Mommy Needs a Minute

On this day of Hallmark sentiments and flower arrangements, I wish you the most banal of all wishes: a happy day. A simple, uncomplicated, cloudless day of blissful forgetting. A safe oubliette of your making. The reliably familiar slick of sweet chocolate on your tongue and sunshine warming your face. The memory of being one-half of a matched set of towheaded twin girls whose faces made one continuous front-toothless slice of smile. The small weight of a child at home in your arms, comforted by your closeness.

Everything good in me is because of you. Thanks, Mom. And Happy Mother’s Day.

Sarah Hepola recently wrote this and this about returning to her hometown of Dallas after living in New York for several years. Her musings on how a city’s coolness quotient factors into your (and others’) perception of success got me thinking about my own for-instances and the blank stares I often receive when I tell people I live in Longmont, Colorado. These are the same stares I get when I say I’m a copyeditor (Oh, so you know the difference between en-dashes and em-dashes? Wow.) or better yet, that I’m a freelance copyeditor. (Oh, so you know how to use a semicolon and you’re unemployed? Wow.) Coloradans know Longmont as Boulder’s beige and tragically unhip neighbor, sporting fewer Tevas and one less Whole Foods (read: 0). Visiting non-Coloradans gaze upon our practically abandoned Twin Peaks Mall, with its circa 1980s Old Country Buffet (still a crowd pleaser) and movie theater sandwiched between a LensCrafters and something called Nail Elegant, and see a relic of another era, an era when going to the mall on a Friday night was a legitimate pastime. They regard it with a mix of nostalgia and confusion, much like catching a whiff of Petite Naté in the Walgreens beauty aisle.

A few years ago, a high school friend and her husband came to visit us. Our ten-year high school reunion in Tampa was approaching, and we were devouring the reunion website, where former schoolmates could create profiles and update everyone on what they were up to (read: how successful/overweight/breast augmented/gay they turned out to be). Neither of us planned to attend the reunion (obviously), but we trolled the profiles like proper Facebook stalkers. As I was creating my own profile, my friend interjected, “Don’t say you live in Longmont. Say you live in Boulder.”

Pride of place is a sentiment that’s usually lost on me. I was thrilled to move to Colorado from Florida in 2006, excited by the change of scenery and the concept of something called “winter.” I know some cities are cooler than others, but so many factors influence and hem in where you ultimately hang your hat — work options, cost of living, proximity to free babysitters family — that I can’t entertain the idea of being picky about where I end up. It’s like appreciating beyond-my-pay-grade cars: I can acknowledge their beauty, but allowing myself to lust over them seems impractical to the point of, well, pointlessness. In other words, Longmont is my champagne Subaru wagon, and I’m alright with that.

But my girlfriend’s comment gave me pause. I thought about Boulder, with its gorgeous vistas, yoga-toned residents, charming bungalows, and high-end shops suffused with sunshine and patchouli. People know Boulder. Saying I was from Longmont was like admitting I had moved to Nowheresville, USA. And really, Longmont is in Boulder County. So no one could say that my typing “Boulder” in the location field was false advertising (says the girl in the padded bra).

I ultimately listed Longmont as my home, suddenly embarrassed by the conceit of still trying, 10 years later, to impress my peers, to make them notice me. I haven’t embraced Longmont to the extent that I imagine Portland or Brooklyn or San Francisco residents do their own towns. I lament that the houses in our neighborhood are variations on a theme, with an over-reliance on vinyl siding, and wouldn’t mind a couple of Boulder’s froufrou chichi stores and eateries. But I do experience swells of Longmont pride: Enjoying crystal-clear views of Long’s Peak, the town’s namesake, from which we can watch the full reach of a storm slowly unfurl an hour or more before it’s upon us. Receiving daily absurdist accounts of our town’s goings-on via the Longmont Times-Call RSS feed and engaging in the inevitable “Is this for real?” debate that ensues upon reading headlines like “Bicyclist stopped was carrying pipes and panties.” Knowing that the previous owner of our home never locked his door in the 20+ years he lived here. (We do. I can wax romantic, but I ain’t crazy.) Being forced to remain in my house while animal control chases down a bear cub in my backyard (true story).

And then there’s this:

Excuse me while I indulge in a Julie Andrews moment.

Ballooning (not to be confused with zeppelining) is a regular summer activity in Longmont, and the take off (take up?) point is not far from our house. So in the summer, we can look outside any day of the week (always surprising because I assume ballooning would be a weekend recreation) and find the clear sky polka-dotted with vibrant, multicolored orbs. I boasted about this when my friend Kate visited a few years ago. She woke up one morning and looked outside and gasped, “Woah. You weren’t kidding about how close the hot air balloons get.”

“I know! Isn’t it so coo–”

I followed her gaze to an enormous, partially deflated balloon that had landed a street over from us. It must have been in our neighbor’s back yard. It was a surreal moment, being suddenly confronted with a thing usually viewed from afar. It loomed like an alien mothership, foreign and fabulous, a surprise spectacle dropped into our everyday suburban existence. I felt my eyes widen with something like wonder and thought, Now where else would I see something like that?

