are you ready for some football?

when i turned 30 i decided to set some goals for myself.

1. brew my own beer
1.a) become the sort of beer snob who says things like "personally, i like my brew more hoppy with a chocolate finish" and then one of my beer friends will say, "i prefer a nice summer ale with lemony undertones." and i'll reply, "how dare you!" and i will slap that person's face and storm out.

2. become a fan of a sport

these are just two of many. but this is where ive set my sights for now.

item 2 is more likely to be accomplished quickly and, obviously, step one of goal two is deciding on a sport to learn to like.

i considered something borderline obscure like soccer, rugby, or competitive eating. in the end i decided im no hipster. i want to be sincere. and i realized that part of this goal of becoming a fan included the shared experience of watching a game with other humans. i want high fives to be involved. so many high fives. and in the end it became clear that if i were a fan of rugby, i would likely end up spending time with dudes who have ironic mustaches, wear white belts, and would consider a high five too cliche.

something traditional then.
baseball, i thought. they have the best movies about their sport. the hats are good, i like the pants. and, i used to "play" softball in a real life league. i did. no, seriously. league rules stated that you had to have at least 4 girls to a team or you had to forfeit. the rules also included a clause that two of those girls must play infield positions... and thats the story of how i became catcher for the Mail Boxes Etc. softball team. the reality of this is that we held "mandatory meetings" at a bar before each game, which did not improve my skill or grace one bit. and one time i got hit by a pitch so hard i thought my wrist was broken. my mistake on that occasion, they told me, was that i tried to hit the ball instead of dodging it the way i usually would.
we didnt win alot of games.

i was 90% sold on baseball and ready to get started figuring out which of my cable channels is ESPN when dorian threw a wrench into the whole thing. i think he figured i was all talk until he realized that he was soon about to be subjected to watching baseball games frequently and would probably, at some point, have to take me to chase field (which is where they do the baseballing, as i understand it)
he cast his vote for the sport of football. actually, i think what he said was, "if youre going to make me watch sports it better be football because baseball is boring and dumb."
i put it to the facebook test and... football it is.
i like it when other people make my choices for me.

so. a fan of football i soon shall be. i figure there will be ample high fiving and im pretty excited to get one of those jerseys that football fans wear, its going to hide the baby weight really really well.

the thing im wrestling with now is the fact that i cant go buy myself a jersey until i pick a team to support.

last night on earth

i was planning on being conservative, responsable. reasonable, even.
i knew that i would probably miss the fall leg of the 21st century breakdown tour... the red pants leg of the tour... the cigarettes and valentines leg of the tour...
i know what youre thinking- if you saw the first part of the tour why worry about it? or maybe youre thinking- if you 've seen them more than 20 times why worry about it? well. because. those times he wasnt wearing RED pants. what if everything is different now and i miss it and history remembers the best green day shows ever were the red pants shows... and those are the ones that i missed...??

still, red pants or no red pants, i made my peace with missing the show because i had a good enough reason... birthing a baby is probably one of very few things that would keep me away from a green day concert.

if one is not permitted to vacuum for 6 weeks after having a baby, i think going to the rock show is definitely out.
fair enough. i would miss this one. it was the responsable, reasonable, conservative choice.

turns out, im not responsable, reasonable or conservative. and missing a green day show is not something we lenzes do.

i was feeling the itch a few days before, when my sisters and friends would post things on facebook like "five days to the green day concert, so excited, LOL" and i would have to counter with my own status update "just got pooped on, isnt life prescious. LOL"

still, resolved to be responsable, reasonable and conservative and sit home with my pre-schooler and my newborn and my husband and all my tivoed episodes of 'big bang theory' to keep me from clawing the walls.

then, 10am on monday morning (day of the show) my sister sends over a text that xander, my 6 year old nephew, may not want to go to the concert and that jason, her husband and avid fan of the band Tool, would also probably not go and did we want her extra tickets if they cancelled?

