Big Brother Season 14 started tonight – one of the best summer traditions.
Drew just demonstrated his excellent planking (the exercise type) posture, while Erin counted slowly to 30. Meanwhile, I threw Hershey’s miniatures at him from across the room in an attempt to distract him or make him laugh enough that he fell. But he didn’t!
I found out today that I officially passed my glucose test, which is a 2-hour series of blood draws they do when you’re pregnant to test for gestational diabetes. No GD here – very happy!
I realize this is just one little e-card. It’s not even a physical thing – it just exists as a jpeg. (And however things on the internet exist.)
This was probably a Mother’s Day card at one point. But I just saw it today, because this “your ecards” thing has somehow merged with Facebook and George Takei to create the unholy trinity that I like to call, “Why is my news feed now composed entirely of semi-funny, oft-shared pictures??”
Anyway. “9 times out of 10 children get their awesomeness from their mother.” What’s being said here? Why are we leaving out the fathers?
I’ve been running into a lot of father-bashing (or father-ignoring) on all the pregnancy boards to which I am now addicted. A common occurrence is that a woman will start a thread about being upset with her husband about a specific incident, and then comments will quickly pile up about how “it’s different for the men” and “they don’t understand” and how “they’re not interested in the pregnancy.”
Based on this and similar stories, Drew and I started a running “joke” about how much more important mothers are than fathers, which is basically us just repeating how the baby doesn’t even know who the father is until they’re 3 years old, 7 years old, 10 years old. (We just keep exaggerating because that’s what humor is.)
But this morning, I had to stop and say, “We’re both just kidding…right?” because it’s kind of getting to me. Enough is enough. Dads love their children too, and contribute to their health and well-being and yes, even to their awesomeness.
Maybe I just grew up in a very lucky kind of household, where my parents shared responsibilities and were around us equal amounts of time. I would say I get 50% of my awesomeness from my mom and 50% from my dad. And I would say that with a totally straight face.
It’s possible I’m overreacting to a stupid Facebook share. I mean, such things happen. (Some time last year, a WP blog post about bullying made the FB rounds, and everyone yelled about how their kid is such a special snowflake, and they would kill anyone who said anything mean to their perfect and sensitive child. I’m sure my coworkers enjoyed my attitude that day.)
On the other hand, maybe we’ve seen enough of FB e-cards, and enough of comments under-appreciating fathers. Hmm?
Yesterday I found myself back at the Safeway in Mill Valley, which has given me great stories in the past.
I stopped in there to pick up a sandwich for lunch before the final 2 performances of God of Carnage at MTC. Sandwiches are great, and probably on my favorite things list, even though I’ve been eschewing turkey (and that’s just one of several things) because of potential harmful effects during pregnancy.
So I just wanted to stop by and get a cheddar, avocado, and veggie sandwich on sliced sourdough.
A good sign: there was no one in line when I walked in. So I went straight up to the counter, where a super polite young man said, “I’ll be right with you.” Then, he went on to say, “Good afternoon, what may I get you?”
Wow, such service. I started explaining what I wanted.
“So you want a veggie sandwich – would you like me to describe the veggie sandwich to you?”
“Um, that’s okay,” I said, “What I want is actually a “California Dreamin'” without the turkey and bacon.”
“The “California Dreamin'” now goes by the name “Turkey Bacon Avocado,” he said.
“Okay.”
He began to assemble the sandwich. Kind of sloppily. I don’t understand why sandwich-makers at Safeway don’t know how to make a sandwich. They always pile everything on the center of the bread. Don’t you know you have to spread the avocado to the edges? And you shouldn’t just stack all the tomatoes in the center? It’s not rocket science, people. Make the type of sandwich that you would want to eat.
And it’s not just Mill Valley Safeway. It was in Mountain View that I watched a guy squirt mustard on one slice of bread, and then pick up both slices, one in each hand, and stare at them, puzzled, until he slowly smashed them together and rubbed the mustard around.
Wow.
When Mill Valley guy was finishing up (having just placed a large pile of pickles in two square inches), he said, “Now, our policy dictates that I charge you an extra fifty cents.” For avocado, I assume? “But I’m debating in my head whether or not to charge you that. That policy is in place to deter people from ordering sandwiches like this. But I don’t think we’ll suffer any damages – any long-term damages, that is – because I don’t think many people will order sandwiches like this.”
“Um…okay.”
WTF? For the record, here is the part of the menu that makes me think that it’s acceptable – nay, encouraged – for you to actually order what you want to eat, rather than just choosing from the 8 pre-designed options.
