Turbulence

Always eager to cross something masochistic off my bucket list, I took Katherine by plane on my own to visit family in North Carolina last week.  It was sort of like knowing you have to get a root canal at your next dental appointment: the anticipation is probably worse than the event itself, but unfortunately there were no pain meds involved in this case.

Getting to the airport, checking in, and going through security with an infant was surprisingly pain-free.  Curiously, staff at LaGuardia were much more helpful and friendly than at the Charlotte airport, where Southern hospitality failed me.  Don't be fooled: New Yorkers are actually a very friendly people.  Just don't cross them.

The painful parts of infant airline travel are really centralized on the plane itself.  Katherine, for those of you who don't know her, abhors being held by someone who is sitting still.  And really, besides hijacking, what is there to do on a plane other than be required to sit still for the duration?  She wanted to stand on my bladder, lean this way, lean that way, turn upside down, look over there, smile at that stranger, and eventually, get angry that she was sitting still.  

She eventually fell asleep in my arms, and I wanted to keep her sleeping there until we landed, but the urge to pee became more overwhelming with every passing minute, thanks to Katherine's earlier bladder stomping.  "Are we descending?  I can wait.  Maybe I can't.  If I move she will wake up.  Did I just feel us start to descend?  No, maybe not.  Why didn't I look into getting those astronaut diapers for myself, like that crazy lady who drove non-stop for hours to stalk that one guy... no, I can hold it.  No I can't.  But I can't move... Okay, I'm doing it."

Naturally, as soon as I stood up, the plane started shaking and I swayed around like the drunk sorority girl I once was.  I figured it would pass quickly so I didn't sit back down.  The plane shook violently the whole time I was in the bathroom, changing Katherine carefully, praying she didn't hit her head on the wall.  I also can't tell you how many times during a regular day I tell myself, "Thank God I'm wearing yoga pants right now," but this was definitely one of those times, because I managed to successfully pee while holding an infant in a violently shaking airplane bathroom and hike up my yoga pants without the hassle of zippers and buttons.  

When we finally emerged, both of us dry and injury-free, I expected a vigilant flight attendant to rush over with a drink, a smile, a warm towelette, a pat on the back and a hand to carry something.  What I actually really wanted was a Cool Runnings-level slow clap from the other passengers, but unfortunately, I could only cheer for myself in my head, and head to the finish line.

The Crumbs

Confession: I am so enormously pregnant that all food must be consumed in a reclining position.  Unless I go all-out Mama June and put on a bib, food goes right down my shirt.  Once a day, I have a ritual where I open the bottom of my shirt and shake out the excess crumbs, but I'm too big to lean over and clean it up, so I call Violet over to lick the floor.  I am disgusting.

No, your eyes do not deceive you, and no, Cats in Baths has not been hacked.  At least I don't think.  This shit is real.

What in the hell have I been doing?

Derrick graduated.  We moved to Spruce Pine, NC for 2 months where I pickled things, grilled things, and picked up that little French bulldog I always wanted.  Her name is Violet; she leaks and is a little stinky, but we love her anyway.  We moved to New York.  I got knocked up.  (It's Derrick's).  And here we are.

Violet is not this little anymore, but neither am I.
Also: Not to brag or anything, but I kept that fern alive all summer.

She loves it when I do this; don't let her fool you.

Hopefully the next time I update CiB, little Princess RuPaula Beyonce (or as she's currently known at her future pediatrician's: TBD Preston) won't already be in pre-algebra. 

I had wanted to blog last summer while living in Spruce Pine but it would have involved spending more time at the local library, which was our only internet source, and I really just didn't want to spend that much more time with the obese solitaire-playing population of rural North Carolina than was absolutely necessary.

A basic summary of my magical summer in the NC mountains.

My first split-second thought when I saw this bear lumbering through the yard was,
"Gosh, Franco needs to lose some weight."  I'm not even kidding.

I had wanted to blog when we moved to New York, but I started interviewing for jobs within two weeks of moving here, and was frequently asked, "So what have you been doing to keep yourself busy if you aren't working right now?" Ummm, two weeks?  Two weeks I've been here.  Soooooo yesterday I finally started throwing out cardboard and bubble wrap, and now I'm sitting here in an interview with you.  And we all know how well I do in interviews anyway.  But really it was the guilt brought on by that question that kept me away.

