The Chicago Chronicles

Another Bad Choice in Men

2012-02-07T22:36:00.000-06:00

WHY do I read Hemingway?!? Why do I think that he'll change, be different this time? That he's maybe learned from his past, turned over a new leaf, learned how to be -- well, if not happy, then a little less of a waiter announcing that the special today is Life is Shit soup?

I don't need happily ever after and rainbows and puppies. I don't. Two of my favorite authors are Flannery O'Connor and Cormac McCarthy, not exactly people you'd want volunteering on the Samaritans hotline. But Flannery, bless her, had a sense of humor, a wry attitude toward the grotesque in people. She kicked you in the guts, slapped you hard, but she at least gave you dialogue that made you smile. Not a bad accomplishment while you're dying of lupus.

And Cormac, while he's written some of the most relentlessly wrenching and painful stuff I've ever read, manages to slide some redemption into the agony. It's as if he's saying,"Life can be brutal, merciless, and the innocent suffer in complete injustice, but there is also beauty and grace all around us, too. People can be terrible, but they can also be holy and decent through simple acts of everyday kindness. The human spirit is frail but so terribly strong, too, in its capacity to survive and love."

Hemingway, on the other hand, is a maudlin, petulant, pan in the ass who seems to take pleasure in creating stories in which nothing good can possibly happen. He goes out of his way to piss in everyone's Cheerios, and you just know he enjoys doing it. In his view of life, nobody is allowed to be happy except in the fleeting, stolen moments that only serve to underscore their doom. He's the depressive friend who wallows and refuses any attempt to get them to lighten up because they think that being unhappy is somehow Important. Hemingway just wants us all to check into in his personal flea-bitten Vale of Tears Motel like cheap dial-a-whores, to sit there with him and stare at the snowy TV while getting drunk and playing a greasy card came called Poor Me, I Feel Things So Deeply.

I'll finish this book, Ernest, but after this it's over between you and me. I hope that wherever you are, the Bronte sisters are making you miserable.

Trifecta Writing Challenge: Three sentences, one story.

2012-02-04T23:26:00.003-06:00

This week's challenge at Trifecta: make it short, sweet, and complete. Oh, and congrats to Trifecta for being a Bloggie finalist!

******

She walked carefully down the unfamiliar passage from thebedroom to the kitchen. The message light on his machine flashed mutely in the pre-dawn dark; he'd turned the ringer off. As she shivered into her clothes, she thought of allthe times she’d called at night, surprised that he wasn’t home.

Questions People Won't Ask Survey from Quizopolis.com

2012-02-04T21:34:00.002-06:00

Inspired by Lisa's hilarious responses at at Seeking Elevation. The girl is my hero.

Have you ever flirted with your best friend's bf/gf?
At a party a year ago I decided to try to get drunk, which I've never done before (not much of a drinker, and don't hold it well). Five flutes of champagne later, I suggested to my friend's husband that we make out in the bathroom. He laughed and said, "Sure, JC, later." Clearly I am a failure as both a drunk AND a whore, because I told my friend about it. She also laughed. So I'm a failure at being a drunk, a whore, or a plausible threat to any relationship.

Do you think that you're all that and your probably really not?
I think I'm somewhat that, but am always open to feedback.

Have you gotten beat up before. Tell the truth.
In my 30s I got pushed off a platform at a club by some college girl, who thought she'd show off to her friends. (I'm small, so I look like an easy target). My friends and two of hers had to keep me from tearing her head off. I still don't know whether I'm proud or ashamed of that moment. Probably proud. Yeah. Proud.

Are you smart or are you dumb?
Smart. Sometimes clueless, sometimes gullible, but I'm not dumb.

If you're a girl, do you scratch your boobs when nobody's looking?
Who let the seventh-grader come up with this one??

Have you ever wanted to have sex with your own gender?
Not in real life.

Are you liking this survey so far?
It's a bit frat boy, to tell you the truth.

Do you have a lot of friends or are you nobody at school?
I'm no longer in school, and I do have a fair number of friends.

Are you annoying to most people?
I don't think so, but when I am annoying to people, I am REALLY annoying to people.

Can you take the truth, no matter what it is?
Hell, no. I'd rather have the truth, of course, but it can be an awfully hard pill to swallow. I go through the stages of truth: shock, resentment, denial, defensiveness, realizing that yeah, I probably am that transparent.

Would you go suicidal if someone in your family died?
No.

Is there somebody in your life you hate at this point?
"hate" implies spending a lot of energy, so no. There is someone who, if they were hit by a car, my life would be a lot less stressful.

Are you dreading something right now?
Discovering that despite spending $130 on good running shoes that my newfound love of running on the treadmill will still be impossible thanks to neck issues. That, and the possibility that I will never snuggle with a man in bed again.

While taking this, did you start thinking about your true self?
Actually, no. I tend to think about myself in an objectively critical way quite a lot.

Would you date somebody on Valentine's Day just to get something for Valentine's?
Enough with fucking Valentine's Day, already.

Have you ever broke somebody's heart and didn't care?
Yes. But except for one guy, they deserved it. And because they used poor grammar, like saying "have broke" instead of "have broken."

Did you go to Pre-K?
When I was growing up, there was no public school before first grade. I went to a private kindergarten ( Four Seasons -- I'll sing our school song for you if you want). My sister went to private Pre-K, which was known as nursery school then. I think my mother could not wait to get us out of the house.

Take This Survey at Quizopolis.com
http://www.quizopolis.com/survey/5844/Questions-People-Won't-Ask-Survey/

Trifecta Writing Challenge Week 12: Image

2012-02-02T23:35:00.000-06:00

I'm too late to submit to this week's Trifecta writing challenge, but I wrote it anyway.
The word this week was:

image

noun \ˈi-mij\

a : exact likeness : semblance image — Genesis 1:27 (Revised Standard Version)b : a person strikingly like another person image of her mother>

The couples at breakfast. Sunday morning, rumpled from thenight before or from fuzzy morning sex, the couples sit, eating. Coffee inmugs. Pancakes, yogurt. You can tell the new couples because they are talking, talking,talking; smiling, happy to be here this morning after a night before; relievedat this breakfast, this miniature happily ever after, the rush that someonewanted this too, this toast, this coffee, these blueberry pancakes, with them.

The longer-term couples sit quietly, murmuring to eachother from time to time, glancing at each other or past one another or eachreading a newspaper or book or a message on a portable device. They have gonethrough the rites of coupledom: the demoting of friends, the drawing in; the fearful elimination of everything poisonously individual until thereis nothing left but an image of the other.

Alone with my book, I imagine sitting here with someone, amate, knowing each other better than anyone else. I lean forward and whisper:

“Surprise me.”

Riot in Cell Block 9

2012-01-24T21:42:00.001-06:00

A friend of mine went to her car in the lot where she keeps it, and noticed that the car next to her was somewhat full of cats. Aside from the number ad the fact that they were in a car, they seemed OK. She left her name and number on the windscreen and suggested she could help with the cats f they needed it.

The car-cat person contacted her. We have a mutual friend who volunteers at a cat shelter. Long story short, my friend took six kittens and gave the owner information about getting the parents neutered at low cost. Because she has a large two-bedroom unit and I have a small 1-bedroom, She has 4 and I have two. The kittens are about 5 months old and need socializing. They seem healthy, but are afraid of people.

The two sisters I took are gray tigers who are situated in my tile bathroom. I suspected fleas (correctly as it turned out), and wanted them separate form the rest of the house and in a place that would be easy to clean. Over the course of several days the activity in the bathroom has taken on the drama of a Women In Prison movie. It goes something like this:

I walk in.

"HISS HISS HISS! DO NOT APPROACH ME! DO! NOT! APPROACH ME! "

I pick one up.

"AAAUGH! AAAUGH! A- Oh, that's nice, now."

I put her down and move toward the other, who is either hiding behind the toilet or on her hind legs, squeezed into the 5-inch space between the radiator and the wall.

"HISS! HISS! I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL CUT YOU, BITCH! JUST TRY ME! DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT PICKING ME U--Oh. Oh, well, If you're going to scratch my head..."

Using a bowl of soapy water as a trap, I've had some flea-combing sessions and have removed 50-75 fleas. And then had an hour of psychosomatic itching afterwards.

Kevin was by to watch a football game (the first time I've ever sat through a game), and we sat with the kittens before hand. He has a cat, but I think he could use another, and watching him snuggle the kittens, I think I sensed someone falling in love.

Nothing more adorable than a 6-foot 4 guy turning to me during the fame and asking, "Can we sit with the kittens during halftime?" Other than of course watching a 6-foot 4 guy snuggle a tiny kitten.

Trifecta Writing Challenge -Week 10: sway

2012-01-21T23:01:00.001-06:00

The Trifecta Writing Challenge is a weekly exercise where you get a word and its definition and write a piece between 33 and 33 words long. It's fun, it's cool, and you should try it. At least check out the amazing contributions; you'll be glad you did.

This week's word for the Trifecta Writing Challenge is sway:
3  a : a controlling influence
    b : sovereign power : dominion
  c : the ability to exercise influence or authority : dominance
Thank God for deadlines and constraints.

Creativity

When he’d taken the apartment, he hadn’t even noticed theart gallery on the next block, focusing instead on the local bars and eateries.The gallery had been part of the background noise of the city, and had notregistered.

When the painting appeared in the window, though, thegallery (the kind of small, understated place that couples with loft apartmentsand overextended credit patronized) became the only thing he noticed. Thepainting became the only thing he noticed.

When he first saw it he’d been stunned into immobility.He’d faced the enormous canvas with its bold, pulsing swirls of color like amongoose assessing the cobra, each knowing one would be the other’s agent ofdoom. The last time he’d seen the painting it was drying on an easel in her studioand she was telling him that she wished him well, but she thought it best ifthey didn’t see each other any more.

Now it hung in a gallery window in his neighborhood, sellingfor a lot more than he could really afford. But after three weeks of trying toavoid it and failing, finding himself helpless over the painting’s sway, hecashed some bonds and emptied his savings and brought the painting home where he'd sat on the sofa looking at it, propped up against thewall, for hours, drinking cheap beer he’d kept in the fridge.

It was dawn when he went into the kitchen and returnedwith a bag. He hefted the oversized canvas down the stairs and along thestreet to a playground a block away. Leaning the canvas against the chain link,he pulled a can out of the bag. Unscrewing the lid, he doused the canvas andstruck a match.

The sun was just clearing the neighborhood roofs as the bright flames rose into the grey sky.

Sounds: inside, outside, both sides

2012-01-09T22:28:00.003-06:00

A friend sent a message around asking whether anyone with a sewing machine could help a friend of hers. Seems he has a hearing implant, the kind that attaches directly to the skull, and he wants some help modifying a winter hat so that he can wear the hat without cutting off hearing or pulling the attachment off.

My sewing experience consists of drapes, hems on second-hand corduroys and jeans, and some pot holders that look like items from a charity fundraiser for homeless Sudanese children who earn their living making whimsical crafts in hopes of raising enough money for the surgery required to restore their sight.

Sure, I said. Be happy to.

She put us in contact, and I stopped by his apartment tonight to pick up the hat. I was greeted by a forty-something tall, chubby man with arm and leg tattoos. His hair was in a short buzz cut, so the implant was easily seen, a small oblong shape a little larger than a postage stamp, with the face of a monster painted on it. It sat a couple of inches down and behind his left ear.

He handed me a sharpie, put on the hat, and I traced around the implant. He told me he'd just gotten it this year.

"How does it work?" I asked. "Does it send sound waves directly into your brain?"

"It vibrates my skull."

"Really? That works?"

"Sure. In fact, if you were to put your head against mine, you could hear what I hear."

"No way!"

"Want to try?"

"Yeah."

He went to a desk and took off the aid. He took an iPod and connected it to the bottom of the aid via a plug attachment. He fired up some music and then put the attachment in.

"Ready?"

I nodded.

He leaned over, and I pressed my ear against his forehead. And I heard music. Music coming from his head. it was fantastic.

"That is mind-blowing!"

"You get only some of your sound through your ears," he explained. "A lot of the sound you 'hear' come through the vibrations on the front of your skull."

I stood, rapt. He smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "I had to learn all this."

"The don't make it for Bluetooth, though," he said. "I wish they did."

"Or WiFi," I suggested. "Imagine walking down the street and hearing all the chatter. Although I imagine that could become unnerving."

"I hear enough voices in my head already," he replied, smiling to make sure I knew he was kidding.

So I have a hat, and I will modify it. I feel like I'm sewing a costume for a superhero. A man who can fill my head with music by just touching me.

Imagine.

Trifecta, Week 8 - Cutting

2012-01-08T12:06:00.001-06:00

(this is a post wrtten for Trifecta's word challenge of the week, using the word cutting. thanks to Karen at http://karenismuttering.blogspot.com/ for kicking me in the ass. She is a wonderfully powerful and nuanced writer, so make sure to check out her contribution this week, too: http://karenismuttering.blogspot.com/2012/01/trifecta-week-8-cutting.html)

******

The night air was thick with the late-summer smell of corn.A faint glow could still be seen along the western horizon, which stretchedfrom one corner of James’ vision to the other. He’d been looking at corn and horizon for going on threedays now.

“I’ve got to. Soon.” The girl’s voice said on his right. The tension, cutting tone, unmistakable.

“Jesus, Staci, I know. What do you want me to do, make a lakemagically appear in the middle of fucking Iowa?”

“Don’t yell at me.”

“I’m not yelling, I’m just tired.”

The girl’s silence was deafening.

They rode for a few minutes not speaking, staring at the rowsof corn zooming toward the car in the headlights. The eyes of something small shone back at the car and thenquickly disappeared.

“I’m going to change,” the girl said. “Just in case. That way I won’t have to wait.”

“Fine."

"Don't be angry. You knew about this."

"I know." He just hadn't thought it was that… inviolate. He concentrated on driving.

After twenty minutes of so he realized the girl's breathinghad changed.

"Stace? Staci? You OK back there?"

"I HAVE TO. SOON." She rasped.

"Ok; Ok. You got your suit on?"

"Yes."

How many laps will you swim?

“A hundred —“ she broke off in a strangled gasp.

He was at 90 m.p.h. when he saw the sign ahead. MOTEL in redneon. Below it in yellow: POOL. Hescreeched into the deserted parking lot; Staci was out before the car had come to a full stop. In the rearviewmirror he saw her bathing-suited form run to the opposite end of the lotand scale the low chain link that surrounded an invisible pool.

James sat looking at the sign, the dark, listening to Staci'ssoft splashing. He thought aboutthe road ahead.

The corn glowed red in his receding taillights. At the back of the lot, watery echoesslapped into the night sky.

Oh, Home Depot, you and your siren call...

2011-11-28T22:23:00.001-06:00

In one of my favorite movies, "Truly, Madly, Deeply." the character of Nina, played by Juliet Stevenson, is talking with a friend about the flat she lives in and owns. It seems there is something new wrong with it every day.

"I know it's a ridiculous flat," she says, "but I think it could be -- will be -- beautiful."

That's how I feel about my place. For the most part, it's not a ridiculous flat. Built in the 1920s, it has that era's sensible design: economy of space combined with simple style and beautiful workmanship. Good closet space, large main room, good-sized bathroom with clever built-in cabinets, and a bedroom that, while small, perfectly -- if snugly -- holds my double bed, two dressers, a bureau, a china cabinet, and a steamer trunk. (It also currently holds a small bookshelf, blearily pushed into the room in the middle of a night after I was awakened by the sound of Sparrow making a midnight snack of it. Not a lot of walking-around room, but easy enough to navigate.

The "dining room" and kitchen are another matter. They are the ridiculous part; at least, the kitchen is.

It was not always so. These rooms, which lie in a shotgun layout from the main room, were originally models of economic design. A whopping six feet across, the dining room bridges the living room and the kitchen (which is also six feet wide). The original French doors that divided it from the living room are, sadly, long gone, as is the folding Murphy table that used to sit inside a cabinet-like apparatus in the wall. My downstairs neighbor still has his; by opening oak doors, you pull down the table, and from it out fold two benches, one on either side. When you are done, you fold it back up. Beautiful.

The original kitchens had plenty of floor-to ceiling cabinet space, making the small kitchen seem uncramped. In contrast, what I have now is a joke among friends who visit. You literally cannot have two people in the kitchen at the same time. The previous owner installed standard-sized cabinets, including one base cabinet that results in a full nineteen inches of clearance.

Cooking is a marvel of ballet, T'ai Chi, and yoga as I pivot, matador-like, to allow drawers to open, and stack mixing bowls anywhere I can on rare surface areas. On the bright side, I can reach everything with little movement; on the other, making a meal is less an act of cooking than of contortion.

I decided to remove the base cabinet and replace it with something cheap, since I have no money for remodeling. So it was that I alley-picked a nice old wooden dresser being thrown out by an older resident up the street. It would fit perfectly, and this holiday weekend I decided to get things rolling.

I removed the contents of the cabinet and surveyed the interior. I started by trying to remove the quarter-round molding at the floor level. And that's when I realized that when they put the new floor in, they did not sit the cabinet on top of the new floor; they cut a hole so that it sat on the old floor. I would need plywood to build it up and hide the yuckiness.

My neighbor C--and I drove to Home Depot, as she'd been wanting to make a trip. Neither of us found most of what we wanted, but I did pick out a nice cheap piece of plywood and brought it to a Dude in Orange to cut it to size for me. While we waited, an older gentleman walked up with a thick, trimmed tree branch about as tall as I.

"Every year, we put up a tree. This year, I decide I'm going to make a cross to celebrate our Lord Jesus," he said, in an accent I couldn't pin down. "I need to cut this; it's the part that goes across and it's too big and heavy."

We discussed his plans and his design, and he wondered how he would stabilize the cross piece. C-- and I were intrigued, and we began brainstorming.

"You could bolt it to the upright, then drive a spike in the back, and tie rope in an X around the branches, using the spike to hold it in place." I suggested.

"My wife suggested that same thing," he said.

"Clearly, your wife is a very intelligent woman," I said.

I also picked up some high-gloss tangerine paint, and when I got back home spent about five hours priming and painting the dresser. It looks fantastic. The plywood is waiting in the kitchen. I'm determined to have it done by Christmas. Then, priming and painting the entire kitchen.

I know it's a ridiculous flat, but I think it could be -- will be -- beautiful.

Back in the Spin

2011-11-16T22:27:00.001-06:00

Over the past several months, a combination of new medication and perimenopause led to fatigue and increased appetite, which meant I've been eating more and exercising less. Add to this that I no longer have a car and my work isn't located close enough to the Metra to get to the Y in time for classes, and you have an extra five or so pounds. Doesn't sound like much, but I'm five feet tall, so it's actually somewhat transformative; jeans that were comfy are tight, dresses that fit comfortably are now land mines of bulges. I'm not fat, I'm still pretty petite, but I feel uncomfortable and I miss being OK with what I saw in the mirror.

I'd always vowed that as I got older I'd not go gently into that good night of becoming fat and frail, so I've been looking for a new gym to attend. Kevin sent me a coupon offer to try 5 classes at a gym not far from one of the El stops on the way home, so I bought them and tonight went to my first spin class there.

The class was a nice mix of ages, and had a fun, mellow vibe. The instructor was a woman about my age, and she played excellent music. I do love Lady Gaga; the woman is a spin-class answer to prayer. The man behind me, who appeared to be in his 50's and was clearly a fit bike enthusiast, periodically whooped when he was feeling happy. It should have been annoying, but it was pretty cute.

I'd been worried about what it would be like to spin after abstaining from biking for awhile, but I did pretty well, and had a good workout. Got the eye from the older guy, and I think a lesbian flirted with me in the locker room.

In other words, the usual.

Peruvian Food and Zombies

2011-11-10T23:32:00.001-06:00

My friend Kevin suggested a free preview of a play he'd heard of, and had a Groupon to a Peruvian restaurant about 8 blocks away, so we decided to make it a night.

The restaurant was really cozy and I liked the atmosphere. The menu had a fair amount of variety, unless you are a vegetarian, in which case your choices are variations of pasta and mushrooms. I can't eat mushrooms, so I made do with a really tasty yucca appetizer and some potato. Hey, you can't go wrong with starch. I liked the place, overall, limited food choice notwithstanding.

We walked the distance to the theater; it was a cold but calm night, so the walk was brisk and pleasant. At an intersection I recognized as the one by Fred's glass studio, and I mentioned that I'd ben thinking it was time to go back and do some more projects. I looked toward the studio, and who was coming out with his bike but Fred.

"FRED!" I yelled across the 5-way intersection. He looked up and I ran across and got a big hug.

"I thought you were mad at me," he said.

"No, I've just been busy and poor, and you know how time just passes and before you realize it a year has gone by," I said. "Can I come back?"

He assured me I could; I just had to call first to make sure he wasn't using all of the tables. I've been wanting to finish the two windows in my living room and work on something for the kitchen so I have more privacy; neighbors are very close.

Kevin and I finished walking to the theater, and made it just before the show began.

It was free, it was short, and it was an object lesson on how some actors could be less bad if they had some direction.

Set in Chicago, the play had this premise: a woman is shot at an amusement park, it's ruled an accident, but her husband believes she was murdered. She was (although why is never really explained). The husband, a newspaper reporter, works with a junior reporter to uncover the mob connection at the amusement park. They do this by working with an informant, a call girl who has been dating the corrupt alderman in hopes of bringing him down for the murder of her mother when she herself was 10. The reporter breaks the story without consulting the junior reporter (who has been the informant's contact); the mob figures out who snitched, and they kill her.

But before they kill her, she puts a Polish curse on the alderman and his henchmen. Henchmen begin to die quickly, and the ghost of the woman keeps appearing to wreak her vengeance, eventually killing the alderman as well as the male reporter who betrayed her.

The plot has its problems. Why was the reporter's wife murdered? Dunno. Why did the reporter run the story without warning his associate so she could in turn warn her informant? What kind of moron jeopardizes informants?

And why did Vengeance Woman work with a reporter to break a story that would bring down the corrupt alderman, when all she had to do was use her witchy powers to kill him? If she can come back from the dead and kill people with a gesture of her hand and some strobe effects, why didn't she just kill him when she could?

And most of all, what the hell was in the letter that was found left for the junior reporter by the dead woman? We are never told, and this is pretty unforgivable.

"I"m so sorry," Kevin apologized later.

"Hey, I don't care, it was short and it was free," I said. "It was also educational. I did of course sit there thinking, 'and I can't get cast?!?'"

But you know, I had a good night anyway. It as one of those random, try new things, mellow deals. I like those.

Get Thee to Indiana..

2011-10-16T23:35:00.001-05:00

It began with a suggestion to my friend C-- last week that we go hiking in the beautiful autumn air before things got crappy. We outlined a plan to head north, perhaps to a nature preserve. I had visions of rolling hills (well, of finding rolling hills), cottonwood trees, majestic oaks.