The key word here is “choose”…
Finally he handed it over. And I walked 10 feet away, found the voice memo application on my phone, and dictated what he had just said, because I was worried I’d forget part of it.
Then I called Drew and told him about it.
When I got to the theater, I found he didn’t even cut it in half for me. Which is kind of the most annoying part. I mean, who wants to pick up an entire sandwich?
Apparently the bane of Safeway’s existence – a product of theirs that someone ordered and paid for.
First world problems, am I right?
When the actors started arriving, one of them (with whom I had just bonded over orchids the prior day – I’m starting to think we might be some kind of soulmates or something) started telling a story about how he’d just stopped to pick up a sandwich at Safeway. We then went on to bond over our annoyance at the crazy people working there, and how in New York, you can just order food and then get it and then get out in record time, but here it seems to take people forever to get anything done.
Yeah, we were those people.
Anyway, the sandwich was okay, the shows went great, I was home by 10:30 and in bed by 11:15, and I got to sleep in until 8:30 this morning. So overall…life is good.
So, as I understand it, yesterday was the first day of summer. I basically say my favorite season is whatever season we’re currently in (with a slight bias toward spring and fall), but seriously, summer is great. We left Drew’s parents’ house the other day just after 9pm, and it was still sort of light outside. I just freaking love that.
From here on out, the nights are going to start getting longer again. This is bittersweet. On the one hand, I’m enjoying the relative heat (for the most part) and the looooong days. On the other hand, this means we’re on the downhill slope into fall, which I’m looking forward to for a variety of reasons.
To celebrate the beginning of the decline of the summer, we were serenaded last night at 4am. Well, I was. Drew slept through it, thank goodness.
This same thing happened a couple weeks ago. That night, I also woke up at 4am, not sure if it was the music that woke me up or if it started after I was awake. (I wake up a lot in the middle of the night, and usually just fall back asleep.) But there was this vague instrumental music, and I thought, Is the TV on? But it seemed to be out the back window, so maybe it was coming from the house behind us? That night, it played through that instrumental song, then the Partridge Family’s “I Think I Love You,” then “That’ll Be The Day” by Buddy Holly, then something I can’t remember, and then we were on “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover” by Paul Simon when it finally switched off.
I assume it’s someone’s clock radio going off, and it just takes them 15 minutes to turn it off. But that time a couple weeks ago, when it also woke up Drew, he sort of freaked out, and then spent the next two hours unable to fall back to sleep, and then had to get up for work.
So last night I tried to ignore it the best I could, and to fall back asleep, although it didn’t happen until it was finally quiet again. The only song I remember was “I Want You Back” by Jackson 5. I’m still not sure if it’s from the house behind us, or from our neighbor. Either way, I’m just really glad it didn’t disturb Drew, and that I wasn’t awake longer than about 20 minutes altogether.
Happy summer! Here’s to sleeping through the night tonight!
6/22 EDIT: I jinxed us! The radio went off again last night, and I got to hear Buddy Holly again, and also “I Can See Clearly Now,” and also about 4 other songs. It woke up Drew this time, and he walked around trying to figure out where it was coming from. He reported that you can hear it best in our room, leading me to believe it’s either our upstairs neighbor or the house out back.
He even opened the window to try and pinpoint it. When the music went off a minute after that, he said loudly, “Thank you.” Which I found hilarious.
The only upside is that this morning I heard what the station number is. So, Dad, it’s 103.7, which appears to be KOSF. You can listen to it online here. I mean, it’s annoying at 4am, but it does seem like a good station overall. It’s not the station’s fault.
How many times do I let this happen before I start doing some investigating/conversing with neighbors?
I’ve been trying to figure out how to illustrate what I feel like my life has become: a cross between Tetris and books.
Unfortunately, I’m not an artist, so I can’t just draw it, and I don’t have any great skills with Photoshop, and I just didn’t feel that one of my typical MS Paint mashups was going to do this justice.
I’ve obtained a lot (and I mean A LOT) of new books lately. This is on top of already having a bunch of things that I haven’t read yet (and yet I keep thinking, “I love humorous non-fiction; I bet I will really like that book I bought when Borders went out of business and everything was 70% off”).
But then a couple weekends ago, I bought 7 or 8 used books at the library book sale, and I think I’ve only read about 3 of them.
I even checked out three books that day, although who knows why I felt like that was necessary.
I got books for my birthday this weekend (thank God some of them are for kids, so they’ll go quickly).
Although one of them is the FOURTH Game of Thrones book, and I have yet to start the third one! (Which I’m dying to do.)
