Thursday Thirteen: Fall

Kimberly, also known as God(ess)mama, at least to me, must have gotten up good and early to write this blog this morning. I love it, though, and I would consider making "Thursday Thirteen" lists a regular feature in conjunction with Kimberly. This is something we'd talked about in the past--a blogging partnership of sorts. I'm up for it if she is.

Thirteen things I love about fall

1. Turning off the air conditioner. Being a quarter Dutch, I am cheap, and the arrival of the electric bills from May until September generally leaves me in tears.

2. The changing leaves. In Michigan, fall tended to be gray and drizzly, and as a result, not that appealing. Here, we get lots of bright autumn leaves against blue skies.

3. Halloween. This year, we're dressing Max up as a dragon, and he's almost as cute as last year, when we dressed him as a cow, or the year before, when he was a lobster.

4. Fall clothes. Hoodies, scarves, big thick socks (only in neutral colors, please; I hate few things more than I hate colored socks), and sweaters all come out of hibernation.

5. Fall farmer's markets. One of the vendors at Eastern Market sells hot apple cider on the weekends in the fall. I shouldn't have it, it's LOADED with sugar and I always have to take some extra insulin with it, but it's so worth it. I also am a big fan of the market in St. Mary's County. This particular one is weird enough to be the topic of its own blog.

6. Out with the Pinot Grigio, in with the Barolo. Somehow big, oaky red wines just aren't that appealing when it's 106 degrees outside.

7. High school football games. My husband's school happens to be the State Champion in their division.

8. The World Series. The Nationals are a million miles out of it, but the Cubs are playing pretty well, so this could be a good year. Last year, when Detroit was winning, was pretty great too.

9. God(ess)mama and God(ess)dad are coming! Later this month for her twice-a-year check-out at the NIH. Is it true they x-rayed your head and found nothing, Kimberly? Ho ho ho. Also coming in the next month: my mother, who will do all our laundry and get up with Max every morning, feed us, and make a lot of unnecessary impulse purchases on our behalf; my friend Ryan and his person, Jamie (what do I call him? Partner? Boyfriend? Lover? Husband? Ten years with a gay friend and I still am not sure what won't make everybody totally uncomfortable); and my in-laws, who...well, they'll probably drive me crazy, but whatever.

11. Fall cooking. Chili, Belgian beef stew with onions and beer, mushroom soup, chicken and homemade noodles...time to fire up the crock pot.

12. Tourist season is almost over. I have become such a Washingtonian; I am just filled with rage when I hear some boob from Kenosha telling her kids, "Look! There's the Lincoln Memorial. That's where Lincoln was shot!" It used to be funny, now I just wish they'd get out of my way.

13. There is just something about knowing that the hottest, most uncomfortable, most inconvenient season of the year is over, and things like Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's are coming. There's not a whole lot of anticipation for me in the spring, knowing it's about to get hot and uncomfortable and everything is about to be a whole lot more hassle. I am just a October-through-April kind of girl, I guess.

That's my Thursday Thirteen. Feel free to do your own, and link to me, or send me a link, or leave a link in the comments. Peace out.

My Schedule is Tight. So are my Pants.

When tourist season hits D.C., it affects everything, including, it appears, my pants size. When people we love start to come to town, we show them that we love them by showing them all our favorite places to eat, including the Hebrew National stands outside of RFK. As a result, after about ten days with my inlaws and the God(ess)mama and God(ess)papa rolling in for surgery at the NIH, we're eating vastly too large quantities of fattening food. It's not that I don't know how to make good food choices in restaurants, it's that it's the Cheesecake Factory, where you celebrate not having to wait for three hours for a table by ordering 4,000 calories worth of cheesecake as your entree. Bad, bad Molly. So worth it, though, to watch Max, on the most intense sugar buzz of his short life, virtually vibrating in his booster seat while making noises usually associated with Beavis and Butthead as "Cornholio."

And this morning, an email from my mother: cousin Dan and his middle son Davey are coming into town for a little one-on-one father-son time some time this week or possibly next and would like to hook up with us. Dan's the closest cousin to me in age (9 years older than me) and now that he's cut his noxious shrew of an ex-wife loose, he's a real peach. But, this presents a couple of problems: God(ess)mama is, as I write this, probably bare-assed and prone on the altar of world-class neurosurgery with her endolymphatic sac exposed for all the world to see, looking forward to a few miserable days recovering in the MoCo before she can go home--this particular surgery will probably affect her balance, which in turn affects her tendency to throw up, and although I'm not much help to her when she's in the hospital and she gets lots of support from her rockstar husband and her mother, I feel like I should be available if they need us.

