I was pretty excited about this. So when I saw her, all I did was try to get her to make the indian noise. I stopped just short of doing a rain dance and singing Tiger Lily’s part in Peter Pan. No dice. She doesn’t understand “Meg, I’d like you to make the indian noise now, please” but she does get that when you yell “touchdown!” she’s supposed to throw her arms above her head, which is pretty great.

What follows is 4 minutes of absolutely nothing. She’s the Seinfeld of babies– nothing really happens, and none of us can stop watching. I didn’t put music over this because what’s going on in the background is way too great– when I’m not inquiring as to whether or not meg is about to fall on her ass (”is she about to eat it?” is not a reference to her birthday cake) or laughing when she does fall and then telling her to Walk It Off, I’m generally demanding that she make the indian noise, to no avail. But my favorite part of the whole thing is Aunt Patti. After this one, I decided that I’m only attending these Everyone Sit Around And Look At The Baby parties in the future if Aunt Patti is there, because she’s the only one who keeps it real. Unlike my mom, who thinks Meg cries whenever she leaves the room and therefore won’t be in a different room from the baby…. ever… or all of meg’s other relatives who become completely incapable of carrying on a conversation in her presence, Aunt Patti can still hold it down. Aunt Roe can hold it down, too, but this time she abandoned me in the baby party way too early for her presence to be a normalizing influence, leaving me with The Baby and 8,000 toys that play awful, awful music whenever The Baby touches them, and various relatives who refuse to go more than 2 feet away from Meg. In the second part of the Meg montage, Patti starts asking me questions about zombies, and it’s awesome. It’s particularly awesome if you’ve read World War Z, because all you’ll see is Meg’s adorable face but all you’ll hear is Patti going “so when he said that the biggest victims of the war were the whales, what do you think that means? Do you think they were just torn apart by the survivor ships?” Aunt Patti keeps it real.

Meg’s 1st Birthday from Cristin on Vimeo.

Here’s what happens when you ask a bunch of kids’ book authors & illustrators “who they’re wearing.” I love everything about this.

Here’s what we’re going back to. Also, I love this picture from Joe’s wedding two years ago, because I have no idea what I could be trying to do:

Are we whistling? Am I passing a secret thought through Emily’s ear that she is then passing on herself to someone very short and just off camera? I mean, really. Also am reminded that I should find occasion to wear that necklace more often, though it’s a wee bit too scary for the office or the 8 malls within 2 miles of my mom’s house, and those my most frequented haunts these days.

While I was looking for pictures to bring to my haircutting lady (who is back in my hometown– I just can’t bring myself to cross over. I have no problem changing doctors, but for some reason hairdressers and shoe repair people are like my flesh and blood and leaving them makes me want to cry) I ran into the album from my 25th birthday, where it looks like I also had short hair, but not quite as short as I want it to be. But the pictures are still kind of awesome:

I think I was mostly excited to see this picture because Cousins Danny and Erin and I are getting together tonight for Little Brother Peej’s show in the ‘boken, which promises to be ridiculously fun. His shows are always fun, but Erin and Danny could make picking out life insurance policies fun and I’m going to try to videotape a lot of it. Oh, and, all of our mommies and siblings are also coming to take in some local indie punkness. I wish I still fit into the PJ’s BIG SISTER tshirt they got me when he was born but I’ve sadly outgrown most of my wardrobe from when I was 4.

Cousin Erin is getting hitched in April, and she amazingly/ foolishly picked danny and I to be her maids of honor. I have done nothing to help prepare for this wedding other than send erin pictures of acid-wash denim minidresses demanding that she allow me to wear that in her wedding. Danny is working on a rap for the wedding toast. We were probably the biggest mistake Er’s ever made in her life (until she marries CJ, that is. Heyo! I kid, I kid. Welcome to the family!).

Awww, it’s book club! How is it possible that I get nostalgic for pictures from 2006?

One more, just for how anxious we’re apparently making Jordan here:

Bubble Wrap Calendar! Holy God! I want this so hard!

During one of the calls to Little Brother Peej, he let fly that he’s in Spin Magazine this month (Page 28, the one with Coldplay on the cover) as one of their Songs You Need To Download Now (number 13! With a bullet!). I freaked out but we were somewhere in the middle of Texas and I had no idea how to find a Spin magazine. So I did the next best thing and called our other brother in Virginia.

