Judecorp.

We packed a lot of fun into a short span of days, and now I am tiiiiiired.

artjax graciously offered up her spare room for sleeping and we packed up the car on Saturday after Punk's lunch and took off for Maine. We left a little later than planned but really didn't have anything to do until 5:00 or so when we met rizzo41 at Governor's for unhealthy food. And dessert. And I was already full but I had strawberry shortcake and I thought I was going to explode. We had the worst server ever and were there for something like 2.5 hours which is pretty staggering considering it's basically fast food. But Punk got a balloon and it was all good, and Jodie brought Punk some puppets and some other stuff and she was in hog heaven. Punk basically calls any person whose name she doesn't know "this," so she kept ordering Jodie around by saying things like, "this color," or "this drink."

That night we stayed up talking with artjax while Punk tried really hard not to go to bed. I don't think she fell asleep until after 9. But she slept until 7, which means I love her.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, we went out to a delicious breakfast with Jackie and the most adorable thing ever was when she and Punk were making music together, J on guitar and Punk on the bongos. So freaking cute, I could die. So after a little of that, we took Punk to a playground and when it started raining, we gave her a quick McDonald's lunch before heading to Punk's first baseball game! We took her to see the Sea Dogs and they beat the pants off of Connecticut. It rained for the first half of the game but we brought a big umbrella, and the second half was gorgeous and sunny and it was hard to believe it was the same day. Punk took about a 40 minute nap on me at the park and I was pretty impressed that she actually fell asleep like that. But she loved the baseball game and that was awesome.

That evening we went to a cookout hosted by some of J's friends who have kids, and Punk was completely fried from not napping and from having dinner late, and it was okay but pretty stressful because I was always one step ahead trying to avert a meltdown. And this one kid was kind of being a turd and running ahead of Punk and taking any toy/bike she wanted to go play with and then sprayed her in the face with a water gun. Grump. But then we took Punk back to J's and gave her a bath and put her to bed and she was asleep in about one second, around 8pm.

She got up promptly at 5 this morning (WTF??!?!) and since there was no clock in there I didn't know what time it was and didn't coax her into going back to sleep, so we had a really early morning. Zzzz. We had a quick breakfast at Denny's where Punk ate her weight in oatmeal and sausage links, and then drove down to Kittery to do some outlet shopping. Punk fell asleep in the car on the way down (sigh) and then was all kinds of turned around all day. We did some shopping, got a lunch for her at BK (who knew BK has mac and cheese? score!), and then started driving home where I assumed she would take her nap, only, she didn't. She acted like a crazed jungle child for a good two hours before falling asleep for the last hour. Then we shoved her in a stroller so Jen could get some mandals at the mall and we ended up getting her a bubble mower because we seem to be physically incapable of not buying her too many things. (Gymboree Outlet, anyone?)

So we finally got home, she splashed around in the water table for a long while, got a change of clothes, played in the yard and sandbox for a while, and then we had a grilled out dinner (chicken) where Punk had her first ever corn on the cob which was insanely cute. And then a bath. And now bed.

I am so ridiculously tired right now. But it was awesome. Thanks, J & J!

First of all, happy wedding day to prunesnprisms on Saturday and happy birthday to my lovely Labortine laurajones! xoxo

~//~

We jam-packed as much into this weekend as we possibly could, considering we both seem to have come down with some sort of crud and the baby has picked up one of the side effects of switching to Prilosec, which is diarrhea and abdominal cramps. Poor kid has been /miserable/ for the latter half of the week, straining so hard that she's given herself Abs of Steel. But we're determined to make her a "portable kid," and the weather has been pretty good, so...

Saturday we celebrated Gus's 2 month birthday by taking a little road trip to the outlet malls and dropping a mint on their sidewalk sales. We manage to curb spending by only buying things for the punk, heh. But still, umm, she got some, umm, stuff. It was a nice day to walk around the outlet malls, and the ride to Lee is always really pretty. Lots of people brought their DOGS to the outlet mall. WTF is up with that?

Yesterday we decided to brave the Tri-County Fair. We wouldn't have gone if we'd known that admission was $10 each, but hey, live and learn. By the time we off-road parked in some dude's backyard and walked through the gate, we realized that there really wasn't anything to do with the baby at the fair besides walk around a little bit. And eat fried dough. Mmm. Still, we got to see some pig races (yay!) and eat some fair food and a large number of people stopped to tell us how beautiful the baby is. That's weird! The baby makes us popular. Jen carried the punk in the knock-off Bjorn thinger and it was nice to see, and the punk seemed to like it. Then we went to Friendly's to eat ice cream sundaes and vowed to be better eaters the next day. Heh.

Today after lounging around the house for a long while, we went to Childs Park in Northampton, spread out a blanket, and hung out for a couple of hours. We took some photos of the punk and just chilled in the nice weather. It's good to finally just pack up and get out sometimes, and I'm not going to lie - it's nice having Jen home for an extra day to share Baby Duty.

I am so not ready for summer to end. For realz.

