Actual text message I got from my dad last week after posting my State Fair slideshow:
Actual slideshow I made to showcase how handsome my dad is (with background music from his favorite band, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists):
You’re welcome.
Reply
Category Archives: family
Trade-Offs
You’ll notice that it’s August and I’ve yet to post either a slideshow from #photoadayjuly or the prompts for #photoadayaugust. That’s because I finally gave up on the Photo A Day project halfway through last month. Because I’m lazy, and I’m okay with it.
So in lieu of Instagrammed images of Nixon chewing a Kong, Nixon sunbathing, and Nixon sleeping, here’s a recap of our annual California State Fair weekend.
(For the record, it’s okay to be jealous.)
STATE FAIR!!!!!!!!!!!!111111111111!!!!!1
Our annual trek to Sacramento for the California State Fair starts TOMORROW. And this year, we’re going to be scarfing down corn dogs in style.
(image courtesy of Rebecca)
#photoadayjune, Part Deux
I’m finally finished with the #photoadayjune slideshow. Voila!
I think the last photo I took (“Day 30: A Friend”) is my favorite. The original caption was “A friend to technology,” and was a joke about my dad finally coming into the twenty-first century and buying an iPhone. (He’s been using a flip phone for the last six years. Prior to that, he didn’t use a cell phone AT ALL. Can you imagine??)
Anyway, he just discovered FaceTime yesterday. So here’s a hilarious picture of him not knowing how to use it.
Naked Baby Goes Dunking
Dan and I went to Turlock on Sunday as a means of escaping the unexpected Bay Area heatwave that came on quickly late last week. Turlock was obviously no cooler, but his parents’ house is equipped with central air conditioning and a pool. Problem solved.
We spent about an hour swimming before the rest of the family (including Naked Baby Braeden) arrived, during which time I almost drowned twice and realized that I hadn’t been legitimately swimming since 1999.
Braeden immediately showed me up with his mad swimming skills, which included face planting into his baby pool and getting dunked in the big pool by his dad, Anthony. I have seriously never seen this baby smile so big.
Going Against the Grain: My Grandma on Abortion
Bubby wrote me an email in response to my post on abortion last week that I wanted to share here. Not only because it reiterates the point I was trying to make in my original post, but also because it shows how far-reaching the desire for equality is.
Contrary to what many conservatives seem to think about members of the pro-choice community, Bubby is not some twenty-something woman who wants access to abortion because she wants to have casual sex without consequence. She is a mother, a grandmother, a woman who made a career and a life for herself, and wants other women to have the opportunity to do the same thing.
An excerpt of the email is below, published with her permission.
Why would [your husband] want to live his life having sex on a schedule? — Sometimes contraceptives fail. How would he feel having a passel of kids he could barely support ? How would it affect your marriage — or anyone else’s for that matter— if you were to start a family unexpectedly — long before you were ready?
Having an abortion goes against the grain. But how about young people? Sexual instincts sometimes take over one’s senses. What about the young girl just about to start college and make her dreams come true? What does she do? I shudder when I think of deliberate abortion but I find it even more horrible when a young woman’s life veers so completely off course because of an interlude that ended in unprotected sex.
Sexual activity among young people, not totally committed to each other, is a reality these days and another reality is that every woman needs to be allowed to take full responsiblity for her own body and live with the emotional consequences of a decision to abort her fetus. I believe that most woman would be racked with guilt. However it’s her life and her body and NO ONE should be in a position to dictate how she treats it !!! — In a similar vein — I think Tattoos covering ones entire body is vomitatious. I don’t hear any outcry trying to outlaw that procedure.
[ ... ]
THE DECISION TO HAVE AN ABORTION IS A WOMAN’S RIGHT!!!!!
Interrupting Cat
Dan and I drove up to San Francisco last night to have dinner with my parents and meet my cousin, Jason. Jason is my dad’s cousin’s son, which I guess makes us either second cousins or first cousins once removed? I have no idea. I’ve spent my entire life trying to figure that shit out and still don’t understand it.
Jason and I bonded over our love of animals (he and his wife have four cats), Jason and Dan bonded over their love of science fiction (at which point I promptly tuned out), and Jason and MoMo bonded over their love of filtered water.
This cat, man. I’m telling you. My parents needed a purple, and they got a very, very green.
So this is the new year.
When I was younger, my ultimate dream was to spend New Year’s in New York’s Times Square. Or at least it was, until MTV ruined the entire holiday.
But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve started to appreciate the opportunity to keep New Year’s Eve low-key. My first New Year’s Eve in Merced was spent with Chinese food and an Entourage marathon. Last year, Dan and I went out to dinner, and then came home and watched the ball drop in our pajamas. And Raeann’s Mad Men-themed New Year’s party the year before that was the most dressed up I’d been in YEARS.
So when I found out that neither my parents nor Rae and Stephen had plans for New Year’s, I devised a brilliant plan for us to all come together, eat dim sum and ice cream, and go to bed at 12:05 AM.
Some choice photos from the evening:
Our dim sum FEAST.
Feather headdresses are sexy.
MoMo got in on the celebration.
Dan said we look "way too sober" in this picture. NOT POSSIBLE.
Basically, it was perfect.
Happy 2012, y’all!
