USS New York

While driving into the city Saturday night, Grant and I drove right past the USS New York docked at pier 88. I must say that I had no idea this ship existed nor that it was forged from steel from the World Trade Center debris. But after G filled me in on it, I set about trying to find out as much as possible about it, and Wednesday we'll be taking Griffin to see it in person.

I just find it deeply moving that the people who are responsible for it coming about had the foresight and determination to see this symbol of our nation's unity come to fruition. I think I am also still saddened by the Fort Hood tragedy, but seeing this ship has sent my emotions into overload, once again. I have such mixed feelings about the wars and our government, I'm truly torn when thinking about the future of our armed forces.

I guess I have this maternal feeling of responsibility to all of the men and women who protect our safety both here and abroad including the police, firefighters, marines, army, navy, coast guard, and anyone else I'm forgetting. Though I would cringe at the suggestion that Griffin someday enter into one of these incredible fields, I realize he may feel the need to serve his country this way and so I hope I would be able to support it. Because all of these people are somebody's son and somebody's daughter, let alone husband, wife, father, mother etc.

It makes me want to do small things for these people if and when I can. I try to buy police officer's coffee if I see them in line behind me at the bodega. And I keep procrastinating but will eventually bake something to take to my neighborhood firehouse too. I want to take Grif to see the ship so that one day we can talk about 9/11 and hopefully he'll feel some of these same emotions too. So, I guess I just wanted to share the story of this ship with you to get you thinking.

Probably Not Going to Make "Most Popular" with This One...

Alright, I admit it, I'm a card carrying member of a "Mom's Group". I'm not proud of it, but at this point, it's either talk crochet and crockpots or completely lose my mind. Now where's my damn knitting needle?

So to carry my weight in the Mom's Group I've posted several memo's on our google page from time to time. The last post being yesterday and involving the first mention in 2 months of a night out for the mom's to leave the kids behind with dad and finally get to know each other a little more than, "Sara! Get that light plug out of your mouth!" or "I've changed 15 poopy diapers today!" Do you see the problem here?

Cut to this morning when I eagerly log in to check all of the hits I've gotten on my Night Out invite and do you want to know what I saw?

(MNO) Mom's Night Out
By Teresa B* - Nov 5 - 1 author - 0 replies

W.O.W. Not only do I have no prospects for sanity here, I'm now the "Bad Mom" because clearly I "don't care" about my kid and his infinite poopy diapers and lego stacking abilities. I'm sure the group owner is scouring her google capabilities to see how fast she can un-join me from the group. But I've got news for you, Crazy Mom Group Ladies, I hate crochet! In fact. I've had the same scarf in progress for 3 YEARS, and I'm damn proud of it. So shove that in your crockpot and slow-cook it.

And Now You Know Why My Cable Guy is on Speeddial

Big plans for the weekend, huge (compared to my normal plans verging on minute). Griffin's going to carve his first pumpkin. Well actually, I'm going to carve it and then after covering him head to toe with dropcloths, give him all of the pumpkin innards to play with. After which I will photograph him and show you later, because that's what parents do. They humiliate their offspring and publicize it for laughs. And in response, said offspring spend their entire lives trying to even the score. Now you never need to watch another Dr. Phil episode again. Didn't think you'd reap such an amazing benefit from reading my stuff, now did you? Consider yourself gifted with the majesty of avoiding Dr. Douchbag.

In related news, you know how most of my friends are tv personalities? Yeah, you too? Good, I love when we find things in common. We'd kill on eHarmony Olympics. Anyway, I've talked before about Op's and Ellen, but recently I have a major crush on the entire cast of 30 Rock. Like insane group crush. Not your usual Jim and Pam - 2 person crush, nope the whole shebang. It's not that I want to be on the show as a castmember, I just want their characters to be real life people that I work with. Then I for sure wouldn't be falling asleep at my desk every half hour... What? Did I say that? Ha.

What did people do before sitcoms? Horror.

Yep, I Did That.

To save you the trouble of googling this before you send an email to the entire department that confirms the suspicions that you're a flaming idiot.

Moot Vs. Mute.

Anything I can do to help my fellow 'Intellectually Challenged' persons.

In other news, on my way to work this morning a man walking his 5 year old daughter to school gave me the once over and proclaimed, "God Bless You". And hereafter my list:
1. Shut up, you're walking your daughter to school.
2. What the hell does that even mean anyway? Do I need blessed today?
3. I reiterate: You, with a 5 year old (though she is insanely cute with her pink backpack) = not hot.
4. I do confess that the blessing was much classier than the whistle, the profanity, or the gesturing but still - 5 year old. Gross.