Another friend, K-- asked whether we wanted to do anything this weekend, and we told her of our plans. She suggested a drive to Indiana to Amish Country, where we could go to farm stands and markets, etc. She seemed excited about it, so I thought, "Sure, why not? Not exactly what I'd had in mind, but if we're outside walking around, that should be fine." K is the salt of the earth; a good friend, comes through in a pinch, thoughtful, giving. We tend to have dissimilar tastes; she's a picnic blanket and classical music, show tunes on the radio; I'm The Vaselines at the Metro, alternative on the radio. Like most good East Coast kids, I'd been packed on a bus as a teenager with a school group and taken to Lancaster County, PA, to see the Amish and the Mennonites (the main difference, from what I could see, was that the Mennonites were kind of like Amish but had taken some PR classes).

I'd spent that trip being an annoyingly socially conscious 12-year-old, grabbing classmates' Kodak Instamatic cameras lest they take forbidden photos of the Amish. What I remember mostly were beards, bonnets, carriages, and shoo fly pie.

Cut to this morning: K-- is driving; J- is in front, C-- and I are in back. Show tunes play until I beg K--to kick it up a bit, and she relents. OK, Bryan Ferry and Haircut 100 are not exactly what I'd wanted, but they were better than Peggy Lee and the Nelson Riddle orchestra.

We shout "WOO!" as we cross the Indiana state line, toy briefly with the idea of stopping by Michael Jackson's old home in Gary, decide Gary is not calling us, and keep heading on. I'm sitting, enjoying being a passenger, thinking back to my Amish experience so long ago. The clothing, the beliefs, the customs.

Wait.

"Hey," I said, "has it occurred to anyone that we are heading to Amish Country...on a SUNDAY?"

"So?" asked C--.

"It's the Sabbath. Nothing is going to be open."

We rode in silence for a bit. I felt like I had to salvage something.

"But hey, there will be non-Amish places open, I'm sure, and we can enjoy walking around!"

We found the Visitors Center in Amish Country. I assumed the staff in the shops was not Amish. The lack of bonnets and the fact that they were doing work seemed a confirmation. J--wanted to watch the free 20-minute video on the Amish, and asked about it. The bored man behind the counter informed us it was shown on the bottom of every hours. We'd just missed it.

Apparently the Amish had not heard of a button called "auto replay."

One of the things the Amish are known for is excellent craftsmanship. Everything is made manually; no trips to Sears for some Black and Decker. Furniture, quilts, candles, you name it, the Amish do it right. So it was a bit disappointing that instead of fine handcrafts we gazed upon Amish snow globes, tacky ornaments...a lot of junk made in China, even the apple peeler.

"If some foreigner came and were unfamiliar with the Amish," grumbled C---, "this crap would give them no idea."

We drove on, and on, and on. Pretty countryside, the occasional Amish buggy, but otherwise nothing. The only moving things were farm animals in the pastures we passed. Small town were closed. We began to get hungry, but could see nothing. We tried the quilt gardens only to find they were closed for the season. I thought wistfully of Wisconsin.

We finally ended up in Elkhart near Mishawaka, and I recognized the commercial strip I'd visited with Marilyn when I'd stayed at her land. I found the diner we'd liked, and we all sat down to a good, friendly meal.

All in all, it wasn't a bad day, but I was sitting for most of it. I'm participating in an organized bike ride next week, and the guy giving me a ride apparently has a cabin in Wisconsin. I pray he's normal and sane and wants to be invaded by a group of nerdy women.

Changes, Changes

2011-10-12T00:36:00.003-05:00

I've noticed that life is cyclical (Whoa, you say, earth-shattering, JC). Yeah, yeah... what I mean is that it's important to remember that it's cyclical. So when things are really good, you hold onto that, knowing that someday they won't be, but that the bad stuff always passes. And when things are bad, you say to yourself, "Hey, remember when things were good, and you promised yourself you'd remember that good things always come back around?"

I have this sort of hypomania, which can be understood best by remembering the part of the children's rhyme that goes, "when she was good, she was very, very good, and when she was bad she was rotten."

So when I'm up, I'm up. When I'm down, I'm down. I've been on meds for this, but the drug I've been on has made me incredibly fatigued. I stopped taking it about 5 days ago, and I was good. Very, very good. Manic good. Energy levels off the charts; my brain feels like there are a million things churning inside, trying to all get out at once. Everything makes me think about something else, something so interesting that I have to just talk about it then and there. I have to exert a conscious act of will to not do this. I get up from my desk ten times every half hour to go get water, find a reason to move and shake the overwhelming agitation that comes from sitting still.

Now, the way I describe it, you might think I look like a freak, but I have it under enough control that I come across as just quirkily energetic. I'm paranoid that I will look look a nut, so I work very hard to compensate.

But social concerns aside, how does mania feel?

It feels fucking glorious.

It feels like being high as a kite, like being able to access all of your brain cells at once. It feels like a superpower. it feels like being free. All you are is what you want; you become your fullest expression, freed from concerns about consequences, because every impulse, every single beautiful impulse zapping nonstop across your mind is good and right and too delicious to ignore.

It also feels like a horrible curse. Because you can't shut anything out, and you can't stop the emotional reaction you have to everything, EVERYTHING around you, from TV commentators to conversations overheard on the elevator. The tone of some one's laugh, the monotonous beat of headphone overflow on the subway, and you go from Jekyll to Hyde in a nanosecond. Your feelings are raw and powerful, and there are no grays, and they are triggered by so much external stimuli that you feel like you've been hooked to a never-ending shock treatment like some monkey trapped in the sadistic experiment of an invisible madman.

And when it goes bad, it goes so far beyond bad. You're eaten by Leviathan, and it's dragging you in its belly to the depths beyond light and balance and rationality to a dark place where your limbs lie ponderous and passive under the weight of it all, and your brain keeps going only now it's an endless chant of no no no I can't what's the point, and you feel your lungs and heart will collapse under the immense inertia of futility. And you wish desperately that they would.

Fortunately, I have a doctor's appointment in a few days and will ask to try something else. In the meantime, I remember that life is cyclical, and that I've felt good before, and that I've felt bad before, and it will always come and go, and that's OK, and that's life.

If only we could Apple-Z Steve's departure.

2011-10-07T00:56:00.003-05:00

Steve Jobs died yesterday, and I've been feeling as depressed as I was when Jim Henson passed. We all have our personal stories about Macs in our life, and I won't bore anyone with mine. But at work today, the big TVs in the break room kept showing Steve's 2005 commencement speech at Stamford in 2005. I'd never seen it, but I couldn't keep from stopping to watch it over an over each time I passed through. It's simple, it's brief, and it hits you between the eyes.

The basic message is, "Life is short, so don't waste it doing things you don't love." A corollary is, "Do what you love, even if you don't see the value, and one day you will see how it got you where you want to be."

He asked whether what we did today would have been what we'd chosen if we'd known it was the last day of our life. That hit me.

So tonight at the closed board meeting as the Impossible Board Member's Unbalanced Wife presented her gate design plan, and I tactfully mentioned that what she was presenting as a finished product was not what we'd selected for her to finish, and as she made a huge scene and accused me of having no taste and attacking her personally (this despite my pointing out a number of times that the design we'd chosen was one of HERS), and during the interminable discussion about bed bugs, and watching Impossible Board Member and the two new guys talk and strategize without even bothering to look at the three woman board members, and when the treasurer flaked and didn't show, which meant we couldn't discuss the budget, and as I reflected that I put a ridiculous amount of personal time and energy into this board and I really just don't want to any more, and that I'm burnt out...I realized that of all the things I would not want to do on the last day of my life, this is right up there, slightly behind a root canal. And that because I'm too taken up with responsibility, I have no time for fun. And I AM fun, not this angry, frustrated, irritable shrew that all of this has turned me into.

So after the board meeting I went to a neighbor's apartment (she'd been president too and had also dealt with Impossible Board Member), vented, got a little tipsy on wine, came back to my place, and calmly sent my resignation to the board.

A huge, HUGE weight has floated off of me.

I'm going to start doing things I like to do. And I'll type about it on my Mac.

Thanks, Steve.

Forgive me.

2011-10-01T12:27:00.001-05:00

Blogger now offers templates, so you may find that the look of this page changes somewhat regularly while I make up my mind.

October

2011-10-01T00:05:00.005-05:00

Well, last time I posted it was spring and I was having an acting-class breakdown. It's now fall, so the weather has gone from chilly to blistering to chilly again. I have not acted since last December and have pretty much lost my appetite for performing. I'm feeling more satisfaction in solitude. I have other artistic interests that I've been neglecting, and I don't need to prove to someone that I can do them in order to do them.

I have a new rabbit for Leroy -- she's been around for several months now; she was very young when I adopted her, so she's his trophy wife. They took to each other very quickly, and now they are inseparable. She's small. brown, and I've named her Sparrow. Actually, her full name is Lady Jane Sparrow Vashta Nerada Furry Piranha.

Because she, Gentle Readers, is a chewer. A chewer that makes a Great White look like a milk-licking kitten.

I've plexiglassed the furniture, shoved blankets under the sofa bed (she was climbing under and up inside and shredding something), stapled hardware cloth to the bottom of the love seat to prevent her from eating it from the inside like the creature from Alien, and have put flexible aluminum ducting over the legs of my dining-room table.

The trash-picked wooden side table has been given over as a casualty of war.

Part of this, I suspect, is because she's very young, and getting adjusted. As she's grown, the chewing has diminished, and hay seems to be all she needs for her chewing urge. She's also still a little skittish (she was found roaming the streets -- people, do NOT dump unwanted rabbits outside - give them to a shelter!) and I think the chewing calms her. As a stress eater, I can relate; what I do to a pack of gum is unholy.

But I'll keep the place locked down for now.

George, Harry's brother and my last cat standing, passed away in August. He'd been having some issues with bladder inflammation, had an ultrasound, threw an embolism, had what appeared to be a mini-stroke, and after several days of watching him get worse, I took him to the vet to be put out of his suffering at the age of 20. What can I say -- it was hard. I miss having a kitty around -- It's been 23 years since I've lived without one. For financial reasons I won't add one to the house yet, but I do miss kitties. I miss my kitties, terribly.

Have finally gotten over my crush on Younger Guy -- I knew I would; I just needed to wait until my brain got over it, and it did. We are completely incompatible, and there's only so many times I can suggest a movie or a book or a musical performance or an outing or a play and have it routinely shot down by a laundry list of gross over-generalizations as to Why He Won't Like It. There's no way I could be happy or grow with someone so determined to reduce life to a series of unshakable prejudices. It's too bad - he's not a bad person, and I hope he finds that woman someday who motivates him to take more chances.

I'm getting to that point in life where I'm losing interest in romance completely. Or rather, in the notion that romance is real. I find myself more interested in hanging out with my female friends and having no guys around at all.

Earlier in the year I went back on an antidepressant I'd taken many years ago. I got tired of feeling on the verge of tears constantly, not to mention the free-floating rage. I'm better now, less manic, able to focus and be more measured. Which is by no means to say that I'm calm; just able to control the impulsivity much better. One side effect (which I had before) is memory issues. I forget the names of actors, books, etc. Things that I'd always been able to pull out of the air stump me. People watching me on the train must be perplexed to see me staring furiously at a point in space for several minutes before a look of relief washes over me as I mutter, "DIANE KEATON!"

I'm still stressed, mostly from work related to my condo board. Our property manager is another hi-drive woman like me; turns out we are on the same medication, and the other day we were talking about our crazy stress dreams:

"I'm in school and I can't find the classroom!"
"I can't get someone to drive me to the airport so that I don't miss my flight!"
"I'm trying to hurry but the ground turns to mud."
"I'm back in college and I can't keep my grades up with a full-time job."
"None of the cars starts, and when one does, it has bungee cords where the doors should be and I'm afraid the goat will fall out."

Much more has happened this summer, but enough of going backward --I'm making a pact to blog regularly again. It clears my mind, it helps me process and unwind. And it brings me closer to you.

Acting

2011-07-03T23:23:00.002-05:00

Struggling to get cast, I decided to try an acting class several months ago, thinking I could perhaps hone and refine, get some feedback and guidance. I met with the head instructor for my interview, was accepted, and was eager. I'd been told that the class used action to bring out character, etc., which appealed to me because I'm not a fan of the School of Emotional Regurgitation. (When I was in therapy in my 20s, my therapist brought up the subject of group therapy, and I responded that I really didn't have the patience for other people's demons or emotions, just as I'm sure my demons were not all that interesting to anyone but me. He didn't push it, as he wasn't all that sure I needed it - I was working pretty hard on my own.)

So first day of class. Four boys, two girls, one woman. Yep, everyone but me was in their 20s. And guess what? Everything was based on emotions an impulses. Act on your impulses. Well, you have a 20-something boy on stage with a 20-something girl, and guess what the impulses are. Yep, lots of kissing, Of course, those impulses did not translate in my scenes, because I was not fuckable to them, nor were they to me. And we all know that most boys feel one of two things toward women: lust or contempt Yeah; it was fun. I'd paid $300 to be an outcast again, only I didn't have the safety of the Latin Club this time around.

In one scene , one of the guys tried to get me to "open up" by taking off his shirt. In the scene analysis afterward, the instructor (there were four) suggested that had I followed my impulses I might have rubbed my hands over the boy's chest.

If I'd followed my impulses, I'd have walked off stage and the incredible feeling of discomfort at the prospect of any kind of sexual encounter with someone I could have given birth to.

In on wordless scene, I was told that I'd come across as "angry" when I looked through some CDs. "Angry about what?" I'd asked, mystified. "I was looking for a CD."

Of course, instead of pointing out that when I get focused I look angry, which might have helped me with my technique, they insisted I was in denial of my true feelings.

True feelings of rage, apparently that sorting through CDs engenders in most people.

I stuck with the class, feeling old, isolated, and more and more, as Morales says in A Chorus Line "that this bullshit was absurd."

Finally, in one class one of the guys decided to take it upon himself to show me how truly angry I was, help me uncover the anger that I was in such denial of, and began insulting me and calling me names, ridiculing me. I should mention that in another scene in the previous week, another guys had told him that I disgusted him. So basically, here I was, a true grown up, being emotionally assaulted by a bunch of kids who think that by being cruel they are somehow experiencing artistic growth.

I ended up in the bathroom in tears, and walked out of the class. I did not return. I did not go through a childhood and adolescence of crippling shyness and self-consciousness, serious depression, and therapy to have these people tell me how I feel. I have faced riot police, gangs, muggers, bad dates, and a verbally abusive alcoholic father; trust me, I know what it feels like to be afraid and angry. Anger is not something I'm going to vomit up like some parlor trick to satisfy some kid with half my life experience who's decided I need to dance to his tune.

And I fail to see how it will make me a better actress. From what I can see, the main things standing in my way are my age and my hair, because nonprofessional theater in Chicago seems more and more like some post-college party for mediocre twentysomethings who think a woman has to be under 35 and have hair to her ass to be feminine. This is the Midwest, were inspiration goes to die.

I've begun discussions with a woman I know form my last show who's near my age and feeling the same way. We're talking about just putting on our own show. If you can't get cast, cast your own damn self.

Today is SP's birthday.

2011-06-29T22:22:00.000-05:00

I guess as you get older, birthdays are less about cake and presents than they are about taking stock.

SP is my best friend. What I mean by that is that I am lucky to have one person on the planet that I trust absolutely, without reservation.

We met 16 years ago. I was 32; he was 20. He lives in London now with his boyfriend, but they are in the process of applying to move to Canada next year. Being on the same continent again will be my birthday present.

Happy Birthday, SP!

I'm in here.

2011-06-28T22:48:00.002-05:00

Sorry to be absent for so long - I've not found my life all that interesting lately, which says that I either have to make my life more interesting or get a better perspective.

Here we are in summer. I'm still at the same job, but it's become easier, mostly because I know how to do it and I'm no longer micromanaged. I've proven myself enough, I guess. The problem is that I have a sort of goofy, kinetic, expressive persona, which leads a lot of people to conclude that I'm ditzy or reckless or immature, but over time people see that when it comes to work, I'm Type A all the way, and serious as a heart attack. A heart attack that does impressions from "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" to tweak Claims Guy.

"I don't want YOUR claim, and I don't want HIS claim, or HIS claim, or HIS claim! I want MY claim, so can I please have my claim now, Nurse Ratched?!?"

There was dry ice left over from some catering event, and Claims Guy put it in a cup with water. I carried the frothing cup around making theremin noises and singing "Science Fiction Double Feature." And then I saw the department head looking at me from where she'd gotten up, and remembered she was back from her London trip. Fortunately, she finds me amusing. Very fortunately.

Bunny Leroy has a new companion, Sparrow (Lady Jane Sparrow), and they are sickeningly in love. Smitten bunnies. Nothing cuter.

I'm still president of my condo board, and that, too is going easier. We have a terrific board, despite a couple of difficult people, and we're getting a lot done. i'll be presiding over my first hearings of people contesting noise complaints. When it comes to being rude and loud, I'm a hanging judge.

Oh, and I went on happy pills. What a difference 20 mgs make. I'm baaaack...

Had an audition last Saturday, and although I thought I did well, I've not heard anything, so still no performance opportunities, which I would very much enjoy. I need cheap hobbies. I watch colleagues in shows, and while I enjoy supporting them, my friend B--said it well: "I'm tired of going to shows and thinking, 'I could do that better.'"

So a couple of friends and I are talking about just producing a show ourselves.

I continue to be a drama magnet: first there was a guy jerking off on my train car (CTA employee, when I told her about it: "Honey, when that happens, I just want to say, "Is that all you GOT?"), then a loopy guy who decided to activate the emergency release on the doors while we were at full speed (I jumped up and made him sit down), then the guy at the post office who stole mail from his estranged wife and was pursued by a pack of us until the police showed up. So yeah, I've been busy.

Off to NH next month to climb Mt. Washington, see my family and some friends. Really looking forward to it.

Random Workness

2011-03-22T23:22:00.001-05:00

So I had my annual review in which my department head gushed and told me how the sun shines out my backside.

Well, OK, not really, but pretty close.

And because I've been such a quick learner and because I've transformed things, and because I've so exceeded expectations, they are going to (pick one):

A. Give me a big raise
B. Give me a big raise and a title change
C. Give me lots more responsibility and a 2% cost-of-living raise

I mean, we've all read Tom Sawyer and we know a fence-painting scam when we see one, right? I know the praise was sincere because the department head is a no-nonsense non-ass kisser. They truly think I should be flattered that their solution to other people's lack of organization and technical skill is to just give their stuff to me.

So I emailed a recruiter I know and asked her to find me a job where I won't get punished for being competent. I've already decided I'll walk from my condo if need be in order to take a job I like even if the pay isn't great; I just can't keep dying on the cross of hyper responsibility as I get screwed. Perhaps I should not have finally seen Fight Club because all I keep thinking is, "This is your life. And it's ending one day at a time."

Another day of Granola.

2011-02-14T00:05:00.002-06:00

Today was another granola demo day. I'd decided I was going to locate my table somewhere far from an open refrigerator case, as I not longer find the challenge of freezing for four hours a bracing test of my fortitude. Besides, I'm sick of staring at butter and yogurt (who knew there were so many kinds?)

I saw another woman demo-ing some cookies in an aisle closer to the front of the store, and asked her whether she'd mind if I set up near her. I figured we could share some company. She liked the idea, and as she was demo-ing gluten-free cookies, we decided we'd create a gluten-free gauntlet for shoppers to run. She was also almost out of product and would be leaving soon.

We chatted and I discovered she worked for a company that was contracted by clients to demo their products. I also found out that for a flat fee she just handed out samples until the product was gone, and then went home. So for three hours she made twice what I made in four.

I'm calling her company tomorrow.

My new location had me facing the Personal Care section, so I was getting to know the woman who worked there. I asked her about the oddest things she's been asked for.

She looked at passing shoppers, waited until we were alone, and said, "I had a guy once talk at me for a half-hour about improving the morphology of his sperm. He was having trouble getting his wife pregnant.

"Another time a guy said he needed something for itching, and I said I needed to know a little bit more. He just said, 'For itching,' and I asked him to describe the condition of the skin, was there a rash, anything, and he finally yelled, 'IT JUST ITCHES!'"

"And that's when you realized what was itching," I laughed.

"Yep."

I told her I often get people who want to talk at me. They just park themselves at my table and don't pick up on cues that they are in the way.

"The thing is," she said, "the people who come into this store, they have their things, their fancy whatever, but a lot of them are just really lonely." I agreed.

Just then, an elderly woman with a bad wig rolled her shopping cart to the table. She was hunched over it to the point where she had to look up at me through huge plastic glasses.

"What are you sampling here?" she snarled.

"This is granola from Michi--"

"YUCK!" she yelled. I looked at her. Now, I deal with people who range from thoughtless to rude all the time, but today I felt that final straw quivering. I've had a really crappy two months -- a REALLY crappy two months, and my impulse control is almost totally gone. I knew I was going to say something, so I tried to channel it into something less destructive.

Putting on the biggest smile I could, I said, "THANK YOU FOR YOUR CANDOR. IT'S SO REFRESHING."

She glared at me then wheeled away.

And so went another demo day.

Facebook Detox

2011-01-25T23:35:00.004-06:00

So I realized I'd developed an unhealthy relationship with Facebook: I'd become preoccupied with what was going on there to the point of addiction. Part of it was the immediacy of being able to post an impulse and have it be read by so many people; part of it was this sense that I was connected to this larger web.

There were side effects. One was that I stopped blogging. Facebook satisfied my craving for communication, leaving me no motivation to create thoughtful entries.

Another was more insidious. I spend most of my free time alone; it's just how my life is. I don't have a BF/husband, and I live alone. I meet tons of people through various activities, but few that have turned into real friendships. A woman in my building put it this way: "Chicago is TOUGH when it comes to making friends. It's almost impossible to break into people's groups."

I think of the friends I have in Boston, and the ways we met. We could have easily not turned into friends, but people were easier to bond with. No such thing has happened here. I'm tired of trying to find a tribe.

Before Facebook, I went out, saw movies, had dinner, kept myself busy. It was fine. After Facebook, I did the same thing but then got to read about all the activities my "friends" did while I was by myself. I discovered that the kids I used to sit for had a birthday party. I wasn't invited. I'd post, "Hey, who wants to do XYZ this weekend?" and get no response.

I became lonely, and the lonelier I became, the more addicted I was to FB. It was like the nerd who tries harder and harder to get the cool kids' attention by hanging around all the time, trying to be witty and eye-catching.

I'd stopped looking for activities to go to; instead, I spent hours posting and reading, trying to feel a sense of community, and feeling more and more empty.

Facebook is great for so many things, but it's still just a tool, and I'd let it decide its role in my life. So as of this Friday, the only people I will keep as FB friends are people I know who live out of state. There has been a bit of a response of dismay from local people, but what they don't get is that if they need FB to stay in touch with me while we live in the same city, maybe that says something about their investment in a friendship with me. The people I see and do things with are either not on FB or communicate with me outside of it or in addition to it.

I'm feeling a mix of anxiety and relief, but mostly relief. I can let go of a facsimile of friendship and focus on my real-life life again, get some real perspective. I'll still be here; the people who really want me in their life know where to find me.

Does it still count as a boycott?