Over a year ago (jeebus), I contemplated painting my beastly fireplace. I lusted over images of crisp white brick, read tons of tutorials, and determined just the right shade of white for our basement space (Benjamin Moore’s Decorator’s White). And then I sat with it. I just stared at that brown behemoth, running scratching my fingers over its craggy, gnarly surface. I was the pale chubby kid in water wings solemnly considering the deep end of the pool. Could I handle it? I mean, this bitch is about 12′ long x 8′ high. I was worried about how much paint it would soak up and if it would quickly become cost prohibitive based on all the paint required. Or if the insanely porous brick would yield a whitewashed effect, which is okay if you’re going for a more rustic look. Or if you want your fireplace to look like it’s survived a nuclear winter. But seriously, look at this fucker:

Yikes.

Of course, the whole process was less scary than I anticipated. But priming the beast did take me almost TWO FULL DAYS. Apparently, I paint about as fast as grass grows. But I made the brilliant decision to impose on my sister-in-law (thanks, Jenna!) when doing the topcoat, and we busted that shit out in, like, six hours. Sorry, we’re not for hire.

We also painted the wall behind the fireplace Benjamin Moore’s Hale Navy, after Adam requested a dark color that would allow our film screen to pop off the wall more. Naturally, this had nothing to do with aesthetics and everything to do with improving his picture quality. But I love how it turned out! Which is great because I’m too tired to feel anything but happy about the result.

Look at the shine from the semi-gloss paint captured in the image below. Isn’t it sexy? No, there’s nothing wrong with your computer. You’re supposed to hear Barry White crooning in your head when you gaze upon such fineness.

Damn.

This accomplishment needed to be celebrated, and you know how I roll. LOOK AT BANNER, READERS!

As promised here, I created an anagram of my existing silly banners to create a new! and improved! banner. Of course, I didn’t consider the lack of contrast with the newly white background. It says FAMILY ♥ SHIT ♥ CAVE. This was just one of Emily’s 30+ amazing suggestions. I also seriously considered OILY MADAMES, BILE ♥ SHIT, and CHEST LOVE. But since the fireplace lives in our basement, I liked the idea of christening the space as our loving family shit cave. Thanks, Emily!

So, what do you think? Be honest! Oh, and if you don’t like it, get your ass over here and say it to my face :)

Working Subtitle: Baby Wang in the Wind

I recall a small blue portable potty of thick plastic and my mother dragging it into the living room so I could sit, queenly on my throne, as I enjoyed reruns of Cagney & Lacey and Hill Street Blues, the actors performing before me like court jesters (that Tyne Daly — such a hoot!). Every time I made a successful potty, I got to add a sticker to my crapper. They were those puffy stickers with flat backs, which gave my toilet a colorful, textural, and decidedly decorated look. Stationed in the choicest spot for TV viewing, it was a conversation piece adorned with a gallery of Droopy dog’s different visages. Jonathan Adler would be charmed by its insouciance; Kelly Wearstler would gild it and flank it with geometric trellis-patterned theater drapes, or fashion it into a top hat.

We got Henry’s potty not long after his second birthday. We kept it next to the “big” potty in his bathroom and presented it to him with great fanfare. This was the gateway to the magical “big kid” realm, where kids frolicked in meadows and ate unchecked amounts of candy corn. Beneath its plastic lid lay the promise of independence and underpants. We decided not to push the training; it was still early and there was no rush. But we figured we could start building positive associations with the potty and regale Henry with the wonders of crap-free pants.

For the next several months we prompted potty trips, didn’t push against any resistance, high-fived and hoorayed all potty successes and rewarded them with treats. But overall, we weren’t make much progress. Henry’s interest in and our diligence with pursuing potty training waned. We had reached a potty plateau. We got 1 to 3 on-demand potty pees and poos a day, but Henry still snuck off in corners to drop a secretive, almost conspiratorial deuce. Our slow and steady approach was resulting in Henry lagging behind some of his peers. He developed a preoccupation with “being big,” and though he connected “bigness” to being diaper-free, this understanding only frustrated and saddened him. This defeatism (so my kid, by the way) was totally breaking our hearts, so we decided that a more aggressive approach was in order, something that would shift the potty from a novelty to a linchpin of independence and big kid-ness.

So we used the long President’s Day weekend in February to attempt the very quick-fix potty-training tactic I had hoped to avoid: Potty Training in 3 Days or Less. You can reference the article for details, but the gist is this: baby naked from the waist down for three days with easy access to a portable potty. Successful pees and poos on the potty are celebrated with a “potty dance.” On day 2 of the program, you leave the house for 1 hour and your toddler wears pants with no diaper, pull-up, or underwear. In other words, your kid goes commando — nothing comes between him and his OshKosh B’Goshes. On day 3, you venture out for 2 hours, again commando-style. If your kid returns to school by day 4, he continues going commando. The article notes that this program is most effective between the 18- and 24-month window. With Henry over 2 1/2 years old, we were already behind and therefore weren’t expecting 100% success. Since I’m in no way an expert on this matter, I thought I’d go ahead and foist my two cents on you:

1. Because we embarked on this quest (don’t ask me to say journey) smack in the middle of a Colorado winter, Henry was initially reluctant to remain in a perpetual state of dropped trou. Forcing him to stay half naked seemed inappropriate and possibly illegal, so we created a contingency plan wherein he could wear pull-ups and every hour we’d initiate a potty time. Whether that would have worked is unclear; after Henry’s first moments of waist-down nudism, he’d discovered a new lease on life.

