Everything is Unfinished

It’s things like this that remind me why I love They Might Be Giants so much. Even after 16 years of loving their music, they do something so awesome that I am forced to repledge my love and share with you this video. I mean, come on: John Hodgman as The Deranged Millionaire, a megaphone-crooned song, AND a shout-out to Mrs. Hitler? How can you not fall at the feet of John and John and declare yourself their number one fan?

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to buy a copy of Venue Songs.

After going completely stir crazy this winter and having a mini breakdown last week, I finally wised up and got out of the house. Today, Jack was introduced to Gymboree.

Unfortunately, the closest location is about a 35-minute drive from our house, but fortunately Jack had a GREAT time so the drive was worth it. I don’t know what he loved most: being able to crawl around unhindered, the brightly-colored wiffle balls, the other babies, the other mommies, the parachute (which was my favorite part) or the bubbles. But he definitely had fun and I got to talk to other adults! Granted, it was mostly little snippets of conversations punctuated with “do you see that other baby?” and “no, don’t take that other baby’s ball”, but it was adult communication nonetheless. So we signed up for a 3-month unlimited package and can basically LIVE at Gymboree between now and June. And if I get to keep playing with the parachute, we may just do that.

Mmmm, chocolate. I do love you so. And I try not to eat too much of you, but what am I to do when I find things like this at the store:

Coconut creme Kisses? Come on, you know I don’t have that much willpower. I’m eating one RIGHT NOW, as a matter of fact. And don’t get me started on these:

Last week at my parents’ house I probably ate half the bag of those cherry Kit Kats. All I can say is, at least they were minis. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go find some Cadbury Mini Eggs.

Just a little placeholder entry here to let you know that iPowerWeb hosting sucks. The server our website is on went down on Sunday and they lost 3 days worth of data. Plus we couldn’t send or receive any email through our peelio.com addresses. Everything came back up Sunday night, but I couldn’t get into our admin page or the blog entry page, and we still couldn’t use our email. This continued through Monday, then Tuesday morning everything went back down again. Today everything finally seems to be working but there’s still that issue of the lost blog entries and the fact that I’m missing 3 days worth of email. It’s a good thing we don’t really have anything vitally important here - I really doubt that anything dire or irreplacable got lost. But it’s the principal of the thing, and the point is that iPowerWeb hosting sucks. I hope Google picks up on that. We’re changing hosting providers this week.

I know that Valentine’s Day was yesterday, but since my concept of days and time has been a little skewed lately anyway, I figured that posting this list on the 15th was ok.

Things I Love:
* When Jack reaches up to touch my face as he’s falling asleep, reassuring himself that I’m still there
* Crawling into my nice warm comfy bed and snuggling with Johnny
* My Dad’s big strong hugs
* Moonlight sparkling on fresh snow
* Jack’s new happy squealy noise
* That I can talk to my Mom about anything
* Bringing Jack back to bed with me to cuddle in the morning after he’s had his bottle
* Being able to just look at Johnny and we both know what the other one is thinking
* My brothers’ senses of humor. They’re slightly different, but get us all together and inappropriate (but hilarious!) comments abound.
* That Johnny works hard so I can stay home with Jack
* Making Jack laugh
* Early Spring days when the ground is still a little soggy, but the sky is clear blue and you can take off your jacket for the first time
* Being in Love

You’re all going to think I’m Woody if I keep posting videos like this, aren’t you? But this one is pretty cool, especially if you like setting up dominoes and watching them fall over. Which I do.

Blizzards are great. Especially when you have to have a funeral in one.

So, the funeral service was nice. More “churchy” than Gramma would have preferred, I think, but not too bad. There was a very short graveside service and then a luncheon afterward, and the whole time it was snowing and blowing and snowing some more and then also blowing. The afternoon was spent dozing while Johnny drove back home. It only took him an hour longer than usual! Then when I went to pick up dinner (I get my committment to cooking dinner from my mom) there was an 18 inch drift behind the car in the driveway. I was originally going to head back home myself tomorrow afternoon, but now I’m just going to wait and see what happens. The death toll is holding steady at zero, but it’s ready to shoot right up.