I Get It! Frigid-Air! Silly GE.

Temperature Alert: It is f-ing FREEZING here. When did that happen? Where have I been that I didn't notice it until my fingers were so stiff I could no longer type or pull my pants up after visiting the you-know-where? I mean don't get me wrong, I love October. But we could use a little easing into winter instead of this frat party bingefest of frigid air and freezing rain. Like give me an orientation week or two, at least.

Hold on, my Pandora's way too loud.

There, much better for think/writing. Plus, I just noticed the people in the hallway are headbanging to my Beyonce and that is so not cool. My Beyonce. Mine.

Can you tell I have a 14 month old? No? Yes? No? (Welcome to Parenthood. Now you get why Mommy needs her cocktail.)

My little buddy is getting so big these days. In true genetic brilliance he said his first sentence the other day. "Dada byebye". And he even knew how to use punctuation after quotation marks correctly. Sheer genius. He also picked up an acorn at the playground, (because out of all the amazing and fun looking pieces of equipment he could possibly play with he chooses small choke hazards - why do I feel karma is associated with this reality?) and held it up in one hand while using his other hand to sign "eat" to me with a question mark in his eyebrows. PEOPLE. Maybe you don't understand that this translates into English as "Hello, I will be the next leader of the free world", but that is exactly what it does. Just saying.

It IsTime For Change

Seeing as how it's Fall, I've made an executive decision that it is New Leaf Day in our household. There has got to be a way to squeeze more productivity from my day, and by God, I'm going to find out how. Starting with writing, I have got to get my act together and write more. I think some of this problem stems from the fact that when I'm crazy busy I feel like I don't have the time to write something great. And if I can't create something quasi-intelligible, I don't want to even bother with the time.

So more on this later, the babe is a-stirring, but what would you do on New Leaf Day?

*Brainstorm #3* They Also Drink Out of the Toilet

Does anyone else find it offensive that dog food commercials now very closely resemble TGI Friday's commercials? Maybe it's just me but the day I buy Chef Michael's Canine Creations for our dog is the day I iron my dinner napkins (or in other words, never). Plus, they try to sell the food because it looks like table food when in reality it looks like chunky dog food covered in gravy.

Attention Chef Michael advertising committee: the people of America do not think your commercial is appetizing. Because *Brainstorm #1* we can tell the difference between real food and dog food. What was that team meeting like: I know! Let's appeal to the people who think regular dog food does not look appetizing enough for their dogs! *Brainstorm #2* let me put this delicately: dogs lick their own butts. Are you really concerned they may not find dry dog food appetizing?

I have a better idea, can you do anything for Olive Garden? They need you now more than ever.

Note to Self: Dye Hair Before 15-Year

Why haven't I told you about my 10 year high school reunion yet? Why? Why? Why? Because I don't care if you have never met anyone from my high school at all, this is an entertaining story.

I'll skip over the part where I was either gigantically popular or enormously stupid which led me to be our senior class president, but I was. Which leaves me forever strapped to the responsibility of planning our reunions, and thereby receiving months and months of hate-mail emails telling me what a horrible job I'm doing, and how the reunion is going to suck, and how my eyebrows are uneven. *Highlight.* And maybe some would even say I deserve the hate email because I don't "plan things in advance" or "give a shit", but I say to those people, "f%$^ off" and if you would rather snort spaghetti through your nose than come to a reunion planned by me, than go for it Chef Boyardee. L'chaim.

My idea for our reunion involved two things: people and booze. Now, maybe I'm a little conceited here but I didn't estimate it taking me very long to secure these things for the party, like, all of 4.7 seconds of my time. Which must have just really pissed some people off. Wait I retract, there was a good 15 minutes it took me to stop and pick up sticky name tags, 15 minutes 4.7 seconds total. Added to some serious Facebook and emailing efforts to reach people and we were in the money.

Day of reunion arrives and Grant and I get there early, but not early enough because there was already 4 or 5 people waiting. Wow, the enthusiasm. I measure the evening on several points that added up to an all out raging success. The points are as follows:

- Out of 210ish classmates, around 80 were in attendance.

- A total of 4 people were cut off at the bar before 9pm.

- The cops were called 3 times.

- My tab was under $100.

