NonSoccerMom.com

Yesterday morning I was sitting in the kitchen, drinking my coffee and messing around on the computer.  Miss T was busy in her play kitchen, feeding her favorite doll.

I was only sort of listening to her tiny, one-sided conversation.  “Are you hungry, Baby Beth?  Here you go, Baby Beth.  Have some pizza.  It’s yummy.”

After a moment, cheerful chattering gave way to a stern lecture.  “You in time out, Baby Beth.  NO, NO, Baby Beth.  Dat’s not nice.”  The scolding continued, culminating in something I wasn’t quite sure I’d heard correctly.

I was only half-listening, after all.

I turned around.  “Miss T,” I asked, “why is Baby Beth in time out?”

“Because,” came the answer, plain as day.  “She punched me in the nuts.”

My freakout has begun.  You know, the I’m-starting-grad-school-in-10-days-while-working-full-time-and-parenting-two-young-kids-I-barely-keep-on-top-of-my-life-as-it-is-mother-of-God-what-have-I-done freakout.

What, you’ve never had one of those?

I ordered my textbooks online through Amazon last week and one arrived yesterday.  I skimmed through it and was immediately transported back into my very first sociology class, a place where I was introduced to the word “paradigm” and didn’t have a clue what was actually being discussed. I’m one of those people who would show up to lecture, half-ass the assigned reading and somehow manage to BS my way through the exam just enough to squeak by with a passing grade.  Honestly, it’s a wonder I have a bachelor’s degree, considering my astounding lack of study skills.

I’m someone who reads crappy romance/mystery novels – like the ones by Nora Roberts and Mary Higgins Clark – on the rare occasion that I actually sit down and read a book.  Do you know when I feel like I have time for that?  On airplanes.  In hotel rooms before I go to bed.  That’s about it.  Reading actual informative books – and comprehending them – is going to be a rude awakening.  As is eschewing my evening glass of wine and mindless TV for some serious study time.

I am fortunate enough to have a wonderful, supportive husband that takes an equal role in raising our kids.  But there are things that I must do that he won’t (because I am a control freak and also rather anal), or other things that he could do but doesn’t think about because they don’t bother him.  Things like the laundry, setting out clothes for the next day, vacuuming more than is strictly necessary, cleaning the cat box, straightening up the kids’ rooms, putting away rogue toys, etc., etc., etc.  So I am going to have to learn to ask for help when I need it, and also to lighten up a little.  A year from now, is it really going to matter that Miss T’s various dollhouse components didn’t get put away before I went to bed?  Settle down, self.

Not to mention all the other regular tasks that will still have to get done.  Cooking dinner, grocery shopping, going to the gym, going on occasional out of town trips to visit my nonagenarian grandmothers…none of these things will stop being important just because I have homework to get done.

I’m going to need another twelve hours in each day.

I have no doubt that I can do this.  Anyone who knows me in real life can attest to exactly how stubborn I am.  Hell, I ran a half-marathon powered primarily by sheer force of will.  Prior to running those 13.1 miles in San Francisco, the furthest I’d ever gone was 6.7.  But I did it.  If I want something, I go after it full-throttle and won’t stop until it’s mine.  I’m not worried about that at all.

It’s going to be hard.  Probably harder even than I’ve prepared myself for.  I ran into a professor I know at the grocery store on Sunday.  He had been kind enough to write me a letter of recommendation when I applied to ASU and so has an understandable interest in whether or not I succeed.  “Gotten started with those graduate classes yet?” he asked.  “Next week,” I replied.  “Remind me, do you have kids?” was his follow-up question.  When I answered, “Yeah, two of them, not quite 8 and 2 1/2,” he looked impressed.  “All that and you’re still planning to work full time?  Good luck,” he said sincerely. “You’ll need it.”

Thanks for that, dude.  Now I’m even more panicked than I was before.  I’m coping by telling myself that his graduate work was in HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS.  Of course it was a challenge.  GAAAAAAH.

But beyond the nerves, trumping the stress – is the excitement.  God, y’all, I’m so excited.  This is what I’ve always wanted.  It took me a lot of years to figure that out, and the path I chose is not the most direct, but this is what I am meant to do.

And I can’t wait to see where it takes me.

In no particular order (or genre, really), here are spoiler-free reviews of what I’ve been watching this summer:

Zombieland - I really didn’t think I’d like it at all.  I’m not a Woody Harrelson fan.  In fact, I’m anti-Harrelson.  So much so that my Netflixed copy of the movie sat there for two months (TOTALLY making the $15/month subscription worthwhile) before N and I finally decided to give it a go.

And guess what?  WE LOVED IT.  BOTH of us.  Huzzah!