Regular (Not Jewish) Christmas
Dan and I have an agreement that we’re holding off on spawning offspring for at least a few more years, but in the meantime, I needed to get a fix for my baby fever. So on Sunday, we headed to Dan’s parents’ house in Turlock to celebrate with his family and help Baby Braeden celebrate his first Christmas.
We beat Jenn and Anthony there, which means I had to wait a full TWENTY MINUTES for Operation: Baby Fix to commence. But when they finally arrived, I snuggled that baby endlessly. And then I made Dan do the same.
YOU GUYS, LOOK HOW CUTE.
Anyway.
Christmas with Dan’s family is always fun. There are shit tons of presents (except I’m not allowed to say “shit”), crap tons of honeybaked ham (except I’m not allowed to say “crap”), and bucket loads of pie (“bucket” is an acceptable word).
I got all kinds of fun stuff, like a new mini-umbrella:
New scarves, which I desperately needed since all of mine are in storage in Merced, and it’s COLD here:
And, of course, the much anticipated Kindle:
I could have killed Dan when I opened my present to find a Kindle. I mean, REALLY. Two weeks ago, I called him on my way home from work, and this is the exact conversation we had:
Dan: Do you want a Kindle for Christmas? Because you’ve mentioned it, like, five times this week.
Me: I don’t know.
I said “I don’t know” because I really didn’t know. Would a Kindle make my life easier because I wouldn’t be carrying around a five-hundred-page paperback in my purse all day? Absolutely. But would I miss the smell and texture of books? Would I miss being able to highlight passages, dog-ear the pages, and break the spines? Absolutely.
So you can see how I believed him when he told me, every day for the last two weeks, that he hadn’t bought me a Kindle. He used this conversation as an excuse: “‘I don’t know’ means ‘no’ with you.” Fine, husband. Fair enough.
I spent the last two weeks trying to figure out what my present could be if it wasn’t a Kindle. Maybe jewelry? But why would Dan spend money on diamonds when he could buy me something useful, like a genetic test for Nixon? Or a pink leash to match the pink collar that I bought for Leela that Dan totally hates?
(Why is it that all of my other dream gifts revolve around my pets?)
But it turns out that a Kindle actually is what I wanted. And I’m lucky enough to have a husband who can read my mind. Or at least decipher my vague answers to his fairly direct questions.
Dan also enjoyed my gift to him, which was, against my better judgment, a Joe Montana jersey.
(Those of you who have heard my Joe Montana camping story will understand the “against my better judgment” comment. Dan has heard the story multiple times. It does not negate the fact that he loved his Chrismukah present.)
But the best part of Christmas was when Braeden and I opened our presents to find the same gifts. Except Dan and I bought him a 49ers teddy, and his parents bought me a Giants teddy:
Great minds think alike, I guess.
I hope everyone who celebrates Christmas had a fabulous one, and that you got all the gifts you wanted! And I hope that you were maybe even allowed to curse in front of your in-laws, because if so, I want to live vicariously through you. Shit fuck damn, I wish I could do that.
The Night Before Christmas
… is Jewish Christmas where I come from. Which means we take our loud, inappropriate, drunk family out to Chinese food. And then order the entire menu.
But that comes later.
We got to my parents’ house early in the afternoon so Dan and my dad could watch football while my mom and I made latkes to make up for all the latkes we didn’t get on Friday night. Making latkes is a laborious ordeal, and not something you do often, partially because they’re holiday specific, and partially because they stink up your entire world.
(I’m not exaggerating. It took me two days and three washes to get the smell of fried potatoes and onions out of my hair.)
But it was totally worth it, because for one, it made my mom really happy.
And for two, I had the pleasure of watching Dan eat latkes for the first time ever. He ate them with his hands, but marriage is about letting the little things slide, right?
Several hours later, after I was sufficiently drunk on latkes (and wine and vanilla vodka), we ventured down the street to Golden Rice Bowl, formerly known as Beijing on Irving, affectionately known as “Lou’s.” This place has been our Chinese restaurant of choice since I was three or four years old, and actually used to be owned by the family of my orthodontist’s assistant. (Six degrees of San Francisco, anyone?) Their family sold the restaurant a few years ago, but the new ownership retained Lou, their star waiter, who knows my entire family by name.
Jewish Christmas dinner was, as always, fantastic. Lou is a champion of multitasking, somehow managing to satiate all the needs and cravings of our massive group of fourteen while also handling nine other tables of three or more people.
What can I say? The dude is a (very underpaid) saint.
The only qualm I had with the evening was that there were TOO MANY PEOPLE at the restaurant. Remember when Chinese food and movie theaters on Christmas used to be just for Jews? Apparently, those days are long gone. And Golden Rice Bowl was filled to the brim with people in Santa hats. Many of whom were dirty San Francisco hipster transplants who probably couldn’t afford the plane ticket back to Ohio (or wherever the hell they’re from) for Christmas.
Yelp needs to stop making the things I love so popular.
But even with the influx of hipsters and Santa hats, Jewish Christmas was a resounding success. I was so filled with pot stickers and general’s chicken and Szechuan eggplant that Dan practically had to roll me out of the restaurant at the end of the night. Because this is how Jews do:
They came to kill us. We prevailed. Let’s eat.
