexi-Hyper-Consumer Gigaplex over in White Marsh. Wish us luck.
Honky tonk woman
Beer tastes good. I had a hankerin’ to go to a bar today, any bar, since I haven’t been inside one since last June [what with baby-growin’ and -birthin’ and whatnot], but a cold Labatt on the deck will have to suffice.*
My family’s coming in this weekend to see the little man, and I’m wondering if Iain and I will be able to steal away for an hour or two. But we’re broke, so I don’t know what kind of a “date” we’d be able to wrassle up. You know, it’s a lot harder to put QT into your marriage when there’s a baby in the house. Our quality time usually consists of sitting on the love seat, watching television, until it’s time to go to bed. Not very romantic. I suppose we could reinstitute BPR once Owen is in bed for the night, but frankly, his asleep time is only about an hour or two before our own bedtime, and we’ve got a lot of shit to do each night before then. Laundry, dishes, packing lunches and diaperbags and generally maintaining the flow.
Sigh.
If I didn’t spend so much time on Flickr, or watching horrible edited-for-TV movies on UPN, we probably would have some more QT together.
Duly noted, self.
*I’m so scatterbrained. Of COURSE I’ve been inside a bar in the last year. Several, in fact. Blog Baltimore Happy Hours and post-Ariel Gore readings and all sorts of occasions. I just had to come clean on that. A good blogger doesn’t let false statements float around in the ether without correction.
Home maintenance makes you fat
OK. The oven works now, thanks to Mr Jim The Oven Repair Guy, who waggled around on the floor with a screwdriver for some time Tuesday morning. The technique leaves something to be desired, but who can argue with the results?
On a related note, I have worked my way through half a pan of brownies in the last two days.
Hometown paper makes good. Again.
From Editor and Publisher: “Holy Toledo: ‘Blade’ Series Uncovers Rare-Coin Scam”. They’re getting almost as much attention for this as for their award-winning beryllium series or last year’s Pulitzer.
Back at base
We had a really good weekend. We drove back to Pittsburgh to Iain’s parents’ house on Friday night, with a trunkful of baby gear and the iTrip set to 88.3.
Owen did spectacularly. He slept nearly all the way there, with a break at the Sideling Hill rest stop for a bottle which was heated with hot water donated from the ubiquituous Starbucks. He awoke again when we arrived at the ol’ homestead at about 10:30 p.m., bestowing a sleepy grin on all my in-laws, and remained in a good mood for the duration of our stay. Everyone was amazed at how happy and even-tempered he is. I guess not all babies are like that?
He met his cousins, Caleb, Levi and Joshua, their parents, Uncle Jeremy and Aunt Katrina, and his aunt Erin, the bride, and his new uncle, Doug. I had the camera going pretty much the whole time.
It was a beautiful weekend for a backyard wedding, sunny and mild. The groom’s parents were totally Pittsburgh, all “yinz guys” this and “yinz guys” that. There were trays and trays of cookies at the kegger/reception, which I’m told is another Pittsburgh tradition. And there were pierogies, and probably Iron City on tap. I didn’t check, though; I had a baby strapped to my chest.
West Sunbury, where the new couple reside, is a tiny little hamlet north of the Burgh. To get there, you have to drive up Route 8 past Cranberry, Mars, and Butler, which was filled with what appeared to be jaded Goth-type teenagers itching to get the hell out. West Sunbury was one block long and a little long in the tooth, but very picturesque.
Visiting little towns like that leads me to idle daydreams of living the small-town life, where everyone goes to the Big High School Game on Friday nights and there’s only one gas station. Sure, it sounds nice, but having lived in a town very much like it I know that it would drive me crazy with time. I’d be all jaded, dying my hair black and itching to get the hell out.
I’m still amazed at how happy-go-lucky Owen was about the whole trip. I was worried, concerned that he would cry the whole way, or be anxy about being in a roomful of strangers, or not be able to sleep in a stranger’s playpen. But he slept well, apart from being sniffly [cat allergies, I suppose] and he had but a few episodes of stranger-danger freakout, usually when some well-meaning person got alarmingly all up in his grill. But thankfully he was easily soothed.
