Munchkin spent the remaining time eating and sleeping.  We took a quick jaunt to the independent video rental joint down the street, and picked up a movie.  The clerk, who recommended a movie to me the week before, remembered me, and we chatted for a bit.  Slowly but surely, things are becoming familiar, and my neighbors are becoming more familiar with me.

(1) We have lots of pictures and artwork lying on various bookcases.  They need proper places on our walls.  I have a 10 dollar gift card to Target I will be using tomorrow.

(2)  Find a recipe for broccoli soup.  Hun asked me a month ago to make it.  I had vowed to make one “veggie”tarian meal per week to increase vegetables in our diets and less fatty crap.  I fell off the wagon for the past month.  Along with blogging.  Damn you, facebook!

(3)  Blog tomorrow.  Again.  Rinse and repeat.

(4)  Complete  “Poppy” Dr. Who scarf by Halloween.  I can then complete another set of Bella mitts for my former landlady and former fostermom.   I will also need to knit a suitable Mayhem Cap for the Munchkin.  After that, I will attempt  the adult version of the Tomten for Hun, who has been begging over a year for one.  At that point, I will actually knit a sweater for moi!  (I will also forgo buying any more yarn until I substantially cut down my stash by half.

(5)  Commit to cleaning the house one morning per week.  Munchkin will have to deal.

(6)  Schedule an appointment with the doctor, as I’ve had a case of the awful coughin’ for over a week now.  Get flu shots, rinse, and repeat.  This is a general appeal to go to bed earlier, and take better care of myself.

Well,  I should brush and floss my teeth before bed.  Then I need to catch some sleep.

Ooops . . . it looks like I forgot to do one thing . . . submit my post.  I am now drinking a damn good cup of coffee the next morning as I do just that .  . .

I have decided that I will have one FB holiday per week–and to stick to it.  I gave myself one yesterday–but broke my promise.  Today, and half of tomorrow, I will be off the FB bandwagon.

Giving more time to write in tangents and bore my two readers.  By the by, hey Mom and Dad.  We’ll be booking plane tickets this week for the end of November.

I will also get back on the bandwagon of writing every day–even if it might be 1am, to do it, like brushing my teeth twice a day.

Alas, the post I am writing about is remembering how the world changed ten years ago yesterday.  I remember I started grad school in journalism.  I just moved to Boulder, and my roommate asked me if she could use my television–we didn’t have cable and I had the only tv in the house.

She told me the United States was under attack, and wanted to see the coverage.  We couldn’t get reception, so I hiked over to campus, to find out what was really happening.  American under attack?  Are you kidding me?!  She was smoking too much pot.

I hustled into the journalism school to find out what was really going on.  At that moment, I witnessed both Towers toppled to the ground live on CNN.   I sat amongst a room full of strangers, dumbstruck–both unwilling to believe the tragedy I couldn’t deny.

I saw WTC fall on reloops throughout the day, journalist and other witnesses who barely escaped with their lives, family members wandering the streets and accosting reporters for help in finding the missing.  I also saw footage of people dancing in the streets in Pakistan and Iran.

I wanted to reach through the screen and choke those dancers.  A foreign classmate stood by me, and agreed it was a very sad day.  She then said that in her country, bombings were not uncommon occurrences–people wound die because of politics masked in religious ideology.  Americans showed little interest in people with the same plight, and were more focused on the little nothings and taking their safety and security for granted.  Meanwhile, we did quite a bit of pissing off the rest of the world–and it was unfortunately a matter of time for America’s veil of  illusions would be lifted.  Still, it was a very sad day.

After the Towers fell, our word changed.  Many things change, just on the basis of time.  I have more gray hare, a wedding ring, and a child.  I live in Baltimore instead of Boulder, and I returned to social work after completing my MA in journalism.  It’s the natural order of things to change over time.

Yet 9/11 started a series of events that we as a country couldn’t turn back.  We couldn’t ignore our place in the world.  We couldn’t ignore the plight of others.  We–as a country–could no longer pursue our own material wants while willfully disregarding the needs of others.  We couldn’t take our safety and welfare for granted.

Ten years later,  Osama bin Laden was assassinated in Pakistan.  Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize for not being George Bush. China and Vietnam enjoy the seductions of capitalism while communism whisper’s its swan song.

And something astonishing is happening in the Middle East, where we least expected it . . . Democracy is pushing forward–not by our own hands by pursuing liberty, justice, and the American way–but through everyday people taking to the streets and taking control of their own country.

It’s been a week since Irene hit the East Coast.  We count ourselves lucky here in Baltimore.  Although there were over 400 trees felled by Irene, there wasn’t any major flooding.  Our cars and our persons were fine.  Overall, Irene made a lackluster appearance–and that was alright by Hun and me.  Munchkin would have preferred to have gotten out and about more over the weekend.

Unfortunately, Upstate New York didn’t fare so well.  The was major flooding in the Catskills, and in Ulster and Dutchess counties.  Back in the day, I worked as a social worker in Greene and Columbia counties, and my thoughts are with the friends, foster parents, and kiddos I worked with.

Then, it happened.

At first, I thought the downstairs neighbors were playing the stereo too loud again.  Then, the building started to sway.

I thought, “This can’t be an earthquake, can it?”

Then, as the building continued to sway and the floor shook, I thought, “I can’t believe it, this is an earthquake.”

I then though about what people would do in the movies, and I though panic in the streets wouldn’t do.  I also remembered someone, like Sally Fields, or some similar actress bracing herself in a doorway.

I walked over to Munchkin’s room to grab him and yell at Hun to wake up.  As I approached Munchkin, Hun was up, and headed towards the same Munchkination.  Then all was quiet.