I had wanted to blog when I got pregnant, but, getting myself to the Tasti-D's on my block took so much out of me, I just didn't have the energy left to write anything.

Me, knocked up, on an invigorating walk to Tasti-D's,
detouring through Central Park, months before I became the slob I am today.

But now!  I am spending the next month trying to get myself together before this little gumdrop arrives.  Unpreparedness does not begin to describe my current situation.  I remain the youngest person in the Hartwell family, and truth be told, babies scare terrify me.  I hold a baby and think, "PLEASE DO NOT DIE, BABY!!!!!" They feel my tension and start to cry, which makes me realize I am too tense, and then I get tenser from the crying and the realization that I'm too tense and I'm just a big hot baby-holding mess.  

Derrick and I have a "Caring for a Newborn" class this week, and if it's anything like our baby CPR class or our childbirth class, around the mid-point break one or both of us will mentally break down, begin to pluck out the hairs on our heads, one by one, and there may be some thumb-sucking involved.

Oh, and one more update: Franco is doing well and frequently employs a salad bowl as a bed.  Not exactly a bath tub, but it'll do.

Why I Still Hate Duke

Many of you think the Big Game already came and went on Super Bowl Sunday this past weekend.  Well, you would be wrong.  Tonight, my beautiful and amazing alma mater will continue a storied basketball rivalry against Voldemort's alma mater: a place powered by polar bear tears and unicorn blood, otherwise known as dook.  It is true that dook is ranked higher than UNC at the moment, but that doesn't change the fact that UNC will always, always have hotter girls.

This is a hilarious piece that ran in the Daily Tar Heel in 2007, by Ian Williams '90:

I always hated it when alumni came back and waxed rhapsodic about their undergrad years. "Yes," I would always think to myself, "I know there were kegs in the dorms, I know there was free love outside Bingham Hall, I know that everyone sung in harmony about a perfect world, blah blah blah..."

So why listen to me, you might ask? Well, usually in this spot, the DTH runs an old chestnut I wrote about Why I Hate Dook. I had a Wednesday column back in the Bronze Age of 1990, and I told the story of how my high school visit to Durham turned into a flaming pyre of white-hot hostility.

When the piece ran, I thought my friends would disparage the obviousness of it - writing a column about hating Dook? Jesus, that's like shooting barrelfuls of cod! Instead, the column ended up on refrigerators across the Piedmont, and it taught me two lessons. First, don't overthink your duties; and second, never underestimate the hatred for Durham Clown College.

A whole cottage industry has since grown out of the UNC/Dook rivalry; two big-selling books, endless coverage on ESPN, and gigabytes of Photoshopped files featuring Mike Kryshwqhskdi. What used to be private disgust is now a public phenomenon, and it raises the question: is Dook still worth hating?

I assumed, like everyone does, three things would happen to me once I graduated. My views would become more conservative, I wouldn't be allowed to sleep past 10am anymore, and my passion for beating Dook would gradually drift away. I would grow hair on my ears and suddenly think sitcoms were funny.

I'm here to tell you these things don't necessarily happen. I grew more obnoxiously liberal, I got a writing gig with flexible mornings, and my eye-twitching contempt of Dook's basketball team grew even more intense. They seem to manufacture loathsome jerks year after year.

How can you watch any random press conference of Koach K and not feel this man is a modern-day Narcissus so fixated on success that he's happy to throw his own players under the bus? A tightly-wound mess of resentment and profanity, the toxic combination of a control freak with a thinly-veiled persecution complex?

Yes, I was a psych major.

And believe me, I wouldn't bet three cups of snot there isn't some person just like me in the other camp, the Dook fan who has his own dime-store theories on why Carolina is a blight on the athletic world. But I wouldn't trade places if the Buddha himself showed up wearing a navy blue unitard.

I'll tell you why: I got to choose my church. Having grown up without an organized religion, I adopted the Carolina Way. I adhered to the Dean-Gut-Roy belief system, and incorporated it everywhere: doing things the right way; playing hard, smart and together; valuing your family above all.

