Jul
8
Before we left for our vacation JB drove to a fireworks stand in Washington called — I am not making this up — Boom City, in order to purchase a large number of Highly Illegal Explosives (I don’t really know how this works, it’s legal to sell them from reservation stands but not legal to take them offsite? Meh?), because every Fourth of July JB and his brother basically put on a professional show from the middle of the Umpqua River, where they paddle out to a big rock in order to safely set off their fireworks without burning down any nearby national forests. It’s loud and crazy and big and for a teeny tiny ‘burg in the middle of nowhere, it’s pretty damn awesome.
Well, except if you’re three years old. Riley heard exactly one mortar go off and he immediately issued forth an editorial complaint about the volume level and also NO LIKE IT and I WANT TO GO INSIDE WIGHT NOW. So he spent the evening huddled inside with his grandma while I worriedly stared at the baby monitor waiting for Dylan to wake up screaming from the terrible audial injustice happening over his head (answer: NEVER. He never woke up once, during the entire eardrum-shattering show, and this is the same baby who will wake up if you cough while in the same room with him, what the everloving fuck) and once it was all over Riley tearfully reminded us all that he did NOT like that ONE BIT because it was TOO LOUD. It all seemed quite traumatic, and reminded me of last summer when we thought it was a good idea to take him to a Blue Angels show and, well, this is a no-shitter in retrospect but it turns out he was completely terrified what with the nonstop unbelievably loud flyovers and ended up being scared of planes for a solid three or four months afterwards, and seriously, the fireworks thing seemed just as bad, like why not just take your toddler and immerse his brain in muriatic acid, as long as you’re on a roll with the long-term psychological damage and all.
So imagine my surprise when one of his daycare teachers warmly told me all about how Riley had described his amazing, wonderful, festive July 4th fireworks experience, how his dad and uncle went in the canoe and made really big fireworks that went like this (expansive arm gesture, kapowwww noise), and they were really really cool, then another teacher told me about it, and another one, until I basically got the idea that Riley has spent both school days this week talking nonstop about this fan-fucking-tastic fireworks thing, and either he’s remembering things a lot differently than I do or we’ve abused him so horribly he’s having to create his own falsely happy bucolic childhood memories to bandage over the mental trauma and soon he’ll create multiple personalities to shoulder the burdens we’ve placed on him and he’ll have a lifetime of medications and therapy and jesus, I JUST THOUGHT THE FIREWORKS WOULD BE FUN.
Also, I got to talking with one of his teachers about potty training and I learned he’s pretty much the only kid in his class not trained yet. Yeah. Parenthood: FAIL. So I think this weekend is going to be Potty Boot Camp, with NO DIAPERS ALLOWED, since the weather’s decent and he can soil himself out in the great outdoors instead of the living room. I don’t know how else to get him to even consider crapping in the potty, because lord knows I have begged and pleaded and issued forth bribe after bribe with no success to date.
(Hilariously, one of my freelance projects last year was for a potty training DVD, which I watched for the first time recently, snickering and cringing and occasionally slapping my knee and letting out a hoot; the actual dialogue by the “parents” in it is written mostly by ME, as though I have even the first clue about this stuff, which, HI. Clearly I do NOT.)
Lastly, if you are going to BlogHer, may I entreat you to join me at this horrifically-scheduled yoga class? I know, I know, 7 AM, the hell. But think how superior you’ll feel afterwards! You can make the L sign at your fellow BlogHer attendees who got to sleep in and linger over their coffee and . . . uh . . . listen, it’s fucking healthy, okay? It’s zenlike and happy and shit, so come and make me feel like less of a dork about being there to “meet and greet bloggers”, goddamn it.
Lastly for REAL lastly, if anyone wondered, Dog is fine and her lump was a fatty deposit which the vet, ah, drained? for about a million dollars. Fracking pets.
Jul
7
I decided to reward myself for continuing to stick with this whole exercise-and-diet thing — even while on vacation! People, I got a pass to the local gym and I took two Turbo Kick classes last week, for which I felt I deserved some sort of high honor, perhaps a knighthood or honorary Harvard degree or at the very least a large portion of magical calorie-free creme brulée, shot directly into my open maw with a robust Burnt Cream Expulsion Device (OH YEAH FILL MY MOUTH WITH CREAM) (What?) — and so I visited our local fancypants retail mothership on Sunday in order to try on approximately eleventy billion pairs of “premium denim” jeans.
(My beloved pair of Joe’s, the ones I’ve used as a weight loss goal all along, have actually gotten a little too loose, which is craaaaaaazy and also, wait, oh yeah, fucking crazy, and listen, I am sure you are tired of hearing me yap about fitness stuff but DUDE MY SKINNY JEANS GOT TOO BIG, and holy shit, WOOT. Thank you Turbo Jam and fat free Cool Whip and Hip Hop Abs and Inhale yoga and GoLean breakfast cereal and sugar-free Red Bull and 24 Hour Fitness and Fuji apples and my beat-up old Nikes and my silly new Pumas and shelled edamame and Lululemon pants and South Beach peanut butter bars and the blessed ability to stave off the utter exhaustion brought on by two small children by RUNNING AWAY FROM IT ALL [literally]).
I tried on all sorts of crazy styles and eventually found a glorious pair of 7 For All Mankinds (the A-pocket Flip Flops, if you’re curious, which is a ‘petite’ style, meaning the legs are thankfully not designed for human giraffes), which the salesperson convinced me to buy in a size TWO sizes smaller than my Joe’s, a size I would describe as really quite snug if not downright sausagey. True to her word, after several hours of wear the 7s somehow relaxed a bit and expanded to allow my belly to do something other than explode over the waistband in giant terrifying rolls of unfurling fleshy muffin-topedness, but for a while there I was fairly convinced she had played a mean, mean joke on me.
“Oh, I know,” she kept saying while I turned this way and that in front of the mirror making hurt-puppy whimpering sounds. “They feel like ‘OH MY GOD’, right?” And I was like, “YES! YES THEY DO. DEAR LORD YOU CAN SEE MY SPLEEN,” and she talked me through it like a labor coach until I was doing Lamaze breathing and saying little affirmation prayers and handing over my debit card in order to buy a pair of insanely expensive too-small jeans on purpose.
Anyway: fierce new jeans, you guys. Fierce. Although I have learned that it’s a very bad idea to drink carbonated beverages while wearing them, unless I want to experience something like a Diet Coke-and-Mentos effect inside my midsection (a disturbing sensation that brought this video to mind all too clearly).
Lastly, I give you the 5 Stages of Rolling Over, as performed by Dylan:
Stage One: Flirty Preparation
Stage Two: Grunty Full-Body Effort
Stage Three: Shocked Holy-Fuck-Will-You-Check-This-Shit-OUT-ism
Stage Four: Groovy Self Accolades
Stage Five: ABORT MISSION! ABORT MISSION! SYSTEM FAILURE RESET RESET! FAIL.
** Edited to add photos of the JEANS, since some of you asked, and I am nothing if not . . . well, apparently someone who’s a little too trigger-happy with the camera, jesus.
Warning: do not consume fizzy drinks while wearing.
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