“Was that an earthquake that just passed?” Hun inquired.

It sure as Hell wasn’t gas.

“Ya, I guess so.”

Hun went back to bed, and Munchkin and I headed to the playground.

We came back.  Munchkin pooped (again).  The end.

There are some disparaging things about the internet–I can spend a lot of money at the click of a button.  I also look and pine for items I fantasize will make my life perfect.  I really do need that extra yarn on sale to knit Christmas gifts.  I really do need a larger pressure cooker.  Munchkin would look adorable in these cute little clothes pictured here.

In that way, the internet is a bad, bad thing.

Nirvana's epic album.

Awhile back, I found myself waiting at a local B’More tire shop to pick up Edgar, my trusty Subaru Outback.  Edgar received two flat tires, and I needed to replace all four slippers anyway. (Edgar must have rolled over some  highway shrapnel.) I abused much of my time reading past issues of music magazines and Marie Claire while being assured by the mechanics not to worry, ma’am, my car would be ready before the shop closes, and my faith in the mechanic’s promise dwindling.  I came to three conclusions:

(1)  Half of Baltimore’s service industry is polite and charm itself–just not the most efficient.

(2)  Marie Claire is a much underrated magazine.  They had some great articles, and none of them with titles like, “200 Hot and Sexy Moves to Make Him Go Wild!” and  “How to Snag a Sexy and Loaded Boyfriend So You Don’t Die A Failure As A Woman.”

(3)  SPIN’s music reviews suck stinky ass.

Each of these ponderings make for excellent blog entries, but today, I focus my post on the third.  Perhaps I’m not hip enough or withit.   Granted, I live in Charles Village, with hipness and hipsters from Johns Hopkins maudlining about, and uber-hip Sonja Sohn is one of my neighbors in our hip community.  I’ll admit, I do shop at thrift stores and am over-educated.  But with each passing year, any residual withit-ness trickles away.  The fact remains:  Miles Davis, I am not.  I am, after all, 36 and shop at Sam’s Club for clothes.

Still, a fuddy-duddy like me still calls bullshit phrases like, “. . . playfully caustic solo noise . . . ,” when she sees them.   Sorry, but pouring flesh-eating music into my ears isn’t my idea of playtime.  Fine, I get the author is meaning the artist has a biting, or perhaps sarcastic, sense of humor.  The problem is caustic ain’t playful–it’s harsh and no-holds barred.   Visions of children burning ants with magnify glasses dance in my head.  I hear a squawking clarinet player that never practices in band class.  That’s not playful, that’s painfully awkward.

” . . . puffy-shoulder keytar pop . . . . that would give Alan Parsons and Mr. Roboto pause, “  and,  ” . . . there’s enough elasticity in ‘Too Much Midi (Please Forgive Me)’ to hold up an entire generation’s leg warmers. .  . ?!” Please.  Why doesn’t the reviewer just say, “It’s reminiscent to 80′s New Wave?”  Two words:  overwritten drivel.

I am not interested in listening to “grunt-garling vocals” and “serrated feedback squalls,” even if I need workout music, “provided your workout consists of jogging through a quarry while on mescaline.”  It does paint a vivid picture.  I’ll give points for that.  Although, it doesn’t sound like any music I would listen to–more like music blasting from a car that disturbs my playground chi while hanging with Munchkin.

“Romweber is still ruler of his own bossa nova rockabilly kingdom, skipping from surf-guitar rave-ups to spacey instrumentals to sepulchral balladry, with the occasional Xavier Cugat cover tossed in.”

I have no idea what that means.  Could someone translate?

I wish I was hip enough to decipher some of the reviews, as they were layered with obscure references upon references, turning them into some music-reviewese.

Ironically, SPIN dedicated the issue to the release of Nevermind, bemoaning the decomposing of Nirvana’s rage-music legacy in today’s pillowy music scene, fattened by generic Justin Beebers and Nirvanabes.  Perhaps the editors should read the over-written prose and hipster-cryptic fallow littering their magazine, instead of wondering whatever happened to edgy music.

Kurt Cobain would be shaking his head in his grave, mumbling, “It figures.”

Uber-cool just ain’t my scene.

I believe I understand what the reviewer is getting at when he lauds a  ” . . .yowling chorus morphs into a kiss-off for the ages.”  But if I really was in the mood for that kind of music, I would pop in my trustee Nirvana CD.

Wait.  Are you saying my pseudo-hipster, pseudo-intellectual rant is to conceal my own self-loathing and overwritten prose?  Oh well . .

 . . . nevermind.

Not that I didn’t try.  I set him down to sleep twice after he pooped in the morning and in the afternoon.  (For some reason, pooping seems to make him sleepy.  But today was an exception.)

Munchkin fared well despite his denial of zzz’s.  We went grocery shopping in the morning, and he dozed off 5 minutes before returning home.  I let him have time for shut-eye, but he shouted “Up, up, up!  [giggle] Out, out, out!” for about a half hour until I relented and gave him lunch.  (He was also looking a bit sheepish after breakfast, and I set him down after his morning constitutional–but to no avail as well.)

After lunch, I set him down again.  Again, he wasn’t interested.  We went to the playground to burn some energy and the library to return books.  We grabbed a Slurpee on the way back, figuring Munchkin would not be napping.  We enjoyed our treat, played outside some more.  I gave him some dinner, but it was a bit spoiled by the Slurpee.  We watched some Muppet Show, and I put him down again.

Is he sleeping or just napping?  Perhaps I didn’t feed him enough dinner and I should wake him up again . . . nah . . . we shall see how long my Sleeping Hansom rests his eyes.