2010-12-04T23:25:00.002-06:00

I always boycott Black Friday. Here you have a holiday that absolutely everyone celebrates, and what? Instead of spending it with family, friends or relaxing, we're supposed to run some manic gerbil-wheel of consumption? Screw that.

The Friday after Thanksgiving I biked to the gym, and on the way back decided to stop at the Salvation Army in Evanston to pick up some winter things. I like shopping there; people are friendly, there's no attitude, and I get some pretty cool stuff very cheap.

When I arrived, Bride of Dracula was outside smoking a cigarette. I smiled at her and she nodded and smiled back. Inside, the place was hopping. It seems even the SA sees a bit of Black Friday. I found lots of good stuff on the racks, and was enjoying the vibe, the hustle and bustle, the great supply of clothes. Finally, I made my way to the line at the register. A woman in front of me was talking to her teenage daughter, who was looking at a fleece jacket.

"Do you like it?" she asked her daughter.

"I'm not sure," the girl said.

"That's a nice jacket," I told her. "Champion is a very good brand, and it wears well for a long time."

They were unfamiliar with Champion, but thanked me and took the jacket.

"Are you a Pisces?" asked the daughter.

"Nope. Leo," I replied. "Talking to strangers, giving them advice, offering an unsolicited opinion. What else could I be?"

"Do you get along with Ares people?" she asked.

"I'm not sure, really," I said. "But my best friend is a Cancer."

They both visibly flinched.

"Really?? asked the mother. They both stared.

"Um. Yeah. Best friend in the whole world."

"How does that work?" the mother asked.

"Well, we are brutally honest with one another and it rolls off our backs, I guess," I said. I sensed they wanted more, and I felt bad that I'd disappointed them with an absence of drama.

Then I idly looked to my right and saw a loveseat. It was small, and somewhat 1970s-ish, but with a very pleasant, benign pattern. I sat on it with my legs extended. Perfect fit.

I've been looking for a loveseat but can't afford a new one, and most of the used ones are lousy. I tend to avoid most upholstered things at second-hand shops, but this item was clean as a whistle and in extraordinarily good shape.

"How much for the loveseat?" I asked Bride of Dracula.

"Sixty-five," she said in her sub-sonic voice.

"That's IT?" I asked. She looked at me with a "you don't buy furniture here much, do you?" look.

I stared at the loveseat, deciding.

"Is a very nice piece," came the rumble behind me.

"OK. I'll take it."

So it was that my Black Friday boycott ended with a "new" loveseat being delivered by Ray the next morning. And today I saw the mother and daughter at Whole Foods. We are full-spectrum people.

State and Lake

2010-11-22T23:39:00.000-06:00

I have to say, although the trains at this station are crazy crowded after work, the performers on the platform are pretty great. There is the duet that performs Same Cooke songs in gorgeous harmony, the seeming brothers who look straight out of Deliverance but who belt out some pretty rockin' guitar country, the woman who plays a guitar with picks and a violin bow and accompanies this with tap shoes Flamenco-style, and the elderly Chinese couple that plays waltzes on an accordion and a Chinese stringed instrument.

I love them all.

"Will things ever return to normal?"

2010-11-21T22:17:00.002-06:00

So says the woman I play, who calls her husband on his cell phone. She does this because her husband has checked out of it all and gone to live in the stairwell of their building.

I like this couple; she is disturbed by his withdrawal from the world (and to an extent, her), but she understands him and loves him well enough to see that he's been happier now in the three days in the stairwell than he's been in years. So she brings him food and misses him and worries that he'll never come back, and talks to him at 2 am when she can't sleep for the worry that he doesn't want her any more.

He has taken to drawing the bricks in the stairwell, and pictures of his wife. The artist in me knows that the best way to see something is to draw it, to be forced to look at every line, every shadow, to be unable to overlook detail if I'm going to render something faithfully. He tells her via phone that he feels closer to her than ever, and you believe it. It's a lovely scene, and I'm looking forward to getting it really honed.

There are two scenes from this play, and another from another play, in which I play half of a middle-aged couple having a brief argument in a museum. My main scene is a two-person scene between a mother and her pregnant 18-year-old semi-estranged daughter. It's a long scene, and would be considered my "big" scene, but honestly I'm kind of over the whole trite Complicated Mother/Daughter drama. So I look at it as a good chance to practice nuance, and to make lines I don't really buy seem believable. The woman playing my daughter is the playwright's daughter, who is in school in Wisconsin. We've had two readings together, over Skype. It's kind of hard, so I just practice my lines on my own. It's a fun kind of challenge. We'll rehearse in person in the next week.

By contrast, my phone call with husband in the stairwell is fairly brief, but I really love it. The man playing my husband is much younger than I, but he has a nice deep voice and I like him in the part. We still need a little work, but I'm enjoying it.

Last Saturday we had rehearsal, and I was early, so I joined the production meeting at the restaurant across the street. The playwright's younger daughter, who is in 7th grade, was there. She began digging in her mouth and produced a piece of a tooth.

"Mom, it's loose, and I got a piece of it," she said.

I was glad I'd already finished my meal.

"It's slippery," she complained. "I can't really get it."

"Well, what you do," I advised her, "is to take a napkin and -- not at the table, but in the bathroom-- use it to grab the tooth."

Across the street at the theater I suggested I pull it for her. She thought it over.

"No, I'll have my dad do it."

"OK, but tell him that when he does it, he has to say 'Is it safe?'"

She's used to me being a little loopy, and she kind of likes it, so she didn't question my instructions.

Oh, and my husband's reply to my question, in the scene?

"No. But that's a good thing when normal was not so good."

The Callback

2010-11-15T00:12:00.000-06:00

On Saturday I went to the callback for the classical play in which I was up for the role of the queen, who is a sort of Lady Macbeth character, only more unbalanced.

The callback was for the entire cast, and as there were roles for three young woman and numerous soldiers, and since people seem incapable of picturing seasoned warriors as being older than 28, it looked like a 4th-year college reunion.

On the bright side, this made spotting the women up for the queen (Isabel) role much easier. I sat in a large, bright empty room where folding chairs had been set up around the perimeter, and gazed around the circle of people, checking out the other Isabel-wannabes. Uh-huh... uh-huh... uh-huh....

Uh-oh.

At three-o'clock sat a very tall, statuesque dark-skinned African-american woman with a nearly shaved head. She was called in to do the Isabel scene, and as she rose from her seat, her perfectly-fitted clothing clung to a very well-muscled body of impossible perfection.

Basically, I was up against Grace Jones.

The room where they did scenes was right off of the waiting room, and one could hear the voices coming through. Although they were a bit muffled, I could still tell that her voice was rich and strong.

And there was when any illusion that I could be intense enough to overcome the fact that I'm five feet tall with a rather high voice went right out the window.

They had her read a number of times with a number of people. I was the final Isabel, and when assigned the other people with whom I'd read, I went into the kitchen with three young men and practiced.

I was feeling a bit dispirited at this point. I'd been there for two hours and hadn't read once, and had watched very pretty boys chat with very pretty girls, and been generally ignored. Had this been 20 years ago, I would have had a complete internal breakdown; ten years ago, I'd have felt completely defeated. I also would have been undone by the huge nervous-sweat pit stains on my poorly chosen gray top, but instead I told myself it lent character. I thought, "you are all younger and prettier than I, but I will bring it, and even if I don't get cast, I will read the hell out of this scene, and that will be my victory."

And I think I did. We went in, I did the scene, I got some direction, re-read the scene accordingly, and that was all. I left with a certainty that I didn't get the part, but I hope to God the Black Chick did, because she was impressive. Sometimes you're right for the part; sometimes someone else is more right. That's the way it goes.

On the bright side, the showcase that I was cast in is beautifully written, and they have given me another scene to be in because they hadn't cast one of the parts yet, and the director for that scene liked me in it when I stood in for it. In addition, the writer added a follow-up scene that I really like, so now I'm in four scenes in the show, including two two-person scenes. And the people in the show are really nice. I'm pleased. I don't know how much attention the show will get, but I anticipate a good experience.

Hypothermic Crush

2010-11-11T22:22:00.001-06:00

I did my granola gig last Sunday. I saw a young man I'd seen before, and then I saw him an hour later, and then even later. He carried a bag with two oranges.

"These college kids must really be hard up to hang at Whole Foods all day eating sample," I thought.

He came over. I'd talked to him the week before; I have lots of regulars.

"You wearing wool socks today?" he asked.

"Yup," I replied. "So, you keeping an eye on me, making sure I don't palm some wine? (I was in front of the liquor department, facing the dairy section. Much warmer than being in front of the open juice fridge).

I was teasing, but then it hit me: Of course! He WAS a store detective!

He clearly thought I'd known, and made some joke about it. Well, how could I not know? He's there ALL DAY. I'm so stupid sometimes.

A little while later, another young guy I'd seen before came by. He, too, was a store cop. You would never notice them unless, like me, you were there for four hours and saw them regularly.

We started chatting about his job, my gig, sharing stories. He was so much that I haven't experienced lately: attractive, conversational, confident. He strolled off and then came back. He was eating some cheese.

"Here, have some," he said, and handed me a piece before strolling off again.

I began to notice him hanging around my area, and I caught him watching me.

"Either he's interested, or I seem really suspicious," I thought. I was incredulous. I mean, this guy was cute -- seriously cute -- and way younger than me. Although I'm used to being taken for younger than I am, which in this case, was just fine with me.

After I was done I put my stuff in my car and came back to catch up on some shopping. I bumped into him in the beans aisle. We exchanged names, and he offered me a Starburst.

I can really go for a guy whose main impulse is to feed me.

He doesn't work this weekend, which is too bad, but that's OK. Something to look forward to.

Seriously cute.

Auditions, Act 3

2010-11-11T22:06:00.002-06:00

I had an audition for The Maid of Orleans last Saturday. I was really excited about this, because I was trying for the role of an antagonist, Queen Isabel. I'd jotted down the address, checked Google, and took the Red Line to the closest stop.

I'd given myself a ton more time than I needed, because I have this fear I'll be late. Turns out that was good, because when I got to 629 N. Sheridan I stood facing a mid-rise condo building. I looked at my date book.

I'd written 629 N. Sheridan on another paper; in the date book was 6129 N. Sheridan. They are not close.

I'd dressed up for the audition in a dress, long sweater and wool coat and knee boots, and considered the walk back to the station. I decided that since I had time, I'd just take the Broadway bus, which would come right by where I was.

What made me think that this was a good idea on a Saturday I can't say. All I know is the bus crawled up Broadway, stopping at Every. Single. Stop. At Argyle, our merry band on the People's Bus was joined by 817 Vietnamese shoppers. Had I not been pressed for time, I'd have thoroughly enjoyed it. But I was pressed for time; yes, I was.

I watched my time surplus head towards deficit with each tug of the cord, each "Stop Requested" flashing across the screen at the front of the bus.

The cultural center where I was to go is actually very close to where I used to live; the irony is that I could have gotten there by taking the El all of three stops, or riding my bike for fifteen minutes.

I finally got off when it seemed the remaining distance was faster traveled on foot. I ran the five blocks, gasping out my lines in preparation. I was reading a monologue by the goddess of love from Euripides' Hippolytus.

"I am called...*puff puff* ...the goddess Cypris..."

I ran up Broadway, dodging shoppers, taking a right at Granville.

"...has blasphemed me... *gasp*...naming me vilest of the gods in heaven..."

I finally arrived. The building is a gorgeous old thing right on the Lake. It's empty, available for functions and.. well, auditions.

A young woman sat at a table. She had me fill out the usual form, then told me I was third in line. She was very pleasant. I'd had a lot of tea, and asked for the bathroom. She pointed.

The bathroom was smelly and old, and had no toilet paper, as I discovered...after. So I just pulled my tights up, feeling distinctly unlike the goddess of love.

I began running my scene, walking through the empty hall off the bathroom. My nose was running from the dash from the bus, and I needed to blow it badly. There was a grim kitchen, and I opened cabinets in search of paper towels, anything. Nothing.

I could not audition while sniffing every three seconds. I was getting desperate. Just as I considered the inside of my sweater, I spotted a discarded paper towel in the trash. Someone had clearly used it to dry their hands, leaving a large portion of it untouched. So yes, the Goddess of Love, having just drip-dried in the toilet, blew her nose on a discarded paper towel scavenged from the trash.

My turn came and I did my bit in front of three people in a wonderful old room with big windows. It was the first time I'd used the monologue, and I felt good about it.

I got a call-back and a scene to review for it. I know I can play this character. I just have to convince them that five-foot me can command a stage.

Watch me.

Auditions, Act 2

2010-11-11T21:43:00.001-06:00

It was a single-night audition. Basically, a young local man has written a play about Relationships, and I landed the role of the 40-year-old woman. The jaded, bitter divorced attorney 40-year-old woman. Yes, I am once again playing a cliche. So there are no performance dates yet, because they are hoping for "backers," so we are reading for "potential financiers" next week.

Trust me, this all sounds way more weighty than it is. The script is not, in my opinion, in a final form. I know it's hard to write a play, and lord knows I've never written one, but really, when the only women in the play are competing for the same man, your Inner Feminist heaves a great, big annoyed (and bored) sigh.

So last Saturday the cast met in the playwright's Streeterville apartment just behind Watertower Place. Think Chicago's equivalent of Central Park West. There was a doorman. I mean a literal doorman whose job it was to open the door.

I am never comfortable with this arrangement.

The playwright, "Alex," had baked muffins and had plates of pastries, and offered us coffee and tea and orange juice laid out in a large dining room. He gave us a tour, and I asked him to pause in the kitchen so that I could make out with his butler-pantry cabinets. We glided over walnut-stained hardwood floors to the living room (yes, Virginia, there was a fireplace), and I looked through the full-length windows over the Juliet balcony at my sad car being bullied by an Audi.

The French boyfriend, Mark, was asleep in the bedroom. Of course.

The group consisted of playwright Alex, the director, "Ned;" "Tracy," the Stage Manager; "Cassie,
the female lead; "Jack," the male lead; "Josh" in the supporting role of Gay Best Friend to the female lead; and "Sarah," airhead girlfriend to Jack. I play Jack lifelong best friend, Jane, who is also in love with him. Jack is supposed to be my age. The actor playing him is barely 30, but I think he'll be able to pull it off. I have to cringe through lines about 40-year-olds being old.

The other actors are all in their 20s. The female lead is in college, studying theater. Jack is understudying with Chicago Shakespeare and is fairly solid; Sarah is very good as the bimbo, and I think I've got Jane down.

The female lead, however, is awful. Just awful.

It could possibly be the reading thing again. I am not exaggerating when I say that the number of people I meet who cannot read is starting to really enrage me. When you are a senior in college, there is just no excuse for this. None.

"I spoke to Jack-eese," said Sarah.

This was how she read "Jacques" before finally being corrected.

Other terms that held up our collective brain trust included "indebted" and "Le Monsieur." At one point the female lead struggled mightily with a word before I blurted, "the word is ENEMA."

I want to add that they were all extremely nice, and you can invite me to your place any time to read your script when you feed me like that.

After we read it, the director asked whether we had any questions or comments. I looked around the table, watching people watch each other. I figured I'd take the lead.

"I don't understand why they don't end up together. I mean, it's refreshing that they don't, but I don't feel like I'm really given a reason to believe it."

My questions elicited a chorus of agreement, and we all began discussing the play. We had some good comments, and the playwright took notes. I managed to suggest that the relationship between my character and the lead be less nasty, that there were some great opportunities to let the audience in on what made them tick, and the other cast members agreed.

At one point, caught up in the discussion, I looked at Alex's face.

"Hold it," I said. "we're all excited about this, and we're all giving you lots of feedback, but I want you to know that you have a good basic work here, and it may feel like we're picking it apart, but we're just enthusiastic."

The thing is, it's hard to write about relationships without falling into cliche. And I don't know, maybe a gay man should write what he knows, and women, well, women who date men aren't it.

So we read the show for our potential financiers next Monday. I'm amused. Frankly, I don't know when the show will go up, and if I'll be around when it does, but I have a pretty small part and it's something to do.

Auditions, Act I

2010-11-07T00:33:00.000-05:00

I had an audition a week or so ago where I was scheduled to meet the playwright and another actor at a small community center in neighboring Evanston. I arrived to find them at a table in the main room. Accompanying them were the playwright's wife and daughter, who was about 10. The wife had brought little homemade cupcakes. already so much nicer than other auditions.

The playwright, Mark, is putting on a showcase of his work: some one-act pieces, some scenes from full-length plays. The other actor, Ken, and I were to read some of the work. Ken was about my age. I mentioned to Mark that I had trouble finding roles given my age, and he said that he had a really hard time finding mature actors. He had had some good younger actors audition, but he really wanted to balance out the cast.

The world is a big, fat conundrum.

So Ken and I read some scenes. Ken had some experience, but he had a shortcoming that drives me straight up the wall: he couldn't cold read. He wasn't illiterate, but he had trouble just reading the page, and kept stumbling and having to backtrack. Forget about injecting any real character into his lines. It's amazing how many actors I've met who, once they learned their lines, were fine, but who really had to work hard to actually *read* them.

Mark and his family reminded me of New York Jews. If you know me, that's high praise. By this I mean that they were intelligent, educated, had a worldview, and were good, kind people. They were a refreshing change from what I'm used to. I wanted to go live with them. Their daughter, Cathy, was greedily reading a thick 'tween fantasy book whose cover revealed a tough heroine protagonist holding a sword.

One script was rather heady; the proprietor of a philosophical cafe proposed a variety of things to a patron. We started the scene with Ken as the diner owner and me as the patron. Ken, who'd been emailed the script, said he first needed some clarification on some terms he'd never seen before. In a previous scene, we'd had to acquaint him with "Aeschylus," which did not bode well.

"This," he pointed to the page.

Art Nouveau. Bauhaus. You get the idea. I don't know what disturbed me more, that he had gotten to almost middle age without ever hearing of these things, or that he'd gotten the script online and never thought to look them up.

My Scottish coworker, Colin, told me the other day that someone had rated American cities according to their intellectual rating, based on things like number of libraries, number of nonfiction books purchased, etc.

"Boston came in number one," he said. "Chicago was 22."

"So now I have hard data to support my growing impression that people here are just plain thick," I said.

I mean, really. ART NOUVEAU? BAUHAUS?

Ken and I got through the slow death that was him reading the script, then he got to leave while I read a two-woman scene. In this scene a woman tries to connect with her estranged 18-year-old daughter, who's single and pregnant.

"Cathy," the director called. "Can you come read with us?"

Cathy put down her book and bounced over. She was clearly used to this. She was adorable in pigtails and glasses. She sat down next to me and by golly, the kid could read, and she could deliver. Although I confess it was odd to have her play the character.

"I said I was sorry. that was four years ago already, for Christ;s sake," she said. We were discussing her driving her drunk boyfriend home. She was great.

We all had a nice chat. I really like Mark and his family, and I got a role in two of the scenes, including the mother/daughter scene. I confess the scene reads a bit like a piece from Lifetime TV, but I think it can work with the right approach. The daughter will be played by Mark's older daughter, who is attending Northwestern and majoring in theater. Although, really, doing it with Cathy as daughter might be really fun. If I could keep a straight face.

And as I wrote that...

2010-11-05T21:34:00.002-05:00

..I realize I need to focus.

I want to tell more...

2010-11-05T21:13:00.000-05:00

..but I'm so tired.

New condo board, Yours Truly as president; cast in two shows, one as a supporting character, another in a couple of scenes of a showcase; still working 4 hours a weekend; trying to complete a painting, need to do taxes for Boston property; another audition tomorrow and one on Monday. Job continues to spiral down into unmitigated hell; all I really want is to live near SP and eat dinner together.

But for now, will crawl into comfy flannel sheets and sleep well.

I keep looking for the PUNK'D camera...

2010-11-03T20:23:00.000-05:00

Today at staff meeting, upon being informed that some insurance policies were sent in binders with a CD at the back containing the reams of backup data and documents that went into the policy, the department head decided that we needed to print out everything on CDs because at some point in future they may become obsolete and we won't be able to read them.

Nice? NICE?!?!?

2010-11-01T23:33:00.001-05:00

I'm going through the latest cycle of being so aggravated with my pointless job that I want to walk out, never look back, sell all my possessions, load up my car with my animals and a few items, drive back East, and live in someone's basement.

The latest, briefly (omitting for time's sake the complete LUNACY of wasted effort that this entire procedure represents): we have sent to Property Managers, among other things, Excel spreadsheets, each containing a list of the properties they oversee. The information on these sheets needs to be updated, then we transfer the updated info. into the original master sheet. There are approximately 20 columns of data for each property. The master of this was created by our sadistic, incompetent broker who decided that oh, by the way, we need to highlight EVERY CELL that people change. We're talking a LOT of properties. I flatly refuse to sit with my coworker manually comparing the original to updated sheets, and instead downloaded some unknown software that will compare sheets and give us 60 free uses. Because I am the only one who knows how to use the Internet for anything other than sending jokes about cats and testicles.

All of this galls me, all of this sucks, but what is really sending me from 0 to 60 is that in addition to people sending these things in past their deadlines despite numerous reminders, when they finally do send them, we have to keep sending them back because people DON'T READ DIRECTIONS.

Today, I was on the phone with SP and I saw one come into my inbox. This had been sent before, and returned to be completed. I opened it and lost it.

"SHIT. Shit shit SHIT!!!!" I hissed into SP's ear. "These stupid F*CKING PEOPLE! HOW DO THESE PEOPLE HAVE JOBS?!? WHAT IS SO HARD ABOUT "ALL CELLS MUST BE FILLED IN -- NONE MAY BE LEFT BLANK!"

"I can tell you're angry because you're whispering," said SP. "It used to scare me, but I'm used to it now."

"OK, I have to go," I said. "I need to get real with this guy." I hung up.

"Now, now, be nice," said my spineless co-worker.

And here, Lades and Gentlemen, is where I lost all interest in worrying about how she will cope when I do finally leave.

"I don't have to be nice. He does, however, need to learn how to do his damn job," I snapped.

WTF?!?!? NICE? Really? Is there any lingering mystery as to why this woman gets walked all over? "Oh, I should really take charge of these procedures, but I'll worry about being nice instead when these dickheads ignore my instructions and blow past deadlines EVERY TIME, making life three times as hard for me and my co-worker, who is already seething with visions of homicide."

I sent him a very direct email. Short sentences. Periods.

He replied, "What do I do if I don't have the information?"

Let me interject here that in every column, there is an elaborate header that describes the information they're looking for. Under this explanation is a list of possible numbers, with what each stands for. At the top is 0. "0=Unknown," to be exact.

"As the instructions clearly state," I typed, gritting my teeth,"you put '0' when you don't know. The broker won't accept an empty cell; they need an indication that you have answered every question."

I have had to ask for information to be corrected over and over, simply because people will not read directions. Apparently people no longer respond to anything that is more than 42 characters long on a smartphone text screen.

Spineless Coworker isn't in tomorrow, so I stayed until 6:30 to get things under control before tomorrow. If I'm not in the headlines, I've smuggled rum into the office.

When I am an old woman, I shall...