It opens with one of my favorite Metallica songs…I chose to focus on that rather than the significant blood and gore.  I’ve got a strong stomach – and a long-standing fondness for horror movies – but holy jeebus, you know?  I wasn’t sure I was going to make it past the first ten minutes, but it was a little less gory after that.

Anyway, as it turns out, there’s a lot to enjoy.  Harrelson’s character isn’t a total jerk – well, maybe he is a little.  But I liked him anyway.  It was funny, and smart, and moved along at a great clip.  And as an added bonus there’s a “reveal” at the end which I personally thought was cool (though I am one of a very specific population subset that would have cared).

In general, anything that both N and I actively enjoy automatically gets an A+.  If you can handle the gore (most of which has a comic book-esque feel), Zombieland is an absolute must-see.

War - Ugh, was watching this one ever a debacle.  It was next up in my queue after Zombieland, and didn’t have to wait nearly as long to be popped in the DVD player.  After all, it’s got everything:  fast action, flashy cars, hard-core martial arts and Jason Statham.  And with no chance that N would care anything about it, I could fire it up at will without waiting on him to “be in the right mood” to watch with me.  What could go wrong?  (Hint: as your high school English teacher would point out, this is called foreshadowing.)

Everything was fine for the first 10 minutes or so, then the disc started causing me problems – it was dirty and scratched up, and it began to take serious coaxing to  convince our persnickety DVD player to keep at it.  (Fastforward.  Pause.  Restart chapter.  Fastforward.  COME ON, PLEASE.)  Eighteen minutes into the movie I had to throw in the towel.  The disc was just too badly damaged and I had to request a replacement copy.  The new copy arrived while I was out of town for a week and a half, again making excellent use of our Netflix membership.  FINALLY I had time to try again.  Replacement disc goes in and the DVD player just flashes “DISC IS TOO DIRTY”.  WTF.  We’ve owned that DVD player for nine years (!) and it has NEVER said that before.* So I take it out, scrub it down with my shirttail, curse mightily at my fellow Netflix members, who are apparently too irresponsible/lazy/stupid to take care of DVDs that don’t belong to them (N says: This surprises you why?), and put it back in.  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the stars align, I get things going and manage to pick up where I’d left off two weeks before.

The rest of the movie played without incident, and then it was over.  Just like that.  SO abruptly, in fact, that I actually screeched at the TV “THAT’S IT?!  I WENT THROUGH ALL THAT FOR THAT CRAP ENDING?!”  N found the whole scenario wholly amusing, I cursed at Netflix some more for good measure and sulked the rest of the night.  The end.

In short:  I WANT THOSE HOURS OF MY LIFE BACK.

Salt -After running in the San Francisco Marathon (I did the half, N did the full, more on that later if I ever get around to it), we were far too exhausted to contemplate doing anything other than sitting.  A nice movie in a comfy theater seemed like a good idea.  The original plan was to see Inception but it was sold out.  Salt was Plan B.

Not bad at all.  It certainly didn’t do anything to change my opinion of Angelina Jolie as a badass.  She’s gorgeous and sexy and awesome.  Liev Schreiber is a great actor and perfectly suited for his role.  The plot and script were just so-so,  but the whole movie was adrenaline-charged enough to keep me interested the entire time.  The actor they had playing Salt’s husband was pretty creepy and gross, but thankfully his scenes were limited.  Overall, it was well-casted and decently-acted. 

Final verdict:  An enjoyable watch and something I could probably sit through again, though I have no desire to buy it when it comes out on DVD.

The Other Guys – Normally I’m not in a rush to see comedies in the theater.  When you have 2 kids, going to the movies becomes rediculously expensive by the time you pay the babysitter so we usually reserve that honor for something that will be noticably different on the big screen.  (Case in point: Prior to seeing Salt when we were in SF sans kids, the last movie we went to go see was Star Trek.  Yes.)

But Mark Wahlberg is adorable and Will Farrell is hilarious, so when the opportunity presented itself (read: when in The Swamp and grandparents were available for kid duty) I dragged him to the local theater (where we know the manager and can get in for free.  Bonus!).

When watching a comedy, there’s always the risk that all the funny parts were used in the TV promos and trailers and the actual movie won’t be all that great.  And since I have a grandma-like sense of humor, there’s alway the additional chance that there will be so much crude toilet humor that I won’t be able to get past it.  But The Other Guys did not disappoint.  The whole thing was just as laugh-out-loud hilarious as the trailers.  Will Farrell was just doing his usual shtick, of course – he’s kind of a one-trick pony in my opinion but that doesn’t stop it from being hysterical.  Mark Wahlberg and Michael Keaton were great complements to Farrell and really stole the show. 

The casting just worked – Farrell was perfect for the role of doofy police accountant, and Wahlberg was a great choice as his reluctant partner.  They bantered well, and the jokes were easy and none of the humor seemed too forced.  You can tell a lot of Farrell’s lines were improv, but that’s what he does best.

