Live Forever

Our good friends the Botchkos came down to visit us over last weekend, which was especially awesome since we didn't have any visitors planned for the month of June and, well, Vee and I like entertaining. So I made a watermelon chiffon pie as Kiddo crawled around my feet (do not recommend this).

We went down to the Old Market with the Botchkos on Saturday morning, hoping to go antiquing at this awesome antique mall that I knew was going out of business...YES, YOU GUESSED IT, we were just a day TOO LATE, and the joint had a big NO LONGER IN BUSINESS sign on it. DAMN! So we poked around a few stores and then had lunch at a brew pub downtown; the one restaurant, without fail, that we seem to ALWAYS take visitors when we go downtown. It was actually the first restaurant Vee and I ever went to in our beloved prairie city, way back when we first visited back in 02. Ah me, young love.

Back at our house, we decided to watch one of the movies the Botchkos had brought. Mr Botchko and Ms Botchko are movie-watchers-extraordinaires and had supplied us with five from their huge stash to pick from. We picked...

BABYCAKES!

What can I even say about this movie other than IT IS AMAZING, and THERE IS NOTHING BETTER THAN THE "SOUNDTRACK" with its "babycaaaaaakes...niiiiiiice" awkwardly repeated at random intervals.
(see below for a sample)

I was SCREAMING my head off with laughter--the premise of the movie is that Ricki Lake is fat, and she works as a cosmetologist at a mortuary, and one day she sees this NOT HOT BUT SUPPOSED TO BE dude ice-skating and decides she is supposed to be with him. So she VERY CREEPILY stalks him, and after a series of "this dude is a CHUD with NO LIFE who and he is ENGAGED AND NEVER DENIES IT" events, they stay together.

But not before Fiancee (who is apparently a bitch because she works a lot) beats up Fat Ricki at a New Years party!

Furthermore, Ricki's TRULY A BITCH best friend who hates her because she is happy NEVER GETS HER COMEUPPANCE and when she is lecturing Ricki and Chud about how the world is going to come to an end, Chud AWKWARDLY screams out "Then I'm CLINGIN' TO GRACE! [Ricki's name]".

DUDE IS STILL ENGAGED! AND NEVER DENIES IT! Can you tell that I CAN'T GET OVER THAT?

Anyway, GOD BLESS THE BOTCHKOS for bringing Babycakes into my life. After that, what could we do but FINALLY plant Kiddo's YEAR PLANT?

We had been meaning to plant something on Kiddo's first birthday to honor her, and, ok, I'm just going to say it--we wanted to finally plant her placenta.

YEP, HER PLACENTA!

Vee specially requested that they save it when I was giving birth, and since I was IN THE MIDDLE OF LABOR, I said "Whatever! Fine!" and they bagged it up in a biohazard plastic bag and it has been living at the back of our freezer. FOR OVER A YEAR. But no more! Placenta is supposed to be AN AMAZING FERTILIZER for plants, so I'm just hoping that's what happens and not that MY KILLER PLACENTA takes down Kiddo's hyssop plant.

Sunday morning, we took the Botchkos to our favorite breakfast joint where we all chowed down, and then on to one of our favorite WILD WOODS parks (in fact, the one where we had our engagement pictures taken) before we sent them on their way.

IT WAS AWESOME, BOTCHKOS! LET'S DO IT AGAIN!

But I can't really leave you guys tonight until I tell you about my most recent Twilight discovery. So I was totally going to say that I feel much better with the Twilight series under my belt, and I am going back into it and actually reading all of the words this time, and I wanted to assuage your fears that while I am crazily into Twilight, I wasn't going to, like, make a Youtube video of Edward and Bella and set it to "Live Forever" or anything,

BUT THEN I WENT ON YOUTUBE TO CHECK AND SOMEONE TOTALLY ALREADY DID!


OMG! What is next, did someone make a video of clips of Al Gore and set it to "I Need a Hero" like I dreamed about doing back when they were trying to impress him into running for president?