Lessons Learned: This program involves inordinate amounts of baby wang. This added new color to our weekly video chats with the grandparents and many unintentional cheesecake poses.

2. For our special celebratory potty dance, we adapted this routine from PeeWee Herman, replacing the “Tequila!” refrain with “Pee pee!” or “Poo poo!”

Lessons Learned: I assumed this would be a slam dunk, but halfway through day 1, when Adam and I would high-five Henry and say, “Should we do the pee pee dance?!”, Henry would respond with a polite but direct, “Um, no.” Apparently the joy of watching your parents make asses of themselves comes with age. Right now, it’s simply embarrassing and must be stopped.

3. In our attempt to forge positive associations with the potty, we’ve been rewarding potty successes with treats. We’re now locked into this practice, and I would not recommend it. (Treats are not part of the Potty Training in 3 Days or Less program, by the way.)

Lessons Learned: Though it initially aided in presenting potty training as a super-duper-awesome pastime, not unlike scoring cotton candy at the circus, it’s become a crutch that has resulted in far too much sugar consumption. We managed to switch out junky candy with organic gummies and fruit strips (yes, seriously), so we feel slightly better about it, but we’ve unwittingly created a troublesome pee–candy association. Case in point: Henry will pee on the potty and request a treat and then will immediately return to the potty to finish peeing and ask for another treat. He essentially pinches off the pee in order to score more treats. So clever! So wrong! On the upside, I suppose this is a roundabout (read: totally unrecommended) way of teaching bladder control. As such, Henry’s future Wikipedia page will identify him as the founder of Candy Kegels, a revolutionary fitness program for post-menopausal women.

4. Going commando at school has not worked out for us. His teacher reports that he’s doing very well and that he’s asking to use the potty instead of being prompted. However, the first 2 days back at school after the 3-day program yielded 6 accidents total, requiring so many outfit changes that he ran out of his extra clothes. I arrived on one of these days to pick him up and got a whiff of something. I checked his pants and found nothing, so I figured the whiff was emanating from another toddler butt. As I picked up Henry to leave, he informed me that we had to do something about his poop. “What poop? I don’t see any . . .” I asked as I rechecked his pants. Then I saw it. The turd on the floor. In his commando state, the kid pooped and it traveled down his pants, escaping out of his pant leg. And that’s how we transformed a playroom into a biohazard.

Lessons Learned: Sustained commando-ing is the ideal scenario for buttoning up the potty-training process; it seems those accidents are important to helping the child connect non-potty peeing/pooping with discomfort. But it’s not practical sending him to school every day with 5 extra pairs of pants. So we’re letting him wear a pull-up at school. Though his teacher reports that every pee and poop is made on the potty (yes, they actually track this. These daycare workers are saints, I tell you.), we occasionally discover a wet pull-up. When Henry’s at home, we let him go pantless, though this has yielded a few unfortunate skid-mark incidents. Considering my neat-freak tendencies, this means I obsessively follow him with a wet wipe, a tidbit he’ll surely be sharing with his therapist in 20 years.

5. Overall, I recommend the 3-day potty training. It was the proverbial kick in the pants we needed to shift Henry’s perception of potty training from fun novelty to applied practice.

Lessons Learned: That said, this is ultimately no 3-day affair. But that’s more than fine, since we managed our expectations from the get-go. As with sleep training, we’ve adapted the research to suit our situation and don’t anticipate the advertised by-the-book result. It seems pull-up weaning will be Phase II of this endeavor. In the meantime, Henry can air his boys out in the comfort of his own home.

And Now We Come Full Circle . . .

Though I have no photos that capture my own potty training, if you replace The Jungle Book with an episode of Hart to Hart, it looked exactly like this:

That's how he do.

I aspire to be a crafter. I follow a stupid number of crafting blogs, have dog-eared a zillion crafts in various design books, and have a Pinterest board devoted to DIY ideas. I even get together with ladyfriends once every month or so to get wasted while crafting craft together whilst sipping spirits. But all I have to show for this “hobby” is proof of my crafting aspirations. I’ve yet to hang a subversive cross-stitch on our hearth or pepper the laundry room with fabric-covered embroidery hoops or cut a doormat into the shape of a cloud or knit sweaters for my vases (huh?). I’m ultimately too lazy, too practical, or too much of a perfectionist to attempt the myriad DIY projects that I oooh and ahhh over online.

But. I make a fucking killer banner.

Now, there’s nothing particularly special about the banners I make. I recoil from any project that requires a sewing machine, so my banners are quick and easy. The only skills required are printer ownership and the ability to endure long sessions of tedious X-Acto knifing until your fingers are cramped and calloused. Side note: You don’t want to meet me in a dark alley with an X-Acto knife. I will cut a Hallmark greeting into your forehead in a font called “Little Lord Fontleroy” with terrifying precision.

And did you know that banners are great for all occasions! No need to limit banners to birthdays and roustabouts. Think outside the box: New Year’s, anniversaries, V-Day (for “Valentine’s” or “vaginas”!). Instead of whispering sweet nothings to your loved one, make a fucking banner! Listen, banners are easy and downright plucky. Nothing says “I Loved You Enough to Make Something Pointless” or “It’s a Venereal Disease” or “At Least It’s Not a PajamaGram” like banners. (Incidentally, those would all make excellent banners.)

