Expatriate Games

Even though it’s not quite so huge a deal when staying on the same land mass, I just wanted to share the gorgeousness of Baby’s First Passport picture. It’s…markedly better than Baby’s First Visa picture (which doesn’t have to be redone for Montreal, thankyaJesus), which was taken at a 24 Walgreens in the wee hours of the morning after which Josh flew down to LA to get five visas to Great Britain. Which have only just expired. Single tear. Anyway, baby passports aren’t valid for quite as long as ours for obvious reasons – though Ezra still looks pretty much like this, no? – so he’ll need it renewed while we’re “abroad”.

And now – a simple request. I have some pretty amusing (to me) search engine terms showing up on my stats page. Could you PLEASE feel obligated to leave a comment letting me who a) who the hell typed that in the first place, b) what it brought you to on my page and c) whether it was a satisfactory result. And whomever searched for “dead eyes”,…what the hell were you looking for?! And I hope you liked that picture of me, dubbed “Sharkie” by our beloved Caitlin. And while that one – and the new “socialite turns into tiger” and endless “smelcer” searches – are pretty obvious, there are some that leave me wondering. Like, “Aryan Satanism” and “stained glass satan”….did you find what you were looking for? “Lisp + stephanie march” …you better not show your face here. O_O

And as such, I must update you on a story we both came to love. How can I tell you this? (deep sigh)

Guess you won’t have to do “extra good in [middle] school” after all, Alfie. ‘Cause – tell ‘em, Jerry Springer! – that ain’tcho baby.  Daaaaaaang, Gina! Maybe those boys weren’t just trying to jump on the scandalously lucrative bandwagon of a British tabloid story (that just felt nasty writing that!)… turns out my blushing British beauty (those words make sense only in that order when one looks like she) wasn’t still a virgin at 15! I certainly hope he meant what his hoodie said. You do remember, don’t you? “The baby is mine and if not, f*** you, I’ll still be there.” Really, young blood? Sure you wanna stand by your ogre instead of, I dunno, going to school?!

And to wash that nasty flavor out of your mouth, a football player and his wife and kids were racing to a Texas hospital to see a dying grandmother. Unfortunately, they didn’t come to a complete stop and were pulled over close to the hospital. The wife, unaware they were stopping because of being pulled over, began to run to the hospital. Her mother was dying, did I mention? Well, the cop who must have forgotten he had a dashboard cam made her come back and they all stood around while he wrote them a ticket, assuring them that a dying family member was no excuse for a California stop. Grandma died while they waited around in front of the hospital for his permission to go in. Cop was white. They were all black. And rich and famous. Annnd for anyone who was born yesterday, no one else seems to think there’s a better explanation. Dang it, Obama – cure it already! Am I right?! I mean…AM I RIGHT?!

Holy My Jesus. She is forcing me to speak: why will Lindsay Lohan not fut the shuck up?! I honestly cannot think of anyone else who embarrasses themselves the way she does. And I get mad when I’m humiliated for someone who is too stupid to be humiliated herself. Plus, remember way back, when she said she liked the incessant pap stalking and that it meant people were talking about you? Seems little Miss Stickfigure assumed ex-cons chasing her with expensive cameras was a surefire path to Oscar-winning. Poor little HoLo.

What else is in the “news”…

Well, we got some next year news, though not all of it. Josh got his acceptance letter to Concordia in Montreal today! We knew that was where we’re headed but hadn’t heard any official word yet. This is a lovely thing, despite the fact that he hasn’t heard from McGill yet, which is his first choice of grad programs. Then there’s my junk, about which I hope to hear soon. But now we can update all of my many visual aids/plans/guides and start solidifying travel dates. Which includes Ezzie’s first Disneyland trip in early August! Yeay! After which, we make the trek whether by air (please no) or one-way-rv+u-haul-towed (hopes – this would allow us to stop in both grandpa’s hometowns of River Falls, Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois). In addition to the other things we’re waiting to hear, we are anxious to know whether or not Josh got the Tuition Fee Remission award for Concordia, which would allow us to pay the same as Canadian students. Good times, yo.  Either way, it’s time to get the CAQ, which we need to stay for more than six months. We don’t need visas as Americans but we do need the CAQ and the study permit which is approved at the border as long as you have the CAQ in hand.