I bought Jonathan’s book club book off of him, because he was just going to return it to the store. (But it’s The Leftovers by Tom Perrotta! I didn’t know anything about it when I turned over the cash, because I just have faith in Tom Perrotta, but it’s about the Rapture, and I don’t know if you know this about me but I’m kind of into Rapture stuff.)
And then I have to purchase my own book club’s next book, which I plan on doing from Amazon, but then I’ll want to add something else so I get to $25 so I have the free shipping.
It’s just a torrential downpour of books, and there’s no way I can keep up with them all. It’s like one of the later levels on Tetris, but instead of pretty colored shapes, it’s all books. But they’re piling up so fast!
At least books fit together well. Until you run out of space, that is.
Oh, I get it – it’s just like Tetris only none of the layers disappear when you fill them in. I guess that would happen if I actually read things, and then gave them away.
Why did I used to have so much time to read? I guess in New York I had the commute every day, and then both my roommates worked a show schedule, so I spent a lot of time alone. (Not in a sad way.)
But now, I just don’t have that same amount of time.
Although, I’m doing a cameo in wardrobe at Marin Theatre Company this weekend (started last weekend), and there is PLENTY of time to read then. Partly because the show is super easy (yay!) and partly because the show is short, so the break between shows is hours (yay!). So I’m going to try to get through as much this week as possible.
I would say, “And then I’m going to try to lay off acquiring books for awhile,” but it’s just not that easy.
That being said – anyone reading anything good lately?
Last night (~11:30pm), Drew got really restless and threw his half of the comforter on me. He sat up and was feeling all around.
Syche: What are you doing?
Drew: Looking for something.
Syche: What are you looking for?
Drew: A piece of chocolate I dropped.
*beat*
Drew: But now that I say it out loud, I don’t think that really happened.
So he’s getting self-aware. Which is a little bittersweet. I hope this doesn’t mean the end of the days of having to convince him that I don’t own a hot air balloon, or that Words with Friends isn’t out to get him.
They’ve already sat through my graduations, all of ’em – from kindergarten to eighth grade to high school to college. So you’d think that this would be old hat. But apparently it’s weirder when it’s not you graduating, and you get to evaluate someone else’s major life choice.
Of course, they’ve also spent way more time in school than I did. When you’re a student, every step has such a firm expiration date on it (usually four years, if you’re doing it right) and so, while I felt like graduating college was an accomplishment, it wasn’t exactly a surprise, and I hadn’t been there that long anyway, and also I had to get out of this ceremony and over to Sacramento for a matinee.
But my parents have been teaching FOREVER. I know my mom started officially teaching long after I was in school, but she was there as an aide before that. I have memories from all ages of my mom at school, from monitoring the playground in elementary school, all the way up to middle school. As a substitute teacher, she took my sixth-grade class on one of our end-of-year field trips.
In high school it was my dad who was always around, whether he was actually teaching the class I was in, or just letting me and all my friends use the computers in his classroom during lunch. (I know, we were the most awesome kids ever, right?) He was one of my class advisors, which meant he led all the class meetings and was all over the prom planning. And probably the prom. Which was fine with me, since me and my parents have always been pretty cool.
But they’re graduating today. And I’m pretty sure they will still have to finish cleaning out their rooms next week (I mean, I could be wrong, but I’m just guessing here – teachers tend to accumulate a lot of stuff), but this is it. I’ve known this was coming for awhile now, but I guess it’s just sinking in.
Everyone keeps asking me, “What are they going to do??” and I just keep saying, “They will be busy.” Neither of them is a sit-around-and-do-nothing kind of person. I mean, maybe for a day. But not for much longer than that. So I’m pretty sure they’ll have things to do. I hope we will get to see each other more often.
Whatever they decide, I am super proud of them and they are extremely deserving of this chance to do whatever they want. So congratulations, you two, and definitely take at least a couple days to sit around and do nothing! (And then come visit me!) I love you both!
In sticking with the theme of Drew finding old board games in his attic and us playing them…today we played Forbidden Bridge, a game I’ve never heard of before but that his parents both seemed to have fond memories of when their boys were little.
But it’s hard to remember the rules to a game you played in 1992, and the instructions were missing. So Drew went online to try and find the rules. He found not just the rules, but the exact instruction manual from 20 years ago. So we read through all the rules (when do you ever do that, even with a new game?) and set up the game.
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The game was over pretty quick, but actually not as quick as I expected. You have to get up and across this bridge, and pick up jewels from the idol, and then get them back into your boat. But you spend a lot of time getting knocked off the bridge when the idol “wakes up.” It’s actually kind of freaky.
I don’t think this is going to become a regular party game, like Taboo or Scattergories, but it’s fun, and I can see why boys would like it. Drew and his brother definitely had a lot more “boy” games than I ever had growing up.