IN! TOO! DEEP!

Next blog will be about the great visit with our friends the Botchkos, who came down to visit us from MN over the weekend, but I can't focus because I have been in a "Twilight"-induced K-hole for the last four days.

How deep? Let's put it this way--I drove out to the West library in hopes of getting book2 ("New Moon") and was devastated to realize that every 12-year-old had the same dream this summer--there was a waitlist queue of 84. EIGHTY-FOUR! Since I had bargained an hour of mom-time-away-from-Kiddo with Vee, I had approximately 35 minutes, including drive-time, remaining after my failed adventure.

What did I do? Where did I go?

Barnes & Noble, where I sped-read the first hunk of chapters in "New Moon" for twenty minutes while perched on one of those uncomfortable step stools.

Did it satisfy my bloodlust for Twilight?

What do you think?

Being unwilling to shell out $20/book for the rest of the series, yet mentally incapable of waiting through 84 slow-moving pre-adolescents who would definitely max out their two-week-checkout-periods, I turned to eBay. Then I realized I would have to pay $35+ for the four books and THEN WAIT ANOTHER WEEK OR SO while they were shipped to me.

Unacceptable.

While scanning the about-to-expire listings, I stumbled upon SALVATION:

Some enterprising young kid/adult had SCANNED THE PAGES OF ALL OF THE BOOKS IN and would EMAIL YOU THE PDFS immediately upon winning the bid.

WTF?!??!?! An UTTERLY INGENIOUS scheme that cost the seller JACKSHIT while appealing to FIENDS LIKE MYSELF!

So I guttersniped the poor leader with only 2 feedbacks at the last second (I've been bidding long enough that I KNOW WHAT IT TAKES TO WIN) and actually Paypaled $5.04 over to the seller, and LO AND BEHOLD...

I WAS SENT TO A FILESHARE SITE! With all four books PLUS some bonus material!

First of all, I immediately wanted to share this with my friends because DUDE, it wasn't even the PDFs, I just FOUND OUT THE SITE WHERE THEY WERE BEING HOSTED and TOTALLY ANYONE COULD ACCESS THEM! But before my beneficient nature could take over, I realized that, well, NO ONE ELSE CARED AS MUCH AS ME, and besides, I WANTED TO START READING!

So, my Twilight K-hole. If I was on the computer at all in the last 24 hours (which, believe me, I WAS), I was furiously using Page Down and screaming through the pages of "New Moon," "Eclipse," and "Breaking Dawn." Usually, I'm a LITTLE more discreet and take my time, but with ALL FOUR BOOKS AT MY FINGERTIPS, I was stampeding through the storylines so that I could find out what happened, and enjoying little bits along the way, knowing that I could go back to REALLY read them at any point.

Conclusion? TWILIGHT IS A K-HOLE I WILL GLADLY FALL INTO, but my two complaints are this:

1. Honeymoon scene? NOT WORTH WAITING FOR! When Edward and Bella are making out in "Eclipse" it is SOOOOOO much better! Even the cottage scene in "Breaking Dawn" is better than the honeymoon! Which leads me to:

2. EDWARD NEEDS TO STOP BUSTING UP EVERY MAKEOUT WITH REMINDERS OF HOW THEY SHOULDN'T BE DOING IT! Look, I understand JUST AS WELL AS THE NEXT GIRL that over 75% of Edward's sexiness is his Mr. Darcyian falling-in-love-against-his-will, but DUDE NEEDS TO STOP RUINING LITERALLY EVERY MOMENT and just LET IT HAPPEN without the dumb remorse post-honeymoon!

You're KILLING MY BUZZ!

Twilight Falls

Of few things am I as certain as this fact:

Are you writing a teen novel series which will incorporate mythical, magical elements? If so, LET ME KNOW SO I CAN GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR THIS TIME!

Y'all know where this is going. Yesterday, I stopped fighting fate and borrowed a copy of "Twilight" from the library. And as Kiddo happily crawled back and forth between the couch and the sliding patio doors on her own personal track, I tore through the book in three hours flat.