Very, very funny.  I highly recommend.  Even N (who I have noticed seems to actually be the person reviewing every movie that I see, if by proxy) laughed out loud quite frequently, and since he is the world’s most stoic movie-watcher I think that’s high praise.  Go.  Now.  I promise,you won’t be sorry.

*The very next movie in my Netflix queue was Without a Paddle,which I cannot currently review for you as I have not yet seen it, because I am waiting on my replacement copy, BECAUSE THE DVD I RECEIVED WAS SO BADLY DAMAGED THAT MY DVD PLAYER DID NOT EVEN RECOGNIZE IT.  NO DISC, IT SAID.  PLEASE INSERT A DISC.  NETFLIX, YOU ARE ON NOTICE.

Hello from Providence, Rhode Island!  I’ve been here since Monday evening, attending a work conference.  I won’t bore you with the conference details, but I was the single person chosen from my office to attend.  (Because it was my turn.  But still – yay for me!)

I’ve never been to Rhode Island before, and in fact haven’t spent a lot of time in New England at all, so this has actually been a fun experience for me (hours of meetings notwithstanding.  But in all honesty, even the meetings weren’t bad – it’s nice to talk shop with colleagues from other institutions, you know?  ANYWAY).  I hit it off with a woman from Buffalo, and we ended up going out to dinner last night with a group of ladies from the Boston area (one of whom was a transplant from Ireland, so her accent was extra-fun).  It seems that quite a few of the conference attendees are from Boston and the surrounding areas, and I love listening to them talk.  I’m sure they probably feel the same way about me because try as I may, “y’all” keeps flying out of my mouth far more often than it normally would.

I’ve had excellent New England clam chowder, scallops that were among the best I’ve ever had, and a fabulous shrimp pasta.  The seafood options alone make coming here worthwhile, is what I’m saying.

I spent a pleasant (if surprisingly warm) afternoon walking around town taking pictures after the conference ended today.   I had a very nice chat with the poor lonely park ranger at Roger Williams National Memorial, and he gave me the scoop on where to go and what to see.  Providence is pretty small, and I was able to cover a lot of ground in just a few hours.  There are tons of gorgeous Colonial-era buildings, and an impressive amount of hills.  So in addition to a crash lesson in Rhode Island history, I was able to get in my daily workout at the same time.

The one downside of the trip (other than being lonely – I’d be having way more fun if N had been able to come) has been the complete lack of internet access in my hotel room.  N swears, the nicer the hotel, the crappier the internet service.  That seems to hold true here – it’s $9.95/day to get access in the rooms, and it isn’t wireless.  And OF COURSE the cable they provide doesn’t work with my computer.  So if you would like to know where I am sitting to bring this post to you – that would be the hotel lobby, where there IS free wi-fi.  I swear, the sacrifices I make for you people.

Here – since I’m already making sacrifices, enjoy some photos.  They were taken with my iPhone (the only camera I brought), and I had to e-mail each one to myself individually because the phone cable is back in my room.  You are welcome.

Because sometimes they are almost as amusing as conversations with my kids.

Scene: My cubicle at the office, around 10 a.m.  My mom called to ask a question.

Mom: I’m sorry to bother you at work, but I need to know what that thing is called that my friends gave me at my retirement party.

Me: That wine tasting cup?  I have no idea.  Why?

Mom: Yeah, that.  I’m trying to write thank you notes and want to refer to it by name.  Didn’t someone call it something that started with an s?  Somm-something?

Me: Sommelier?  That’s not the cup, that’s the guy that uses it.

Mom: Are you sure?  Then what’s the other thing called?

Me: I don’t know, why don’t you just call it a wine tasting cup?

Mom: Because I want to know what it is really called.

Me: Fine.  Let me google it.  [hoping my nearby coworkers are enjoying their impromptu wine lesson]  Here we go, it’s a Tastevin.

Mom: A what?

Me: It’s pronounced taht-VAHN.

Mom: Okay…how do you spell that?

Me: T-A-S-T-E-V-I-N.

Mom: T-A-S-T-B-I-N.

Me: No!  T-A-S-T-EEEEEEEE-V-as-in-Victor-I-N.  [acutely aware that at least 6 people can clearly hear my end of the conversation]

Mom: T-A-S-T-V-I-N.

Me: [getting annoyed]  Mother!

Coworker with adjoining cubicle: [unable to keep from laughing any longer]

Me: You do realize that my coworkers can hear me and probably now think I am insane.

Mom: Oops. [laughing]  I’m sorry!  One more time.

Me: Taste.  Vin.  V-I-N.

Mom: Oh!  So like you’re tasting wine.

Me: [bangs head against desk]