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This weekend I watched a documentary on one of our many cable channels about the making of the Vegas show, “LOVE,” a collaboration between The Beatles and Cirque Du Soleil. The documentary was pretty good, and as for the show itself, it looks really good. I’d definitely catch it if I had a chance.

Watching it brought back so many memories. I’ve been basically obsessed with The Beatles since I was about 13 years old. I can’t explain why I got interested in them, or what it was that fascinated me so, but it was a straight-up obsession. My parents, who were past the target demographic when The Beatles were sprung upon the world in the 60s, were not sympathetic, but they did indulge me by buying me my first Beatles album and then allowing me to spend my allowance on later ones, as well as playing them at fairly loud volume on the old cabinet record player in the basement. They did not raise an eyebrow when I checked out every book that our local library had with anything to do with The Beatles, wrote many school papers about them, and later rented every Beatles-related item our video store carried.

I remember the day that John Lennon died very vividly. I was in the 8th grade. My mother heard about it on The Today Show, and came to the bathroom where I was getting ready for school to break the news. I was devastated…but she still made me go to school that day. My English teacher, who was a young, hip type (and whose name I sadly cannot remember), mercifully was sympathetic and spent nearly all of our class that day talking about John, The Beatles, and what an impact they’d had. (Plenty of kids I went to school with in the suburbs of Cleveland were depressingly unaware of The Beatles or anything else that wasn’t played in heavy rotation on WMMS at that time.)

Any way, I’m still pretty obsessed with The Beatles. Here’s one of my favorites:

Here is my obligatory “Happy Holidays!” post. But I’m really sincere. I hope my readers (all three of you) have a wonderful holiday, and a new year that’s full of hope and possibilities. Make resolutions, if that’s what you do, but wait until next week to do it. This weekend, just enjoy yourself.

My own Christmas plans involve sitting on my ass a lot, eating what I feel like eating without counting any WW points, playing WoW every night and some afternoons, and bemoaning the fact that I have zero freelance hours for December (and therefore no check in January). Oh well, at least I have time off work until January 2. And my father is visiting us, which helps distract The Bean. Also, our weather is decent here – no blizzards, ice storms, or anything else terribly inconvenient.

Things I Hate About the Holiday Season:

• Those stupid news stories about how expensive all the gifts from “The 12 Days of Christmas” would be this year. Please, local media outlets, retire this dumb meme already.
• Christmas music, decorations, and other stuff in stores BEFORE FUCKING HALLOWEEN.
• Endless local speculation about the possibility of a white Christmas. Look, Virginians: it doesn’t happen here. Get over it.
• Cheap, nasty wrapping paper that tears when you try to cut it. Pretty wrapping paper that I bought at JoAnn Fabrics, thinking it was slightly better than what I could get at the Dollar Store, I’m looking at you!
• Christmas cards. Endless chore, yet I still put myself through it every year.

Things I Love About the Holiday Season:

• Nostalgia.
• “A Christmas Story.” Closely tied to previous item, since I grew up in Cleveland, where much of it was filmed. Higbee’s downtown really WAS that awesome and amazing.
• Food! Christmas cookies! Extra-aged Gouda! Pate! Ham/turkey/standing rib roast! Bourbon!
• Finding the perfect gift for everyone on my list. Seeing The Bean open her presents. Balling up and throwing away all the wrapping paper afterwards.
• Time off work.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Over on Dooce.com, Heather is talking about the misery of the first few months of pregnancy, and the horrible morning sickness she seems doomed to deal with again during this, her second pregnancy. I can soooo relate. I thought this was especially funny:

I cannot relate to women who say that they love this, that they wish they could be pregnant for years, that they have never felt more like a woman. I don’t know exactly why, but there are things about this that make me feel totally disenfranchised. I have no control over my body or appetite, and I cannot do anything to improve the way I feel.

That’s pretty much how I felt the first three months of my one and only pregnancy. In fact, here’s a story about how I figured out I was pregnant.

Hubby and I had been trying to get pregnant for almost two years. We were really at that point where you’re supposed to seek fertility treatment or something. I had been trying everything: mucinex (makes the vaginal environment more welcoming for sperm, if you can believe that shit), counting my cycle with the help of a computer program, tracking basal body temperature and other changes, examining my saliva in a little mini-microscope device, using those fertility test kits from the drug store. Hubby had finally gone to the doctor to donate a sample for testing (he was fine) and I was getting a bit frantic. So anyway, one day, I go to my friend Kim’s personal trainer with her, and have a free workout. And damn, what a workout! After some cardio, he had me do all kinds of weights and stuff, and I was SO sore afterwards. The next day, I still felt sore. The day after that, I not only felt sore, but I actually felt WORSE than I had the two days previous – achey all over, tired, draggy. It was like I was getting the flu. The next day (a Thursday, I think) I finally noticed that my period was something like a week late.

Oh. Duh.

I went to Target on my lunch hour and bought a pregnancy test, then took it in a stall at work. Here’s the thing about pregnancy tests: when they’re negative, it takes forever for the negative result to show. But when they’re positive, that little plus sign shows up IMMEDIATELY, like within SECONDS. And that’s how I knew I didn’t have the flu, wasn’t dying, and hadn’t pulled every muscle in my body – I was just pregnant. Hallelujah!