Congratulations, Joshie!

Soooo….  I was shopping in the commissary today and I had a flashback.  Let me paint a picture:  We are walking in the store in the late evening, I think then it was called “Lucky”, we enter the bread aisle and then it happens… (dum dum duuummm) After watching “Ace Ventura” for the millionth and one time, we decide to reenact the HDS guy scene.  You remember now, don’t you?  You grab the loaf of bread and say the unforgettable phrase,  “We’re going downtown…”  You then kick the loaf of bread engulfed in the thin plastic wrapping as if you were kicking a football for a fieldgoal, bread goes EVERYWHERE!  Hilarity as we sprint from the aisle and leave a huge mess for some poor store clerk to clean up.

Good times.

I have absolutely no preface for this. Makes you wonder where they’ll put it in Borders, no?

And speaking of time consumption, ‘member that little doozy that is Lulu and my personal book collection….looks like I did it again. The pain. Staking. And the ….two hours?! How does this happen? It’s a good thing it’s out of my control because, seriously? I know before and after I realize I didn’t want to do it but that compulsion doesn’t go away as long as I know I’m unsatisfied with a project. So. Redid that whole ordeal to change the font size. Thank God/ Curse Satan for the ‘blank slate’ syndrome. Seriously. I’m … sort of shocked right now. I honestly didn’t know I was gonna do that, or that I could even maintain sanity even considering it. But last night Jordan showed me her copy and I did agree that the font size was uber tiny-tastic. So. I simply changed it back to the font that had been for a decade (good thing), adjusted all of the “art” – such as chapter icons, scrolls, text boxes (not-too-bad thing), saved as pdf (easy thing), ….realized my trial period for a pdf to jpeg converter was expired (lame thing), downloaded a second one (not-too-bad thing), converted to find that pages had watermark declaring “RESTRICTED VERSION” (bad thing), uninstalled second converter (lame thing), downloaded a third one (getting-stupuid thing), converted document (whatever thing), forgot log in for the ftp upload and had to look around lulu (eyes-burning-’cause-I-was-already-tired thing), went down and double-clicked 156 things to begin ftp-ing (annoying thing), whilst ftp-ing I deleted the 117 project pages that were to be replaced… with 156 (annoying thing), after ftp-ing I transfered all of the jpegs to the actual project (maddening thing), and then it was just a matter of putting 156 jpegs in the correct order (I’ve-officially-gone-numb-to-this-demonic-process thing). So, that was pretty much it. And my high school amour is fin!

Oh, how bout this? Because I’m supposed to care what these people think of me and my fur coats?! Right. I’m also not gonna eat ice cream made with breasts milk in it, no matter what cows milk does to my intestines.

I’ve realized another reason for my frequent departures – despite the loathing I feel towards the mechanics of relocation, packing, unpacking – aside from the fact that we, quite simply, have not found a place worth committing to. I don’t want my child to become saturated, even in a city for which we have affection, because it automatically takes the whimsy out of that place for him – though his father and I may get to keep ours. I want every place to still be exciting and interesting and something of which he’s proud, as opposed to (gasp) becoming bored with an amazing city simply because he knows it inside and out. And yes, I realize that some people live somewhere from birth and love it and grow old with it. I just can’t think of any such person I’ve gotten on with. And it’s a completely foreign concept to me so clearly, when raising my child, I’m not going to take such outliers horribly into account. Who would. (Do feel free to raise your hand.) It’s just unfortunate to think of finding a place in which I could actually set up shop and then have my son eventually perform a necessary exodus simply because it’s his “hometown”. But then, I remind myself… you may never find that place anyway. For every city that seduces me and convinces me that I must live there for an undetermined amount of time, there’s one more. And I hate flying too much to frequently (as in have “home” be both at once) go back and forth… or do I. I hate flying but clearly that has never stopped me from going anywhere.
Flergous Blerg.

So what to do.

Sidebar: I recently read someone is in love with the UK because they are so disappointed in America’s lack of culture. O_O You mull that over while I drink some iced water.

There are plenty of ways I could repay my brother-in-law for joining our family, for buying me Chipotle or for giving me gorgeous nephews. (They do, in fact, belong to me.) But there is no better way, I feel… than responding to his previous entry (linked above) with this.