Banner-making is my Put a Bird On It. Ooh, I should incorporate birds into my next banner.

Anywho, I recently shared a photo of the banner I made for New Year’s Eve. And I love it so much that I’ve decided to leave it up. Indefinitely. Or until Henry can read. Unlike the stigma of Christmas lights left up well into March, the genius of this banner is that it’s designed to be appropriate for the whole year. And when 2021 rolls around, you can put it up again! Perhaps in the post-apocalyptic world of 2021, banners and Tina Turner’s Mad Max earrings will be the only form of currency, and you will be wildly rich, allowing you to afford canned corn and Glenn Beck’s table scraps. You are so welcome.

Inspired by the Bluth family’s practiced hand with timely banners, I made my New Year’s banner a friend to celebrate Adam’s birthday:

Look at banner, Adam!

Oh yeah.

And I can freshen up the messages from time to time by creating anagrams of the existing banners. Here’s what I have so far:

ADAM LOVE BITCHES or BITCHES LOVE ADAM or ADAM BITCH LOVE (Valentine’s appropriate)

MOVE ♥ BITCH (for illustrating the imperative)

2012 FAMILY BITCHES (for family reunions)

201 ADAM * BITCH 2 (some kind of scoreboard?)

LOVE MAD BITCHES (for your next Russ Meyer-themed party)

MO MILEY BITCHES (?)

♥ MALE ITCHY ♥ (self-explanatory)

Since word play isn’t my strong suit (stupid English degree), I’m currently accepting submissions for more anagrams. Please submit your suggestions in the comments section below. An elite panel of judges including my dog, my toddler, and possibly Paula Abdul will select the best one, and I’ll post a crappy cellphone photo of the winning banner(s) for your entertainment/edification. Show me what you’ve got. Make a banner of it!

So this thing happened yesterday that kind of derailed my day and bummed me out. It’s really stupid, and I’m more bothered that I’m bothered by it than bothered by the actual thing. Before my explanation turns any more circular, let me ‘splain:

Someone made fun of my bust (or, more pointedly, lack thereof) on Facebook.

This was some dude I don’t even know. Not a FB friend of mine, but a FB friend of a friend of a friend. Three degrees of separation but apparently close enough to point a finger at my chest and laugh. It felt like the virtual equivalent of someone yelling at me from across the street and announcing my most obvious deficiencies in front of passersby: “Hey lady. Laaady! Your tits are small!”

Let me further ‘splain: My sister-in-law, Jenna, makes beautiful, ornate handmade jewelry (which you should totally check out right here and here!). Since moving to Colorado earlier this year, she’s been churning out pieces and turning her talent into a business. She asked me to model (a generous word) her jewelry so she could post photos on Facebook. Now, it’s worth mentioning that I am deeply unphotogenic. I have a sixth sense, which I call “photo-prioception,” that allows me to feel the presence of a camera lens before actually seeing it. It’s like Spidey-sense, though it’s probably more closely related to George Michael Bluth’s instinctual cower/deflection when balls are thrown in his general direction (incidentally, I have that, too). When I sense a nearby camera, every muscle in my body tenses and I morph into the stick-person version of myself; my face becomes a death mask, tense with rigor mortis, my smile uncomfortable and Joker-esque. It’s pretty unattractive. But I didn’t want my camera-phobia or, frankly, my ego and vanity to keep me from helping out my sister-in-law, and most of the photos would be closeups of the jewelry anyway. So I was happy to lend my neck, awkward as it was, and the following image, among others, was posted on Facebook:

The Sprocket Necklace by Secret Side Project. Also: hubba hubba A-cup!

One of Jenna’s FB friends commented on the photo, something to the effect of “wow, this is awesome!” Then, one of this FB friend’s FB friends (stay with me) added this comment (names have been withheld to protect the identities of anonymous douchebags):

“What the hell is so awesome about this picture? All I see is an A-cup, at best.”

To which one of this dude’s FB friends, a woman, no less, added this: “That’s just what I was going to say, (insert name of Douchebag 1).”

To which Douchebag 1 replied to Douchebag 2: “And that’s why you are the COOLEST CHICK EVA, (insert name of Douchebag 2)!”

So now my boobs are being discussed openly, and this comment thread is attached to a photo I’ve been tagged in. I’m getting FB email notifications as this commentary is unfolding. A commentary on my boobs. Boobs that belong to me, who is intensely uncomfortable being photographed. A commentary by people I don’t know. And, as is probably glaringly obvious, a commentary on the boobs that I have hated all my life. If one of my 2012 New Year’s resolutions had been “Face your fears plus your feelings of boob inadequacy,” I could check that shit right off my list!