“Hey, we’re at Coldstone. We just gave the baby ice cream for the first time in her life,” he said of the slippery, slippery slope they’re setting an almost-one-year-old Meg on.
“PJ’s in Spin Magazine!”
“{half a pause} I’m going to get it right now, I’ll call you back.” {Click}
He called back in 12 minutes. “There is a PICTURE of PATRICK in SPIN MAGAZINE.”

This is my favorite thing that’s happened to Peej so far, which is saying something considering how much I freaked out when MTV News sent John Norris to Glen Rock to talk to the band. (According to my boyfriend, Wikipedia, El Norris himself turns the big 5-0 soon. Mazel tov!).

A day after that I got an email from Ali (whom you may recall as the gal who immortalized my wedding guest practices in TONY) saying that they were in Time Out this week. My favorite part is the opening: Most people living the examined life spend years trying to find answers to all of existence’s big questions, eventually settling for something that rings true to them or just giving up entirely. But what if you’d read a bunch of philosophy and all the classics and had everything figured out by age 20? And you realized it wasn’t pretty?

And then YESTERDAY my mom mentions that NPR reviewed the album. N!P!R! The pinnacle of nerdery! This puts me all of 3 degrees away from Ira Glass, people! Thank you, Peej!

We finally wound up tracking down Spin in Wyoming. This was after a serious false start in Reno, when I saw two copies at CVS (the one that sold wine) and immediately bought them, only to notice 5 minutes later that they were the April issue, still being displayed in July. Oops. (This also set off what was probably the biggest argument my mom and I had all trip as she tried to get me to return the magazines and I refused to do so. “Just take them back. It’s not your fault.” “It IS my fault. And if I take them back, then I won’t learn anything from it.” “yes, you will.” “NO, I WON’T.” “But you could get your money back!” “It’s three dollars!” “It’s SIX dollars.” “JUST. DROP IT.”) When we finally found it in Wyoming, I stood in front of the magazine of that Hastings for a considerable about of time, trying to wrap my head around the fact that the good people of Wyoming had access to my little brother.

I think my entire extended family is going to the show at Maxwell’s in Hoboken on friday (my annual pilgrimage to the ‘Boken… see you in ‘09!), should you want to hear some screaming both by Stickleses on and off stage.

and we loved the view of the arch. We were under the overhang, which was lucky as it started pouring half an inning after we arrived. The rain delay only lasted 20 minutes or so but was more than enough time to make me look like a drowned and exhausted rat.

At every stadium I go to I try to find one thing that they do better in that city than anywhere else. My favorite thing about St Louis is that after every at bat, they put the scorecard notation up on the big screen so that people who want to keep score the old school way can do it easily. Whenever I’m at a game with my dad, he always seems to find the one guy in the crowd who’s annotating a score card so he can point at him and tell me that it’s a dying art, and this was such a smart and easy way to keep it alive I hope all the other stadiums eventually pick it up.

 Our next morning in St Louis was brought to us exclusively by Camilla of OldJob fame who had great suggestions about what to do while we were in town. We hit Left Bank Books first, where I grabbed another bunch of books (including a used copy of Matilda, since my problem with used book stores is the same problem I have with dog shelters, except it can be alleviated with a much smaller financial and time commitment) and perused their selection of Congrats On Your New Baby cards directed towards lesbian moms.

Immediately from there we hit the frozen custard stand Camilla had suggested, which was one of the best meal time decisions we made all week. Seems like the easiest way to make me wildly happy is to put something cookie dough flavored in my hands:

I would probably go back to Missouri just for this. I love you, Ted Drewes.

This was my easily my favorite state, and one of the few places I can see myself going back to. Not that I didn’t love everywhere we went (though, wait, I didn’t– I have nothing good to say about Nebraska), but while I was glad to see everything that we did, each day was another brick in my I’m Never Leaving New York wall. I missed it so much it was physically palpable, as pathetic as that was. In high school, when we found ourselves in a typically boring setting (grocery store, CVS) Jordan and I sometimes played a game where spent the whole trip acting like That Guy Who’s Reminded of His Exgirlfriend By Everything He Sees (”no, it’s nothing… it’s just… she loved lentil beans. She ordered lentil soup once at Friendly’s and when I asked her how it was she said it was ‘alright….’ I just wish she were here to see these lentils. They would have really made her happy.”) and I eventually started feeling like that about New York everywhere we went. When a woman randomly came up to my mom and I in San Francisco and gave us directions that we hadn’t asked her for all I could think about was how that never would have happened in New York and that I couldn’t wait to get back there. I had the same cliched “Nice place to visit, but…” reaction to every place we saw. After about three hours in Wyoming, though, I was emailing my boss about something for work and tacked on “…not that any of this matters, though, since I’m moving to Wyoming to compete in the Miss Frontier Days pageant and marry a cowboy.” She didn’t respond.