2010-10-31T00:41:00.004-05:00

We most of us know how this poem begins. "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple, and a red hat that doesn't go, and that doesn't suit me."

When I was in college, my friend Linda and I would gleefully recite this poem, Warning, an anthem to finally getting to an age where you are fully, freely, joyously and eccentrically yourself and stop worrying about being responsible and dignified. I have seen flocks of grey-haired members of local Red Hat societies, identifiable by their conspicuous headwear in varying shades of crimson.

Yesterday I was coming home from work and waiting at the light to cross Sheridan before going down my street. I had on my iPod. An older woman was waiting at the curb; she appeared in her early 60s, dark, coiffed hair, makeup - pretty, in a Liza Minelli way. Animatedly stepping to and fro. She wore a coat with a leopard-print collar, shiny black knee boots, and a red hat on her head. I wondered whether she belonged to a Red Hat club. She turned and said something to me, so I removed my ear buds and smiled at her. "Pardon?"

"I have to pee," she said, stepping from side to side.

"Then I hope the light changes very soon for you," I said.

I shall sit down on the pavement when I am tired

and gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells

and run my stick along the public railings

and make up for the sobriety of my youth.

And by way of casual conversation, tell people when I need to pee.

Absolutely marvelous.

Oh, yes he did!

2010-10-28T22:57:00.005-05:00

The other day I was patting Leroy, my rabbit, caressing his snout, which he loves. My fingers brushed something rough, so I picked him up and looked at his mouth. His lips were scaly, almost scabby. I was worried that he'd eaten or chewed something that had caused a reaction, or something poisonous. I scheduled an appointment with the vet.

So yesterday morning we arrived at the vet. She came in, gave him a physical, wrapped him in a towel, flipped him over, and looked at his mouth.

She smiled at me. "He has syphilis."

I stared and then burst out laughing. "Of COURSE he does. Because that's just perfect. HOW?!?"

"He probably had it when you got him but didn't have any symptoms," she explained. She also assured me that if he'd given it to Amie, it would not have been what killed her.

"Wait. So if he's had it for a year," I said, "am I going to come home to find sunflowers all over my wall and a long, velvety ear on the floor?"

She explained that it doesn't affect rabbits the same way as people, as far as they knew, and that three injections of antibiotic should do the trick. She also assured me I couldn't catch it (I had visions of THAT doctor's appointment).

As I was paying the bill, a small, lean Basset Hound on a leash moaned and wailed with ecstasy at the prospect of someone who could pat her. She kept scooting across the floor, groaning and wagging her tail. I went over, crouched, and gave her a hug. I scratched her back and the base of her tail. She wooed and groaned and was in heaven. She was very pretty.

"She lost the use of her hind legs," her person said. "She's only now getting it back, slowly. That's why she was pulling herself towards you."

"Well, she's so adorable it's hard not to come to her, so she's got that worked out," I said, rubbing the dog's ears (her tag said her name was Lily). Lily tucked her face into my armpit and sighed with pleasure. Her tail beat a dull rhythm on the floor.

"Whoa Lily, you sure got that hound aroma going on," I said, as the musky doggy smell wafted over me.

"Yeah, she needs a bath but I wanted to wait until she could stand better," her person said. She looked toward my carrier. "Is that a cat in there?"

"It's a rabbit," I told her. Then, relishing the anticipation, I added, "with syphilis."

"What?!?!"

"Yep. Not contagious. Easily addressed."

"How does a rabbit get syphilis?!?" she asked.

"The usual way," I explained. "He was rescued in a raid on a place that had about 70 rabbits. He was neutered and adopted out, but it seems that until that time, my Leroy was a Travelin' Man."

It's fun to go to the YYYYY! M! C! A!

2010-10-27T00:07:00.006-05:00

Now that fall is here and I wake in the dark, I'm not so motivated to ride my bike to work. This means I'm back to a regular routine at the gym, which is the Y. I love the Y; the people are nice, it's not an ego factory, and I never feel unwelcome when I have to go to a predominantly male part of the gym (I'm more a strength-training gal; attempts at aerobics invariably degenerate into a Jerry Lewis tribute, and an attempt at mat Pilates looked like the wrong end of a Milgram experiment).

But I used to attend a spin class on Tuesday nights, when my work location allowed me to get to it on time. It kept me in biking form, and the instructor gave us a great workout to fantastic music. The room looked out via a glass wall to the indoor running track outside, so if you were facing the outside wall, you would see people do their turns around the track: runners, walkers, people in singles and in pairs.

The thing is, because the spin room was dark, the window had a TV effect: anytime someone went past, if you were facing the window, your eyes flickered to it. Thus, the 50-something guy who walked for a solid hour around the track would often look to see me looking at him (among others). He began to look in, and this mildly awkward chronic eye contact began. I was not interested in this person; he was just a guy walking, we had never had a conversation, and I had never seen him speak to another person or crack a smile. I created a backstory for him, imagined he was a retired Marine who had Seen Too Much. I don't think he was particularly looking at me; he seemed caught up in the same wandering cycle of eye-catches-movement-oops-you-again-really-not-staring-a-you.

I haven't been to spin all summer, but I've been going to the gym to work out. I keep seeing this same man in the workout area. It's a cavernous high-ceilinged room, cardio machines on one side, resistance stations in the middle, and a section for free weights at the other end. The man and I have met eyes a few times, and it's clear we recognize each other, but there is nothing -- not a smile, not an acknowledgement. I have to stress that I'm not attracted to him at all. (He never smiles. How can you be attracted to someone who never smiles?) We seem to be in this awkward dance where we keep inadvertently meeting eyes (the walls in the weight area are mostly mirrors) and it's irritating, because I don't want to do this, which seems to guarantee that I will.

There's also another thing. Back in my 20's I was a special instructor for Severely and Profoundly Mentally Retarded Adults. Think grownups with the mental capacity of a toddler, usually with other behavioral or physical issues.

There was one client, Steven, who had issues with self-injurious behavior and a clothes obsession. This man looks a lot like Steven. So even when I idly try to imagine what it would be like to go to dinner with this man, the scenario invariably involves him being served something that disappoints him, resulting in him slamming his head against the table, then soiling his clothing before peeling it off and throwing it. I give him a time out, and drive him home.

And still, not all that much worse than a few dates I've actually been on.

Pretty

2010-10-24T22:52:00.000-05:00

This has been going around Facebook, and it's worth repeating here. This performer is my new heroine.

Email purging as time capsule

2010-10-24T10:31:00.000-05:00

Found this while cleaning out old emails. Don't know whether I'd posted this here, but I'd sent it to a guy with whom I'd had two uneventful dates back in 2007. It's the kind of thing where, when you read it three years later, you wonder, "Did he realize with deep regret what a funny, whimsical person he so foolishly rejected, or did this come across as the mad scratchings of a total maniac, validating his choice completely and making him eternally grateful that he dodged that bullet?"
**********

I don’t want to get your hopes up unnecessarily, because there are still two months left to the year and a dark-horse candidate could come out of nowhere and blow it all, but right now you are scheduled to receive the “I was 100% of Joy’s Dating Life in 2007” award!!!!!!

Prizes will include:

The expired condoms in my bedside table, dipped in bronze and mounted (Obvious pun avoided).
The scary emails from fiftysomething men from New Jersey and Elgin who insisted we would hit it off, Baby.
The flirtatious emails from not one but TWO men in whom I was actually interested before they decided to start sentences with the words “my wife...”
A soundtrack, with polka mix, of all the times a gay person here has said, “Oh..you’re...straight?”
A copy of the plane ticket to my upcoming London trip on Virgin Atlantic, because by now I can claim reinstatement.

..and much, much more!!!

“I was 100% of Joy’s Dating Life” sponsored by Angostura Bitters http://www.angostura.com/home.htm, Cold Comfort Farm, on DVD everywhere, and the Society of Perpetually Single Women With Cats. “I was 100% of Joy’s Dating Life” is protected under U.S. and international copyright.

Publish Post

Party Talk

2010-10-24T00:52:00.002-05:00

My neighbor and her husband are returning to New Jersey, so they had a going-away party at their apartment. Some of us form the condo came as well as other of their friends, a few couples they had known for awhile.

One of the women was a vegetarian, the first one I'd ever met outside of a vegetarian gathering. We bonded instantly, and shared battle stories of living as vegetarians in Chicago. Then she mentioned that she had a gluten allergy, so I brought her to my apartment to get some gluten-free granola samples. Back at the party, her husband came over and somehow -- I'm not sure how; it was loud and rowdy and friendly and they were drinking -- the subject of vasectomies came up, as they do (I didn't bring it up, in case you're wondering. There was a lot of Jameson's being drunk by others). Her husband insisted he would never get one.

"I have my kids and I don't need any more, and I'm happy to keep things as they are."

"You don't want more kids," I said.

"Right."

"So who's making sure that doesn't happen?"

He looked puzzled, then pointed to his wife. "Well, she does. She has that thing in her."

"So you're happy for her to take care of this for the next 20 years, with 'that thing'" I said. I then proceeded to do my imitation of a terrified man obsessively guarding his testicles. I was pretty limber.

"Dude, I'd totally get it done," said my friend's husband.

"Dude, you'd let them cut your stuff?!?"

"It's like nothing, Dude. It's a doctor visit."

"Dude, but It will be all gone!"

"Nothing is gone," I laughed. "Just deactivated."

After he had confirmed that it was much more invasive for his wife to get her tubes tied than for him to have a vasectomy, and after I answered his questions about my tubal ligation (which included a primer on what exactly happened during a menstrual cycle -- seriously, he was genuinely fascinated and asked all kinds of questions), we proceeded to questions about male anatomy and what happened with a vasectomy.

What grown people don't know about their own bodies amazes me. He was funny, though, and earnest, and he was becoming fascinated by the subject. So while he stood there, engrossed, Light Beer in hand, I explained the difference between sperm and semen, where each came from; I described a train that still ran but no longer had passengers. And of course the party starter, the prostate.

"So...I'll still have all my...stuff?"

"All your stuff."

"Where do the sperm go?"

"Exactly where they go when they die constantly in your testicles. They are absorbed."

"Dude, you don't use them all!" his friend said.

But..ok..when I ejaculate -- will I still have ...you know...

"You will still have your money shot."

"Whoa, cool! And will it still be... you know... juicy?"

"It will still be delicious," I assured him.

He was dead serious. His wife behind him was doubled over.

"Wow, Dude! I never knew all this!" he said to my friend's husband. His expression was like Helen Keller at the water pump.

He turned to his wife.

"Think of all the fun," she said.

"I'm so getting this done!" he said, and kissed her. Then he and his pal went to get more tequila.

His wife and I were grinning.

"You're welcome," I said.

Then I spoke with Jose who was there with his wife, a very sweet woman. Jose worked for a company that was growing, and we talked about employment, I mentioned I was probably not going to be able to leave Chicago as soon as I'd hoped, and was considering that I needed a new job. He said they were always looking for customer advocates, they were growing, and the pay was decent. He took out his smart phone to get my number.

"So you're gay, right?"

"Pardon?"

"You're gay?"

"Um. No."

"Really? Never even experimented?" Perplexed.

"No. Always been wired for guys." Wondering where this was going.

"Oh, I guess I thought you were."

"Did you just ask her if she was gay?" My neighbor asked, appalled. She turned to me. "He's like that."

"Oh, I'm not bothered, " I said.

"Wy would you assume she's gay?!?!" My neighbor pressed him.

"I don't know. Maybe the hair," he said.

"And," I suggested, tying to diffuse the awkwardness, "because the only possible reason a girl like me would have for being here without a guy or three hanging off me is that she's a lesbian."

"Exactly. You're hot, so..."

I'd been picking up a subtle flirtation from him, but this was more blatant. I don't appreciate married men who flirt. Especially married men who flirt at parties attended by their wives.

It was late and time to go. I went to say goodbye to my friend.

"So I introduced one woman to new granola and convinced her husband --and possibly yours--to get a vasectomy, and might have a line on a new job. My work here is done. I'll miss you. I'll be the only East Coast head case here." I grabbed her arm. "But you're going over the wall, and I'm happy for you. I'll see you on the outside. I'll come to Jersey to visit!"

Oh, and I made cookies, from scratch.

To Amie, a sweet, sweet girl.

2010-10-04T01:03:00.001-05:00

Amie, giving Leroy a smoochy grooming session.

Amie, like many lops, had had chronic issues with her teeth. Every 6 weeks or so I'd bring her in to have her teeth examined and trimmed, because for some reason she didn't grind them down properly. Because rabbit teeth grow constantly, this is an issue. My previous girl, Lola (also a lop), had had the same problem, and had been put to sleep when a heart condition appeared when surgery was considered for a sudden abscess behind her eye that was probably tooth-related.

By the middle of August Amie had been eating just fine but was losing weight at an alarming rate. Blood tests showed nothing conclusive, and she was put on antibiotics just in case. At one follow-up appointment, I felt a ping-pong-sized lump under her chin. This was brand new, and I was startled when my fingers found it.

When my vet came in, she felt it and nodded. She looked grim.

"Abscess."

"Dental?"

"Yes."

"The kind we'd talked about? The kind we can't cure but can only maybe manage?"

"Yes."

She lanced the abscess to drain it. Rabbit pus is the texture of caulk for various reasons, so it takes some work to clean out a rabbit abscess. Amie was very good about it, wrapped in her Bunny Burrito towel. Her weight was down to under three pounds. She'd lost a full third of her body weight.

More abscesses appeared, and I tried to address them. I flushed out her poor neck every night, marveling at the cavernous pockets that had appeared under her jaw. She ate like a pig but felt bony and frail. She wasn't healing despite changing to another antibiotic. We were pretty certain she was geriatric, and surmised that there may have been cancer at play as well to account for the weight loss.

After another evening putting her through abscess torture, I decided it was time. I'd given her a chance, but she wasn't getting better, and her quality of life was not great. She still loved to eat, was chipper and sweet, and hopped to the front of her hutch to lick my nose or hands when I knelt down to say hi. She was so adorable, which made her condition so much more sad. I'd snuggle her or pat her back, and wince at how skeletal she felt under my fingers. The vet warned she was in danger of cardiac arrest from being so thin.

So in the beginning of September I took her in and had her put to sleep. I got to hold her and the nose cone for the gas that was used to knock her out so that the euthanasia solution could be administered directly to her heart. I rubbed her head and kissed her ears, and once she was out I held her little paw while the vet administered the solution. The vet was as teary as I.

I'd brought Leroy so that he could see her after. It sounds morbid, but rabbits bond and I've learned that it's kinder to let them know when the other is gone so that they don't look for them. I brought Amie to Leroy in the exam room. He sniffed her, then froze, staring at me. His look was terrible.

"I think he knows," said the vet.

"Oh, he knows," I said. "Thing is, he's wondering what I had to do with it." I talked to him and patted him, but his eyes never left my face.

So now it's just one of each species in my house: rabbit, cat, human. I believe that pets should have one of their kind to keep them company, and have always had at least two of whatever was under my roof, but money issues prevent me from doing this right now. I give them both a lot of attention, but I am an inadequate substitute, and I know George misses Harry and Leroy misses his girl. I've always been surrounded by a crowd of animals, and as their numbers diminish I feel like I'm watching the ending of a story. It's a good story, full of lots of happy moments, but the ending is heavy and bittersweet.

Granola Girl

2010-10-03T01:01:00.002-05:00

Today was my first gig demo-ing an all-natural gluten-free granola made by a woman in Michigan, Jessica, who's gotten her product into a number of Illinois Whole Foods. Basically, I stand at a table and hand out free samples in a transparent attempt to get people to buy the product. I do this to make extra money, and in a way that does not involve sitting at a desk or in any way using Microsoft Office.

So I arrived today with the materials that Jessica had sent me. She is incredibly thorough and organized, having emailed me clear instructions and photos on how to set up the table, and sent me a large tub containing all the samples and paraphernalia I'd need. We'd had a one-hour phone training where we went over ingredients, etiquette, everything. I was ready.

When i arrived I was shown where to set up by a Whole Foods staff member. My table was to be between the chilled juice case to my back and the dairy case on the other side of the aisle. Jessica, ever thorough, had advised me to wear a sweater, and I was glad I'd followed her advice. I put my bandanna (regulations - hair covered when serving food), donned my Jessica's apron, latex gloves, and set up. I laid out the packages and spooned samples into small paper cups like the cups they put pills into at the hospital.

A word here about granola. I have never been a huge fan. I grew up with Nature Valley bars, which were basically oats and sugar. Like cardboard dipped in syrup. If that granola is comparable to a Ford, Jessica's granola is a rocket ship. Oats, honey, maple syrup, coconut, flax seed, cinnamon, almonds, Michigan dried cherries, chocolate chips...it's the most delicious granola I've ever had, and the hardest thing has been to have a huge tub of it in my house and not eat it all.

As people passed (and there was a lot of traffic, what with it being the 11-3 slot at Whole Foods on a Saturday), I'd invite people to try a snack, grab a pick-me-up, anything that didn't sound like, "Please, try my product." I was friendly but not overbearing, witty ("Only in Whole Foods would you be offered granola shots") and proved conversational on a number of subjects. I discussed why an oat-based product wasn't by nature gluten-free (oats grown near gluten-containing grains can become contaminated, and equipment used to process gluten-containing grains are often also used on oats, introducing gluten to a naturally gluten-free grain.) I answered questions about nuts and dairy. I suggested ways to serve it, and assured kids that they could buy it with their allowance if their parents would not.

I watched people idly take a sample, start to walk away, and then pop some granola into their mouth. I saw them stop, then turn with a look of amazement on their faces.

"This is GOOD!" they'd say.

"I know!"

And people are hilarious. There are those who avoid eye contact, uncomfortable; those who sheepishly try one, and then ask permission to try another flavor, and who act like it's Christmas when I tell them they can try as much as they like.

Then there are the Mooches. Now, when I was unemployed, I'd arrange for my shopping to take place at about this time in order to avail myself of all the free samples on display at the local Whole Foods. I called it "Whole Foods Tapas" and could usually put together a good lunch out of free apple slices, cheese cubes, pineapple on toothpicks, snack crackers, kettle chips, cake chunks, and acai juice. But I always took a sample, not ten, and I was shopping at the time.

I was impressed by how shamelessly some people would ask the price of the granola, and upon being told (it's a little pricey because of the certified gluten-free oats and the top-shelf ingredients), instead of taking a bag to buy, would just take several cups of samples, sometimes returning for more when those had been consumed. Our protocol is to always be friendly, and never deny someone. Still, the chubby 17-ish girl who kept swooping by and grabbing a sample started to get tiresome after the fourth pass, pretending to be on her cell phone in an effort to avoid having to look at me. I'd made up my mind that the next time I saw her I'd put on a big smile and say loudly, "Boy you really like this huh? You're not full YET?" But she didn't come back.

I chatted with the store staff, who came by for samples, word getting out that the granola was crazy good. Louie told me about the almond tree outside the house in Puerto Rico that his sister now lived in and was fixing up.

After three hours, my hands were very cold, and the generic reggae that had been pumped in an endless loop into the store had become a form of mental torture.

"Louie," I called to him as he passed by with a labeler. "how much would it cost to bribe you into getting some metal onto that system?"

"One day it was all jazz," Louie said. "All like, 'tweet' and 'boop.' I had a huge headache at the end of the day."

"All I know is I could really use some 'Highway to Hell' right now," I shivered.

At some point, the music changed, heralded by the first bars of Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" thumping through the speakers.

"THANK GOD!" I exclaimed involuntarily, startling the people looking at organic cage-free eggs, butter, and butter substitutes.

My samples persuaded people to buy 17 bags of granola. I'm paid hourly, not on commission, so the pride I took was purely competitive. Next Sunday, I shall return.

And on the eighth day God created a black hole. And He named it O'Hare. And it was most definitely not good.

2010-09-29T00:31:00.003-05:00

Met my old Boston friend Dawn for dinner tonight. We used to work together oh, 17 years ago, back when I was young and recently divorced and nobody had internet. Except for our company and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, which was one of our company's clients (we were helping them through their identity crisis now that there was no more Cold War).

Dawn works in marketing for a software manufacturer, so she travels a lot doing trade shows. She's in town doing one this week, so we got together. Now, the one thing about Chicago is that if you need a convention center, you either have McCormick Place in Chicago (and the attendant union madness), or you go to Rosemont, which is the area around O'Hare International Airport, a small city comprised of convention centers, large music venues, and lots of hotels. She was in Rosemont. It's a bit of a hike, as are a lot of things in this sprawling metropolitan area, but I really wanted to see her. I made the trip in under an hour, which is pretty good, considering; traffic is usually pretty bad.

There's not a lot out that way, and I don't know the area well. Dawn needed to get some containers in which to ship back some materials, so with help from the super-nice front-desk clerk we got directions to a local Target. As luck would have it, the Target was in a shopping area where there were restaurants. Dawn burst out laughing at the Steak and Shake sign.

"Yes, that pretty much sums up the gastronomic desires of this part of the country," I said.

We settled for Chili's, where there were actually two things on the menu I could eat, including -- shocker! -- a black bean burger.

What's this? I asked, picking up a tabletop device that looked like a large GPS.

"It looks like you can order from here," Dawn said.

Our waiter, Frank, a nice young man (did I actually use that phrase? Cripes, Im getting old) came over, took our order, and demonstrated the device.

"You can order your meal, entree and desert, pay right here, and a receipt will print out," he said. Or, there are games you can play, or you can see movie previews...

Dawn and I looked at each other, and I could tell we were thinking the same thing. We laughed and pointed at each other.

"Or we could talk to each other," we said.

"You have a TV in each corner of this place," I laughed, "and I need this on my table?"

Dawn picked it up and put it on the divider above us. "I think this can sit here."

"Besides, Frank," I said, "what about your job?"

"Well, I won't have one soon, if this catches on," he joked.

Absolutely perverse.

So after a lovely meal and catching up and having a great time (I have to say, not many people here make me laugh the way my friends back East do. There is a cleverness, a quickness that I miss so much), I dropped her off and faced the challenge of getting home.

See, the area around O'Hare is all service roads and concrete, and I get lost so easily. And it was night. Add to this that when I backtracked the way I'd come, I was STILL heading toward O'Hare and not towards Chicago. I knew if I just drove through I'd eventually see signs (I learned this the hard way on another trip; no matter how many times I drive to O'Hare, I find myself in the most improbable dead ends, or on exit roads leading to Rockford or Indiana).

I drove. And drove. And suddenly found myself in front of about six lanes with gates and lights and signs telling me I was entering a huge city-unto-itself parking area.

No. No, no, no.

I couldn't turn around, so I went in, took a ticket, drove to the exit, explained the situation, was let through, and finally saw signs for Chicago.

So here I am, past midnight, tired but happy and wishing more and more that I could get back East. I know that when the time is right it will happen. Life is always an adventure.

"Sucks to your Ass-mar!"

2010-08-29T21:50:00.000-05:00

This excerpt from Lord of the Flies ran through my head when I had my annual physical last Friday. During it, I mentioned my lingering chest cold. My doctor asked some questions, then declared she didn't think I had a cold; she thought I had asthma.