suddenly possibility was alive. suddenly being reasonable, responsable and conservative seemed overwhelmingly stupid and my primary concern became 'how quickly can my mom get here to babysit rocket and zoe?'

of course, sarah (my sister) is at least 50% cold-hearted bitch. because there turned out to only be, say, a 25% chance that xander would not go and we would get to...
however, lest i seem ungrateful (or somehow incur sarah's wrath) just to offer us the tickets, just in case, just on the 25% chance we could use them, was incredibly generous- dont get me wrong- sarah is at least 50% wonderful, kind-hearted and pure.
but she did put us in a situation where we now had to sit and wait for the whim of a first grader to determine whether or not we could go see our favorite band and the man of my dreams in his red pants.

waiting is not something im good at.
but moving forward relentlessly once set in motion is an area at which i excell.
i knew months ago that i would not be going to this show, but now possibility had been introduced. all that reasonable, responsable crap went right out the window and now i had a willing and eager babysitter all set up and all i needed was the means to attend... the tickets.
sarah had given us the potential for tickets, i needed a guarantee.

enter the idiot club.
you may remember that last fall when we saw green day at america west arena we had terrible seats and i found out too late that i could have won floor access tickets from the idiot club if i had only checked my email that day.
well, i learned my lesson. and now that i was fanning the fire of possibility and burning the slaughtered remains of reason and responsability, i was also refreshing my email inbox constantly looking for word from the green day fan club that i have been a paying, card carrying member of for at least 6 years.

and it arrived.
a trivia contest for tickets to the show. and i knew all the answers except one, which i found the answer to easily on the idiot club news page... which i also refresh constantly.

so now, here we were sitting, waiting and wondering if we would either hear back from a sister or win a contest. should we put on pants for the first time in two weeks, or stay comfortable in our 'never leave the house' attire (the uniform of new parents)?
we waited. one leg in a pair of real pants, ready to be seen by other humans, and one leg in a pair of pj pants, ready to expand at the waist and be comfortable. one hand on the breast pump, ready to supply provisions for a temporary substitute mommy, and one hand on the remote control, ready to que up endless hours of sitcoms to pass the long living room hours. one eye on the phone, waiting for a text from sarah, one eye on the computer looking for an email from the idiot club... it was like green day twister.

then the inevitable happened, xander decided he DID want to go to the concert (which ended up being a good choice for him) and then the impossible happened, i won tickets from the fan club.

we stepped into non-pijamma clothes, fired up the pump and got ready to rock... red pants here we come....

to be continued with the story of how it ended up being the second best green day show of all time...
k.

so if you dare to second guess, you can rest
assured that all my love is for you.

ouch. my eye.

no stranger to humiliating injury, minor emergency and small scale disaster- today i suffered an eye injury.

i got shampoo in my eye.
no, not a little lather run-off easily wiped away.
i got an entire squirt of shampoo in my eye. not the pea-size recomended dosage either, a good handfull of suave professionals. in my eye.

dont ask how it happened. i dont know.
i can tell you without hesitation that being 8 months pregnant and carrying 35 extra pounds has done nothing to make me MORE graceful or demure.

i dont know how i managed to get a fistfull of shampoo right into my eyeball, but now- looking back- im a little surprised it hadnt happened before now.

it burns. undiluted shampoo in your eye hurts like a mothereffingsonofamotherlessgoat. its the worst. i actually screamed.
and when the shower water didnt have the pressure or concentration to wash the offending gel out of my eye socket, i had to hop- screaming- out of the shower and rush to the bathroom sink.

a little back story.

a. the sink height in our new bathroom falls precisely at my belly's widest point. its a challenge to get close enough to wash my hands, let alone get my entire face under the faucet.

b. we recently installed a water saving device on the sink that has to be triggered constantly to make water flow. you cant just turn on the faucet and get a steady stream of water, you have to now turn on the faucet and constantly engage the device to get any water at all. tough to do when youre half blind, screaming in pain and can barely reach in the first place... this is my reward for going green.

