#136 - momma's boy.

let's hear it for moms or at let's at least hear it for the non-psycho moms, the moms who don't drown their kids in lakes. the moms who care about their offspring & have to because their ovaries tell them to. my mom's one of the good ones. to use a term a college friend often used, she's a "good egg." even growing up, when i was supposed to be at odds with her, i was cool with her for the most part. heck, she bought a few of us a sixer of our favorite beers one snowy christmas break night in college, when we were at the house & still pre-21. after seeing the way many parents treat their kids here in nyc, i realize that i had it pretty sweet. when i was born, my mom was 21 & my dad was 23 & while they were young & not without fault, they sort of figured out how to raise kids. they met at kate's, a now defunct bar in boston's now-mallified kenmore square. she was a young girl out of westboro, mass, the worcester county town that's famous for being the birthplace of eli whitney. cotton gin, bitchez!

you can never truly tell what'd gone on in a person's life unless you ask & i tend to not ask much, but this is the impression i've formed in my head about her pre-me existence. she lived in a small massachusetts suburb, the oldest of three kids born to two of the genuinely nicest people i've ever known. they were friendly neighborhood folk who went to church every sunday. my mom's always had asthma, so i think that led to some sheltering by her parents, but in her high school yearbook, there's a quote that says something like "she may look quiet, but look again." scandalous! i mean, it makes sense. she can be quiet, but she can be jokingly hilarious as well. i like to think that much of my sense of comfort around other human beings comes from her.

since i'm slightly obsessed with music, i often identify her by the music she listens to. i know that she saw a very early aerosmith show at some boston club. back in the eighties she used to occasionally go dancing with friends. the first time i heard appetite for destruction was from her copy of it. on cassette! there was a period of time where she listened to joan jett a lot, but that has to do with one particular song & that's a whole other topic that i'd rather not get in to. she liked the traveling wilburys for a while & from that, i learned of roy orbison, tom petty & dylan...although at the time, i only knew of them as the members of some old guy supergroup. i'm not sure what she listens to these days, but i'm assuming it's at least something rocking. is there even anything new & rocking out there? she can't be listening to japandroids.

so yeah, she's not entirely perfect, but i think she's lived through whatever she's lived through & come out on the other end as a pretty respectable person. she's worked the same job (at a nursing home) for almost thirty years now. she still goes to church & in my mind, embodies what religion should be. she's roman catholic & enjoys church for the sense of morals & community she gets from it. she's even got my dad to start going & he's ten times more relaxed & part of the community than he ever was during my childhood. according to my sister, momz sometimes reads this here blog & i'm sure my sister will notify her about this particular entry, so i might as well get this out of the way...mom, forgive me for the use of "bitchez" in describing your hometown. it was all in the interest the funny. eli whitney...inner city slang...funny! see?

#136 - momma's boy.
snack: david's dill pickle sunflower seeds
drink: schweppes ginger ale



about a month back, my sister was home visiting & she was at some windham-area store with my mom. they were totally thinking of me because my mom sent me a text message (she text messages & emails now!) that read "we got you dill pickle flavored sunflower seeds." it was accompanied by smiley face clip art. a week or so later, i got a package in the mail with that bag of david's dill pickle sunflower seeds & my childhood stuffed animal, george (who will soon become blog famous if my plan comes to fruition). as for the seeds, it's a 5.25 oz bag, which if you're keeping score at home, is a TON of sunflower seeds. like, if ALL the chickadees & sparrows in my childhood backyard enjoyed the sweetly sour taste of pickles, this bag could feed them for at least a forknight.

i got a lot of use out of them for a while. i was trying to cut down on my smoking (mom wasn't happy to learn i'd started back up), so sunflower seeds are the perfect snack for filling that oral fixation. like most sunflower seeds, these particular ones are all about the salt, but there's also that natural dill pickle flavor in the mix, so they're extra sodiumtastic. i was digging them for a while & got in the habit of bringing them back & forth from work with me, often devouring them at such tremendous rates that between the saltiness & the jaggedy shell cracking, i actually burnt the roof of my mouth a bit a few times over the course of the last few weeks. i've cut back on them over the last week or so, so there are still a bunch left. they'll be around for a while. hell, i'm assuming i'll be munching on them the whole ride home to nh for T-day.

growing up, whenever i was sick my mom would pour me a glass of ginger ale & stir out the bubbles. from what i learned, it's good for an upset stomach. i'm not sick or anything, but i am ten days caffeine-free & at the beginning of a foolish venture into caffeine withdrawal, so i picked up a bottle of schweppes ginger ale to try to fill the void. i've been cutting back on my soda intake for a while, so i figured that i'd work on the caffeine intake first. cutting out soda's just not a realistic goal. maybe i could handle cutting out soda with HFCS in it, but i can't cut out soda altogether. it's too damn tasty & fun to just kiss goodbye.

along with canada dry, schweppes' ginger ale is what i think of when i think of ginger ale, which is like all the time! not really. sorry, ginger ale. i really only think of you when i'm trying to run away from caffeine. overall, you're not the most exciting soda. you go well with cranberry juice & many mixed drinks & whatnot, but by yourself, while you can be refreshing, you're a decidedly unflashy soda, just a few rungs above club soda. at least 7-up has limon. still, i see a lot more of you in my future, so i guess i'd better get used to you. you're nice & all, but seriously, i don't want to hear you complain when, to avoid drowning in your boredom, i start buying a mess of cranberry juice to drown you in first. it'll be carbonated murder! oops. sorry about joking about murder too, mom.