I don’t know how much of it I can attribute to my own parenting, and how much of it is his own personality, but damn, we got us a good one. And Lord, how I love to show him off. He’s so beautiful! He’s so perfect!
AND HE ROLLED OVER TODAY! [“How do you like that? I buried the lead”*]. Four distinct times, from front to back. We had to help him get his left arm in a non-spraining position but he did the rest of the work himself. He probably wet his pants at all the shrieking and praising and squealing we did.
We gave him some squash, his first vegetable, as a reward. He wasn’t impressed. Covered in orange goo, yes, but impressed, no.
In other news: The Oven Repair Guy is coming over at 8 a.m. to fix our damn oven. It’s gas, and it won’t light, and I’m kinda concerned the whole thing is gonna blow one of these days. Plus, I was suffering from a rather debilitating case of “I hate the universe”-variety PMS last week, and how fucking unfair it was that I couldn’t even bake a pan of brownies to alleviate it. I had to settle for Captain Crunch, which is not even in the Chocolate food group. Stupid oven.
“I could probably get you pregnant from here”
Oh, that Iain. Laff-a-minute.
So we’re leaving tomorrow for Pittsburgh to see his little sister get married. Apparently it’s a denim and sandals backyard type affair with a kegger reception. I think we’ll be skipping the kegger, seeing as it’s happening an hour away and kegstands do not good parents make.
I’m a little apprehensive about the five-hour drive, but I figure we’ll get such a late start [think evening rush hour] that little O.J. will snooze the whole way. Tonight will be for packing and I’ll leave tomorrow for panicking. Maybe my hideous bad mood will have dissipated by then.
I am, however, excited for Owen to meet his cousins — one of whom is merely a few months older, the other two are 3 and 5 — and his aunties and uncles on his daddy’s side, not to mention his grandma and grandpa E. And who could forget Morgan, everybody’s favorite, if slightly deranged, Gordon Setter? Look for some good Flickr action when I get back. I may suck at photography, but at least marriage and a successful night in the sack [begetting Owen, I mean] means I have good subjects.
Today’s Self-Confidence Crisis Which Was Totally Uncalled For: So I went to Mars today, looking like hell, and I mean Satan’s Basement hell, for the weekly shopping. I did have the world’s cutest baby in tow, which redeemed me slightly, but still. Total hell. So I’m rounding the corner to the Bakery department [where I blew 45 cents on an eclair — no, an ECLAIR — for my lucky spouse], when I look up, only to see twin six-foot-tall Amazons breezing past. Seriously, I think they were floating. Stick-straight shiny hair. Tanned skin. The hated Lycra T-shirt and low-rise jeans combo. And a motherfucking six-month-old baby. AND? Fuh-laaaaat stomachs. Flat as a pancake. I gather the one pushing the cart with the baby in it was the baby mama, and the other was her sister. I actually blushed, I was so embarrassed. They looked over with that Ugly Girl radar that all pretty girls have and smirked. They smirked! At me! Can I help it if I don’t shop in my clubhopping best? Apparently, I can. Then I noticed there was a third woman with them: their mother, equally bleached and tanned and faked-out. I ducked my head and immediately vacated the area.
I felt like shit until I walked out to my car. They they were, loading into the ‘88 Dodge Caravan parked right next to me. And Baby Mama sat shotgun.
Suddenly there was a ray of light pouring down from the heavens, and I felt instantly better. If I had my mother and sister around to take care of my baby while I straightened my hair and put on my hoochie clothes or worked out or hit the tanning salon or plucked my eyebrows or painted my nails or shot myself in the head for even giving a damn, well, it would be a different story, sister. I can clean up nice, too, if given enough hours. I made it out to the grocery store today BY MYSELF, with NO ONE TO HELP ME.
And I went to college before I got knocked up.
So there.
“Hey, breeding hipster”
The City Paper finally wises up to Sweetney’s Rock’n’Romp gigs for this summer.
I like when good ideas get good press.
Postprandial dreamin’
Two unrelated reasons to be cheerful after all.