I'd had mild asthma in my 30s and used an inhaler mostly to ease the tightness that came after seeing a band or dancing in a club. Then Boston passed a smoking ban, and the inhaler went away.

This time the culprit is most likely the terrible allergy season we've had this summer in Chicago. Temperatures routinely in the 90s, high humidity, bad air quality -- and me out on my bike. So today I got an inhaler, took a few hits, and was pleased to find it was easier to draw breath, and I felt more energy just walking down the street after I'd taken some puffs at the Walgreens. One of the more annoying effects of this --well asthma, it seems -- is the extreme fatigue. I fell asleep at the hair stylist's yesterday while under the heat lamps; I fell asleep at the pharmacy waiting for my prescription, and the CTA has become my movable bedroom. Crazy, crazy fatigue. Tonight is the first night with the inhaler. I really want to bike in tomorrow, so fingers crossed!

Give me back my breath, please.

2010-08-26T21:30:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I biked to and from work, as usual, still trying to fight off the cold with exercise. Weather's getting cooler, so headwind season is upon us, and that, combined with my lower energy level, made for a longer ride home. Although on the way I passed a saxophonist playing "I'm In The Mood For Love."

Today so tired and congested (still dry) that I overslept by 90 minutes and took the train in, exhausted. Doctor's appointment tomorrow, a well-timed annual physical. Next week, a wedding back East. I have visions of me in my new discount dress hacking into a hankie.

Renfaire

2010-08-24T23:47:00.003-05:00

So went to the Bristol Renaissance Faire in Kenosha last Saturday with a friend of mine. Judging by the getups, the term "Renaissance" seems to be interpreted very broadly to encompass Medieval, Goth, Punk, Pirate, Lord of the Rings, and "It was either this or ComiCon." My friend bought a bodice at a Ladies Shoppe, and there we were instructed on what to look for in a good corset (never plastic boning; always metal).

I waited while she was fitted into her garb, amused at being called "milady" by another salesgirl wanting to know whether I needed any help. I was not in the market for a $90 corset, so I demurred and watched my friend be laced into hers. My friend is....well, she has quite the rack, so her bodice overflowethed.

"What do you think?" she asked me, modeling he corset, her now-useless bra in her purse, her bosoms exploding from the top of her shirt.

"Very wenchy," I asked. "You look like your name should have 'saucy' before it, and you should be carrying flagons to yon masters."

"Great; I'll take it," she said to the sales girl.

As we wandered, I noticed that men were giving themselves whiplash checking her out.

"So all you really do have to do is flash some boob," she mused.

"Apparently it really is that easy," I replied.

Highlights of the day included being grabbed by a man in a kilt (never joke with strangers about needing a good pillaging), trying on a chain-mail belt, almost tripping over a faerie sitting on the ground against a tree (and almost screaming because I thought she was dead), drinking sasparilla and eating cheese fritters, and watching a Mud Show, a master of flaming bullwhips, and a man get pelted with tomatoes as he hurled insults at the throwers.

At one point, one of the paid costumed wanderers came up to us and engaged us in conversation.

"Ginger with a beard!" my friend murmured to me (I'd told her I was particularly fond of gingers with beards). Alas, I was a tad shy and tongue-tied (I suck at flirting), so nothing came of it.

As I stood by the jousting arena, a small inner voice said, "You are standing in a Renaissance fair in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This is your life right now."

"Shut up shut up shut up," I replied. "I'm having fun. Right now I'm having fun."

The people were all very nice, it was a lovely nerdfest, and I bought a rune necklace and some incense just to get into the spirit.

FHA-off

2010-08-19T22:22:00.003-05:00

Ok, so it used to be that if you qualified for an FHA loan and wanted to buy a condo, the lender performed a "spot check" on the condo, meaning they looked only at the unit: market value, any outstanding assessments, etc.

This year (February, in fact), faced with so many condo associations facing serious financial crisis, the FHA decided that it would now require entire condo associations to be FHA approved in order for anyone to buy a unit therein with an FHA loan. The approval process looked at the financial stability of the association: as well as factors the lend itself to a stable association, it capped the percentage of rentals allowable under approval, and the percentage of ownership allowable for any one individual.

These rules make a lot of sense; in effect, the FHA is recognizing that an individual condo unit is affected by the entire association's financial stability and ownership practices, and I frankly wonder why they didn't do this sooner. My condo association is in the process of signing a contract with a new property manager, who will help us get this approval. Mot lenders follow FHA guidelines.

However.

I also own half of a condo in Boston. About ten years ago, a friend and I bought a triple-decker and converted it to condos: she owned one unit, I another, and we owned the third jointly, and rented it out. the rental has no mortgage. I sold my unit when I moved to Chicago. Given the amount of upkeep required of a 100-year -old house (we've had to deal with a leaky basement to the tune of $7K, and just last month had to replace the roof to $12K - thank God we were prudent and put away reserves aggressively), it's not what you'd call a money maker. Concerned that my recession-imperiled financial state would make it impossible for me to absorb another large repair, I asked my friend about buying me out. She agreed.

We agreed on the price, on terms. She researched the transaction fee, and it was all going smoothly. Then she approached lenders, and we came up against our dilemma: With her unit and half of this one, she owns 50% of the association. If she buys me out, she owns 2/3 of the association. FHA has exceptions for small associations like ours, but it does not permit this much ownership by one person even in this circumstance.

So lenders won't let her take out cash to refinance and buy me out. Again, she will only leverage 50% of the place's value, so it's not like she's getting a loan against most of the place. But no. She's looking into lenders that manage their own portfolios (rather than sell them), but it's slow going and it doesn't look good. So the upshot is that while I sit here drowning in an under-paying job and racking up credit-card debt on veterinary bills, I have about $80K worth of asset that I can't liquidate. How crazy is that?

Bard of the Card

2010-08-17T22:14:00.000-05:00

So today the department was going out to dinner to celebrate the department head's 30 years with the company. A card was being circulated, and I was the second person to get it. I looked at the blank expanse, trying to think of something to write. Something appropriate to the occasion, yet with a personal touch. It's not like this woman and I were chummy, and as my supervisor had admonished me, it is a very conservative company. Oh, the dilemma.

Then inspiration hit like a bolt from the blue. I sensed what The Bard must have felt as he penned his sonnets and soliloquies, what William Carlos Williams experienced upon contemplating that red wheel barrow, that icebox of delicious, cold plums.

I took my pen, and began my inscription in large letters:

"WOO WOO!!!!!"

Birthday by the Lake!

2010-08-16T00:09:00.003-05:00

Holding my Tardis cake!

This year I decided to capitalize on the fact that my condo has a lakefront yard, grills, and picnic tables, and my birthday is in summer. So I had a bunch of people over to celebrate. Being a broke vegetarian, I made it BYOM (bring your own meat), and asked people to bring food to share.

It was a blast, and people were so wonderful. I took pictures, and at one point had a picture take of me with my cop neighbor.

"Oh, I know - here; let's make it look like I'm assuming the position!" I said, putting my hands behind my back and leaning over as though to be pushed into a squad car.

"Yeah. I NEVER hear that joke," came the deadpan response behind me.

Fellow Dr. Who fan C-- made me a Tardis cake complete with BAD WOLF graffiti, and I was over the moon. She, another neighbor, and I exchanged observations on the series, and agreed there would be a marathon when the weather turned cold.

My friend M-- stopped by with her elderly parents on the way to visit her 98-year-old aunt. M-- is the woman with the land in Michigan. I'd met her parents in their huge house in Oak Park (Ernest Hemingway's house is nearby), and find them delightful. Her father is 82, and told me that the record for the oldest man is 156.

"You thinking of breaking the record?" I asked.

"Yes, I'm thinking 'why not?'" he replied.

I contemplated the fact that if he succeeded, I'd most likely be dead at that point.

I asked M. about her recent stint as an extra in the latest Vince Vaughn movie, and about her land in Michigan. I asked about her neighbors there, the woman with the two sons, only one of which I'd met at my last visit last summer. The son, R--- had been beautiful but, assuming he was in high school, and not wanting to do time in prison, I'd not acted on the mild attraction I'd sensed between us.

"R-- has gone into the army" M-- said.

"The ARMY?"

"Yeah; he was laid off and then hired back, but hated his job and wanted to learn how to work on trucks, so the army's training him as a diesel mechanic."

"Well," I said, "It's not like there are all kinds of job opportunities where he was living, so it sounds like he took a good option. But isn't he a little young?"

M-- made a can-you-believe-this face. "He's THIRTY-FIVE."

"WHAT?!??!? I thought he was in high school!"

"I thought he was 25," said M. "But he's --well, he's now 36."

We looked at each other, and I knew we were both thinking the same thing: DAMN.

"He comes back in September for a couple weeks of leave," she said.

"You know," I said innocently, "I haven't seen your place in a year, and I've been wondering how it's coming along. We should have an end-of-summer party to celebrate, and you could invite him and his mom and brother to come over. I liked his mother." (It's true; I really did.)

M-- thought this was a great idea, and we decided she'd talk to the mother about a good date for a party. I know we were thinking the same thing, though: Welcome home, soldier boy.

The Very Nerve!

2010-08-12T22:33:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I was sitting at my desk when I heard one of the attorneys in Legal next to us yell "WOO HOO!" I went to stand by Colin's chair, a few feet away.

"Did you HEAR that?" I asked, my voice dripping with disapproval.

Colin looked up and shook his head. "Disgusting."

"Don't they know this is a very conservative company?" I asked, outraged.

"I don't know how they expect us to work under these conditions."

"There is a time and place for everything, and anyone with any sense of decency would know that there is absolutely no room for happiness in the office. "

It was about this time we lost our composure and burst into hysterical laughter. My supervisor looked over at us, puzzled.

Whoops. Too much happiness!

Nice things are simple.

2010-08-10T23:20:00.001-05:00

Felt the need for a walk yesterday evening-- decided to head north on Sheridan to where it curves around to the lakeshore in Evanston, and walk that way. On the way out, checked my mail and found a birthday note form my great-aunt with $20 inside. I walked my walk, loving the beautiful blues and pinks and yellows of the evening sky above the lake, the loose clouds, the warm summer air.

In Evanston I used my birthday money to buy an ice-cream cone, then walked back. Migrating Canada geese were lined along the shoreline, resting in silhouette against silver water. I watched them, and thought about how I was right here, so close to all this beauty, how it was peaceful and free. How much our lifestyles keep us from remembering that this is what is real. I envied the geese. They didnt' have to go to work in the morning.

I need to figure out how to not go to work in the morning.

TGIFPalooza!

2010-08-06T22:49:00.006-05:00

Earlier this week, we had our monthly department meeting (I call it the monthlies). I am so in denial of my employment that I blank each month and forget that we always go around the table and talk about what we've been working on. As people list their projects and special cases, I jot notes on my ruled pad about the stuff I've done, quickly editing mentally how I'll make the most tedious job in the world sound like a manned flight to Mars.

"I worked on the PM Book, the DO book, the Australian book, and I've taken over the bond processing."

Translation: "I muttered 'are you f*cking KIDDING me?!?!?' all week under my breath while my supervisor obsessed about completely pointless things in the books that I had to keep changing for her, refusing to understand that we have a department of certifiable anal retentives who find it physically impossible to let go of a document so I can proof it in time to hand off to the department head. These books are making my life a living hell of stomach pain and Prevacid, and I am hugely nostalgic for unemployment."

Seriously, in a meeting my supervisor kept saying, "The department head wants these books perfect, so you have to look at all of the formatting to make sure that it is all absolutely consistent." And I replied, "To get that kind of perfection, you have to give me time, ideally a full day undisturbed. I have people handing me stuff at 4:57 pm and expecting me to take care if it."

"Well, as I've said--" (imagine, please, the most patient, condescending tone you can. Imagine a parent talking to a misbehaving kindergartener with special needs) "-- time is not something we always have."

Translation: "Nobody here can manage their time, including myself. In fact, while you all were working frantically to get two books together by close of business today, I decided to announce at 10am that I'll be leaving early and need everything by 1."

I replied, "And what I'm saying (consciously not raising my voice or getting shrill) "is that I don't disagree with you about the desired quality of the finished product; I'm simply saying that without the time, I can't deliver it the way you and I would like."

I no longer die on the cross of unrealistic expectations. And I'm OK with that.

Then there's the analyst who literally hovers over my left shoulder as I take a nightmare of tabs and spaces and put the data into a nice neat table.

"Um--"

"No. No, you are NOT standing there being a back-seat typist."

"Well, it's just - are those LINES going to stay there?"

"No. They are not. I know what I'm doing. Please let me do it. Go away."

"It's just--"

"OH. MY. GOD, please don't make me kill you."

Seriously, there is nothing like poor time management and micromanagement combined with incompetence to make my day.

Did I mention each book contains about 20 files? So I don't have say, one Word document that I can use one set of styles for, or run one set of corrective find/replace exercises. Oh no, I have to navigate among well over a dozen files taken from last year and updated by several people who divide them amongst themselves, trying to get them all to look the same. Then there are the multiple-tabbed Excel workbooks that, as part of the total INSANITY, cannot be allowed to round up. The boss literally takes her calculator and adds the numbers horizontally and vertically, and if they are off by a dollar due to rounding, it's unacceptable. We are researching Excel to see about a formula that might address this. In the meantime, I print the page for reference, and hard-type in the face values to keep everyone happy. Because a dollar matters so much when you're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yep, an underwriter is going to lose their shit over that dollar.

All this goes through my head during the meeting as I make it sound like I'm having just the best! learning! experience! in the world! I'm learning all right; learning how to not kill people who print emails and make me file them. Because my supervisor doesn't want to learn how to save emails as html in folders that can be put on a CD and stored, rather than printing out emails that I have to mark up and file in a drawer. Oh, and send to offsite storage in a year. Oh no.

The thing is, I'm liked in this department, because on some level they realize I'm good. I'm fast, I'm competent, and I'm grossly underpaid. And I'm also fun, and, it might sound odd, but I do like the people there, even when their work habits drive me up the wall. They aren't awful people, just terrified of anything new. Like effectiveness.

At the staff meeting, the department head mentioned reviews and personal assessments and goals and putting together a list of objectives preparatory to meeting with her. So on one hand, I need to come up with objectives that sound real, but that won't actually cost me a lot of effort, because I just refuse to give more of myself than they're already draining from me. And I can't be honest, because my real objective is another job.

So we had cake, as is the custom, to celebrate staffers who have birthdays this month. August is just me so far. And it was nice, and friendly.

Today was an insane day ending an insane week, and we were looking wistfully out the window at the people flocking into Millennium and Grant parks for Lollapalooza, and wishing we were there and not where we were. Lady Gaga there; flush-left bullet points here. *sigh.*

Then a beautiful Friday thing happened. My supervisor left early as promised, and the department head had gone for the next several days. For me the feeling of relief was palpable.

My coworker brought out the leftover cake, which we'd forgotten about, and I sang "Bad Romance" to it. Then I found mini Tootsie Rolls in a common dish and threw them at co-workers. When they looked up, puzzled, I intoned, "We are a very conservative company here," and threw some more.

When I wondered aloud whether the department head would find it funny if I put a picture of a flasher on the Exposure Data section of the book draft, my closest coworker laughed that I would almost certainly be fired.

"You wouldn't tease a girl, would you?" I asked.

Back Seat Typist sniffed, "A lot of people don't have jobs."

I said, "That's like complaining of your husband beating you, and all someone can say is 'at last you're married.'"

And then I scooped up a huge fingerful of frosting and said to it, "I want your loving, all your lover's revenge; you and me could write a bad romance."

And I ate it all.

I'll give you fish! I'll give you candy!!!

2010-07-28T23:08:00.001-05:00

A friend was given tickets to the B-52s at Ravinia for her birthday. She invited three friends, including me, so I was pretty stoked.

I'd come close to seeing the B-52s in oh, I think it was 1982. They were playing a club in Boston, and my boyfriend and I had tickets. I was in college just outside Boston, and he lived about an hour away. The day of the show his car was acting up, but he took me anyway. The car died in the parking lot of the club, and as we got to the door I'd realized I'd grabbed my college ID by mistake, and left my license in my dorm room. We couldn't get in, and with the car dead couldn't go back for my license. I remember crying in the parking lot. My boyfriend had been very comforting - he was a great guy.

So now, thirty years later, I'd get my chance. Sure, instead of a ratty semi-condemned club it would be a tony outdoor venue that hosted acts like Yo-Yo Ma and Patti Lupone, nestled in a very upscale northern suburb, but what the hell.

The plan was for them to drive out early and snag a spot on the lawn, and I would take the train from work to meet them.

I got to the train station, checked the board, and got on a train. A few stops out, the conductor announced "This train will not stop at Ravinia Park." I went to the door to get off at the next stop, and the conductor signed my ticket so I could board the next train.

"Am I crazy?" I asked him. "Didn't I see 'Ravinia' on the board?"

"That's Ravinia. You want Ravinia Park," he answered.

Of course.

When the next train came, I was going to ask the conductor whether it was the right one, but the plethora of folding chairs and Whole Foods shopping bags answered my question. I hopped on and watched as houses I could never afford in a million years began to pass by.

I was close.

At Ravinia Park I got off and headed to the gate. I opened my purse..and realized my ticket was in my date book.

The datebook I'd left on my office desk.

Serious Deja vu.

I went to the window and bought a lawn ticket to replace the free one I'd had. Fortunately, they were not too pricey. I found my friends, we ate the food we'd brought, discussed girl things. ONe of the women was recently laid off. She's a single mom who'd gotten a good severance.

"Use the summer to spend time with your boy," I suggested. "I had to learn to not feel guilty for not looking for a job every second."

"Yes, but you didn't have a child to take care of."

Oh, good lord, this again.

"No," I said, "but I had four pets who all ate, and who blew through litter and hay at lightning speed, and I wasn't getting anything extra in my unemployment for them," I said.

Amazingly, she conceded that I had a point.

I drank an entire glass of wine, so became drunk very quickly.

"I'm going to walk around while it's still light, before the band starts," I said. I was a little unsteady, so I decided I'd be better off walking firmly. Striding. I strode around the grounds, watching the little tables, the tea lights, the elaborate setups of people sitting out on the lawn. The golf shirts. The careful hair.

I returned to Girls Base Camp and announced loudly that there were no attractive men at Ravinia.

Darkness fell and the band came on. I walked to the barricade separating the path from the seated area in front of the stage. Thirty years later, and they still sounded the same. They were great. I danced and cheered, and a woman next to me did the same. The couples around us stood appreciatively, but nobody danced. They had a sort of amused, "I'm glad we were able to get a babysitter for this evening" look.

They looked... domesticated.

"Party Gone Out of Bounds" came on, the woman next me grabbed my arm, and we let out a victory scream. I had a blast.

"HEY! WE JUST THOUGHT WE'D DROP IN!!" I yelled.

At one point I rejoined Base Camp and the girls finally stood up to dance to "Love Shack." The encore was "Rock Lobster." As I danced on the grass, people with their belongings passed us by, headed for the parking lot. When the show was over, I turned to my friend.

"If I ever get to to a point in my life that I walk away during "Rock Lobster" because I want to be out of the parking lot early, just put a bullet through my head. Don't tell me you're doing it; just come up behind me and put me out of my misery," I instructed her.

We got to the car, and one of the girls noticed the car next to us. It was a very pretty BMW 2-seater convertible.

"The guy who owns that," I said, "is older and divorced. Trust me."

We wanted to take our picture, so we decided to ask a passerby. A man who looked to be in his early fifties approached. He was trim and good looking, and I sensed money. Then again, we were in Richville, so go figure.

I asked him to take our picture, and he obliged us. He was very nice, very polite. Then he walked over to the BMW.

"I knew it," I sighed.

I'm not into rich men, don't get me wrong. But it's tempting to think about being with someone who can open doors for me that are closed right now. Like dinner. Travel. Groceries.

Holy Hannah, it's mid-July!

2010-07-12T22:49:00.000-05:00

Which means I watch all of my co-workers take vacations. But there are always things a gal can do to make her day more fun:

Perform a "welcome back" drum solo for your co-worker, using cheap pens and the area table.
Explain to North America Payroll that you *know* they don't have wage info for the Australian John Smith, so perhaps you mean the John Smith in Connecticut. Yes. THAT John Smith. Oh look! You found him!
Sing selections from "Avenue Q"
Pay back all the baseball and hockey addicts by constantly mentioning the roller derby game coming up. "Windy City Rollers vs. The Boston Massacre!! The Jam is ON! UIC Pavilion! There! Can! Be! Only! ONE!" Follow up by singing Jim Croce's "Roller Derby Queen."
Nap in the onesie bathroom.
Pick up work from the photocopier, and by this I mean exit the other door and head to the lobby for frozen yogurt.
Taunt the pregnant attorney who thinks she hears a kitten mewing ("I think it's the hormones. You sure this kitten isn't calling your name?") Begin mewing when she walks by.

Did I mention the department head is out all week?

Goodbye, Harry.

2010-07-06T21:00:00.008-05:00

Last Wednesday I'd noticed Harry was slightly favoring one of his front legs, and noticed his leg and foot were swollen. A call to the vet confirmed that it was part of the lymphoma: tumors in the lymphatic system were blocking the drainage of lymphatic fluid. I was advised to increase the prednisone and apply hot compresses, and-- to expect more of this.

That evening the rear leg on the same side had also become swollen. Harry was looking tired, and I emailed my vet to confirm her availability, as he was clearly going downhill. She was very sweet and accommodating, and I said Sunday but sooner if Harry got much worse much more quickly.

"Will you tell me when it's time?" I asked him. "If you need to go, I'll be OK. " He'd always been a tough cat, protective, my pal, and I wanted him be able to let go.

That night we climbed into bed as usual, and he settled on my shoulder. He kept shifting, getting up, turning around, trying to get comfortable, failing. At one point I woke to the sound of him rapidly licking his lips and got him to the bathroom just in time for him to vomit on the tile floor. He lost his balance and fell into the sick.

"OK, Pal, " I whispered, wiping him down with a damp cloth, hating to see him losing his dignity like this. I got him back to bed, where he once again tried to lie against my head, his paws across my shoulder. I dozed but woke to find him sitting up, looking haggard, staring at nothing in particular. He had an expression I'd never seen on him before. The expression said, "I'm done."

I scratched his head and stroked his back. "OK. Tomorrow. We'll just go in." And I simply knew that was the right decision.

Early the next morning I called my vet as she was on her way to work. "I don't want to wait until tonight after work for you to come here," I explained. "He's ready now, and I want to do this before discomfort becomes suffering. He's ready, so I'm ready."

She told me to call her back in 15 minutes so that she could get to the hospital and check the schedule. I put on some jeans and a T-shirt and sat on the floor cradling Harry, talking to him, crying a little.

The rabbit hutch is across the room, and I keep the door open. The rabbits have had a peaceful but neutral relationship with the cats. Amie, the girl, prefers to stay in the hutch most of the time, and both rabbits tend to keep their distance when the cats are on my lap.