Cheyenne is covered in these big boots, each of which are decorated differently (this one is, I think, poker themed), like the apples that popped up all over NY that time or the mermaids that are in Virginia (VA beach? Norfolk?). We took this picture outside of the museum that’s devoted to Frontier Days, which we now know is a massive week-long rodeo and general hoedown in Cheyenne that’s visited by ten thousand people every year. This museum is pretty much the best advertising that they could have because afterwards my mom and I were like “Maybe next year we can come for the rodeo! How great would that be?” which is not a thought I’ve ever had before.

Know that that is, my friends? A surrey with a fringe on top. Rodgers and Hammerstein never lie!

The lobby of the museum houses the buggy collection, complete with creepy faceless dolls who are taking the long ride to nowhere:

And even Tom Selleck stopped by:

I’ve never really had trouble controlling my discretionary spending, but that was before I spent two weeks visiting about 18 different museum gift shops. I had a lot of trouble in the one for the Frontier Days museum and am now the proud owner of various things including a set of christmas ornaments featuring Santa riding a bucking bronco. I have a particularly difficult time when faced with their book sections, and can’t say no when I’m faced with tomes such as:

Soiled Doves: Prostitution in the Early West.

I thought the fact that I was buying over $50 worth of useless crap would be enough of a distraction for the high school girl who rang me up (who mentioned to her coworker in passing that she had gone to high school 30 miles away from her house, which made me rethink my Wyoming relocation plans) but she zeroed in on this in a second. “I read this one, it’s SO good,” she told me. Which put me in kind of a weird place, because my instinct was to say “Oh, if you thought this was good, you should try Sin in the Second City, which is all about turn of the century whorehouses in Chicago” but that would have made me THAT GIRL, right? That Girl who trolls museum gift shops for books about hookers? Right? No one likes that girl.

After this, we went to a Cowgirl themed museum/ gift shop where we spent just as much time and money and where I found Meg’s birthday present. It’s going to take her awhile to grow into them and I don’t plan on making buying her consignment birthday presents a regular practice, but I couldn’t resist.

My #1 Rule of Meg Presents is that I won’t buy her anything that I wouldn’t wear myself, if it came in my size, but these guys took it another step (heyo!)- I covet these boots like you would not believe, to the point where I’m fairly sure I’m going to wind up buying myself a pair before ‘08 is out. This worries me a little since it means I’ll probably have to start wearing jeans, as I don’t approve of the Boot n Skirt look unless you’re at a theme party, but I’ll cross that bridge once I get to it.

We woke up in Salt Lake City and I had yet another breakfast that involved bacon, trying to keep my Percentage of Vacation Meals Involving Pork Products at above 70% (this is surprisingly easy to do). I vetted our route with one of the sales VPs I work with so that she could tell me what bookstores to visit along the way (according to my mother, this makes the entire trip a tax write-off. I can’t wait to explain that to the IRS) and first on her list was The Kings English in Utah. I would pretty much live in this store if they decided to take in boarders.

I bought many things, including the new-ish Joan Bauer book that I’ve been meaning to grab and the Patron Saint of Butterflies because it was autographed and because you can never have too much teen fiction about polygamyst cults.

Afterwards, we went off to the Utah Museum of Natural History, chosen based on my love of the real Museum of Natural History on the west side, and because I hear there are lots of dinosaurs in Utah.

And I love dinosaurs.

This museum also proved to be a great place to continue my accidental photographic study of stuffed wild animals retained in clear boxes:

This was my favorite museum display signage that we saw all trip– Oh, what’s that over there, is it a dinosaur? Huh, I’m not sure. I wish someone would clear it up for me:

 This is the last video that I made on the trip, so I’m glad I didn’t hold off on the song choice for a more special montage or one that might have images that even remotely coordinate with the lyrics.

Cristin Loves Dinosaurs from Cristin Stickles on Vimeo.

After leaving Salt Lake City, we drove across Wyoming and stayed in Cheyenne at a hotel advertising some fantastic musical selections:

Ohmygod, Pyschostick!! I love their gospel album!!