Once upon a time, I was thirteen, and I got my period. And I looked right past the cramps and discomfort and general feelings of grossness and had this bright, shining epiphany: This means I should get boobs soon! And so, I waited. And waited. And waited. And after my son was born, I finally got them! And though they did look awesome, they were engorged and sore and leaky and a source of sustenance for my baby, which officially made them The Most Unsexy Things Ever. After weaning Henry, I watched them shrink and deflate and turn sad and schmoopy. And at that moment, I felt sorry for not appreciating the boobs I once had. Though small, they were pink and plucky and happy and adorably resilient to my disapproval of them. I was unfair to my boobs, and now the life force had been sucked out of them. So I resolved to accept them as they were. Like Bubble, I too would love to fill a bra with big, pendulous breasts, but that’s not to be, and that’s okay. Because they have other talents! One: They’ve never attracted cat-calls by construction workers nor the attention of random men in bars. Two: They fed my child for a full 18 months (holla). Three: They provide an undistracting backdrop on which to display gorgeous jewelry (did I mention it’s available for purchase here!). Or so I thought.

I managed to fire off the following comment before Jenna rightly deleted the offending parts of the comment thread, lest her FB page become a catty tit-for-tat (zing!) quibble about my boobs:

“Dear (insert name of Douchebag 1 and Douchebag 2) — As owner of said A-cup, thanks for eclipsing the purpose of this proprietor sharing her wares on Facebook with the real showstopper: my tiny tits! Congrats on your astute powers of décolletage observation. It’s good to know that even though I’m helping my sister-in-law showcase her beautiful, handmade jewelry, shitheads will still be shitheads!”

To Douchebag 1′s credit, he swiftly deleted his comments. I doubt my comment shamed him, but rather forced him to consider that the disembodied chest he was poking fun at belonged to an actual person. A person with a Facebook profile, a person who posts photos of her family, a person who shares silly links and dumb videos. I’m sure he initially regarded my image as nothing more than any other Internet image — devoid of context, separated from any identity. Another female body part to judge and caption.

But this isn’t a treatise on douchebags; obviously the comment pricked at my own insecurity, my desire to be more curvy and womanly. But if I didn’t appreciate my young, nubile breasts with their life force intact, they won’t satisfy me now. And unless plastic surgery is a serious consideration (it’s not), I’ve got to get over myself already. Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned in my 31 years, it’s that self-loathing is fucking exhausting. This realization doesn’t mean I’m suddenly enlightened or over it, I’m just tired of it. I can’t kick it, but I can acknowledge that it’s there and move on. In other words, I sit with it. Self-loathing is the chatty neighbor who wants to suck up your time when you step outside to get the mail. You’ve got to wave a cheerful but dismissive “Hello!” and get back to your business.

So my A-cups and I will continue being invisible to construction workers and bar patrons, though (thankfully) they no longer feed my kid. And I may still unconsciously dart to the closet when changing my clothes in front of Adam. But fuck it. And fuck Douchebags 1 and 2.

My husband is a voracious, omnivorous consumer of online content. On a weekly basis, he emails me “must-read” links covering a variety of subjects: politics, film, tech news, science/health, why Scooby Doo is a treatise on secular humanism. I could go on. The man is a walking newsstand and fount of useful and useless-but-entertaining information alike. He shares this fantastic content with such regularity that I’ve begun to dread it. “Oh, great. Here’s another brilliant think piece I have to read that’s going to eat into my Pinterest-ing. And I just reached Inbox Zero. Fuck, life is hard.”

Luckily, Adam had the brilliant idea of formally culling, curating, and posting these must-reads via a Tumblr site called Brute Neighbors. So if you’re trying to kill that last hour(s) at the office, have to endure a daily commute on a bus that smells like burritos and feet, or want to feel “enlightened” or “informed” or whatever, then check it out!

Speaking of “brute neighbors” (I’M THE WINNER OF SEGUES), I’m bursting with Longmont crimes to report! Let’s see what’s been keeping the boys down at the crime lab working in shifts these days:

Breaking, Month-Old Headlines

Wallet Returned Three Years after It Was Stolen

Disorderly Man Cursed at Passersby

Three Geese Killed, One Injured When Hit by SUV

Man’s Trees T-P’d

It’s True: Rodents Will Chew on Your Car’s Wires

Mountain View Rescuer Freezing His Keester Off (a story about a rescuer saving a dog named Keester. Har har.)

‘Private Dancer’ Drug Supplier Sentenced to 16 Years (about an arrest that resulted from a Longmont police investigation called “Operation Private Dancer.” Are investigations typically named?)

The Scourge of Jaywalking

Police took a woman and a man into custody Wednesday night after the woman was stopped for failing to use a crosswalk while crossing the 300 block of Main Street and did not have identification. The man was arrested after also crossing Main Street mid-block and confronting officers physically and aggressively questioning them about why they were arresting his “wife.” However, the man could not tell officers what his wife’s name was, police said, and he also could not provide identification. Both the man and the woman were released after being temporarily taken to the Longmont Justice Center and given municipal summonses.

Longmont police arrested a 26-year-old pedestrian Thursday night who turned out to be wanted for failure to appear on a damage-to-property charge in Boulder, after an officer stopped the man and his companion for ignoring a red light while walking across Main Street at Second Avenue. Police said the pair had nearly caused a traffic accident.

(I’m going to change my Facebook and Twitter profile info to read ”30-something pedestrian.” Really, that about sums it up.)

Crack Reporting of Disturbing Burglaries

A Christmas wreath was stolen from outside a home on the 800 block of Windflower Drive, and an exterior carriage light damaged, according to a report police got on Friday.

A Twin Peaks Golf Course employee reported Friday that several water hoses had been stolen.