Our day of doing nothing was a complete success. I didn't take a shower until after 4pm. I got up at 8:30, ate breakfast, then got back into bed with Jen for a while. Then we sat around like sloths and watched some television - we caught the two episodes of "Top Chef" that we missed. Jen made me lunch, and we sat around some more, then did some more nothing.

Eventually we took showers, got some dinner, and went to the movies. We sneaked DQ Blizzards into the theatre - awesome. We saw Knocked Up. It wasn't as terrible as it could have been. Although some air conditioning would have been nice.

I don't know why I let Jen talk me into going to Chili's for dinner. I freaking hate the food at Chili's. Oh well. Half of the big Jehovah's Witness convention was there for dinner and the place was PACKED.

Also, people apparently love to stare at you when you dare to go out in public with a big, round belly. Or maybe just when you walk around like big old queers? I don't know.

The end.

I took a total roundabout route to work today that is probably 84789273 miles out of the way, but I got to work in about 42 minutes. Take that, construction!

~//~

Friday night, Jen and I headed down to New Britain, CT, for the CAT SHOWDOWN. I have attended very few AA baseball games (lots of AAA) and yeah, it was interesting. The innings go very, very quickly. Heh. We actually were stuck in about an hour of traffic trying to get INTO the parking lot (ugh), but when we did finally get to the parking attendants, Jen asked them if we could park in the close parking lot (mostly disability parking) because of my big belly and they said YES! I felt like baseball royalty or something, but also guilty that we were taking a space. But man, walking way out from the boonies would have killed me. Anyway, the game was kind of lame but picked up at the end when the score was tied and there was a very dramatic finish with a win by the home team! So when the fireworks went off, everyone was in good spirits. The food was greasy and stuff but we got ice cream in little helmets (for the cats, of course) so that is always fun.

On Saturday we went to this little blog get-together that Eryn and Amy arranged at the Northampton Brewery. There were a number of very nice people there, some of whom were locals that I am excited to see again and again, and some of whom were from NY but I still hope we can see them again and again. We conned them into moving the get-together to Herrell's for ice cream, and they had Twinkie ice cream that day, so it was a good day. After 4 hours of blogger socializing, we headed home and it was so humid and nasty. Oh yes. But so fun.

On Sunday, we drove to Boston because the lovely siercia, the lovely prunesnprisms, and the lovely lorac (best Fake Aunts ever) all banded together to throw us a rockin' baby shower at siercia's house. There was a lot of delicious food, like chick pea and orzo salad, cous cous salad, fruit skewers, pulled pork sandwiches, and an enormous Konditor Meister cake. Their cakes rock, seriously. I should have eaten more. Anyway, they were great party-makers and a bunch of people came - people we've known for a long time, people from work, people we haven't known as long, etc. My favorite part was when a couple of people were in the "knitting corner" trying to frantically finish knitted things! It was adorable and I should have taken a picture. I love to watch people knit, seriously.

People were overly generous and I always feel weird when you sit in front of an audience and open presents. So I made Jen do it. I was in charge of the trash - much more reasonable. And Ms. Widget (siercia's daughter), who is obsessed with babies, was ALL over me trying to make the baby kick. It was kind of cute, I have to say. She is a kick-ass kid.

The funniest thing was that Saturday was about 90° and humid as heck, so I wore a tank top and shorts on Sunday... and it was 55°. Holy cow, wrong clothing choice.

Either way, it was an awesome weekend. And this weekend, rizzo41 is coming to visit. YAY!!

Friday: early showing of Spiderman 3, call from Grandma that as of right now nothing dramatic happened during her procedure (some polyps removed, she'll find out more later), and an impromptu sushi dinner at Osaka because nothing else sounded good.

Saturday: Lazy morning, trip to BJs to acquire party food for next weekend (my freezer is now so full of meat it is freaking me out!), a little lounging at home, weird crampy feelings that had me kind of concerned, and then 5 hours of working at the UMass Queer Prom. Where there was dressing up, sparkly decorations, lots of snacky food, and fun with coworkers.

Sunday: Nice morning with cards, impromptu trip to outlet mall in Lee to raid many baby clothes outlets, gratuitous spending of money on adorable little bits of cloth, nice ride home in the spring sun, a stop at the ice cream shop, quick trip to the grocery, and some grilling out before enjoying the Survivor finale.

We are running out of weekends. Must! Have! Weekend! Full! Of! Work! Soon!

Last night I went over to Kriss (skreeky) and Jon's house so they could distract me from my misery, which was really very sweet. We ordered chinese take-out and watched some television, starting out with the Sox game, then to part of a Margaret Cho DVD, and then to Sweeney Todd (the demon barber of Fleet Street), which is apparently Jon's favorite musical ever. And he sang a lot, which was really cute. And they didn't even make fun of me when I fell asleep on the couch. (Television always puts me to sleep.)