So I was surprised when I felt something on my lap and looked down to see both rabbits at my side. Amie's chin rested on my leg, and she looked up at my face. This was unusual. I reached down and stroked her head. She stayed still, and then began licking my leg, moving down until she found my bare foot, licking my ankle.

I can promise you all this was new. And it was lovely.

I called the vet, who said they were booked, but could I come in now? I sure could. I debated bringing George, so that he could see Harry afterward know he was gone, but I decided I wanted this to be Harry and my last ride together, just the two of us. I didn't use a carrier, worried that Harry in his state would be uncomfortable and cramped, so I just set him in the front seat with me, where he settled into the passenger foot well and rode calmly all the way, with an occasional trip to my lap to check out the scenery. I chatted to him the whole way. I was reminded of our trip to Chicago, Harry getting car sick but then spending the ride on top of a crate in the passenger side, where he could be next to me. He's always been next to me.

We arrived at the the vet's and the staff at the front were lovely. I paid the bill first, because I didn't want to hang around afterwards. Harry sat patiently in one arm, held against my shoulder, blinking at the women behind the counter.

Because I've worked at an animal shelter and have actually performed euthanasia myself, I was given the choice to assist or let one of the techs assist. I wanted to assist, because I know that the person assisting holds the animal, and I wanted that to be me. It was only natural that Harry and I be together to the end.

Harry's veins are bad, so we had to use one in the rear leg. Harry was very cooperative as I held him in place while the vet ran a catheter. She was very good. Once the catheter was in, she got the syringe and asked me to let her know when I was ready. I shifted so that my arm was under Harry's head and my cheek was against his. I kissed him, rubbed his side with my other hand, ran my fingers through his paws. He lay calmly on my arm.

"Thank you for being such a great friend," I whispered. Then to her, "OK. We're ready."

She administered the solution, and Harry went quietly and quickly. I felt him relax, and kept talking to him the whole time, thanking him over and over, telling him how wonderful he was. I knew he was deaf, but hoped he sensed the sentiment.

The word "euthanasia"is Greek for "Good Death." A Good Death is free not only from pain but also from fear. Harry had a Good Death, for which I was incredibly grateful, as was I grateful for the chance to say goodbye to him during the previous week. I know that everyone loves their animals and every pet is so special to its human companion, but Harry will always be so much more than my cat, so much more than my pet. He was really my friend. He met me every day when I came home, followed me around the house, sat outside my bathtub when I had my evening soak, slept with me at night. He loved to be with me, and the feeling was mutual. I felt special; I felt loved because I was important to him. We've lived in over 13 places together, and each one has felt like home because Harry was there to welcome me each evening.

He deserved a good death at the end of such a generous, wonderful life. Rest in peace, pal. I miss you.

Two Legs Bad

2010-07-01T22:59:00.000-05:00

Harry now has two swollen legs. I made the call to the vet, and it looks like Sunday will be the day, unless things get much worse much more quickly. My stomach is killing me, but man, I'm glad for the time I've had with Mr. Harry. Nineteen -- NINETEEN!-- great years with this cat. I've been so blessed.

None shall pass?

2010-07-01T19:27:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning to find Harry, as usual, doing a Vulcan mind meld with my face.

MEEEEEEOOOOOOOWW!

"Yes, Deaf Cat, I hear you. So does all of Chicago."

MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWW!!

I got up and plunked Harry onto the floor where his brother, George, waited. I headed for the bathroom, and noticed Harry's gait looked odd. I couldn't put my finger on what it was, and then realized: his left front leg was swollen. I squatted down and felt it - it felt like a hot dog wrapped in a water balloon. He's been favoring it a bit, probably because the paw was also swollen.

"Oh, Buddy," I said. I feel awful, watching this happen. So guilty that I can't make it better.

Harry just purred at me, his expression all, "This? 'Tis but a scratch!"

And then we all had breakfast.

Have You Seen This Belly?

2010-06-28T22:05:00.001-05:00

I woke up this morning to Harry lying on my shoulder as usual, reminding me that he was on the brink of starvation as he was most days, what with him never getting food or love. (My cats can be positively Dickensian when it comes to the Food Ploy). As usual, I grabbed him and rolled him onto my stomach, holding him tight and calling out "Prisoner of Love!" while he purred.

It was then I noticed his swollen belly was... well, gone. I kneaded his stomach; where there had been a tight swollen drum of tummy was his usual soft self. What the----?

My vet called me at work to confirm that the slides showed a form of lymphoma, and I told her about Harry's vanishing belly. Apparently, this is a sign that the prednisone she put him on is having an effect; in cancers like this it has a short-term "anti-cancer" effect of shrinking tumors, so she thinks it has shrunk the tumors in his lymphatic ducts such that they can drain properly again. It's not a fix, but for now it means Harry can be more comfortable, and right now, that's good enough.

A long life of love

2010-06-28T00:09:00.001-05:00

Recently I noticed that Harry, one of my two nineteen-year-old cats (the other is his brother, George), has been looking a little round in the belly, and that his tummy has seemed swollen and tight, although not painful to the touch. I also realized he hasn't really been pooping.

"Aha, he's constipated, not uncommon in older cats," I thought. So I booked a vet appointment with my friend and proceeded to dose Harry with mineral oil and Metamucil, hoping to cure the situation and avoid a vet bill. Neither remedy produced the desired result.

"He may need an enema," said my vet friend, "and trust me, you don't want to do that on your own."

So on Saturday morning we went for the appointment.

"Wow, his belly is really firm," said the vet, feeling Harry's abdomen while he waited patiently. "I'm going to do a rectal exam to see whether I can feel anything in there, and to make sure his bladder isn't enlarged."

She took Harry out back and a few moment later I heard a loud "MEEEEEOOOOOWR."

"That would be the rectal exam," I thought.

She came back in, holding a rather astonished-looking Harry. "I feel some feces, but nothing to indicate he's constipated, and his bladder feels fine, so I'd like to do an X-ray to see what's going on."

"Do what you need to," I said.

Now, Harry is easy at the vet. He's mellow and not troublesome, so I knew taking his X-ray would be simple. So when over twenty-five minutes had passed and she hadn't come back, I began to feel dread in the pit of my stomach.

Finally, she came back holding two X rays, She stopped and gave me a very sad look.

"I had a feeling," I said, my stomach dropping.

She held up the X-rays. There was fluid, a lot of it, in Harry's abdomen. She showed me all the things that I never would have picked up on with my untrained eye. The lack of a clear border, indicating fluid rather than a mass. The pressure against one of his lungs. But even my untrained eye had seen enough other X-rays of my cats over the years to know that I was looking at a story with no happy ending.

"I'd have to put the fluid under a slide to confirm it, but I'm pretty sure it's cancer," she said. "I'm so sorry."

I just stared at the X-ray, at the insides of the cat I loved more than breathing, and felt so sad for him, that his body was betraying him this way. I looked at the outline of his heart, the fine bones of his ribs, the sharp poetry of his spine. I looked at the dense white cloud of fluid that didn't belong there but that would, unfairly, cast the deciding vote for everything that did.

"You could try treating it, try chemo..." she began, "but at his age, you'd have to ask yourself who it would really be for..."

"No. No. I will not put him through that. He's nineteen. It's just his time. I've been sort of preparing for this... it's just...hard."

I drew in a ragged breath, trying to focus and stay coherent. "Ok. Ok. So...is this at a stage..."

She knew what I wanted to know. "It's affecting his quality of life."

I could feel the tears all over my face, but I swallowed the lump in my throat and kept talking, feeling the contrast between my matter-of fact tone and the tears streaming down all over me. I was still staring at the X-ray, at the bright spot, trying to focus on something.

"I can't euthanize him today," I said, my voice finally breaking. "I can't. I need some time to say goodbye. He's nineteen. He's been with me for nineteen years. I need some time to say goodbye. Do you think it would be OK to wait a week, I mean, do you think it would be inhumane to wait a week?"

"You can do that," she said, "and if he deteriorates in the meantime, you just bring him in sooner. I'll give him some fluids, and send him home with an appetite stimulant."

She aspirated some of the fluid to study and showed me the syringe. It was full of a milky-white fluid tinged with pink.

"It looks like lymph, so I'm guessing he's got lymphoma, and it's blocking his lymph ducts, and it's draining into his abdomen."

She also agreed to see about doing an in-home euthanasia for me when the time came.

Out in the lobby, sunglasses over my swollen eyes and the tears mercifully at bay, I waited to pay my bill, Harry in a carrier at my feet. A little boy of about six came over and squatted in front of the carrier. He was careful to keep his hands against his chest, so someone had told him about not touching strange animals.

He looked in at Harry, and broke into a wide grin. "This looks like a really nice cat," he said. He was adorable.

"He is. He is a really nice cat," I smiled at him. "His name is Harry, and you can pat him. He's very friendly."

"Hey, Harry," the boy said, putting a finger through the door of the carrier. "He isn't sniffing my finger or anything, and he's not letting me touch him. He's too far away."

"Well, he's been poked and prodded a lot today, and he probably just needs a break," I explained. "But you can talk to him; he likes that." Harry is of course now deaf, but he didn't have to know.

"Hey Harry, you sure are a nice cat," the boy said. Another little boy joined him.

"Have you ever read the book A Cricket in Times Square?" I asked. "There is a cat named Harry in that book." They thought this was great.

I'd paid and picked up the carrier. "Thanks for talking to Harry. And remember: A Cricket in Times Square."

I made it to the car, had a moment, regained my composure, and drove home.

Harry is sleeping a lot, and walking very little, his distended abdomen making it more difficult, although today it is far less tight. I'm not going to kid myself, though. I slept with him on the floor for part of the night (he seems to prefer that now), but ended up in my bed when my neck got stiff. I woke to find him on the bed with me in his usual position in the cook of my arm, purring. Yesterday I took him to a side garden and let him sniff the grass and flowers and bask in the sun. I read sitting on the floor, and he comes over to lay his head on my lap. He's still Harry.

I do wish he could still hear, but the fact he can't doesn't stop me from talking to him. I lay with him on the rug, reminiscing while he purred at my side.

"Remember when you almost attacked the raccoons in Vermont, thinking they were a danger to me?" I laughed. "They were twice your size, but you almost went through the screen to get to them. And the time you swatted Maggie's dogs away when they started licking my face?" I rubbed his chin, burying my face in his side, bringing on a louder purr. "You have always had the heart of a lion. Thank you for taking such good care of me."

The hard part is knowing when the time will be right. I know he has cancer; the signs of it are unmistakable in his obscenely swollen belly. He doesn't appear to be in pain, but he lays in one spot practically all the time and sleeps. His head hangs down in a strange new way. But he still thrums with happiness when I stroke his head, his paws kneading the floor in bliss. I think he knows his time is getting short -- he's going out of his way to show me attention, just as I am with him. I don't want him to suffer, but I don't want to rob him of any good days he has left. He spends most of them sleeping, but they are his days to sleep away, on his rug, in his house, with us. And he loves to be with me, sometimes purring so loud he goes up an octave. He loves being here.

I have never let my cats roam the streets, terrified that they would come to harm. When I make the decision to end Harry's life, I know I will do it to spare him suffering, make it as gentle and kind as it can be, but I will also be sending him away to a place where I can't protect him or take care of him. I will be putting him out of my life, exiling him to someplace unknown. For the first time in his life, I will be sending him away from me. The first time ever, and the last. The decision weighs so heavy.

I put my head against his, twisting my fingers in his paws.

"Do you trust me?" I ask him.

His answer is to purr even louder and knead my fingers gently.

I wish I shared his faith.

Tornado!

2010-06-20T00:14:00.006-05:00

So I work on the 46th floor of the Aon building, once known as the Standard Oil Building, a skyscraper right by Lake Michigan. My department is in the southeast corner, and the company has a completely open floor plan, so we have access to some great views.

Friday was a hot, sunny day - at lunch, I walked to City Hall with the intention of getting my car's city sticker (this is a sticker that you have to have to park in Chicago. You have to renew it every year and it costs $75. So you basically have to pay to park in the city where you already pay taxes to cover, one would think, city streets. but I digress.)

The sky was clear, and it was hot - easily high 80s.

After deciding the line out the door was a tad more hassle than I wanted, I decided to just buy the sticker online and pray that if I didn't get it in time I could use the printed receipt on my dash to ward off the ticket cobras.

At one point late in the afternoon, I had this odd sense that something was...off. I looked up, and I saw that the light outside had gotten dim. Looking across to Legal, which has a southern view, I saw one of the secretaries standing by the window, looking out. I joined her.

The view to the south is unobstructed: we overlook Millennium Park, and have a clear shot pretty much all the way to Indiana. The lake sits to our left, and the buildings along Michigan Avenue are to our right.

It's also Illinois, which means it's flat, so you have a western view that stretches pretty far.

From where we stood, a heavy, black blanket of clouds was moving quickly towards us and the lake.

"Holy Cow," I said. "This is like "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

The clouds continued to moved toward us rapidly, and we could see the wall of rain underneath. Street lights came on, as did the headlights of the cars traveling along 95 and Lake Shore Drive. It was eerie, like a train-set town.

"Look at the fountain," I said. The plume from Buckingham fountain, which just minutes before had been pointing straight up (if you've seen Married With Children, it's the fountain that turns on in the opening credits) , was now gyrating and twisting like those air-sock figures used to advertise used cars. Waves scudded across the lake; boats pitched in the turbulence. Debris flew past the window.

"Look-- lighting!" said the secretary next to me.

We watched the ground get wet, people run under Anoosh Kapoor's "Cloud Gate."

People were coming over to look out the windows as things got blacker.

"Magnificent," I whispered.

"Hey, come away from the window," I heard my boss say.

"Yes. Step away, right now," said one of the other risk managers.

Were they kidding? Did I look like a child? I ignored them.

"Risk Management people, step away from the windows!" my supervisor called.

I sighed and stepped back a bit.

"Why? What could happen?" I asked in the naivete that can only come from growing up in an area without tornadoes.

Then the window shook like tympani. I saw the glass vibrate.

Oh.

I imagined being sucked out of the 46th floor, and I stepped well back. A group had gathered. The rain was beating against the windows, driven by the amazing wind. We felt the building sway. It made me giddy.

Suddenly the alarm lights flashed and a voice informed us that there was a tornado alert. The elevators had been disabled, and we were NOT to evacuate, but to go to an inside corridor away from windows and glass walls.

Our group joined some others in the elevator lobby on our floor. We stood there for about fifteen minutes, talking and passing the time. I imagined having to kick off my low heels should the need arise to run down the fire stairs.

After awhile, we got the all-clear and went back to our desks, while I sang "The Morning After."

At our desks, my Scottish coworker, let's call him Colin, gave me a high five.

"We survived our first tornado, JC," he said.

"Colin, that wasn't a tornado."

"Was it not?"

"No, my dear. We just survived a tornado warning. An almost-tornado."

He looked crestfallen. "You're sure it wasn't a tornado?"

"Trust me, you would have known, and we would not be sitting here. Unless it was a British version of a tornado: small, compact, efficient. Queues behind other tornados to wreak destruction."

"Tidies up after itself."

"Exactly."

Fellow Crack Coworker

2010-06-16T22:45:00.002-05:00

My co-worker who's reading the Twilight saga came over to my desk today. She's on Book Three. I know, because I lent it to her.

"So I had some time before they all got back from their meeting," she said, referring to the people in her department.

"So you took out the book," I finished. "Bad move."

"I know. I only had about twenty minutes."

"Whoa. Painful." I sympathized.

"Yeah."

This woman is older than me, I should add. Easily mid-fifties.

"I can't wait until I'm done with them all so we can talk," she said.

This is fun.

This Is Not Your Father's Nosferatu, or, How I Came to Love the Twinkling Undead

2010-06-14T23:13:00.013-05:00

At the beginning of this season's "Dr. Who," I watched the first episode with a neighbor and her friend, we'll call her Jocelyn. Jocelyn was funny, acerbic, and refreshingly different. We shared a nerdy love of SciFi and related nerd genres; at one point, she turned to me and blurted out, "Angel or Spike?"

I made a face. "Spike. Duh."

She high-fived me. "I like her," she said to my neighbor.

So a couple of weeks ago I went out with the neighbor and a couple of other women to a drive-in. Jocelyn was out of state attending a nephew's high-school graduation.

"Oh," said my neighbor. "Jocelyn gave me some books to lend you. I guess you two talked about them."

I couldn't remember this. "Books? Really? What books?"

"Some vampire books."

I remember discussing the Interview With a Vampire books, but she knew I'd read them. I couldn't for the life of me recall showing an interest in any books that would motivate her to lend me any.

"They're in a bag in the back seat."

I took the bag an opened it. Inside were two books.

The first two books of the Twilight saga.

No. Oh no.

I'd just met someone I thought I could really see as a fun friend, and she thought I'd read these? What was she thinking? Then the next thought: I didn't want to offend her. Crap. What would I do? Teenage vampire romance?!?!? Did I look like a 13-year-old girl? My 13-year old intern at my old job had loved the books, and I was glad she liked to read, and never discouraged her, but told her they weren't for me. I let her talk about the books, but her adolescent ardor for the star of the movies was not really a motivation for me to pick them up. If my impression of the books was of teenage pap gone amok, the bubble-gum magazine pin-ups in the intern's cubicle did nothing to counteract it.

My face must have read what I was thinking, because my neighbor said, "You don't have to read them. Jut say you couldn't get through them. She won't mind."

Recovering, I said, "No, that's OK. I can give them a try." Privately, I decided I'd read a chapter or two and then tell Jocelyn honestly that they weren't for me.

The books sat in my house for a week, untouched. I didn't even take them out of the bag. When the craze had hit, I was as uninterested as I could be. I sneered. I called it "Vampire 90210." I was sick of the pervasive Cult of the Teenager. I was offended at the notion that vampires had been repackaged as some sort of Teen Angst figures. They didn't DIE in the SUN? They TWINKLED? TWINKLED?!?!? What kind of heretical convenience was that? It was BS; that's what it was. A typical example of how young people today can't deal with boundaries. And I refused categorically to buy into it.

One evening I decided it was time to read my obligatory chapter that would allow me to honestly say I'd tried. Embarrassed at even holding the first book, I sat down and began to read.

Three hours later I had to force myself to go to bed.

I finished the book the next evening and began the second one. I finished that the following day. And I learned a lesson I should have learned by now: don't judge something by anything other than itself. I'd judged these books by their young fan base, by the mania over the teens who played in the movie and yes, perversely, I'd judged the books by their popularity ("If they are this widely appealing, they must be lowest-common-denominator.")

What I'd not realized is that these books are popular for the simple fact that they are really compelling to read. They are light, fast reads, but the writing is solid, the story complex, and the characters engrossing. I loved everything about the world this author has created.

And yes, the central romance is ... well, romantic. Whether you're a teenager or an adult, do you really ever stop hoping that someday you'll meet someone who loves you so devotedly that he puts your happiness and well-being before his own? Who can be trusted completely to be mature and loving and protective, and sexy as hell? Who will always have your back? Yes, yes, yes, it's a fiction, a fantasy, but I live every day in reality and I can tell you I need a break from it sometimes. In my experience, "I love you" means "You're the one I've decided to take for granted more than anyone else." It's a nice change to have "I Love You" mean, "Your happiness is inseparable from my own, so I'll deny my most basic urges (in this case, drinking your blood and killing you) and dedicate my life to making you happy and safe."

I was still too embarrassed to admit I was reading them, much less admit I was loving the books, so I kept my shame to myself. I read only in my house. I needed book three, Eclipse, though, and I needed it fast. On the train in to work, I saw a woman my age reading, and I realized what a pretentious ninny I was being. Since when did I care what people thought? Still, after work I went to Borders and furtively looked for the books, doing a search on the in-store computer while blocking the screen. I had to go to Young Adult, carefully avoiding salespeople (I confess I was prepared to tell them I was getting a birthday present for my niece).

I found the books, grabbed Eclipse.

It felt uncomfortably like the first time I had to buy a box of sanitary napkins at the age of twelve.

I walked to the register. Do or die time. Face it, JC. Face it head on.

"I can help you over here," called out a young man at a register.

I marched to face him. "You can help me, BUT--" I tossed the book onto the counter -- "will you sneer at me?"

He stared at the book, his mouth open, and then quickly regained his composure. "No," he stammered, clearly putting a lot of effort into keeping his voice neutral, "these are very ...um...popular."

"Yes, I know, among teenage girls. And I've sneered at these for years now, and you know what? I'm addicted to them like crack. CRACK. And I know what you're thinking, because I've thought it too, and nobody could convince me otherwise. But trust me; these are way better than snobs like me gave them credit for."

"No, I see lots of----" he stopped, stuck, then continued, "people --your age-- reading these."

"I know what you're reeeeeally thinking," I said, again, torturing him some more, because he was very cute and clearly uncomfortable, and as long as he was uncomfortable, the focus was diverted and I didn't have to admit to myself that I had a crush on a fictional vampire in the body of a teenage boy. "I forgive you. And I'll be back in a couple of days for the final book." I smiled.

He was very nice, and gave me my Borders discount.

I gave him a final ironic smile as I put the book in my bag. I leaned over the counter. "Like. CRACK." I said, and left.

By Friday I was ready for Book Four, Breaking Dawn, the final book. I was back at Borders, bee-lining it to the Young Adult section. It was still only available in hardcover. I rarely buy hardcover, because I take my books everywhere and hardcover is not very portable.

I didn't care. I'd have bought it if it were carved into stone tablets. I hefted the large hardcover, paid for it, and read 70 pages by the time my train got to its stop.

I spent most of the weekend reading it, pacing myself so as to prolong the story and savor the experience. On one hand, I wanted to know how it ended; on the other, I didn't want it to end. Finally, on Sunday, I just parked myself in the evening and read until I'd finished it at 1am.

And yes, the ending was fantastic.

After a week of being immersed in that world, it feels odd not to be there anymore. I loved that world, and I loved the characters, and will truly miss them.

I'd come clean to my best friend and to my coworkers and others, some of who persisted in rolling their eyes at me. Penance for my years of behaving the same way, I suppose. Today, though, one of my coworkers told me she'd gotten the first two books on my suggestion, and when she'd started reading she didn't stop until four hours later. They do that to you. I'm bringing Book Three in tomorrow for her.

A neighbor invited me to watch the first two movies on Netflix, and I think I will, but I'm concerned: the trailers I've seen on YouTube don't fit with what I've read. Edward is supposed to be impossibly beautiful, and his voice is consistently described as velvety, musical. The Edward I heard on the trailers sounds like he's going to be an accountant when he grows up. And while he has a certain offbeat physical appeal, I can't say he'd be my choice.

My neighbor tells me that her teenage stepdaughter was incensed at the first movie, claiming that they got the first kiss all wrong. It's stuff like that I'm not sure I want to see. The books are absolutely engaging, but the movies....hmmm. Still, I'm learning not to prejudge.

Right?

Yesterday

2010-06-12T17:54:00.001-05:00

On my bike, I was behind a van that was making a turn when one of its bumper stickers jumped out at me with such force that it might have been booming right at me:

"Remember who you wanted to be."

I gasped. Literally gasped. And knew it was right.

Rump-fed runion, anyone?