A resident on the 2600 block of Falcon Drive reported on Monday that a 4-foot lighted holiday reindeer was stolen from her yard.

Hel-lo, just get a warrant for all homes sporting hose wreaths, you turkeys. And coming this December: BEST 2012 HOLIDAY DISPLAY EVER.

French-Fry Wielding Gangsters

Police arrested an intoxicated man outside of the McDonald’s restaurant on the 1900 block of Main Street on Wednesday on suspicion of disturbing the peace after reports that he walked into the restaurant covered in vomit, cleaned himself up in the restroom, then sat at a table alone until becoming belligerent with employees and customers, according to reports. Officers saw him approach a car in the drive-through, prompting the driver to speed away. The man told police he was “almost jumped” by “gangsters” who threw french fries at him, so he challenged them loudly to a fight. Officers detained the man.

(This is being optioned for a movie starring Michelle Pfeiffer, with original music from Longmont favorite Coolio, recipient of the honorary Key to the Deli Zone on Ken Pratt Blvd.)

Drunk and Disorderly — Also, Probably Very, Very High

Police arrested a 30-year-old woman Sunday believed to have entered Walgreens, 1041 Main St., and yelled at employees, accusing them of stealing her Ben & Jerry’s ice cream, according to reports. Police said a search of the woman after arrest found a four-pack of 100-watt light bulbs beneath her coat and that she may have been on drugs. Possible charges include theft, disorderly conduct and violation of bond conditions.

A man was arrested on suspicion of obstructing a police officer on Monday after police investigated a report that he was trying to steal a chain from a pillar, according to reports. Officers found him holding a chain that was still attached to a pillar, but saw that he was not trying to take it and did not have the tools to do so. Officers reported he could not explain why he was holding the chain and seemed to be intoxicated and confused. However, he got angry with officers and became combative, so he was arrested.

Crimes of Passion

Hookah Falls Victim to Spat 
Police arrested a 19-year-old woman Wednesday on suspicion of domestic violence and smashing her boyfriend’s hookah, according to reports. She told police she broke the device because he had hidden her laptop.

Just, Woah

A 23-year-old woman who had recently been released from jail for auto theft went back to jail Saturday on suspicion of indecent exposure at a Main Street tattoo parlor, according to reports. Police said the woman is believed to have walked into the parlor with two bottles of lotion and begun touching herself intimately; a person inside the shop recorded the incident on a smart phone, police said. After shop employees asked her to leave, police said, she hid in a nearby car until police arrived and initially refused to come out when officers asked.

A Longmont man convicted in October of exposing himself in a Burger King drive-through and asking a restaurant employee whether she wanted to “touch his whopper” was sentenced Monday to a year of work release, four years of sex offender probation and 80 hours of community service.

Remember several years ago when Whitney Houston, back in her Bobby B days, had a much-publicized HBO concert (a la Barbara Streisand) during which she acted totally weird, cut off songs with long-winded, discombobulated storytelling, and mopped profuse amounts of crack-laced sweat from her forehead with a wad of toilet paper?

Good because that’s what this post is going to be like. (Also, if you can find any trace of that concert online, please send it my way tout suite.)

Part I. The 7 Plagues of Christmas

Our Christmas included the following: (1) a six-hour delay at Denver International Airport with a toddler who would only be entertained by moving sidewalks; (2) a middle-ear infection and extreme motion sickness (me); (3) a sinus infection-cum-asthma attack (Adam); (4) 10 days’ worth of nausea-inducing antibiotics (me); a post-grandparent-adulation crash coupled with a cold (Henry); (5) at least two instances of regurgitated Welch’s strawberry gummies (Henry); (6) one sprawling retirement compound at the tippy top of a motherfucking mountain that can only be traversed via meandering corkscrew roads (reference #2); (7) one lost infant car seat substituted with a stained, flimsy, and in no way Safety Enforcer-approved replacement (thanks, United); and a partridge in a goddamn cocksucking pear tree.

As such, my first reportage from the trenches of 2012 reflects the state of my fuzzy, foggy brain. My ear’s better, but my equilibrium is still off, and I’ve got a raging head cold. So far, I would describe the New Year as a listless boat on a choppy sea. Because I’m metaphorical like that. Also: mucousy. Apparently, the world turned 2012, and I turned into the husk of Dick Clark.

Part II. Copyediting with a Head Cold is a B

I returned from our holiday travels with lots of work, and I can confirm that hours of close reading in front of a computer is perhaps not the best remedy for incessant nausea. But this epiphany did help me get in the spirit and formulate an official New Year’s resolution:

2012 New Year’s Resolution: Stop feeling like I want to die!

This should be way easier than that no shopping thing.

Part III. 2012 Bitches

It’s not all gloom, despair, and agony over here. We managed to ring in the New Year by continuing a 2011 Nikolaidis tradition: the movie and food theme night. So far we’ve done Fight Club Sandwiches, Ghostbusters with Stay Puft S’mores, and The Ninth Gate with Mexican Food. (See, we were supposed to watch Once Upon a Time in Mexico, but we couldn’t get the movie at the last minute, so we decided that since Johnny Depp is also in The Ninth Gate, we should just watch that. Creative license, people.) So we rang in the New Year with Lord of the Onion Rings. Behold the Two Towers:

For your consideration: Trajan Pro

Despite dressing up like Baby New Year, Henry was unimpressed:

But the rest of us enjoyed dressing fancy. The Bros. Nikolaidis did all the cooking, in their wedding tuxes no less (read: the only formal attire they own).