so. i have to abandon that bathroom sink and run screaming for the hall bathroom sink. soaking wet. on concrete floors. still not graceful. still with the non-existant center of gravity and suddenly half blind and in obscene pain.
at this point i started to cry.
aparently, human tears activate the fire chemicals in shampoo. i was now in MORE blinding pain... making me double blind.

i was able to flip that faucet on and get a nice, healthy, earth-killing stream of constant, steady water to rinse the bulk of suave out of my eye... but that did nothing to stop the pain. i rinsed and rinsed and rinsed and cried and stood at the sink dripping and screaming and wishing i had a free hand to call poison control.

at this point dorian woke up and offered me one of zoes sippy cups to hold against my eye as a rinsing device... also did not stop the pain.

eventually i was able to wash enough suave out of my eye that it only felt like i had just been burned in the eye by a red hot poker and not that i was currently being burned in the eye by a red hot poker.

my eye continued to burn and throb for the rest of the day and i kept rinsing it out to little effect.
in fact, around 2pm i started wiping bubbles and soap chunks out of the corners of my poisoned eye.

the good news is, it feels better now. and its never been silkier.

k.

but now it's gone and I take the blame
and there's nothing I can do but take the pain.

Up and Atom!

its not like i had any pressing social engagements or lavish events i was blowing off to spend the whole day at home waiting on various service people. quite the contrary. in fact, i still have PLEANTY of unpacking to do. At least 40% of Phase One Move is yet to be unboxed. So there was lots of slow puttering and back and fourth waddling and struggling to get my arms around things to do while i waited around for the Quest phone & internet guy and the Direct TV tv guy.
so there was no trouble. plus, at the end of the day, i would have my beloved internets back as well as cable television with DVR, which i had been missing for more than a year.

i did learn a lesson... that (thanks to HULU and large screen computer monitors) it is POSSIBLE to live without cable TV and a DVR... but not with a newborn baby. im not waking up at 4am and shuffling through HULU looking for something to keep me entertained as i operate as a human lunch box. not to mention that i will most likely be taking to bed at 6pm to facilitate such midnight snackery, and if i can record my stories and catch up in my wee hour walkabouts, i dont have to hate everyone on earth. so there. direct TV justified.

happily, direct TV was on the scene first. and only 1.5 hours into their 4 hour window! what luck! but the guy turned out to be a complainer and so i had to move the TV to a different wall. to be fair, i didnt move it myself. but i did have to stand there blinking at the guy for at least a good minute wondering how to explain that i would NOT be moving the TV and entertanment center myself... youd think 30 punds of baby sticking directly out ones front would be a subtle indication of ones incapacity to move large objects with success. oh well.

the Quest guy got here at the bitter end of his 4 hour window, but he set everything up swiftly and without hassling me to move any large pieces of furniture or electronics.

Then everybody left and i sat down with the food network on ready to bask in the warm glowing warm glow of internet access... only to find it didnt work.
the Quest guy was literally five minutes gone, which just happened to make it past 5pm, and the internet was NOT WORKING. at all. not sending information. not receiving information, just an infuriating spinning wheel telling me that it was trying, that it would happen eventually, it was coming... just be patient.

but i am not patient.

oh, and, by the way, i JUST got my van back from the 'shop.' tranny the vanny (i call her tranny because shes a transport, and because shes busted, wore out and has had alot of work done) but she was finally back to me and, theoretically, all in one piece. except for the fact that, the second i got behind the wheel, the AC started blowing hot air in my face. so i made arrangements to bring it back to the 'shop' and, sure enough, it works just fine whenever anyone else drives it. only for me does it try to bake the skin off my face with convection oven-style winds. i explain that 50% of the reason i turned her into the shop in the first place was because the AC only worked intermittently and, even still, i had to occasionally bang on the dash with a book to make it come on at all... i explain this and expect it to be a clear indication that something is amiss, and then its everyone elses turn to blink at me and insist that its working just fine.

all of which leads me to believe that i am somehow radio active and therefore magically cause things not to work.

BTW, dorian walked in the door this evening and the internet worked just fine... which of course made him question what i was complaining about when i called him from our newly installed home phone (did i mention my cell phone wasnt working all day?) and told him the internet was stupid and didnt work. so. cheers. guess we can all assume which piece of the puzzle here is REALLY stupid and doesnt work.

in completely unrelated news, i am now the owner of a tazer.

see you soon.

k.
shes an endless war, shes a hero for the lost cause
like a hurricane in the heart of the devastation
shes a natural disaster, the last of the american girls.

30 seconds to glory

so, the deal is you make a 30 second video and maybe get to go to NY to see American Idiot on broadway AND go to the opening night after party... surely something worth winning.

after alot of debate over what can and would be effective in 30 seconds or less, we settled on this:


there is some competition, though.
this one is cute

most are just people stating their case and arent even offering anything eternal or personally scarring like, say, their second born child...
i.e.

although... if someone had to win besides me (and NO ONE DOES, since they are picking two winners) i would have to reccomend this girl

i mean, that really demonstrates commitment. although, you could cover that up with a nice tattoo of a bird or a butterfly or a giant naked mermaid... it takes a special kind of person to offer up the life-long name of their only son.

just my opinion.
pick me! we will even throw in an extra, size of a cantelope person!

k.

looking back what i have done there's lots more life to live
at times when i feel overwhelmed i question what i can give
but i don't let it get me down or cause me too much sorrow
there's no doubt about who i am i always have tomorrow

pick me.

currently i am figuring out what to put in my 30 second video.

30 seconds to prove that me and dorian are the biggest green day fans so that we can go see american idiot on broadway.

i would really REALLY like to win this. you might be surprised to find out, given my generally delightful and positive nature, that im not much of a contest winner. in fact... im not sure ive ever won anything. which kind of, in my own little shallow heart, gives me hope... maybe ive been saving up all my contest winnings to win this BIG one.
i cant think of anything id rather do with dorian as a nice vaca-get-a-way before our little man comes bursting out.

cross your fingers for me.

k.

Second Leg.

i knew it.
i knew that green day would come back for a second leg of the US tour. it was exactly on this second leg of the american idiot tour, 5 years ago, that dorian and i went on our geek-er-ific green day blog road trip and followed the show to 7 different stops... and i was 5 months pregnant.

here i am again, 5 months pregnant, and yesterday was the pre-sale for the next phoenix green day show. which is in august. which is exactly when im supposed to be having a rocket baby.

due on the 16th, concert on the 30th... baby rocket will most likely be born already.

my thinking was, hey lets bring him! the show is at an enormous outdoor arena, we could easily find a nice little patch of grass on the lawn. it would be like a really loud picnic, with my favorite band playing in the distance but still not far enough away to exclude me. picture it, nursing a happy newborn at the rock show. its what jane austen would have done if she had been a green day fan.

i told dorian this plan and he agreed. and then i found out he thought i was kidding.

plan b? i hold the baby in for 2 extra weeks with some determined clenching and we all enjoy the show, still from the cheap seats as im sure dorian (who didnt approve of my collander strapped about the waist method of baby protection in 2005) will surely not approve of strainer-based armour in 2010, and everyone will be happy with a nice uterus barrier between noise and second hand pot smoke. right?

leave baby rocket with a baby sitter, you suggest? that may be an option, except for the fact that i know good and well that a two week old baby knows only one thing about babysitters- 'youre not my mom and i dont like that about you'

i didnt buy presale tickets, though i may still have a few days to convince dorian that my jane austen plan is solid. till then, im open to suggestions.

and i, i just wana see the light.
and i need to know whats worth the fight.
k.