Then obsessively Wikipedia-ed and Googled everything I could about "Twilight," Edward, and, ok, a little bit about Bella.

This is the second time this has happened.

In the spring of 2006, though I had successfully dissed, resisted, and mocked the Harry Potter Mania, I had been through all of the interesting-looking New Fiction at the library, and finally decided to give it a chance. So I shamefacedly went over to the Young Adult section after looking up the author and took home "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

It might have rained that afternoon, it might have blizzarded, Conor Oberst might have been playing a free show at the park a few blocks away from me (and yes, he was), but I was LOCKED DOWN, LOCKED UP TIGHT on the couch in my living room, ENRAPTURED by the book. (For the record, I am totally a Snape girl, and I just like Harry's adventures. But my daydreams are not about little Harry Potter. Digression.)

The next day (no, really, the next day), I marched back to the library and checked out as many of the following books as they had. I plowed through all of them during the following weeks, trying to make Vee see how FASCINATING and AMAZING these storylines were so that I would have someone to talk through my THEORIES with! And as I was reading the books, fortunately I was able to ALSO RENT THE MOVIES! Like BASICALLY THE BEST THING EVER!

I was shocked at myself, since I am sooooooo NOT a fantasy/magical reality person. No, really. Like SO not into that sort of storyline. When I was younger, I was violently afraid of "Alice in Wonderland" and I got really, really uncomfortable whenever TV shows or movies would have things occur that didn't make sense in the corporal world. I had a very difficult time understanding alternate realities/the concept of space, and so I avoided them. On reflection, I think that's why I hate scary movies/ghost stories so much--they're all predicated on things "appearing" or beings existing which DO NOT BELONG in regular space and time.

So WHY WAS I SO ENAMORED WITH HARRY POTTER, a series of books about A BOY WHO WENT TO WIZARD SCHOOL and was permeated with magical flying things and spells and beings that should not exist?

I think the key word here is: wizard SCHOOL. THE BOY IS BASICALLY AT A PREP BOARDING SCHOOL, which has been one of my pet fantasies/favorites subjects to read about ever since I was in seventh grade and sending away dreamily for boarding school information so that I could rappell through the woods in my blazer and matching skirt like the girl in the videocassette sent by the Madeira School.

"Prep" by Curtis Sittenfeld? Basically like SOMEONE SAW INSIDE MY MIND AND WROTE A BOOK BASED ON MY FANTASIES. "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" by Marisha Pessl? Keep it coming! Combine that with A REPLICANT OF "The Worst Witch," definitively one of my favorite movies of all time, where Fairuza Balk goes to Witch School and then Tim Curry, as the Grand Wizard, shows up and sings the most amazing song recorded in history, and you've got Harry Potter. And you've got my obsession.


You can throw all of the usual wet blankets on the series. IT'S WRITTEN FOR YOUNG ADULTS, and so IT READS LIKE IT! No, it's not THE MOST AMAZING WRITING OF THE CENTURY. Do you think I care? Do you think it stopped me from waiting in line at midnight on July 20/21, 2007 for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows?



Or do you think that it stopped me from literally reading until 3am that night, then getting up at 9am and reading nonstop until noon, sobbing at parts, and when I emerged into the bright sunlight, almost speechless, being astonished that the world was still going about its normal cycle?

So here I am, with "Twilight," reliving my immersion into a pop culture mania I thought I was beyond and I definitely thought I was too old for. It's no Harry Potter, but I can read about a vampire teen with gorgeously-mussed-hair in love against his will basically any day. Can we get a little closer to TEEN ME?



I just hope the "honeymoon scene" in "Breaking Dawn" is as good as it should be. DON'T MAKE ME WAIT THROUGH FOUR BOOKS FOR NOTHING!

Technological Delight!