Nikolaidis Mens

Jenna and I felt like we had personal butlers. How’s that for moving on up in the New Year?

Part IV: The Meaning of Life or Thank You for Being a Friend

If I were a hip hop star, I’d call myself E.Piphany (with the ph because that’s still phat, right?). This is because my name begins with “E” and my rhymes would be about all my dope, epiphanous musings. For example: I read this interview with Mitchell Hurwitz a while back in which he discussed how his Arrested Development characters were informed by the archetypes of Matriarch, Patriarch, Craftsman, and Clown. I recently saw a Golden Girls clip (another show Hurwitz worked on) and discovered another character trope: Lanky, Slutty, Baby, and Stupid

which instantly recalled another homosocial domestic sitcom:

This is blowing your mind, right? And wait for it . . .

Daaamn. That’s how E.Piphany rolls. Don’t ask me how the other kids fit into the equation. I can’t figure it all out for you.

Denouement: So This Is Happening

A neighbor has been pestering us to remove a tree from our yard that liters her backyard with leaves. She’s elderly and tapes passive aggressive notes to our door with contact information for tree services. She’s never offered to contribute to the expense. But the tree’s an irritation for us, too, and despite her notes and the patronizing way she says young man when she flags Adam down, we finally decided to have the tree removed. Perhaps I’m preserving my own right to be crotchety and meddlesome when I get older. Right now I’m listening to the crackling, popping, and thunking of tree chunks coming down.

Now we have this wide clearing that allows us to see directly into her yard. Perhaps we’ll plant a shrubbery or a gaudy stone fountain with a cherub peeing into her grass, or some lewd statuary. Like a good neighbor, Statue Porn is there.

Amid the whirring of the chipper, the tree guys are listening to Sugar Ray. Yes, Sugar Ray. And god help me, I somehow know the lyrics. Every morning there’s a halo hangin from the corner of my girlfriend’s four post bed. How the fuck do I know these words?? I’m either recalling some past life where I exhibited very poor taste in music, or my Sugar Ray knowledge can be attributed to three years of serving in a restaurant that played Top 40 satellite radio ad nauseam. Whatever the source, it is seriously undermining my New Year’s resolution.

Help me.

I forgot her. Every year I include Mom on my gift list, which now mostly consists of kids. Each year, I stress and hem and haw and grind my teeth trying to invent a thoughtful gift for her. At the earlier end of her dementia spectrum, I’d get her home decorating magazines and sketch books with markers and colored pencils. She used to enjoy drawing and writing and intensely loved interior design, so those gifts seemed to successfully balance her interests while toning her increasingly flabby brain, distracting her otherwise vacant, wandering stare. One year, I made her a photo book that chronologically followed her life in pictures. I curated the best early family photos I had, vintage, slightly blurred black and white images of shirtless tow-headed twins with matching pigtails and wide smiles pocked by missing front teeth. I added captions under the photos written in the first person. Photo above: Mom, Dad, me, Lynn, and Donna, circa 1962. I presented it to her and watched her peruse the pages, glassy-eyed, confronted with ghosts and immediately recalled loved ones alike. An Olan Mills portrait of my then two-year-old brother smiling sweetly, mouth full of baby teeth and a bowl of golden hair, stopped her. Was this the son everyone was referring to?

She was confronted with another reality, one vaguely remembered but not felt, and I watched singular tears draw tracks down each of her cheeks. I felt gross. Disgusted at the presumption that I could bestow upon her the magnanimous gift of memory, like Prometheus bringing fire to mortals. I was throwing in her face all these moments she’d worked doggedly to will out of her cache. I wasn’t a gift giver, I was a terrorist, wrapping bombs in a 99-cent drugstore bow. I no longer give her reminders.

With each year of worsening symptoms, I’ve moved away from gifts meant to stimulate brain activity and toward gifts of physical comfort. Sweets, the only thing she voluntarily eats. Slippers, for the shuffling. Relaxed-fit exercise pants that rest comfortably over adult undergarments. Soft pink sweater sets that keep her warm while reminding those around her of her stylish femininity, like old ladies in nursing homes who take the time to apply lipstick. But this year, none of my “holiday prep” lists, calendar notes, or phone reminders prodded me to get Mom a gift. I simply forgot her. Maybe unconsciously I was avoiding the angst of trying to come up with something new. I’m too proud to spin the dementia-patient gift wheel, lazily rehashing the same four ideas each year, but exhausted at the thought of unearthing something new. Worse than buying for the person who has everything is gifting to the person who just sits there, staring. I’ve long argued that Mom’s forgetting is a form of self-preservation. I assume mine is, too.

Mom loved the shit out of Christmas. She approached it with a childlike enthusiasm, so excited to share my presents that I often couldn’t keep her from ruining my surprises. One year I wanted a tent, and she created a scavenger hunt for me on Christmas morning with clues hidden around the house that led me to the guest bedroom where a glorious, fully assembled tent sat waiting for me smack in the middle of the room. Even my stepdad worked to make the day special, the two of them staying up late on Christmas Eve wrapping gifts, putting together bikes, and burying surprise gifts into my candy-heavy stocking. They would actually wake me up on Christmas morning, my stepdad softly shaking jingle bells at the bottom of the stairs and telling me later, “You must have just missed him!” During these times, I glimpsed them as the couple they’d hoped to be, the family unit they originally set out to create.