2010-06-10T00:27:00.007-05:00

In my freshman year of college, I'd mentioned to friends that I'd wanted to get involved in theater. So it was that one day three of them came pounding on my door to tell me that there would be auditions for Macbeth, and they insisted I try out.

To understand how I was at the time, you have to understand that while I was very expressive and fun and witty, I was also horrifically self-conscious. (College helped me with that, but during my first semester I was still changing in the closet and could not go to the cafeteria without first securing a dining companion. I'd once just gone alone, and upon seeing no one I knew, had put my full tray on the counter and walked out.)

I went to the audition. Now, I'd like to be able to tell you exactly what happened, but I was so petrified I've blocked most of it out. I do remember that I stood in a room and faced the Communications Department head and the director, a young man with whom I would end up working, and who would be a great teacher for me. But at the time, they were simply the most intimidating people in the entire universe.

I remember they had me read Lady Macbeth's "unsex me here" scene and I was too terrified to do anything but jump. I recall flashes of flailing arms, and I think I went for loud. In other words, a college freshman audition.

I caught a break: not enough men auditioned, so they gave me the part of Malcolm, changing it to Margaret. I got a role, and Scotland got a little liberated. It was an experimental production, abbreviated, so it wasn't a huge part, but I was thrilled that I got a little soliloquy, and the final line to the show. Not to mention freeing Dunsinane.

That was my only Shakespeare experience, and it was fun. I got good feedback from the director, but never since had the opportunity to do more. I read aloud when I read Shakespeare; it's almost a compulsion to feel the words in my mouth.

So when I saw auditions posted for a production of Macbeth to be held outdoors this summer, I jumped at the chance. I had to prepare a monologue. At first I selected something form the Merry Wives of Windsor, something easy I could do well, one that would not require a lot of study and interpretation. Then I decided that I was going about it all wrong. I wanted the role of Lady Macbeth, and I needed to show that all five feet of me could command a presence on stage. So I chose a scene with Queen Margaret in Henry VI.

In this scene, Margaret is sadistic, contemptuous. I ate it up. I worked this monologue for two weeks, testing every line to see that it rang true and worked with the line before and after, I worked on my paces, my gestures, every nuanced facial expression. I obsessed. I ran through it in my mind on the El, while doing laundry, on the elevator.

"What, was it you that would be England's king?" I muttered at Au Bon Pain. "Thou should'st be mad, and I to make thee mad, do mock thee thus," I told passersby as I walked to the El. "But how is it that great Plantagenet is crowned so soon?"

The day came, and I drove to Evanston, full of optimism. Almost thirty years later, I had the maturity, the creativity, the confidence, to do this play. I understood her. I understood a woman who could be so blinded by ambition that she could delude herself that she could do anything, even survive the loss of her humanity. I knew what it was to pretend to be someone I wasn't to prove to myself that I could. In the end, I know, that never works. Lady M learns it, too.

I'd even practiced some Lady Macbeth lines in anticipation of learning them once I was cast. "Who'd have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?" is such an anguished line that it brings tears to my eyes.

So when I saw that the two women waiting to audition were in their twenties, I had a familiar sense of foreboding. Ditto when I saw that the man ushering people into the audition was also very, very young. Chin up, I thought. Judi Dench.

I was ushered into a large room where the director, her stage manager, and her designer sat. All were women. The director, at least, looked over thirty (I later learned from a friend that she'd graduated from Julliard and directs a lot of Shakespeare. I'm glad I didn't know that at the time.)

I did my scene, trying to control my nervousness, but pretty sure I got across that I can deliver Shakespeare decently.

"Great, thanks," the director said when I'd finished. "Can you go out and look over these pieces, and come back and read them when you're ready?"

Excited, I took the sheets of paper and walked toward the door. I looked down to see what I'd be preparing. The name on the top sheet jumped at me.

MALCOLM.

No.

I looked at the other two sheets. Witches.

I felt all the air leave my body. Men and witches. I made them think of men and witches. Nice.

I went back out, and the two 20ish girls were there, clearly nervous, bolstering each other in that false way that the two finalists in the Miss America pageant do.

As I stood in a stairwell going over the pieces (they were fairly uninteresting, not particularly easy to get anything out of), I realized they were bringing each woman in more than once. I heard loud wailing from inside the audition room.

"I will be damned," I thought to myself, "If I will be in a production where Lady MacBeth is a freaking twentysomething."

I took a breath and focused. At least one of the witch scenes was my favorite to say, about the sailor's wife who won't share her chestnuts. ("'Aroint thee, witch!' the rump-fed runion cried.")

The two girls avoided my eyes and spoke only to themselves, and the young man never cracked a smile, instead being stiffly polite. I call it the "I don't know how to behave socially with anyone more than three years older than I am" syndrome. And yes, I was the ugly duckling next to the tall, willowy girls. I'm used to that, and it doesn't usually get to me, because I like myself, not to mention that having a thin skin is pointless when you decide to audition. But I was having a hard week. And... men and witches.

I went back in and delivered the Malcolm scene - I wasn't really feeling it, and they asked me to speak louder, so I belted out the witch scenes, already feeling like this was a courtesy. I've been on enough blind dates to know when I won't get called. They were polite (ack! Not polite!) and I left.

I doubt I'll get a callback. Still, maybe I'll luck out and Margaret, daughter of Duncan, will once more need to rise to the battle to liberate Dunsinane and Scotland from the tyrant.

Not holding my breath, though. there's always tomorrow. And tomorrow....

The best shows are on Broadway. The Broadway bus, that is.

2010-06-01T22:30:00.003-05:00

On Saturday the weather was nice, so I decided to make it a low-key errand running day, leave the bike at home, wear a skirt, and walk a lot.

After picking up cat food at Parkview and tailoring in Andersonville, I headed to Sheridan to try Tweet, which I'd been meaning to try for awhile.

The menu was extremely vegetarian/vegan friendly, and I had the biscuits and veggie breakfast patties with white gravy. This decadently rich dish was delicious, but should come with a side of angioplasty. The proprietress, Michelle, liked my summer color combination, and recommended I check out an installation at the Cultural Center, because my colors were similar to that used by the artist. I've never had someone suggest an exhibit based on my clothing, and I was intrigued.

I walked to Broadway and decided to take the bus to Edgewater for my final purchase: a new broom, at the hardware store near my old apartment. The bus I got on was fairly empty; one woman sat in front of me and a few people sat behind.

We pulled to one stop where several people waited, among them an older black woman with an oxygen tank.

"YOU GET ON THE BUS BEFORE ME. I WANT TO GET ON AFTER EVERYONE!" She yelled. I marveled that someone who needed an oxygen tank could project so well.

"Here we go," I thought.

See, the Broadway bus is The People's Bus. A great deal of its route goes by senior assisted-living facilities and low-income apartments for the elderly, and as a consequence, these people use the bus a lot. Many of them have physical challenges. Many is the time I've spent wrestling with myself as the bus stopped yet again to lower itself or extend a ramp in a painfully laborious process so that passengers with walkers, canes, wheelchairs, or just plain stiff legs could get on. It's like a tour bus at Lourdes.

There is one passenger I see from time to time; I call him the Tuba Man because he has, among other detritus bungee'd to the back of his wheelchair, a dented tuba. I have never heard him play, and I'm not sure that I'm unhappy about that.

So on one hand I watch this and am pleased that we as a society make accommodaton for physical impairments, and I muse that I might need the same mercy one day.

On the other hand, after the third walker/wheelchair in as many stops, my inner voice screams, "OH MY GOD I JUST WANT TO GET HOME!" and I know I'm going to hell.

So I wasn't surprised to see an old person with an oxygen tank waiting. As she requested, everyone else got on first. On Chicago buses, you can use one kind of pass, which requires you to insert it into the box right in front of the driver, or you can use a touch card, the reader for which is just to your left, on a pole at the beginning of the aisle. An older black gentleman was trying to use this reader, and was having no luck.

"CAN'T YOU MOVE IN YOU'RE BLOCKING THE WAY" bellowed Oxygen Woman.

The man quietly ignored her and kept trying to get his card to read.

"YOU ARE BLOCKING THE WAY! THERE ARE PLENTY OF SEATS AND PEOPLE CAN'T GET TO THEM BECAUSE YOU ARE BLOCKING THE WAY!" She was the only one behind him.

I heard murmurs of disapproval behind me. The kind of church-sounding murmurs you associate with black folks.

The man finally gave up and used the reader by the driver (these aren't interchangeable, and I suspect he was simply using the wrong reader in the first place).

The man proceeded quietly down the aisle to the back of the bus, and Oxygen Woman sat at the front, facing sideways.

"THERE IS NO NEED TO TAKE UP AN ENTIRE BUS AND MAKE PEOPLE WAIT!" she roared.

From behind me came the voice of another black woman: "You're sick because you're evil."

I sucked in a breath. The woman had said it neither loud nor soft; she spoke almost as if speaking to herself.

"You got an oxygen tank because you're evil."

I settled back for the show. I was facing forward, looking at Oxygen Woman's profile. One row of forward-facing seats separated us, and an older white woman in a wild-colored top and straw hat sat in front of me.

"ARE YOU TALKING TO ME?" yelled Oxygen Woman, staring ahead out the window.

I was sure she was addressing the woman who'd commented, but then the older white woman leaned forward and said, "I said I like your fingernail polish; it's very pretty."

I thought this was sweet, and wondered what effect it would have.

"IF YOU WANT SOMEONE TO TALK TO, BUY YOURSELF A DOG," blared Oxygen Woman, still staring ahead out the side window. The other passengers gasped, and I had two simultaneous thoughts: one, this was breathtakingly rude; two, this woman had the comeback of an improv pro.

"You don't have all that much time left," the voice behind me said, "and you shouldn't waste it being so full of bitterness."

We'd come to a stop, and the owner of the voice was getting off with a couple of other people. She was a black woman about 35-40.

(I mention race here because I have noticed that black folks will take each other to task in ways that white folks won't, and frankly, I thoroughly enjoy it.)

"IT SAYS MOVE TO THE BACK OF THE BUS. HE WAS BLOCKING THE BUS AND NOBODY COULD GET ON. THERE IS NO NEED TO BLOCK PEOPLE LIKE THAT!"

"You TOLD everyone to get on the bus before you. You SAID you wanted to get on last. So I GOT you."

The woman and a few others got off. An older black woman with perfect hair and the kind of attention to her appearance that reminded me of my grandmother remained directly behind me. The white woman came and sat next to me and spoke to us both.

"Did you hear what she said to me?!?!" she asked.

"Yes," I said, "and that was too bad, because you were being so nice." I sensed that this woman was a little off herself; she seemed childlike and sweet, though. I complimented her on her ring, a huge, zinnia-looking bauble done in some kind of enamel. it was actually pretty groovy.

"She's just full of malice and bitterness. That's what a life of being bitter will do to you," said the older black woman.

"Well," I said, "I think she's not right on the head." I was appalled by the woman's behavior, but she was clearly off her rocker, so I didn't want to be too harsh.

A black man sitting across the aisle from us smiled a mouth full of gums. "She got a demon; that's what she got."

We chatted about the elderly, about growing old, about what it can do to you, hoping we didn't turn out that way. Oxygen Woman got off at her stop with a declaration that she was GOING TO FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS AND GET OFF AT THE BACK LIKE EVERYONE SHOULD. I wondered whether anyone in her life was close to her, and hoped someone was.

Shortly after, I got off and bought my broom from the nice Korean couple at Kim's Hardware.

It was a People's Day. A good day. Bitterness and demons notwithstanding.

Itchy Feet

2010-05-25T23:54:00.002-05:00

It began as a passing thought, then a thought that became more frequent, then an idea at the back of my mind, then an idea that stepped forward from the back of my mind more frequently, politely coughing to get my attention.

And the idea is this: it may be time to leave Chicago.

There are so many things to love about Chicago: the lake, the public spaces, the restaurants, the music, the theater, the affordability of renting or owning.

And yet, the thing that makes this part of the country so charming -- its Midwesternness -- is what's got me thinking it may be time to move on.

No matter how large a city you are, no matter how much you have going for you, when you are in the middle of nowhere, you develop an insularity that shows. The inward focus, the dialogue that gets passed back and forth and back again with little outside influence.

The unrelenting obsession with sports, sports, sports. The pride in being willfully ignorant, of embracing a smoking culture, appalling eating habits, drunkenness and obesity.

The crime. The gangs. The municipal corruption so extreme and pervasive that it would be laughable if it weren't so crippling and insultingly stupid.

I'm not saying any city has the answer, and Chicago is better than most places for livability. But there is a homogeneity to this area that is starting to wear. I should hasten to say that Chicago lived up to its promise: plenty to do, lots to explore, and (since here, too, I do most things alone), I'm rarely bored. In the five years since I moved here, I've met so many good people, and felt accepted by so many. There are artists who greet me with bear hugs that lift me off the floor, people who've offered to let me live in their house when the job situation looked bad, neighbors who look after my animals, people to whom I give my house keys without a second thought. People who have inspired me. Amazing people.

Yet...the parochialism, the feeling that I just don't...quite fit in. An inability to yet find my tribe.

I suspect, as with most things, the main issue is me, how I interact with my world. Coming to Chicago was an incredible growing experience for me. I had to take care of myself, which included finding others on whom I could depend. Five years ago I knew nobody here save an acquaintance of a friend. Moving to Chicago meant getting an apartment beforehand, arranging for movers, finding work, finding connections, learning how to get a transit card, a driver's license and plates, carrying a map everywhere, figuring out where to shop, where to find a vet, a doctor, a bike shop, a supply of timothy hay. I had to find a mechanic, a chiropractor, an insurance agent. I took improv classes at The Second City, had an art studio, took stained-glass classes, showed my paintings in cafes and neighborhood shows, acted in a number of sketch shows. I bought a condo, got onto the board. I've hiked, biked, slept in a tent in Wisconsin, took a permaculture class. Walked the green roof of a local restaurant, stood at the Baha'i temple with a candle to mark the passing of a friend's father. I've stood at the graves of Mies van der Rohe and Louis Sullivan, looked over the site of the 1893 Columbian Exposition White City, seen breathtaking theater, eaten fantastic food, danced to music I hoped would never end. Stood six feet from Fountains of Wayne on a Tuesday afternoon, listening to them with Robbie Fulks standing beside me. I've been sneered at by Sarah Vowell for confessing I've never seen "The O.C.," heard Peter Sagal read from one of his books. Watched Paula Poundstone almost wet herself laughing at a taping of "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me." Stood in Grant Park and hugged strangers when Obama was elected president.

I've been mugged, called "White Girl," walked though gangs, been afraid. Been angry.

I've had not one job here I've enjoyed.

There is still a sense that I've only scratched the surface here, that there is more to see, but the truth is, I still crave a steady friend with whom to share it. I know many people, but have no best friend. My friends here suffer from depression, a lack of imagination, and a steady decline toward a suburban mentality that unnerves me. Is this here, or is it everywhere? I felt lonely in Boston, left behind by friends who married and moved on or away.

Here, a neighbor and her husband, from New Jersey, admit they are ready to go back East. They love a lot of things here, but are finding the city a bit lacking in edge. A friend of mine in Boston, who did work with Chicago clients, once said, "It's not that the people in Boston are necessarily smarter than the people in Chicago; they just get more pleasure out of using their brains." I have to agree. Where do all the "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" people go when the show is over?

It will be at least a year before -- and if-- I'm ready to make another transition. I don't want to have regrets about missed opportunities, so I'm going to use the next year to re-focus my perspective on what I came here for. One big regret I have is that many of my friends from Boston have not visited me. Not once in five years. Some have visited me a number of times, but not the ones I'd have bet on, which has been disappointing. I'd hoped more old friends would show an interest in my life here.

I also want to live a less encumbered life. I came here to live more cheaply so that I could do more, and yet here I sit with a mortgage, which while not necessarily wrong, has sidetracked me from my original purpose. Part of buying the condo was the hope that it would give me a sense of permanence in an established community. This has worked, to some extent: I have great neighbors, and a singing writer/cop living below me. A harp guilder on the top floor, an actor as well. The baby boy who lives next door is entranced with me and follows me around when he's out with his mother. She can call me to watch him and his sister if she has to run to the store, or borrow an onion. It's nice.

I fell in love with twin toddlers, much to everyone's surprise, including my own. So I do feel invested here in a way I never could in a city I grew up in, because what I have here is borne of a deliberate choice on my part to be here, the result of effort and determination, and the permission I gave myself to follow my heart.

So there's no rush, and there will be a lot of soul-searching, and reconnecting with the values I want: fewer encumbrances, a lower cost of living, more freedom. I've got some ideas, but that's for another time.

Channeling Mrs. Kravitz

2010-05-23T23:01:00.003-05:00

So the owner of the unit above me finally rented it out. I met the new tenant, and he seemed like a really sweet guy. I was waiting for him to move in so I could have the very fun "The noise insulation between apartments above and below is pretty poor, and I don't know if you want me to hear you having sex, but I know I don't want to hear you having sex, so if you anticipate a healthy social life, a nice thick rug would be ever so appreciated."

I'd finally had this conversation with the last tenant after a year of being periodically woken by the sound of him having monotonous, excruciatingly boring, repetitive sex right above my head.

"I'm coming, I'm coming, I'm coming," the woman would chant. Endlessly. Like a really bad hip-hip song. One night, after about ten minutes of this, I almost screamed, "TALK IS CHEAP, AND ACTIONS SPEAK LOUDER THAN WORDS, SWEETHEART!"

The way it worked, I'd be woken up by either her loud, clunky shoes clomping on the hardwood floor right above my head, or the very loud squeaking of the floor as she and her boyfriend stomped around ten feet from my head. (I don't know where these two met, but it was NOT ballet class.)

Then silence, then the frenzied squeaking of the floorboards as they had at it in the bed, then her chanting, then silence, then the stomping as they both clomped to the bathroom (the layout of our apartments is identical).

I tried sleeping on my futon in the living room, I tried playing a portable CD player in my bedroom. The thing is, if you live here, you KNOW how thin the floors and ceilings are, so you have to know that if the floorboards are squealing like a catfight as you're screwing, it's reading loud and clear to your neighbor below. Who is most likely trying to sleep because it's after 1am.

There are those who fall into the camp of "it's always OK to make intrusive noise during sex," as though sex were some sacrosanct function to which everyone has to indulge being an unwilling audience. I fall into the "you have no right to include me in your sex life without my permission, or ruin my sleep or invade my privacy" camp. This camp is located next to camp "any noise that wakes me up at 1am is out of bounds, whether it's your CD player or the girlfriend you mechanically screw to preserve your self-delusion that you're straight."

Oh, yes, I had my theories.

So I finally asked him if he could put a rug down, but he moved out for reasons unrelated to this. Now, the owner of the unit is the president of the condo board, so I asked him to see whether his next tenant would put a rug down. I'm sure that his eagerness to rent the place (it was empty for several months) led him to omit requiring a bedroom rug in the lease, or even mentioning the issue. But I shall. Oh yes, I will. The new tenant seems very sweet, although he was assembling new furniture upstairs in anticipation of his official move-in tomorrow, and I had to go up and knock on his door. I'm trying to be optimistic about a man who hammers and pushes furniture around at 10:30pm on a Sunday night. He apologized and promised to keep the noise down, but he and his friend sound like they're doing gymnastics.

Then again, I have a stereo with some pretty good speakers.

Let the negotiations begin.

Sometimes you just have to say no. Or maybe.

2010-05-20T22:06:00.000-05:00

The writer/director of the sketch show I did got in touch to say he'd written more scenes and wanted to do another show in late August through mid-September. He was also going to film the show for Comcast, and was I interested?

I had to say no because I'll be out of town for a cousin's wedding (I would not miss this - weddings in my family are far and few between, and having all of my relatives in one room makes for more entertainment than any television). I did mention that the other thing I could not do was live at rehearsals like we did for the first show. The other woman and I were losing our minds toward the end because we had our lines down way before most of the others, and we spent 4-5 nights a week in rehearsal. (We would have to run a scene three times each go because one guy could not master complex directions such as, "Don't deliver your lines with your back to the audience," or "When you say that line, cross upstage.") For a sketch show with no costumes, no scenery, minimal props and very basic tech, we way over-rehearsed it. I got so sick of the sound of my own voice I started rehearsing in accents.

And we rehearsed so much because, walking-and-talking issues aside, at least two other cast members didn't learn their lines until right before the show. I have little patience for this. So on the one hand, I'm sorry I might not be able to do more with this show, but on the other, I like having a balance in my life. I'm not sure who is being called back, but I heard from the other woman that two of the guys I would not have called back are being invited.

No word from the place where I auditioned the other night; when I looked at the take-away sheet describing the season, I sensed there might not be many roles suitable for me, age-wise.

Still holding out hopes for the Scottish play. There's always tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow!

You wanted two, right? OK.

2010-05-18T22:08:00.007-05:00

Went to my audition after work. Had run through the troublesome monologue in the bathroom, and as I walked to the train I went over and over it in my head. I walked down Lake

I was the first to get out of the car and walk toward the cement stairs

to the El to catch the Blue Line

I was leading them, sort of

And took the train two stops,

The belt hanging down from his right hand

arriving in West Town

the crack as it hit my knees and ankles

Oddly enough, I'm always much more nervous about an audition that requires a prepared piece when it's the day before or the morning of; when I'm there and waiting my turn I get a sort of giddy excitement about it all.

I got to the theater early. My mouth was dry, so I'd picked up a bottle of water, something I usually avoid like...well, like a wasted use of material and energy. I was greeted by a pleasant young woman who took my headshot and resume and gave me my info. sheet to fill out. There were two women and a man waiting already. All much younger than I.

This isn't unusual.

I sat in a chair beneath the headshots of the cast of the current show, noting that they, too, were mostly younger.

Telling myself I'd rather watch Judi Dench than Keira Knightley any day, I filled out my form, gave it to the girl, and returned to my chair. The other auditioners studiously avoided eye contact with one another. I find this is often the case: there is a sense of awkward competition, the feeling that you can't make contact with one another because of some unspoken etiquette that you have to be at odds. Me, I prefer to be relaxed. I enjoy auditioning, find it fun, and when I see people very tense and nervous I want to chat them up to calm them down, let them know that it's all about having a good time.

A couple more people came in. The women were all willowy. Long hair. in skirts. I'd changed into jeans and a simple black top. Sneakers. I thought about my short hair.

"Judi Dench," I thought.

I tried to get a look at the headshots being given. Color is common now. They were all professionally done. Very nice. Mine is still a black-and-white shot I took at home with my digital camera and printed on HP photo paper. It's pretty pathetic. A neighbor is a photographer, and he offered to do my headshot for free. He won't take money, so I might make him a glass piece.

I took a sip of my water, held up the bottle, and said, "The audition dilemma: a dry mouth, or a full bladder?" The others looked my way and smiled. We made a little small talk. I don't try to have my usual gregarious conversations at these times, because people need to focus and practice, and run lines in their head. The last thing they need is a distraction.

One of the girls came back from the restroom and I saw that her skirt was tucked inside her hose waistband at the back.

"Hold on," I said as she passed, and grabbed the bottom of her skirt and pulled it down.