If not for some minor fall backs (ie the bartender recognized me immediately as the "older sister" of one of her friends and ps she graduated high school in 2005), I was thrilled to have so many people there and watch everyone having a great time together. Especially, the part where our former classmate cornered Grant by the bar to give him this card before launching into a 15 minute narrative about his trip to the Netherlands for the Redhead Convention. Let that just sink in for a minute. Poor guy spent the entire party trying to locate every person in our class who had red hair to initiate them into the club. And by the way, you have to have a passcode to get into the website. Those redheads don't joke around. But by far, my favorite comment of the night was his and his alone, "Hey Mike, does your sister still have red hair?".

A-may-zing.

Flying My Bird to the One I Love

Have I told you about my hatred of flying? Well, I kind of freak out a tad and then there's the packing cluster f*^% that is my part time hobby considering how much we travel on a weekly basis. So all in all, it's a horrible experience for all parties involved. And since you know me so well by now, you know I have a husband story that I'm gearing up to tell you, right? Right!

You be the judge, do I need more shit going on when we fly to add to the 12 overweight bags that are costing me 1,000's of $$ that I don't have, which I have to now pay for online to save 15 bucks (because you know if there's 15 whole dollars to save I will walk to Nebraska, skin a goat, build an igloo, and be back before lunch thank-you-very-much), as well as online check-in to save us 15 minutes, and a screaming baby attached to my body by some chinese torture straight-jacket, and 398 liquids that are neither less than 3 oz, nor in a plastic ziplock bag, and God knows how I feel about the laptop that is completely pointless to take on a 3 day trip, but if he wants to take the GD thing then fine, take the GD thing, just don't ask me to help you at the conveyor belt because I also have a stoller, a diaper bag, a carry-on suitcase, and a purse all packed with roughly way too much crap that will probably be exploded on the other side of the x-ray scanner, just as they stop the husband for a 25 minute pat down because did I ever tell you that he is the Incredible Steel-Machinery man with at least 45% of his body made up of metal and or iron of some sort? Well, do I?

No. The answer is I do not need more rediculous shit to encumber me through airport security.

And yet.

After actually successfully maneuvering myself, my crap, and my screaming baby through the above cluster f%#*, I'm hobbling through the terminal towards the gate when my husband chases me down to tell me I have to go back out through security and check his carry-on suitcase at the counter because (wait for it) they won't let him carry-on his Gigantic Electric Power Drill.

[Blink.]

[Blink, blink.]

[Head ever so slowly tilts to one side.]

Friends. I started out under the premise that this is a safe place here on this site and I want it to remain one, so I will not actually tell you the 4 letter and 7 letter words I had to share with my happily wedded husband at that moment. I'll leave that for my diary and my shrink (read: bottle of vodka). Just take faith that I will never have to instruct Grant to forego packing the powertools in his GD carry-on bag ever again. Enough said.

How I Fired My Editor

What's awesome these days? Ooh! I know. How about teenage acne? I think I'd like to single handedly bring it back in style for the 20-something crowd. Hey, what can I say. I'm a trend setter!

And in other things that make my life awesomer, I'm about to leave work for a much needed 2 week vacation and everyone decided to flip the f out at me yesterday for taking my God-given right to paid time off. Bon Voyage, A-holes!

In conclusion, I don't know if I've told you before how I am frequently and rudely edited by my not-so-literary husband from time to time. (I mean his idea of writing involves Microsoft Excel. Can you imagine the horror?) Well, it just happened again and in response I've decided to tell you horrible stories about him here. Witness:

A few weeks back we ran the NYC half marathon together. I believe it was his idea and I was actually excited to participate (this isn't the horrible part). We did an okay job training for it and ran some of our training runs together with the Maestro in the baby jogger, which was cool and grown up of us. Cut to the week or two before the race when my training topped out at 7 miles and I would receive daily emails from the husband bragging about his 9 mile run, and his 10.5 mile run yada yada. To which I swiftly told him to shove his feet alternatingly into his behind. Along comes race day and we think we're ready. If you've ever participated in a run like this or any long course athletic venture you know what I mean when I say we "thought" we were ready. Because for the rest of you, you have no f-ing clue if you're ready or not, you're just hoping you don't die or get picked up by the ambulance for moving slower than the pace of time.

We're about 1 mile into the 13.1 mile death course when Grant loses his shit on me and screams that "You're running too fast! I can't keep up with your pace! WHY DO YOU KEEP RUNNING ONE STEP AHEAD OF ME?! As soon as I catch up, you speed up!" And trust me, I took pity on you by limiting my exclamation points to 4 in that excerpt. So there I am standing dumbfounded in the middle of 4 million racers, trying to estimate the time loss I'll experience by strangling my husband and chopping his legs off.

Turns out I didn't have the time. Lucky for him.