Some Good Things About Funerals:
* Your family from out of town comes to visit. Gramma had 9 grandkids: my brothers and me and our 6 cousins.

It’s not often that I’m the shortest person in a group!

The only one missing is Jennifer Conner. I’m putting her full name there in case she googles herself and finds this page. We haven’t seen her in probably 10 or more years, and even her parents don’t know where she is. If you’re reading this Jennifer, we’d love to hear from you!
* Nice people bring your family lots of food. In our case it’s an abundance of coffee cakes and other breakfast-type pastries. Yum!
* You sometimes get to have one of the lovely flower arrangements afterward. I’ve got my eye on a really cool eucalyptus wreath.
* Looking through lots of old pictures to make memory boards.
* Lots of hugging. (Note: this could also be one of the Bad Things About Funerals.)
*You get dressed up so you can get a nice picture like this one:

And that’s about it. The rest is all crying and making small talk and trying to remember who the person you’re talking to is and hearing everyone say, “I’m sorry for your loss” 500 bazillion times. We need a new cultural phrase to say at funerals, I’ve decided. Because it’s far too easy to be tempted to say back to people, “Well you should be because ultimately you killed her.” Okay, I wouldn’t actually say that to anyone, but I did think it a few times. And I think Gramma would have thought it a few times along with me.

Old and Busted:

New Hotness:

He looks like such a big boy in his new big boy seat!

My brother Myke showed me this video earlier tonight.

I was so horrified/intrigued by it, I had to find out more. The text from the YouTube entry reads:

Directed and produced by Tom Rubnitz in 1989, “Pickle Surprise!”(1989) is a perfect example of the wickedly-whacked-world-view that those demented denizens at the Pyramid Club could conjure from the ether after just a few rounds of cocktails and a big ole spliff.

Sister Dimension stars as Grandpa Hoofpynpoiers (sp?); RuPaul is still in pre-Supermodel phase since she is trying to to pass for a lady in one of her favorite off-the-rack Dress Barn ensembles - you still need to fix those teeth you skanky ho. And my! golly gosh! Lady Bunny gives us only one chin to gawk at! Supporting cast is David Dalrymple, Maria Ayala, and the ever-lasting piece of sex on a stick, Ms. Lahoma Van Zandt.

I guess I’m not up on my drag queens, because I didn’t even notice RuPaul. I did find out that the Pyramid Club is a nightclub in the East Village, but that’s really all beyond what’s up above. I guess some things are just meant to be a mystery!

The only thing I can think is that the bump on the head knocked the crabbiness out of him.

For over 2 weeks, Jack has just been unbearable. At first, it was because he was sick, and I understand being clingy and whiny and not feeling good and I was happy to cuddle with him for a good 18 hours a day. But he’s been better for about 10 days. Apparently he liked all that attention and thought we’d better keep it up. Anytime I put him down, for any amount of time, he turned into Lord Screams-a-Lot of Screamington. Even if he was surrounded by his favorite toys. Even if he was sleeping. Sometimes, even if he had a bottle. And I. Was. Going. Crazy. The Mommy Guilt was getting to me, and when I squashed that enough and convinced myself that he was fine and it was ok to let him cry for a while, then I would just be out of my mind because there’s only so long you can ignore screaming like that. I don’t know how parents of colicky kids do it - I realize now that we were incredibly spoiled with our very good baby.

But then…something happened. Thursday night while we were still in the ER waiting for my dad, Jack just stopped being crabby. He actually smiled for literally the first time in 2 weeks. He sat and played, he made his cute baby noises including the growling he likes to do now. The only thing I can think of that could have made this difference is that he ate A LOT that day. Maybe he was just hungry all the time? Maybe it was just a coincidence? I don’t know, but I’m enjoying having my boy back. He’s been smiling a lot, playing with his toys, and having fun crawling all over Gramma and Grampa’s house. I even have proof!