Mom and I often attended a midnight mass on Christmas Eve. Every year, I’d get sleepy a couple hours beforehand and start to cop out, but she’d whip me into the spirit with her Pollyanna perkiness, despite knowing she’d be staying up for hours after the service to wrap gifts and stuff my stocking. We were members of a nondenominational Christian church, which was beige and bland and woefully unadorned compared to the Catholic church that held the midnight mass. In the darkness, the stained-glass windows, full, fragrant wreaths along the altar, and pews flanked by candle light looked downright luxurious. Those midnight masses encapsulated everything Mom loved about the season and her faith. Her god was a benevolent parent figure smiling down on us, bathing us in light, uniting us in our common humanity. He (definitely a he) would deny no repentant soul (not even Jews or gays! she once told me) entrance to heaven. Though wholly aloft, apart, and above us, her god was utterly accessible, a direct contrast to my stepdad’s abandoning — and apparently denuding — god of the Left Behind series. The church had an excellent choir that shamed our own church’s unwieldy four-person chorale with that one singer who imagined herself in competition with the others, always eager to spice up a hymn with an egregious use of vibrato. Mom’s favorite hymn was “O Holy Night,” and she loved hearing it sung by vocalists with the range to meet the song’s aching crescendo. We’d listen to the midnight mass choir, me sneaking glances at her hair, soft and honey colored, and her skin, luminous in the candlelight, her eyes wet, moved by the music. The production filled her with something she needed, and we both left buoyed by her transcendence.

I managed to remember Mom in enough time to get her something. I found her a cream Ralph Lauren cardigan with gold buttons, nice and heavy despite the $20 Marshall’s price tag. She’d be glad I found a past-season piece at a knockoff price and didn’t spend too much on her. But what I wish for her this Christmas is that somewhere in the kaleidoscope of her memory, she can summon the feeling this holiday once gave her and be filled with whatever it is she needs, held in the soft but strong embrace of an all-loving and benevolent parent.

I admit, I wasn’t in love with Longmont when we bought our house here. I didn’t hate it, either, but our focus at the time was mainly to find an affordable home that wasn’t a cardboard box (aka, all we could afford in Boulder). We’re in a very suburban neighborhood full of builder box-style houses with little variation (sort of the “McMansions” of the 60s, I imagine). Longmont’s bustling downtown area spans maybe 10 city blocks and houses equal parts charming artsy boutiques/hipster(ish) thrift stores/great local pubs, diners, sandwich shops and strange, possibly abandoned buildings mysteriously named “Ralph Castle” (note the lack of a possessive, suggesting this is less likely to be a dude named Ralph’s castle than it is some kind of squalid, commercial mecca of barfing) and historic jail houses-cum-taquerías.

Despite this grandeur, I didn’t appreciate Longmont’s true magic until Adam turned me on to the Longmont Times Call crime reporting. This absurdist journalism rivals anything produced by the Onion, but it’s real. I now follow their RSS feed and enjoy daily, local nuggets of comedy gold. Not since Steinbeck has the American struggle for freedom (to don blankets and bang Dumpsters), prosperity (via IBM workers’ unattended backpacks), and independence (to piss in any bed you want) been so haphazardly wrought, so pulsing with utter banality. It’s a tragic, achingly beige, lovingly phoned-in portrait of the human condition writ small:

A 30-year-old Longmont woman was arrested at about 7:36 p.m. Saturday on the 2700 block of Falcon Drive on suspicion of third-degree assault and domestic violence, police said. The woman is accused of hitting her husband on the back, leaving a welt, because he wanted to watch pornography, police said.

Police Notes: IBM worker’s missing backpack found at mom’s house without iPad2

A Longmont man told police on Monday that a burglar broke into his home on the 900 block of Button Rock Road, stole an electronic music player, and urinated on his bed, according to reports. There are no suspects.

Police went to a reported assault on Wednesday. According to police, a 56-year-old woman said a 57-year-old man had grabbed her arm; the man told police that the woman poked him in the eye. The case is closed.

A suspicious person was reported Wednesday in an alley on the 1800 block of Emery Street, wearing a blanket and banging on Dumpsters, according to reports. Police said they found a 24-year-old man — not bearing a blanket — whom they arrested on prior warrants for failure to comply on a menacing charge and failure to appear on a charge of liquor possession. (Blogger note: Don’t you LOVE that “Dumpsters” is capitalized?)

Sometimes, even Boulder proper gets in on the action:

The man Boulder police say hid in a portable toilet at a yoga festival and then ran from security covered in feces last weekend has been arrested, according to the Boulder Police Department.

Personally, I’m reading these police notes in search of Longmont’s own Ronnie Dobbs. The blanket-wearing (excuse me, blanket-bearing) Dumpster banger seems promising.

Not a local? Fear not. I’ll share these gems regularly. Or you can subscribe to the RSS yourself here to receive your own daily Longmont affirmations.