We all burst from Chapel Hill in a plume of gorgeous blue smoke, wafting to all corners of the globe where other like-minded souls await. The "sky-blue mafia" has beds for you in Manhattan, an internship in Hollywood, a coffee in Prague, and we'll let you get in front of us in line at the K&W in Rocky Mount.

There is no old boy's network, no secret handshake. All we share is an affection for a town on a hill, and this: when we see Dookies clogging our TV, our lips curl and we seethe a little inside. The week of the big game, we find ourselves canceling appointments.

Is Dook still worth hating? Take a look at Sean Dockery slugging Tyler in the mouth. Spend a Saturday night next door to a Dook fraternity. Find yourself in the midst of the Kameron Krazies, a numbnut group of ravenously twee dorks who shellac their nipples with blue food coloring, scream cruel and deeply unfunny crap at opposing teams, then jump up and down with the mindless lockstep of the Communist military.

There's just so much to despise! Every religion must have its Devil, and ours are Blue. Dook is the gift that keeps on giving, and whether you're in an 8am Econ class trying to stay awake, or in your nursery trying to get your daughter to sleep, we're in it together. Break his ankles, Ty! Punch it home, Rey! God bless them Tar Heel boys!

Ian Williams, a 1990 music/psychology graduate, lives in Los Angeles and New York, writing for television and movies.

Road Rage

As excited as we were to leave for the holidays, we are equally excited to be back to our boring routine and back to our own bed!

Some people don't look forward to a good, long road trip, but we do.  We love zoning out on the interstate, rocking out to early '90s jams, and the inevitable and immediate feeling of contrition after a giant double burger from Wendy's.  Oh, it hurts so good!

Our trip down to North Carolina was full of memorable moments, all of them involving eleven hours of Derrick shivering in the passenger seat, pale as a sheet (well, paler than usual) and battling a crippling stomach virus. 

We were sad for Derrick, but as usual, we were way more sad for ourselves, because not only did we have to drive the entire way, we also didn't get to enjoy any of Derrick's hilarious road rage antics.  Luckily for us, he was as good as new for our drive back up to Philly, and we learned so many new foul phrases we could never have imagined in our wildest dreams!

We tried to take his mind off of things with some light conversation.

In all seriousness, it isn't too difficult to steer Derrick back into a happier frame of mind.  Sometimes, a little Lady Gaga goes a long, long way.

Christmas Hiatus and Our First Drawering of Franco

We are super excited that Christmas break is finally upon us.  Derrick has one more final exam and then we're off to North Carolina to perfectly split our time equally between our two families!  You can't let anyone get jealous of anyone else so early in your marriage.  Remember that, ladies.

Part of our time is going to be spent holed up with Bill and Sandy H. off the Blue Ridge Parkway, minus internet, and the rest of our time will be spent eating Derrick's Mamaw's Balls of Fury.  Get your heads out of the gutter.  They're peanut butter-butterscotch balls, they're about 5,000 calories apiece, Christmas is incomplete without them, and you will die unhappy and unfulfilled if you never get to sink your teeth into one of Mamaw's balls.

It should be a really fun drive tomorrow.  12 wrapped gifts, 11 bottles of Leigh Ann's hair products (those points don't just happen, you know), 10 Christmas playlists that we hope Sandy H. won't deem obnoxious (Destiny's Child Christmas tunes, hello!  Classic!), 9 DVDs for when DirecTV gives out in the mountains, 8 extra pounds I've already gained since Thanksgiving, 7 weathermen predicting wintry mixes, and ... 6, 5, 4 of ... something, 3 bottles of Prosecco, 2 cat anxiety pills and 1 super fat and adorable cat who would eat the partridge and the pear tree if given the opportunity.

So... good-byes can be awkward, much like the number 2011.  Which is when we'll be back.  Seriously, 11, what's the deal?

Hating Duke Without Borders

Sandy H. reports from dinner time in Morocco:

"Tonight we sat next to a guy who went to Duke. He was an a*#hole."

Not that we needed any more of an explanation, because our most recent run-in with a Duke grad involved him calling us "slow-minded" within two minutes of meeting him for having gone to UNC, i.e. the Southern Part of Heaven.  But Derrick wanted to know more, so we had to ask why, specifically, this guy was an a*#hole.