That. My friends, is plastic surgery. And nobody does it better. Or more often. Or worse. She spent $4 million dollars trying to turn into a big cat because her philandering husband had a thing for big…cats…. dang I almost lost consciousness just writing that. For real!? I just wanna wrap her….in a pelt…wait, that’s not what I wanted to say, I just accidentally looked up at the picture. I really just wanna….roll her up in a carpet…. sorry. Focus.

(deep breath)

She needs a hug.

WHERE ARE HER LOVED ONES RIGHT NOW AND FOR THE LAST HOWEVER MANY YEARS!?!? I HOPE MY FATHER WOULDN’T LET ME DO THIS TO MYSELF WITHOUT PUTTING ME ON A 5150 THAT WOULD LEGITIMATELY TURN INTO A LONGTERM IMPRISONMENT IN A WELL-GUARDED PSYCH WARD! GOD, IT’S TAKING ALL OF MY WILLPOWER NOT TO CURSE HERE, PEOPLE.

(INVOLUNTARY SHOUTING CONTINUES)

Why are we the generation that has to suffer through all of our childhood favorites being reimagined whilst we’re still trying to enjoy our youth?! I’m only 26, for the love of Apollo. Give it a rest! It’s like nothing of ours is sacred and we have to let our crappy little siblings play with all of our best toys and they get their grubby little hands nice and filthy before picking them up and then when they give it back, everything’s all corroded. What the hell. (This was just something I jotted down as a draft and on which I intended to elaborate…*wanders off*)

And also, what the heck constitutes a generation? Is it only definitive when it comes to events? Like the “baby boomers”… the “mtv generation”… aside from that, how do we know where one ends and the other begins? Like, my dad’s generation doesn’t have a name, right? He was born in 1944 so… he’s the “Hitler’s still alive” generation? I don’t know. Okay, according to Wikipedia, “Generations are extended periods of time that are connected with pop cultures.” However, I should mention that the article from which I got that is multiple times disputed. … So.

As Jennifer listens to “Singing in the Rain”, I’m reminded how my love for Gene Kelly was soiled by the knowledge that the “dancer” who partners with Gremio (…which I could have sworn was Bob Fosse’s character, but is credited as my Bobby Van by imdb) probably got the job because she was engaged to Kelly. She ruined SEVERAL numbers in the movie and generally pissed me off, since Bobby was my pick. (In a household with three girls, every man who met our fancy was assigned to one of us… and it really mattered to us… we’d shriek, “Got ‘im!”, to cement our ownership and whoever said it first got… well, him. Also, there were occasions upon which we had someone in a specific role, like Mel Gibson in “Tim” versus Mel Gibson in “Lethal Weapon”, however he was the same character in the whole Weapon franchise and therefore belonged solely to whomever called him for all four movies. Oh, and there were trades. Tom Selleck and Christopher Reeves were hot ticket items. And Dwayne Wayne… I’m just tellin’ all the family secrets.)

More later? I’m Ron Burgundy?

O_O

That’s what genius looks like. It leaves me speechless (a) that someone got it and was able to articulate it because frankly when some thing or trend is so retarded, I can’t usually do anything but watch my head explode and (b) that the parody was so spot-on. It’s like watching the latest episode of 30 Rock where the girl sings and it’s that irritating “everything sparse and distorted/weird is awesome and profound and this indie generation is so much smarter and post-cynical=pseudo-confident-in-their-intellectual-equality than any before it” sound? Sweet Jesus. Tina Fey is my mirror into my own future.

Which reminds me: I keep forgetting to warn you that the backlash? The post-indie era? Yeah, pop is going to sound meaningful again. Once we’ve wrung every drip out of that whole cooler-than-thou towel, we’ll once again be able to remember that taste is subjective. And even when it’s not, …well, it’s better than the whole youth world claiming to be unique while wearing the same pair of skinny pants. PS If you’d be born earlier enough in the 80s to have class pictures (buried somewhere) wearing …any of that garb… you’d stop being So Fresh.

I may have digressed.

So I’m in Sac until Monday after which I will be in Portland for about six days… so here’s a post before I go.

This is what pretty salon happy good times show looks like with unfortunately dead eyes; the red eye correction didn’t help.