You can dress him up, but you can’t take him out: Owen is like his father in many respects. Big blue eyes that make my heart go pitter patter, and a need to control his surroundings.
For instance, when Owen is drinking his bottle, he grabs onto my bottle-holding hand like he’s getting ready to rev up his Harley. One hand clamped around my thumb, and the other clamped around my index finger. It’s adorable. God save me if I try to take the bottle out of his mouth, because he lets me know — firmly — that he won’t tolerate it. He just pulls those handlebars in and won’t let go until he’s sucking air. And I let him, because he’s my baby and I love him and for gosh sakes, he’s not even five months old. Rev away, little man.
Lately we’ve been adding thin rice cereal to his repertoire of culinary delights, twice daily, and he’s got the same “I’ll do it” mentality, only the consequences are a lot … stickier. Chunkier. And farther flung. He wrests the spoon away from me and sucks on it like it’s made of lollipops. Or beer. I wouldn’t think a grain that smells like ass and looks like vomit could possibly taste so good, but he seems to think so.
I try not to give him free rein with the spoon, though, because unlike a bottle, a spoon can be shoved deep into one’s delicate esophagus and trigger all sorts of eruptions, and I don’t feel like mopping up Mount Throwup every time I feed him. I just like to see that grin he gets, that tiny handle sticking out of the side of his mouth and oceans of long-lost cereal pooling on his bib.
Bearclaws and tootsie rolls: Sometimes, when America’s Next Top Model isn’t on, Iain and I will play a game called “What If We Spent Our Savings On Fun Shit Instead.” It consists of us adding up the money in our savings account and pretending we could blow it on pool tables and iBooks instead of summer living expenses. [Summer living is expensive when the breadwinner is a teacher and hence unemployed for 10 weeks.] Today we played a variation called “What If We Spent Our Gas Money on Doughnuts Instead.” Oh my gawd. When all you want is a doughnut — no, an ECLAIR — and doughnuts are so not even in the budget, not to mention the fact that Dunkin Donuts is like, an entire car ride away, this game is an exercise in delicious masochism. We slowly and methodically counted out various dough, filling and frosting combinations until we had the perfect dozen. Then we gave pause, mourning our lack of said doughnuts. Then we went and ate leftover Hamburger Helper for dinner.
Since we had to satisfy our collective sweet tooth in a figurative manner, and we had metaphorically indulged in a dozen doughnuts already, for dessert we turned our thoughts to the sweets of yesteryear. For me, it was Smurf ice cream at the Penguin Palace and penny candy at Shale’s Pharmacy.
Shale’s Pharmacy was the place to get ugly postcards, incontinence products and prescriptions in the downtown business district of Perrysburg, Ohio. Even better than that, and the faxes they would fax for you if you only had the cash, was the array of penny candy. Granted, by 1993 it cost a quarter, but still. Even baby-sitting money goes far when things only cost a quarter. And those high prices did nothing to mar the Norman Rockwell quality of the corner drugstore.
Twice a week over the summer I was 14 I would hop on my hot-pink Huffy and pedal downtown to the branch library, which was an oasis of books and air-conditioning, and then over to Shale’s, where I blew a few dollars on sugar. After that stop, I biked another block down to the river, where stood a statue of Admiral Perry and some little boy with a rifle, and where no one but rich yachters or post-card photographers ever went. I used to sit on the pier overlooking the Muddy Maumee, staring out over the water to the defunct orphanage on the other side, the site of embarrassingly useless swim lessons when I was 9 and where, six years in the future, my old high-school pals would be caught smoking pot and trying to dodge the police.
Ah, 14. At 14 I was 80 pounds soaking wet, prepubescent [STILL. Dear God, It’s Me, Mary Beth, Give Me Some Boobs Already] and what the kids called “a loner”. Or was that loser?
But I didn’t need those guys, I didn’t need ANYBODY, I had my bike and my books and a few rolls of Lifesavers and the sun on my face. I had Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With The Wind and a dream, yes, a dream. A dream of a future filled with … eclairs?
Shit. I’m still thinking about those goddamned doughnuts!
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