So I can relate to feeling not-so-hot the first few months. My morning sickness was really all-day sickness – I had nausea all the time (though I only actually threw up once). The only thing that helped was munching on something horrid, like crackers, all damn day. So that’s what I did. Surprisingly, I gained very little weight that first trimester, even though I ate whatever damn thing I felt like sticking in my piehole. I also had a lot of intestinal distress, which probably helps explain it. I had the runs so many times, well…my ass was pretty unhappy. Also my skin broke out like crazy and nothing helped it. I was miserable.

But when that first three months was up, it was like somebody flipped a switch. Suddenly, I felt great (although I did get tired a lot more easily, and sometimes my intestines still got angry with me)! My hair looked amazing, my nails looked amazing, my skin looked amazing! My boobs were GIGANTIC, and my skin glowed, and it was spring (I had Veronica June 26) and all was right with the world. I finally did start to feel like those women who “wish they were pregnant all the time.” Oddly enough, the bump growing in front of me made the rest of me look smaller. I felt sexy and attractive and almost euphoric. When the baby started kicking, and then continued to kick, I just laughed. She’d get bored after lunch when I sat in a regular project meeting, and start making my belly jiggle all around, which freaked out the males sitting by me and just made me laugh even more.

So yeah, I wouldn’t want to go back to that first trimester, no sir. But if I could maybe re-live months four through about eight, that would be fine by me (at the end, I was just too uncomfortable and couldn’t sleep to save my life). So actually, I do understand the nostalgia for pregnancy.

But I’m still not doing it again.

Does anybody remember which of the Fractured Fairy Tales featured the oft-repeated phrase “She’ll have a head like a casaba melon,” or something like that? It was my favorite but I can’t even remember what story it was. Man those were awesome:

I was thinking this morning about stores I grew up going to back in Ohio. There’s this Target around the corner from where I live now that’s kind of our go-to place for everything. They sell just about everything, including groceries; and there’s a snack bar and a Starbuck’s inside. But we also shop at Kohl’s, Harris Teeter, Wegman’s, CVS, Costco…

I grew up in the Cleveland suburbs in the 70s and 80s. In the 70s, especially, there were a lot of stores around that we just don’t have anymore. Uncle Bill’s? Gold Circle? These places are gone (as far as I know) now. Of course they opened a far-out drug/everything store called Marc’s, which turned into a chain and took off, but a lot of the other variety stores are kaput, or drastically changed. I remember going to KMart on Bagley Road all the time. We bought everything there. Clothes, household items, lawn chairs, cleaning products, stuff for the car, every kind of seasonal decorative item you can imagine – from Halloween costumes to Christmas ornaments to plastic eggs for Easter. I wore a lot of no-name brand jeans and sneakers from KMart. Did I beg my mom for Nikes? Sure I did, but man she was frugal, to put it mildly. So instead I had the KMart version (and a little teasing at school).

And the garden center! I remember going every spring to pick out the flowers and vegetables that my mom would transplant into our garden and hedges. We even bought lilies and other flowering plants there at Easter that she transplanted into the dirt next to the house. Impossibly, they took root and continued to bloom every year.

This particular KMart was just 100 kinds of awesome. There was a little cafeteria-style restaurant in the back, as well as a little snack bar up front! I loved to get Slurpees there – usually the Coke flavor. Back in the day, Slurpee only came in two flavors: Coke and Cherry. Cherry was too sweet and turned your mouth all red, so Coke it was.

I remember one time when I was in the first grade or so, for some reason I was at KMart with my mom, just the two of us. Not sure where my sister was at the time. I was walking around KMart by myself (back then parents let their 7-year-olds wander stores alone, I guess). I remember walking through the toy aisles and being particularly interested in some model kits they had for sale. They showed little scenarios like Dracula rising from his coffin or The Mummy opening his sarcophagus and leaving his tomb. Or, best of all, grave robbers stealing a body to make Frankenstein! I was standing there, staring at these things, completely horrified and fascinated and a little bit terrified — and I fainted. Just fell right over, unconscious. My mom found me, I don’t know how, and the next thing I remember, she had loaded me awkwardly into the cart and was pushing me towards the back of the store.

Now here’s the thing – not only did KMart have very nice restrooms back then, they had a ladies lounge. That’s right – a whole room where ladies could sit and smoke or fix their hair or, well, lounge, I guess. And that’s where my mom took me, and a helpful employee procured a glass of water for me. I remember several employees asking my mom what happened and her saying she didn’t know, I must be sick. I kept trying to tell her “I fainted because I was looking at the Frankenstein.” This made no sense to her AT ALL and probably contributed to the visit to my pediatrician which was inflicted on me that same afternoon. (I really hated my pediatrician – he had big, clammy hands and greasy hair and a very heavy Greek accent that I could never understand. My mom had to act as interpreter. I was forced to see this dude as my primary care provider until I graduated from high school and ran far, far away from Brookpark, Ohio!) I had a fever, just a little bug, and went home to eat chicken soup and take aspirin and watch the afternoon monster movie on TV (how appropriate).

KMart’s glory days are gone now, especially at that particular Bagley Road outpost. I’m not even sure that store is open anymore. Some time in the late 80s, Little Caesar’s took over the restaurant, and the snack bar at the front shut down. Of course there was some rebirth in the Martha Stewart era, but KMart these days is really a shadow of the Midwestern glory that I remember, and closed a lot of stores around here a few years back. Sure we have nice places to shop now, but somehow, Target’s just not the same.