Bonus: this game, despite the moving parts, doesn’t take batteries. I guess it’s all, like, a wind-up mechanism. A board game in 2012 would never work like that. I am way impressed that this 1992 game still works perfectly. (Hope I didn’t just jinx it.)
This weekend felt longer than three days, but in that kind of weird draggy way. Allow me to explain.
On Saturday we had a dinner-and-game-night at our place, which I spent the day kind of stressing about, since it was an eclectic crowd of people and I’m not quite used to playing hostess yet. But overall everything went very well (possibly better than I had expected) and I learned that I love the game Balderdash, which I have never played before but now want to play all the time.
On Sunday, Drew and I went with Erin to San Jose to help out her dad with this steampunk convention he was doing. It was part of FanimeCon, but apparently only sort of? We didn’t really have all the details, but we were mostly there to do little odd jobs and make sure no one stole any of the equipment. It was…nerdy, honestly, and I don’t need to get into it but there was some major judging going on there. (By us; of the people attending the convention.) It was a fun day though, and it’s always good to branch out and spend some time around people wearing full out Victorian costumes (with steampunk accessories) and speaking in bad British accents.
Also, this bag of heads. But I have no idea why.
On Sunday night Drew and I started our Modern Family marathon – we hadn’t watched any of this most recent season, which ended last Wednesday. At least, we thought we hadn’t, until we started watching episodes and realized we’d actually seen about 4. But marathoning it is more fun than watching a half-hour episode once a week.
That’s mostly what we did on Sunday (after finishing reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in the morning), until after 9 episodes I said, “I need a break,” and then right after that Hulu Plus said “You’ve been watching for 3 hours, need a break?” Oh how we laughed.
We went for a walk but didn’t really accomplish anything while on it. Well, we did pick up a menu from this Thai place near us that we may try out later this week.
We watched some more episodes that night, but we still have maybe 8 or 9 to go, which I think is a nice amount. Although, I do want to finish them this week because I think I’d like to cancel Hulu Plus before I have to pay for another month. (That’s how I roll.)
When I came into work this morning, I found a post-it saying “Gotcha!” taped over the laser on my mouse (so it wouldn’t work). I also found these people taped under the handset of my phone:
If you’re not familiar with Game of Thrones, that’s Cersei (she’s sort of a bad guy) and Tyrion (he’s totally the best guy). Tonight we watch episode 9 of season 2, which aired on Sunday, and which I have heard is an amazing episode. I am pretty stoked. (And I highly recommend if you’re not watching, you begin immediately.)
And, finally, if you’re keeping score, today marks 22 weeks pregnant for me, which is the end of the 5th month. (The counting is complicated, but trust me: 22 weeks = 5 months.) This week the baby is the size of a papaya, and probably weighs about a pound. This isn’t a particularly huge landmark, but we’re celebrating every single little one, plus I just kind of like this picture I took this morning. So please enjoy this relatively infrequent pregnancy update!
This weekend has been all about cleaning. Yesterday we went down to Redwood City and, along with Drew’s parents, cleaned the heck out of his grandma’s house, since she’s on her way back from Hawaii. It was a warm day down there and by the time we were done, I was seriously worn out.
So this morning we got up and started in on our place – there have been all these things we just haven’t done yet since getting all our stuff into the apartment, and we tackled ’em all. I started with a short(ish) list of things I wanted to get done scribbled on the back of a bill, and then Drew added some things he wanted to accomplish…and 4-5 hours later it looks completely different in here.
At one point near the end of the frenzy, I had this flashback to being a kid, and spending the whole day cleaning my room (thanks Mom and Dad, because I’m pretty sure I didn’t do the bulk of that work myself), and how great it would feel at the end of the day. Peeling back the clean covers on a freshly made bed, straightening the alarm clock on a cleaned and organized nightstand, seeing everything around my room sorted and placed precisely in its spot…is there anything better?
And yeah, I’d say there’s still stuff we can do around here, but it feels more like maintenance now, than “finishing moving in.” And I even dusted things that didn’t look dusty, because that’s the way you keep them from getting dusty! Holy cow, it’s like I’m seriously an adult now. (Wasn’t one of my 2012 resolutions to become an adult? Or something like that?)
I just keep looking around at all the vacuum marks on the carpet, and how there are no clothes on the floor. It just feels so great. This afternoon, once we were done, I was stretched out on the (made) bed in a patch of sunlight, reading a fluffy nonsense book. It was a really great Sunday afternoon moment.
I will use this post – and this feeling – as motivation to keep this up for the rest of my life.
The Cameraphone Diaries 