This afternoon we ventured out in the rain to catch the Pride parade. We couldn't really see very well because it was a veritable sea of umbrellas out there. The weather was horrible, cold and raw and rainy, and people didn't seem to be in much of a festive mood, myself included. The thing that sucks about Pride in Boston - at least the parade - is that it's so un-fun. There are usually like 5 floats with music and dancing, and hardly any gyrating boys or anything. It's all churches and politicians and businesses. Instead of queer people showing off their pride of being queer, it's a bunch of business-y folks trying to get proud people's money and votes.

I guess that's what happens when you live somewhere where there is less of a social struggle, where the gay dollar is ridiculously powerful in terms of gentrification/revitalization, and where all of the politicians are somewhere left of center. I prefer Pride in Columbus which is like a big, fun, freak festival. Bring back the rampant humping on the streets!

We did run into Joanna Corndog, which was fun. Because I like her, and we always say we are going to hang out and we never do. Oops.

Then we schlepped up to Kendall in the rain to do Movie Club with my work people. The movie was Clean and we had dinner at Bamboo in Brighton afterwards. There was no movie discussion, though, because no one really liked the movie. It really was not good at all. I thought the lead actress was very good, acting-wise, but I wasn't into the story... and a lot of the other actors were terrible. Ugh.

Time to clean the cat boxes and then go to bed. I wish we'd remembered to get milk today. It's been several days since I could have yummy cereal.

This has been kind of a bummer of a weekend.

• I was kind of disappointed on Friday night because I wanted to get out of the house and that never really happened.


• I barreled down to RI on Saturday morning and spent the day watching some dude go through all of my dad's things. Most of the "collectible" things were acquired after I moved out of the house, which made me feel kind of out of touch with my dad's life. That kind of sucks since he's, like, dead now and stuff.


• It snowed on Saturday and I'm a certifiable Snow Hater.


• Family dinner on Saturday evening was a lot later than I expected, which got me home a lot later than I expected, which killed most Halloween party plans. We ended up stopping by Coworker Gina's shindig (it was only a few minutes away) 3+ hours later than everyone else (when a bunch of people were starting to leave) and taking off not long after.


• Jen is really sick which is a major bummer, though I'm sure that's much more of a bummer for her. But now I'm paranoid that I'm going to get sick. Which would be really sucktacular.


• Today was a gorgeous day but I had no one to enjoy it with. Jen was out of commission, Tim was in Ptown, Shani's in Alabama, and practically everyone else went to the Cape for Dr. Chris's marathon. I got a little outdoor time when I went to Coolidge Corner to hit up Trader Joe's, but that's hardly the same as hanging out with someone in the sunshine and having stimulating conversation.


• My mental state has pretty much been in the toilet since June. While this is probably to be expected, after five months of it I have to say it's really starting to push me down. I don't know how much longer I can deal with the roller coaster of emotions and the general apathetic malaise that seem to be plaguing me.

I'm generally feeling sorry for myself because I have such a different social life than I had in Columbus, a social life that suited me quite nicely. I had a bunch of people who would call each other on a moment's notice if something came up, people who were generally non-planners so there was always something spontaneous to do. I'm not much of a social planner (probably because I have a scattered tendency to double-book) and Boston geographically and who-we-know-ally lends itself to requiring significantly advanced planning. The planning thing and the fact that we don't get a lot of phone calls from people who want to hang out with us are often in the backs of both of our minds.

I wonder if moving to a smaller, more laid back area will solve some of those problems. But then I wonder if I'm just kind of fooling myself, that this is all a part of getting older and I need to find a bunch of "meddling kids" if I want spontaneity.

2005 has been mostly craptastic. I'd like it to end now, please. Can't we just fast forward to next spring?

This weekend was constant motion, and I am exhausted from it. Don't get me wrong - Steve is a wonderful house guest and it has been so great getting to hang out with him and chat and stuff. We just haven't stopped moving since he arrived!

He came in late on Thursday night so we pretty much just went to bed after some catching up. On Friday morning, I went to work and Steve took Jen to get her foot x-rays. We all met up at the house when I got home from work and did a bunch of tooling around - first to lunch at the Hahp&Bahd and then to the mall so Jen could pick out replacement glasses and then dinner at La Paloma and then crashed and burned. Saturday morning, Jen left for work and Steve and I ran some errands and then walked the Freedom Trail, where not only did we do a lot of nice walking, but we also took a lot of pictures, called the police to get an ambulance for a man who fell on the sidewalk, saw some breakdancers, and ogled a very nerdy redheaded a cappella singer girl. We picked Jen up from work, went down to Jae's to eat a long dinner, came home and rotted in front of the television for a while. Today we got up and trucked down to King Richard's Faire for the day, came back, got some take-out chinese, and have filled the evening with laundry and grocery shopping.

Instead of being ready for my 14-hour Marathon Monday (a full - and early - day of work followed by a night of babysitting), I feel like I need a day to recover and just be zen all over the place. I have a killer headache that I thought was from dehydration, but I've been drinking plenty of water since we got back from KRF so I guess it's something else. Probably exhaustion.

Worthwhile exhaustion, but exhaustion nonetheless!

Oh wait, the dryer just buzzed. On to better things!