"I - I - I - Me - Me - Me - My - My - My.  He SAYS he was head of a 300-person law firm (your dad doubts it).  Thinks Chapel Hill is not a 'real town.'  I said, 'Have you been there lately?'  'Many times!'"

We have to interject here and ponder the existence of Durham as a "real town."  We would call it a "real ghetto town," a "real ugly town," a "Voldemort is real and he lives in this town..."  We could go on.

Sandy H. continues: "Is thrilled UNC was bad in basketball last year, hopes it happens again, does not like Roy.  Coach K is the world's greatest coach.  Has traveled everywhere, done everything, knows everything.  I could go on but this re-cap is ruining my morning."

Ours, too.

"It was a challenging evening, but I've been proud of me.  I have conversed with everyone, even a*#holes, and said nice things about everything, even Duke.  Nearly killed me."

Our friends over in London, like us, hate Duke with an infernal passion undying, and encountering obnoxious Duke people outside the U.S. border only adds fuel to that lava-spewing cauldron of hatred.  You can read all about their trans-continental hating here and here. 

Lord Voldemort, Hannibal Lector, Hitler's ghost,
and the douchey kid who wrote I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell all live here.

Fantasies

After Derrick graduates in May of 2012 with law and business degrees, he intends to spend the summer studying for the bar exam - you know, just for fun. I have decided that the best place for him to hole up studying for the summer is the small studio cabin behind my parents' mountain house in North Carolina.

That's not a real goat.  Or is it?

Here, Derrick can live out his dreams of solitude and isolation, never sleeping, yet cuddling with and caressing his law books, growing his ginger beard for three months, and collecting his own urine. He will befriend country mice and then eat them, make his own clothes out of molted snake skins, and his only companion will be Tonto, the bodyless mantel Indian.

I'm Tonto.  You're Crazy.

  
I've heard that the bar exam can drive a man crazy.

The Promised Land

I love the contestants on Top Chef during Quick Fire Challenges when they have to use surprise ingredients. They're all like, "Oh. My. God. WHAT am I going to do with this freshly caught fish, all this home-churned butter, and these fresh chives? I am really going to have to dig deep to come up with something creative. This is going to take all I have."

That's quite a challenge. All week I've been trying to figure out how to subsist on a can of black olives, a bottle of Target-brand syrup, a 5-liter box of chablis, and a pack of expired birth control pills. I have refused to purchase any groceries this week in anticipation of leaving town for four and a half glorious days in North Carolina! I am stoked to visit with our families and attend the Herrmann-McInerney (Herrmannerney?  McInHerrmann?) wedding in Asheville on Sunday. The bachelorette party involved a Shake Weight, so my expectations for this wedding are pretty high.

So I probably won't be able to update Cats in Baths until next week, but I will leave you with an amazing picture of a bathed cat. Oh, and if you're thinking of ransacking my apartment while we're gone, too bad, because it will be occupied, and we have nothing worth stealing - unless you're interested in a table and chairs purchased many levels beyond secondhand from the Habitat for Humanity General Store in Cornelius, NC. I was going to get rid of those anyway.

I have no idea where this image originated, because it's all over the internet, but I got it here.

The First Post

So many people have approached me about starting a blog, and you should always do what other people tell you to do.

My Facebook status updates have amassed a successful following, but I have wondered if my one-liners can make the leap from supporting character on your news feed to carrying an entire show.  I don't know what this blog will end up being other than general musings about the day to day: failing to make ends meet while my husband works his way toward law and business degrees, avoiding molestation on the streets of Philadelphia, hating the celebrity trivia that fills my head, balancing a desperate desire to be skinny with a constant yearning for wine, cheese and chocolate, being judgmental about grammar and spelling, missing family and friends in North Carolina.  

But I am certain about one thing: pictures of cats in baths are really funny.  A bath for a cat is totally unnecessary and the documentation of it seems solely to exist for the purpose of entertaining humans.  Cats don't need baths; they're self-cleaning - like ovens.  They hate water and they hate you for putting them there.  They are angry, desperate, scrawny, alien-like, and totally adorable.  This blog will not focus entirely on cats in baths, but occasionally it will come back to that, because let's face it: I'm not going to make you think or enlighten you in any way.  I've never been particularly smart and I haven't always been gorgeous, so at one point all I had was my sense of humor.  Let's hope this guy retains his: