I really want this to happen. This place is so much better than it was 15 years ago. Case in point? The subway, while still smelling like urine and chicken soup, actually tells you useful information now about connections at each upcoming stop. The bus stops have clearly marked routes and even in some places have schedules posted. Things make sense here. People, with the exception of tourists, walk on the right side of the sidewalks at reasonable paces. When I talk, no one says “Yer not frum ’round here, huh?”

Also? There is a PIZZA TRUCK that goes around this neighborhood. You don’t even have to order pizza, it just shows up. Are you fucking kidding me? Even if I hated it here, I would stay just for the pizza truck dinner option.

So yeah, life is a litle scary, but also exciting and I’m totally into it.

Check out this dude I met at the shore the other day:

I’m getting my hair cut tomorrow and for the life of me I cannot remember what I was going for when I started growing my bangs out and fell into this state of perpetual ponytail. The evidence points to a beatnik Cousin Itt.

I don’t even know what to ask for tomorrow. I might be over my quest for unattainable Jennifer Love Hewitt hair. I’m trying not to let the heat wave influence me, or I’ll end up with a repeat of the dreaded pixie disaster of first grade. (A mistake I’ve repeated more than once hoping it would somehow suddenly work for me? It’s so perfect on so many ladies, including my own mother!)

Anyway, the reason it is so pressing that I get this mess trimmed up: I’m taking an undeserved vacation from my idle life to hang out with a good friend I haven’t seen in over a decade (with some job hunting on the side). As much as we all love shit-talking Facebook, I gotta say, it’s been good to me.

• a karaoke diner
• the cook was ladling sausage gravy all over the place
• birds were flapping around inside, their feathers landing in the sausage gravy mess (also: bird tracks in puddles of sausage gravy)
• no one was wearing shoes or socks
• all of the surrounding conversations were about surgical mishaps
• strangers wearing wool kept bumping into the bare portions of my arms
• at some point I got glitter in my eye
• my wallet fell out of my back pocket and into a toilet (one of my greatest fears)
• my toothbrush cuddling with other toothbrushes
• a drinking fountain filled with milk. “Eco-friendly” recirculating milk.

You know what? I have to stop right there and die a little bit faster.

First, this new Wuthering Heights cover makes my heart hurt:

I can’t even. Just. Really?

Dangnabbit. I lost my entire train of thought and this just became a list.

Things that make me happy, July 2K10 edition:

• almond tea
• all the awesome dogs that live in my town
• finding Kobo Abe’s The Box Man at the used bookstore
• Kate Bush videos on youtube
• the sweet brush in Sally Hansen’s Insta-dry polish (& blazing blue)
• Sebastian Bach as as Gil in Lane’s band on Gilmore Girls

There’s a lot more. I’m in a really good mood lately. I think I am in love with this summer. Is that allowed or is it like when lions lay down with lambs? Fickle, fickle kid, no?

Here, have some tunes –perhaps to fold clothes to. A mostly new wave mix:

Don’t turn your back on me baby
Don’t turn your back on me baby

1990. I was 12. It was hot and sticky and my father’s car didn’t have air conditioning, but it did have a tape deck and one cassette. The tape was a blank one he’d filled both sides entirely with Santana’s Black Magic Woman, and the deck kept auto-flipping so that we’d been listening to it nonstop from Philadelphia to wherever it was he lived back then.

Yes, don’t turn your back on me baby

At one point he pulled up to a gas pump and shut off the car, and then gave the key a slight twist to keep Black Magic Woman going. “No!” I shouted over it, but he was already inside paying to fill up.

Stop messing round with your tricks

I hit the eject button and flung the tape into the bin between the pumps. His radio was, of course, tuned to the classic rock station and when he got back in the car Black Magic Woman had just started again. As it finished I side-eyed him, watching his mustache twitch before he turned to me.

“Did you take my tape?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to give it back?”

“I threw it out of the window.”

“What?”

“I didn’t litter. I tossed it into the trashcan back at the gas station.”

“That doesn’t make it ok!”

“I won’t do it again. You don’t have anymore tapes.”

“They’re just at home.”

“More tapes of just that one song?”

Don’t turn your back on me baby

I didn’t see him again after that, but I did get an email right after I’d left school, about a month before my university account was purged. I refused to listen to his bullshit. Six years and not even a birthday card from him? (Let alone years without court ordered child support checks.) And now he was blaming his long, silent absence on my mom? I replied with the coldest, meanest dismissal I’ve ever produced. He fired back an angry reply and I told him to leave me alone. He did.

Turning my heart in to stone

Several years ago my stepfather had a heart attack, and a bit later spent an entire night on the telephone with me telling me all of the things he would’ve done differently if he could do it all again; none of it included my mother, me, or my step brother. He insisted I promise him to not repeat his mistakes, to do what I want, and not be miserable like him. A few months later, or maybe even then — who knows? — he was cheating on my mother. They’ve been separated for three years now and he lives in their house with his girlfriend and her kids –a replacement family younger than the one he’d had plus one more kid. (I don’t really get it either.) I’ve tried to be civil, but it’s easier to just leave it alone.

His almost-dying and turning into a completely different person made me wonder how often people do change. Does everyone? And if one can change from a relatively decent person into a complete ass, is the opposite also true? Could I be less of a jerk to my own father now? Could he have also grown up a bit over the years? I started looking for him, and the closest I came was discovering that my grandmother had passed in 1998 — not very long after our ridiculous email argument.

I can’t leave you alone

Last week it occurred to me that perhaps my search was too narrow. As soon as I checked the social security death index, I found him; he’d died in 2008.

How do you lose two fathers at the same time and not know it?

And somewhere deep in this hair band graveyard is an even more secret spot where all of my elastic bands ran away to get on like teenagers do –filled with hundreds and thousands and kajillions of these guys from Goodie’s ironically named “Stay-Put Collection” that never ever ever stay where I put them. They’re not in my bag. Or in my desk drawer. Or around my wrist, or the handle of my hair brush. They just leave. I’m certain of it.

Ill-advised pony-tail holders improvised from common office items:

• binder clips
• mangled paper-clips
• chain fashioned out of paper-clips
• pull-chains taken from desk lamps and/or ceiling fans
• Mardi Gras beads from last year’s company anniversary party
• twist-ties pulled from the tangle of cables under your desk

Office supply order:

• rubber bands

Actual Content!

Here’s my semi-monthly list of interesting things! Who is excited? (I am.)

• A look at Isabella Blow by Plumcake at Manolo for the Big Girl. Totally fierce. Totally awesome hats.
• Here is a Shakesville post by Melissa McEwan that sums up why you might’ve found yourself unfriended by me on Facebook or sitting by yourself all fish-mouth after I’ve abruptly gotten up and left our conversation.
• A few of my FB buds hopelessly threw up their virtual hands and wailed “why are all the girls so into Twilight?” the other day, and I almost responded, but thought better of it. It would not have been as articulate as Sady Doyle’s Tiger Beatdown post, The Edward Cullen Underpants Conundrum, in which she deftly points out how no one really questions guys who get excited about female celebrities but when ladies treat a male celeb in the exact same way, it’s unnerving! What is the world coming to? Let us wring our hands! If you are going to read anything about the Twilight franchise, make it that post.
• In Defense of “Douchebag” over a Feministe. Truth.
• Flu Vaccines are safe, even for pregnant women. “There has not been one study that has shown any maternal or fetal complications from the inactivated flu vaccine.” Science-Based Parenting.

Two posts in one day, instead of in one month. I AM ON A ROLL, GUYS.

We went to the 24 hour grocery store Saturday night and it was CLOSED — like completely empty and Oh noes! But there was a sign directing us to the new location. We’d forgotten they’d been working on a big fancy Market District store, so I guess my preferred G’iggle was no longer needed. I was skeptical! What had they done? Was this going to be a nightmare? Change! Differentness! Good things usually, but not when it comes to chores that are already tedious and typically annoying, and I was not in the mood for a scavenger hunt. AND And and … lots of breathless statements of indignation!

It was surprisingly crowded for it being near-midnight on a Saturday, and as D commented, everyone looked so irritated that other people were there. Like we’d all invented Late Night Weekend Grocery Shopping and owned that shit and how dare these assholes ruin our shopping experience with their breathing and their pushing of carts! Indeed.

The store is so ridiculously huge that this grumpitude is total BS, and we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves. We were in a magical wonderland of CHEESE AND BEER. The carts have cup holders. It is fucking magical. I can’t even tell you!

So right, I started to get bummed because in true My Relationship With Pittsburgh style, just as I’m leaving, cool new things start popping up and going on. Like I make a few new friends or find a fun new local band or suddenly there is a place where one can easily procure the integral parts of one’s favorite noodle dish and –it’s a month before I’m outta the joint. And THEN I remembered that I’m going back HOME where delicious things have always been available and you can even get a god damned salad without having to specify that you do NOT want french fries in it.¹ What am I bummed about? I’ve been paddling upstream on Styx with Cerebus snapping from the shore for what seems like forever and finally there is a light ahead. It’s a neon sign that reads “Reading Terminal Market.” Are you kidding me? Snap out of it, lady.

For my friends who are at peace with pretend salads and doughy white bread cut extra thick for maximum tastelessness and are here for the long haul², here is the most important, relevant link: The Market District Beer List. Also their handy Cheese Pairing list.

Does that not make you hungry for fancy crap and feel sort of posh and something like a grown-up, or what?

1. I will never ever understand the Pittsburgh french fry salad thing. It’s supposed to be a salad. You are missing the whole concept of salad when you dump a fryer basket of greasy fries over it. Don’t act like I’m the one who doesn’t know what a salad is. I’ve got the rest of the world with me on this one, and you are a wee tiny baby of a city; a fussy toddler who won’t eat his vegetables unless swamped in ranch dressing.
2. I think you should move too. There, I said it. I just feel very strongly that you’re being deprived of essentials like general deliciousness.

This exciting new pattern has been scientifically formulated with an exotic blend of trendy prints to sell like cakes hotter than “That’s hot” ever was. (And then it’ll wane for like a minute, and then it’ll be retro.)

So I went to the mall last night to find pants and a button down shirt for my EXCITING AND THRILLING job interview on MONDAY. You would not believe how difficult it was to find solid gray dress pants and a solid colored shirt without embellishment — or maybe you would if you’ve gone shopping in the last several years — but my point is that everything is so ridiculously over the top ugly these days and I hate everything. Except! I do not hate that I have a job interview.

I am not entirely thrilled with the results of my expedition and I am concerned I have become the wizened office goth lady who only owns things in black and gray and the darker shades in the red and purple spectrum. Do I remedy this by branching out into brown or navy? Or do I just stab myself in the eye and bleed to death on the carpet of Lane Bryant?

Tonight I am going to get a long overdue haircut for this interview and afterward I will drink a beer while watching a friend’s band. Will I do so with long or not-long hair? Will there be bangs-bangs or fancy side-swept bangs? I cannot say! I will not know until I consult with the expert who has not ever steered me wrong so why am I so weirdly anxious about this? I have nothing to say with regards to that either!

I can say this, though: Job interview! I wasn’t going to get too excited but I can’t help it. I’ve gotten lots of calls about jobs in places I don’t really want to live and this is the first one for a place where I want to relocate. And it’s for something I would feel really good about doing; actually helping people. So wish me luck in the event my textile design genius doesn’t take off. But how could it not? I used science! Like — observation and percentages and stuff. C’mon.

On the way home she had The Talk with me and that is how I learned that all of my cartoon friends who’d visited me were really Aunt Pat in costume on her way to various singing telegram/flower/balloon delivery jobs.