And then there's my job. Oh, my job. Morale around this place is falling like...like...falling like something that falls a lot, and around here, we demonstrate our committment and loyalty by working eighty-hour weeks. Riiiiight. Needless to say, I am not as committed as I should be, but rolling my eyes until they fall out of my butthole doesn't seem like the best way to advance up the corporate ladder. I'm feeling like I need to cowboy up around here, lest I be the next cost-cutting measure that they decide to take.

It's an embarassment of riches, really, having so many swell folks around. But I am seriously over-committed of late, and everything seems to be suffering, including my diet.

Please excuse me. I need to run over to the Giant to pick up some sort of non-threateningly low-calorie lunch to snarf down at my desk while continuing to wonder how to work a few extra hours into my day.

Goodbye Eastern Market, Baseball Dates, and The Mysterious Rage Disease

Anyone who knows Dan and I knows that we were great fans of Eastern Market, the farmer’s market and flea market space just north of Pennsylvania Ave., the main building of which burned early this morning. Since the first month we lived here, most of our weekend plans have included breakfast and browsing there, and we are both deeply dismayed by the loss of this national treasure, a 207-year-old building on Capitol Hill that was designated as market space by President Thomas Jefferson. It is our most fervent desire to see it rebuilt.

Went to the Mets / Nats game Sunday afternoon. At one point, I asked Dan if we had accidentally taken the Metro to Shea Stadium instead of RFK, based on the mobs of rabid Mets fans.

Am I crazy, or are there some excessively sorry-looking first dates clearly taking place at Mets games? By sorry-looking, I mean: guy with artsy-looking haircut and man-clogs, girl with artsy-looking haircut, denim miniskirt and Uggs, carefully not touching each other. Not that, you know, there’s anything wrong with a first date at a baseball game—in fact, that’s the kind of first date I could really get on board with. But most of the spectators at yesterday’s games were comprised of:

--Sorry-looking first dates, as detailed above.
--Youngish, white yuppie families .
--Guys in Mets t-shirts with slicked-back hair, smoking clove cigarettes on the concourse and looking like they were auditioning for extras on an episode of “The Sopranos.”
--The guy sitting in front of me who, inexplicably, smelled like meat.

Guess which one we were.

By far, the best part of the game: a guy who Dan and I have begun referring to as “Superfan.” He was around 40, wearing a red Nationals baseball cap that was heavily crusted with dried sweat, sitting a couple of rows in front of us, over right field, and throughout the game, he literally screamed at Austin Kearns, the Nationals’ right-fielder. “A.K.! A.K.! UP HERE! TWO-FIVE!!! A.K.!” Dan and I were both waiting to see Superfan burst into tears, scream, “AUSTIN! I LOVE YOU, AUSTIN! I LOVE YOU!” and throw his sweaty underpants out onto the field. Finally, around the eighth inning, Austin finally looked up and threw his practice ball up to Superfan. And for one horrible second, I experienced pure terror as a major-league-thrown baseball came flying toward the skull of my sleeping toddler in my arms, and I had no extra hand with which to deflect this ball, as it occurred to me that Superfan could be insane, or looking away, or in some other way incapable of catching this ball.

But he wasn’t. And he caught it. And Max kept sleeping. But if we have our choice, in the future, I hope to always sit near Superfan, because damn, what a big ol’ sack of fun times he turned out to be.

Congrats to Max’s god(ess)mama, whose head, spinal cord, and various other bits passed their semi-annual examination with (mostly) flying colors last week. Keep your chin up, kiddo, the bad stuff will be over before you know it, and you have something great to look forward to. And you have The Mysterious Rage Disease. I wonder if we could convince your world-class neurosurgeon to refer to it as such from now on. Because, you know, I think this would make it one hundred percent more awesome.

Although I know nobody cares about my dreams, I have to tell about this seriously weirdo one that Dan had last night. He has the most surreal dreams of anyone I know, but this takes the cake: our family was being pursued and abducted by large, breaded, rectangular chicken planks. Do I have no imagination at all? My dreams, with the exception of the lesbian sex dreams, are always of things that could actually happen.

Hip-Hop Pooh; MoCo-Bound

Max's God(ess)mama Auntie Kimberly (she's a Pagan) and Uncle Michael are here! Yay! That means two things: noisy toys manufactured by Disney (Max adores his horribly singing and dancing Winnie the Pooh more than life), and Fun In The MoCo! Dan and I rarely go to Rockville or Bethesda, unless the God(ess)parents are here. White Flint Mall! Expensive coffee! Hooray!

Best of luck to God(ess)mama on her multiple tests, exams, and appointments at the NIH this week. We love you.