hanging with mr. cooper

that was a great tv show. mark curry where are you now (besides inspecting my vaj)?

anyways, we spent the day prepping for Mom and Pop Jake's anniversary party this Saturday. we have many embarrassing photos to share and probably even more embarrassing videos (embarrassing mostly for me...a recent video showed me at 11 years old interviewing a life-size stuffed Santa and asking him why he wasn't going to the White House this year, then mouthing something about the Iran Contra hearings. Jay watched this and looked over the breakfast table at me and said, "Roman, your mom really was a dork." Yeah, I TOLD you, ahole.)
we had playgroup with a new friend of mine, Sarah, who has three adorable and well-mannered kiddos and whose hubbie is a freelance toy designer with an eye towards the toy collector market (www.madtoys.com). This is the second coolest job I've encountered recently. A few weekends ago we attended a cookout with a water slide developer. He was actually complaining about having to put his wetsuit on to go down a slide the other day to test it out. Which made me want to wrap his asscheeks in duct tape and rip it slowly off. How does one become a toy designer or a waterslide consultant? Well, it seems there isn't a straightforward answer for that, so what I gleaned could be best described as luck and a gift for bullshiting.
That's a charmed work life right there.

final day of vacation

with one remaining day of freedom, jay and i took the kids for a mini-vaca at the joco pools. we thought Splash Cove to be the perfect oasis for Trix's first dip in the pool. She seemed to take the che;mical and child-piss laced waters as something of an assault to her senses and dealt with the trauma as she deals with most: by falling asleep. She gets that admirable technique from her father. I'm filled with jealousy over this gift.
as is often the case, while we only traveled a few short blocks past the county line, it felt like worlds away from the dotte. we found one of the few neighborhoods with character in joco that we thought might be tolerable to live. we looked around and noted the majority of elderly folk. we have a penchant for picking neighborhoods where there's no one for our children to play with. at any rate, the land wasn't graded beyond recognition and didn't have the flat desolate vistas that most of the south suburbs fall victim to. We decided we need to get into one of these homes. Since I've yet to figure out a way to con my way into one, we have decided a two-year plan for getting me back to work and paying down debt will have to suffice. whoop whoop. i'm going back to work and even though it breaks my heart, I can do it for their long-term well-being, if it's a part of a plan that will actually work for us.
in closing, to the geniuses at Blue Diamond, your wasabi soy almonds have bedeviled even the smallest preutopians:

Filter set to: Off

SO, I'm what is referred to in my family of origin as a mama bear. meaning, i have a very low tolerance for people fucking with my children. So, where other mothers might quietly bite their lip when someone makes a snide comment about her parenting or her child's weight or her child's temperament, my bite turns outward, in the direction of the speaker's jugular when I'm feeling my feistiest. Or when another child baits them in order to get them in trouble. Then sits back to enjoy the tongue lashing directed at the other child. Let's just say after a weekend in close quarters with some family who don't know how to treat my children fairly, that's precisely how it went down. It was unpleasant, yeah. But I've never been someone who takes well to that "Oh, but you're FAMILY, we can say that kind of thing to each other!" I don't get that. Wouldn't you want to be MORE respectful of your family since generally speaking, you got what you got on that front. You can shit on strangers all you want -- you don't have to pass them the stuffing at Thanksgiving. So now, my in laws have seen a glimmer of what my family of origin has long known. I don't make space in my life for anyone who has such little respect that after I've voiced my hurt feelings they continue about their merry fucking business repeating the behaviors that caused those hurt feelings. That's not family. That's not family as I want my children to understand it. Allowing someone to treat you badly is not doing them any favors either. They will never be the better person they can be if you don't call them to a higher standard. If you call them to a higher standard, but they dig their feet in, that's they're prerogative, but that's for sure not love and if a family isn't love, what is it? It's nothing; that's what it is.

happy 40th, mom and dad jake

Here's to another 40 years. It could happen since you got married at like, 12 years old.

Your marriage has grown into one I admire. All my love, sis.

first family gallery night outing

Thanks to our buddy Rob Schamberger, the folk of Preutopia made our first outing to a gallery with Bebe in tow. Ro, as you can see, wasted no time in testing out the punch, while his Daddy and I took in the best Kansas City-centered art you can get your hands on right now. Rob's work as an illustrator continues to expand and his current comic is a must-have for us who are KC buffs. You can dig on his chili over here or here.
Ro later defiled the remnants of the fruit and cheese bar by licking several crackers and putting them back on the tray. (Sorry, but I couldn't figure out which ones those were.)
All of this excitement took place in our very hood during the Dotte art walk last Friday. It ain't so bad over here, really.

trouble in my mass consciousness wavelength

There is a sense of impending sadness that I can't shake. Yeah, baby blues, maybe. It's less actual sadness on my personal part but more of my tuning fork (hehe) sort of pointing to Bleak. I'm not jacked up enough to call any of this clairvoyance...it's just the kind of tuning into the mass consciousness that most souls do on occasion. Kind of like when you think of new product or a storyline and all the sudden, you see it in production a few months later. It's just being tuned in, my spiritual ear to the ground. And I hear rumbling on my wavelength.
Wow, that sounded so freaking nutty. Ah well. That's what this blog is here fer.
In the meantime, other goings on.
Ro and Jay have started swim lessons again. The squeals of delight are burned into my heart after watching his first lesson. The kid is a fish. Or a sailor, depending on if my speech habits aren't actually going unnoticed as I continue to hope.
Also, we've secured passes to the Shawnee pools for the season. Score! He'll get to use his new found skillz. And Bebe will get to rock her sunbrero and bikini Nana P got for her.
We had a garage sale this weekend and I've decided that's the hardest 160.00 I've earned since college. Screw that. I'll take the tax break on the donations next year. But it's the first step in the 100 Thing Challenge that I'm thinking of taking on.
On the plus side, that money is going straight to the good of the family for our trip to the Ozarks this weekend for Jay's family reunion. (I'm from carnie stock, not hillbilly. Huge distinction there, you know.) We're really excited about our little vacation.
Jay is at Peter Murphy tonight at the Beaumont of all places. Early bday gift for my luvaluva.
Hugs and pantaloons,
me

Happy 3 months, Bebe Girl

You're the apple of my eye.

Power and Lite

Ok, so last night we made our first foray into the P&L on the occasion of my 31st birthday. And, after holding up the line at the parking garage whilst scrounging up $2 in pennies (um, seriously, a notation of CASH ONLY on the outside sign would be greatly appreciated), we made our way to Flying Saucer for some ridiculously priced yet all too rare brews. Yeah, $15 for the Cru d' Emperor bottle. I suggested for that price, they serve it with an authentic Byzantine medallion as a garnish. The barely-legal waitress who was consistently confused by our orders of obscure beers (um, 80% of the beer list is obscure so ... ?) was unimpressed with the idea. Bless her little soul, though, she was sweet. None of the attitude of Westport or Plaza servers who've been serving since they still had all the cartilage in their noses, no, she was wet behind the ears, and what she lacked in knowledge and flair, she made up for in sincere sweetness and an earnest wish to do well. We sampled many a tasty, if utterly frou-frou beers from Belgians to bitters to double stouts. All quite over-priced I'm sure, but thanks to my favorite big brother, we enjoyed all this deliciousness at no cost to our penny-pinching selves. (Thanks B)