My big ambitions with this blog (remember when I was BLOGGING EVERY DAY?) seem to have fizzled out; oddly enough, it is occurring in sequence with a decrease in my workload as I prepare to complete my last full week of 3/4-time work. Is it summer fever? Doubtful, especially on a day like today, with gray skies and temps in the mid-60s.

My big girl Kiddokabiddo celebrated her first birthday last Friday. And by "celebrated," I mean "refused naps and ate some refried beans from the Mexican takeout Vee and I were forced into since her non-nap-iness meant there was no way we could bring her into the restaurant." She did get to open a few gifts, however.

Like the dolly and the fake cell phone I purchased two days prior at Toys-R-Us.

It was so strange going into Toys-R-Us; I seriously hadn't been in one since I was MAYBE fourteen. I stopped going into them right around that time because I would get overwhelmed with this adolescent/pubescent/grown-up emotion that centered around the truth that I was too old to WANT to go toy shopping there, depressing myself that I was no longer interested in getting toys. You know, that old "Not a girl, not yet a woman" thing.

So strolling in, looking for toys for MY DAUGHTER, actually helped alleviate it--GENERATIONAL SHIFT! I picked out a doll for her, which was one of the most emotional things I could have imagined--the idea of seeing my tiny little toddler (not that she's TODDLING, but she AIN'T NO BABY ANY MORE) being tender with a baby doll.

Because I would have felt like a cheapo parent for only spending $8 on my first child's first birthday, I decided to get her another toy. There I am, in the "educational" aisle, about to buy those blocks that are different sizes and fit into that hexagonal box, when I spied...

A TOY CELL PHONE.

Kiddo LOVES my cell phone. Like, LOVES it in a way I never could. Since my Razr is busted and not getting fixed any time soon, I let her play with it, but since Vee has an identical phone, she doesn't know the difference and would likely be calling Oslo if I didn't intervene.

Classic educational toy. Cell phone. What did I buy?



Pretty sure Pregnant Me, New Mom Me, and Ideological Me were screaming at my face, but look at Kiddo's delight!

She Give Me Fever

Memorial Day came and went, with a visit from Gramma Goose, Grampa PhD, AKA, and Mr Ben to replicate the Memorial Day visit of last year.

Except this time, Kiddokabiddo was OUTSIDE my womb, and I didn't have to call Mom back down three days later when I gave birth!

We had a pretty relaxing time: tons of MEMORIAL DAY food like hot dogs, burgers, steaks, baked beans, chips, and the first summer pie of the season, BLUEBERRY PEACH. Mmmmm. Dad and Ben hauled my blanket chest upstairs to our bedroom, we hung framed pictures, and Mom & Kate & I planted and trimmed shrubbery. Pretty low-key, considering that last year was a fiesta of light installation, outlet replacements, major planting, and dozens of sundry other tasks. We'd only been there for 2 weeks, ok?

Vee had been complaining of a "special" sore throat that "only he gets," so imagine how I was NOT surprised when I woke up with my own "special" sore throat on Saturday morning, accompanied by an annoying half-cough. IT WAS A FULL-ON COLD, and the only kind of cold I get--a summer cold. I don't get sick all freaking winter long, and yet, without fail, I ALWAYS get a summer cold, generally around Memorial Day. And no, it's not allergies.

Last night, however, the "special" sickness made its way to poor little Kiddo, who woke up at 2:30am with a 102 fever. My little Kiddo didn't let it get her down, but she was BURNING UP as I nursed her back to sleep.

And then I COULD NOT get back to sleep because I kept hearing:

This is the first time she's been sick, and although she's not showing any other signs of anything, I feel so bad for her. ALMOST ONE FULL YEAR with nothing other than baby jaundice!

Vee took her in for her one year appointment yesterday and she got her second round of Pc and HiB shots, and I CAN'T HELP BUT THINK THERE IS MORE TO THIS FEVER than just the "special" cold, but I can't prove it.

THIS IS NOT A PROMISING SELL FOR FUTURE VACCINATIONS FOR MY LITTLEBY!