"Gosh, thanks!" she said.

"Now, that may have been a strategy to get a part, but I don't think that's what they're looking for," I said.

Another young man had arrived and sat in the chair next to me, jittery, his foot crossed over his knee and jangling. The other young man paced back and forth, clearly running lines to himself. I tried to get his attention, but he was deep into his own head. Another girl sat stock still in her chair, eyes grimly glued to a point on the ground in front of her. They all looked like they were waiting for their turn at the electric chair.

My chair was next to the stage entrance, and I could hear some of the monologues. Apparently, loud was in. Very Big was popular. I couldn't tell whether people were doing one monologue or two. I thought they'd asked for two.

Pacing Guy's turn came. As he passed me, I leaned over and grabbed his arm. He looked like he'd been Tasered.

"You have toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe," I murmured.

He looked. "Oh! Thanks!" and he pulled it off.

Stuck Skirt Girl was putting on her coat. "You're saving all of us from disgrace tonight!" she laughed.

"Yes, well, as you all enter, just stop here, do a turn, and I'll do a wardrobe check," I joked.

My turn came. The theater was small, cute. The seats were raked steeply, and there were about six people, including directors, sitting there. We exchanged pleasant hellos.

"Did you want two monologues?" I asked.

"If you have two, that would be preferred," said one of the directors.

"No, I have two, I just thought I might have been mistaken for a moment."

So I launched into my first, a monologue from Sam Shepard's La Turista, where a woman recounts being whipped with a belt in front of her family by her father for a tiny show of defiance. I heard some murmurs after I said my last line, some "Oh"s, which I took to be a good sign.

And then I did an oddball piece from Christopher Durang's Laughing Wild, a crazy number that contrasted starkly with the first. I did it mostly because it could be fired off at full speed and let me stay within the time constraint.

I got some "very nice"-s. Now, in dating, the first-date code for "I'm really not interested" is "I"ll call you," and we all know that "We need to talk," means "Your new address is Dumpsville." In theater, "very nice" is code for "I liked it." They may not love it and they may not cast you, but you did a decent job. When they're not impressed, or have made up their mind not to cast you, you get an informative response, something along the lines of "we're going to call people back by this date."

So I think they liked me. The thing is, as tedious as it is to rehearse a monologue, as hard as it is for me to discipline myself to do it over and over and over, I have to remember how much fun it is to perform it in front of people. In fact, I may just pick monologues by characters I've always wanted to play, and craft an acting career out of auditions. I'll always have an audience, and I'll get to play whom I want. This could work.

For my first piece...

2010-05-17T23:12:00.000-05:00

Audition tomorrow after work. This is for a theater company's season, not just one show, and they pay, so it's a little more serious this time. I've been honing my two monologues, and I'm sure my neighbors think I've been having psychotic breaks all evening. The thing that gets me nerved up isn't the performing of the monologues, it's the time constraint. I know I won't go over, but I have this irrational fear that I'll be at the high point of a scene, a place where I feel most vulnerable, and a voice calling from the darkened chairs of the audience will interrupt with a clearly bored, "Ok. We've seen enough."

For some reason, I can't quite get my lines perfect in one scene, so I'll have to take the script to work tomorrow and practice in Millennium Park, where my psychotic breaks might blend in. Either that or go to the lockable "sick room" and practice in a very low voice. I have a lot of trouble controlling myself, though, even while reading a scene. On the train I tell myself to just *read* the passage, don't act it, but I have this kind of expressive Tourette's, and suddenly realize that my lips are moving, my eyebrows are raised, and I'm poised to tell York that his sons have all been killed, and how does he like THOSE apples, HMMMMMMMM? Surreptitious looks around me confirm that I've been drawing some attention with my silent theatrics. Oh, for a burka. Yikes, look at the time. Must get my rest!

Ahoy Commenter from New England!

2010-05-16T22:37:00.000-05:00

I published your comment with out remarking which entry you were responding to, and I lost you. I'm gad you're reading the blog from "How It All Began" -- I was fresh to the city and saw more things, was less inured to my environment. I wanted to check out your site - if you read this, please post again, so I can respond properly!

JC

Diverted, C'est Moi.

2010-05-15T23:48:00.000-05:00

Next Tuesday, I have an audition for which I need to prepare two monologues totaling three minutes. On June 6 I have an audition for which I need to prepare a monologue in verse (Shakespeare). My plan?

Do everything but, apparently.

Called SP in London to thank him for the book he sent ("The Freedom Manifesto"). Heard about his attempts to swarm his bees (no luck; no queen larvae).

Went to glass studio, but was thwarted when my instructor proved out of the glass I needed. Cut what I could, came home, did laundry, sorted out storage bin in basement. Masked, primed, and put the first coat of paint on the wood-faced replacement windows in my bedroom that had been unfinished since I bought my place two years ago. Got out a cookbook and made a divine couscous/stew dish. Danced to Fountains of Wayne's "Red Dragon Tattoo" five times in a row.

Gave cats Petromalt. Watched latest "Dr. Who" episode (remain unimpressed by Amy Pond; the actress is either misdirected or just not interpreting the character in a way that grabs me. Very one-note).

Did time two monologues (while eating couscous dish) to make sure they fit the time constraint. Worked the one I've yet to perform. Found some good decisions about delivery.

Gave rabbits fresh hay. And time for bed.

Happy Monday!

2010-05-11T00:15:00.000-05:00

(Non sequitur: Have an audition for a nonprofessional show in a neighboring town. Depending on the director's vision and style, I might actually have a shot at Lady MacBeth. Which is my way of saying I'm going to audition for the play in the hopes that I land the plum female role, rather than committing every weekend in August just to say, "The queen, my lord, is dead.")

Today at work I was binding eight books that had to go to an insurance broker. These books contain all kinds of information relative to the solicitation of insurance. Actually, they were due to the broker last Friday, but the person in charge dragged things out until the last minute. It's his first time putting one of these together, and he's fretted over it to the point where he can barely hand it off. And well, nobody ever meets a deadline at this place. It's insane. My new mantra is "PULL. THE. TRIGGER."

So this morning I took over the copier room, copying and inserting tabs and apologizing to everyone. After an hour I was ready, and began to punch the first book for binding. Book Dude came in. He stood by me. I had a bad feeling.

"So I have these," he said, holding up three documents. Three double-spread, staple-bound documents. "I was wondering whether we could fit these in."

He was wondering whether he could, oh, suddenly pull not one, but three, full brochures of over 90 double-sided pages each out of his ass and have me copy and insert them into eight books.

I have a crappy poker face, but I tried my best to appear neutral. I took one document and paged through. The paper was very thin - bad for copying. It would have to be done slowly, manually. There were a lot of pages. I cursed in my head. I debated going home sick. Faking an ulcer. Perhaps a seizure.

"Can you do it?" he asked.

"I can do whatever you want," I replied, trying to keep my voice neutral, suspecting I was failing. "What you need to decide is how important it is to get these to the broker soon."

Wait. These were annual reports.

"We're publicly traded," I said. "These should be on the website."

My cubicle neighbor overheard us searching online and mentioned that he had them on his machine. God love him.

I commandeered three machines and ran back and forth down the hall between copy machines, stacking and sorting. A coworker helped me fudge three tabs with labels to fit in with the pre-printed tabs for the document center. (We do our own production to save money. The department head is frugal.) At one point, we asked Book Dude if he wanted the inserts in ascending or descending chronological order.

"What do you mean?"

"Do you want it to go 2008, 2009 reports and 2010 notice, or 2010 notice, 2009 and 2008 reports?"

"2008, 2009, 2010."

Walking back to the copier room, the other woman and I reflected that this was perhaps the fastest decision made by anyone in the department's history.

A half-hour later, and I was again attempting to bind the first book, now with three extra sections and tabs.

The binder comb was too small. We had none larger. I called the document center. They didn't have any larger. I stood, head down, racing through strategies. Not for the first time, I wished I'd been a stuntwoman. Less stress.

A co-worker came up with a solution: Put the inserts on a CD and insert the CD in a pocket in the back. God love her. She started burning CDs while I bound the books.

So I threw about two reams of paper into the recycling bin.

Book Dude was very grateful, and I congratulated him on getting his first book done. I am proud that I remained calm and helpful, but he is buying me a bagel tomorrow.

Morning exchange at Au Bon Pain.

2010-05-08T00:58:00.002-05:00

Cashier: "OK, you get to play my game. You get to choose: I give you your receipt and you keep it, I give you your receipt and you give it back to me and I throw it out, or I just throw it out."

Me: "You just throw it out."

Cashier: "Great! Thank you for playing my game."

Me: "Thank you for letting me win."

Rage Day has passed...

2010-05-05T19:04:00.000-05:00

...hormones settling back to normal, Houston. Much more able to cope, less maudlin and self-pitying. Headache all day, though.

Hormones or Homicide?

2010-05-04T23:11:00.003-05:00

I'd sent an email to a coworker and copied my supervisor (as suggested by my co-worker, the woman who's training me). The subject was regarding an ongoing issue with a new client, and wording for a document.

My supervisor emailed me back to say that in the future I should just ask one or the other because it looked like I was "shopping for answers."

It's been crazy busy, I've been swamped, and I looked at this email, and it was the last straw. I mean, really? I've robbed my emails of all personality, stopped asking questions unless they pertained directly to a task at hand (I'd gotten some roundabout feedback that my enthusiasm was great, but I had to remember I'd only been there a short time -- I assume this has to do with my persistence in trying to understand how things work in relation to my job, and since people there can't seem to explain how to tie a shoe without making it convoluted and obtuse, I have to keep asking for clarification. So I've stopped that, accepted that I don't understand half of what goes on around me, and have to resist the urge to. Because apparently my desire to understand is annoying.)

And now, a simple email asking for information from my own department members was somehow impolitic in a way I don't grasp, but there is no way in hell I'm asking why. Because I suspect that whatever condescending, verbose answer I get will be the one that sends me screaming across the table with a letter opener in my upraised fist.

So I asked my co-worker if she had any idea what I'd done wrong. After hearing my story, this sweet, 63-year-old Italian-American woman who says "boo" to nobody, screwed up her face and said, "I don't know what the fuck her problem is."

"Ok, just checking. I've had my leash jerked a few times already and I don't want to ask her. But if you don't know, then I don't feel so bad about not understanding."

Then when I followed the advice I'd gotten regarding my initial impolitic question, I got a call from a snarky insurance broker lecturing me on why the information on the form I'd sent in could not be accommodated. She went on and on -- oh yes; she's English, so there was that one extra notch of haughtiness in her voice. I listened to her scold me breathlessly and Britishly, and I finally interrupted with, "Hi. Excuse me -- I'm not an Insurance Person. I've been here all of two months, and I was told by my supervisor that the wording I sent was correct."

So we decided that I'd set up a phone call with my supervisor and the broker. (I won't even go into the nightmare that ensues whenever I try to send my supervisor a simple Outlook invitation, because if I did, I think I'd cry right here.)

After lunch, I decided to tackle the copious files that my supervisor had instructed me to box up and send to offsite storage. I was given a date parameter, and I began pulling files and logging them for storage. There were a lot of files. At one point, I asked the woman who oversees one of our programs whether she wanted me to include her files (they are in the same drawer). This woman is a bit of a princess, and her manner can be infuriatingly condescending and rude.

"Those files were created before I took over the program."

"Yes, I know, but I don't know whether you want them sent offsite, or whether you anticipate needing them for reference."

"I didn't make those files."

(fighting the urge to wrap today's trendy chunky necklace around my hand and twist until her head came off) "I know. But since you now oversee the program, I wanted your input as to whether it was important to you to keep them here or not."

With a tone that suggested I'd asked her whether she wanted to shop at Old Navy, she replied that I could send them to storage.

I was continuing my chore when the junior analyst came over. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?"

"I looked at the carpet, took a breath, and gave her a smile. "I'm sending these files offsite per R---'s instructions."

"ALL of them?!?!?"

"No, only these files through 2008. 2009 and 2010 are staying."

"Well, I went to the cabinet, and it's almost empty!"

(The phobia around any kind of change in this place borders on a sort of collective Autism.)

"Yes, there were a lot of old files. I'm clearing space for those." (pointing)

"Oh. OK."

It all reminds me of the time in first grade when my teacher was out unexpectedly, and the school didn't have time to get a substitute, so my class was divided up and sent to various classrooms. I ended up in the room of one of those sadistic women whose choice of career was baffling given how much they seemed to hate kids.

We were instructed to do our work and, when done, to go to the front of the room to the book table, select a book, and read quietly at our desk. Now, I was reading at a much higher grade level, so I'd pick a book from among the first-grade-level books, read it, return it, and get another. After the third trip to the table, the teacher singled me out and reprimanded me in front of the class for only looking at the pictures.

"No, I'm reading the books," I'd explained.

"No, you're not. You can't be reading them that fast."

"I am. I am reading them," I'd said, standing in front of the class, horribly embarrassed.

"She does read that fast," one of my regular classmates volunteered.

She became enraged, screeched that I was lying. I saw where the power lay, so resignedly, I took a book (they were those paperback books whose shape was cut in the shape of the cover picture and had ten pages or so), and went to my desk. I read it. then I read it again. Then I looked at each picture. Then I read it back to front. Finally, I tentatively put the book back and picked up another.

The teacher had been watching me like a hawk, and she smiled a smug smile. "That's better," she said.

That's kind of how I feel now, except I'm not 6 and don't feel like it's somehow my fault that I'm more capable than I should be.

If I can just keep up the facade for the rest of the year. I just need a year.

Better yet..

2010-05-02T18:07:00.000-05:00

A "woo woo!" tattoo.

I think this is bothering me more than I'd like it to.

The more I think about it...

2010-05-02T18:06:00.000-05:00

...the more I want a T-shirt with "Woo Woo" inside a circle with a slant line through it. Or better yet, a necklace that says "woo woo," that I can wear undercover every day to remind myself that my Inner Woo Woo still lives.

Playing the game

2010-05-02T00:41:00.001-05:00

I meet with my immediate supervisor, a woman I like, every Friday. She has lots of good things to say, and I think she's happy with me, but this week she gave me a word of caution.

"You have a great, outgoing personality, and we love it. But you need to remember that this is a *very* conservative company, so when you send emails, make sure to keep them factual and very professional."

"Ok...can you give me an example?"

"You responded to an email I sent, and I think you said something like, 'Woo woo...'"

"Oh, right; OK; no problem."

"I'd just hate for an email containing something like that to be forwarded and the head of the department see it."

"Uh-huh. Sure. No, no problem, point taken." (I'd responded to a message she sent regarding a resolution to a problem that had been nagging us. It was completely internal.)

Of course, the unspoken part of this was, "The department head is inflexible and humorless and will come down on you like a ton of bricks, so I'm trying to spare you by giving you a heads up." I appreciated it, actually. No more expressions of happiness over new endorsements. Basically, no having to care.

It's an odd situation to be in a job where you don't have to be a Type A about your work, where they WANT you to back off and let other people give you things and take the responsibility. I have to keep reminding myself that I'm not making a ton of money (my mortgage and condo fee for my very small 1930's condo takes almost 50% of my take-home pay), and that this job is less senior, and less is required of me.

There was a side comment about how she knows I want to change everything relating to the Claims Guy. I said actually, that would be hard since he can't really tell me how things get done, so I'm having to figure out how to do what I need to do in a way he wants, so I'm just doing my best in a way that makes sense to me (as an aside, Claims Guy is very nice but is positively dreadful at giving information, and as a result I've wasted a lot of time chasing my tail). Oh yes, I did make one earth-stopping change: I removed the Post-it Notes that he routinely STAPLES to file folders to identify them, and made actual file-folder labels. I told him to just give me folders and I'd be happy to make labels. Whoa! Look at me going rogue with Word and the Avery labels!

So instead of being proactive, I'm going to sit back, wait to be given things to do, and not care when I have down time. I can do that. I can relax just fine.

I think I'd prefer to prepare the monologue...

2010-05-02T00:11:00.000-05:00

So I've been looking for more shows to audition for. Here's the thing: I like being in shows. I can memorize lines, take direction, and I'm a solid, if not gifted, performer.

But when I mention a show I was in, and people say, "oh, you're an actress?" I feel like a fraud if I say yes. It's not that I don't like the stage; I do. But I don't love it. I'm comfortable being the center of attention, but I don't care if I am. I can walk into a party of strangers and have them eating out of my hand laughing in twenty minutes, but I'm just as happy sitting at home with a book.

I also prefer to be cast in plays without having to try to earn the role. In other words, I'm lazy.

When I'm around people who consider themselves actors, there's an edginess about them, a hunger for the next role, the next thespianic fix. A need to be taken seriously, to be validated. A profound inability to laugh at themselves. (Yes, I'm generalizing. It's what I do.) It also means they practice and take acting classes and well, improve.

Since my move to Chicago five years ago, I've done precious little, and most of it very bad (one of the drawbacks to a city that has a ton of theater is the corollary that there's a lot of bad theater).

My last show was a sketch show, and it was fun and decent. I recently saw an audition for a play, which appealed; I'd like to be able to play a single character and stay in that character. The notice said no monologues necessary; the audition would be short and sweet. Great; no need to dust off the comedic or serious or Shakespearian.

The bus took forever in Saturday traffic, and as an added treat, I had the two ghetto chicks right next to me. They'd been at the bus stop at North and Clybourn, and they were clearly friends. North and Clybourn is by where the old Cabrini-Green projects were; the buildings may be gone but the social etiquette is alive and well. They carried on simultaneous cell-phone conversations.

"What, you didn't hear your cellphone when I called you? Oh, OH, the ringer was OFF. Why is yo ringer always OFF when I call you?"

"Im not playing you -- I'm on the bus. ON THE BUS. *tooth suck* Shit, bitch, I ain't playing no games; I'm ON. The DAMN. BUS."

"No- NO. Every time I call you say yo ringer's off. What's that about? No, I'm on North Ave., on the bus."

"Hold on - she's talking loud right next to me. Why you gotta talk so damn LOUD for?"

"Hold on -- HOLD ON. What the hell is your problem? No, not you..."

This went on at full volume for a half-hour.

By the time I got to my stop, I had five minutes to get to the theater for my audition slot. I ran. I ran up Milwaukee Ave. past the bakery and a pub and a car shop and a South American restaurant, a tea shop, clothing store.

The theater is the same one I performed in last, a small, low-budget fun place that exits to rent space at an affordable cost to people wanting to mount their own shows. This is a great concept, but one of the unfortunate side effects is that anyone with a printer, some cash, and delusions of artistic genius can produce even the most undiluted crap.

When I arrived there was one other woman in the lobby. We smiled at each other while I filled out my form. Would I dye my hair? For Steppenwolf, yes; for a no-pay four-night show at Gorilla Tango, hell, no. Would I accept a nonspeaking role? Uh, no.

The other woman went in, was in for all of two minutes, then came back out. I went in, and faced the director and a woman. I was given a sheet, read one part, the director read the other. This happened three times. I gamely tried to bring nuance and meaning to lines such as, "I know you came to tell me that Im dead," but I don't know which of us was the most bored. I was disappointed to see that the sheets were typed, not from a published script.

"Is this an original work?" I asked.

"Yeah. It's kind of a post-apocalyptic Garden-of Eden thing," the director shrugged. Way to sell your show.

I got the usual, "We'll call people by...blah blah blah." I tuned it out, because I already knew I wasn't going to accept a role if one were offered, and I knew I wasn't going to be offered a role.

Afterward, I consoled myself with lunch at Sultan's Kitchen, where I had an amazing sandwich for all of three dollars. And read some monologues. And dreamed of a good script. Or of writing my own.

Getting off the property

2010-04-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I decided I needed a day where all I did was whatever I wanted to do. I took the El to Lincoln Square, planning to sit at The Grind and read a bit, and then perhaps do some budget shopping.

At the counter I ordered a beverage and a bagel, but when I handed my debit card over, the cashier told me there was now a $10 minimum for plastic.

(A TEN-dollar minimum? At a COFFEE shop? What did they expect people to buy?)

"OK," I smiled, gritting my teeth. "Off to the bank."

Thus it was I paid a $3.00 ATM fee to take out cash for a purchase that cost just slightly more than the ATM fee. Cripes.

Gamely trying to hold onto my carefree-day buzz, I returned to the cafe, ordered my stuff, and sat down. I opened my book, "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo," by Stieg Larson. This is apparently a popular book, but I have to say, the translation from the Swedish is stilted, and well, a third of the way in I'm bored, not to mention confused by the endless relatives involved in this "mystery." The characters are flat and uninteresting, and they don't have to be.

After my stint at the cafe I took a walk to a local consignment shop. Although I'm on a budget, I'm also trying to intelligently re-outfit myself. I'm not a tall gal-- five feet, actually, and fairly petite. I have trouble finding clothes where the sleeves and shoulders fit, and as a result, I often buy clothing (usually from thrift stores) that almost fits. Lately I've decided enough is enough, that it's time to be more fastidious. More fabulous. So I tried on a number of clothes that looked unusual and promising.

The dressing rooms at the back of this small storefront establishment consist of a hard-walled back panel divided at a right angle by another hard wall. The right wall of the store forms the outside wall of the right-hand stall, and a curtain, the left-side side wall of the left-hand stall. Curtains run across the front.

I was in the left-hand stall, stripped to bra and panties, when the curtains around me began puffing inward from the movement of a hand feeling for the opening. This happened around to the side, and then the curtain was wrenched back from the rear of the cubicle. A middle-aged Asian woman stopped, holding an armful of clothes, looking at me blankly.

"Hello!" I said brightly.

"This is individual, or group?" she asked in a heavily accented voice.

"Oh, it's individual, " I said, still standing in my underwear, briefly reflecting on this recurring public half-naked theme in my life.

She stood there, silently, for a moment.

"But," I chirped, "I'll be out in just a few minutes!"

"OK." And she was gone.

I found two (two!) reasonably priced dresses and left. And now I can't help, as I walk down the street, or at work, suddenly starting and looking down to see whether I've got on clothes.

A whole new meaning for the term "Business Casual"

2010-04-18T21:40:00.003-05:00

Friday promised to be a beautiful day, and I looked forward to my bicycle commute to work. After forgetting my work ID and misplacing my keys several times, I was determined to be more organized. The night before, I laid everything out. Since I pack my work clothes in panniers, I have to select clothes that won't wrinkle. I'd selected a simple black dress and a duster to wear over it in case the office was chilly. In the morning, I packed earrings and hair product and shoes and made sure I had my cell phone and work ID. Feeling put together and prepared, I headed off.

As usual, there was a headwind. (There are smug trivia buffs who claim that "Windy City" refers not to a meteorological phenomenon but to the breeze generated by the yakking of Chicago politicians. These people have never ridden a bike in Chicago.) I dug in and biked to work, making good time, feeling happy that it was Friday and warm and the beautiful lake was to my left along the way.

In my office I took my bags into the single-room bathroom that I use as a changing room. I laid out my things, and stopped. I looked in the bags again. I stared in disbelief.

I had forgotten to pack the dress.

I put on my heavy tights and donned the duster, but it was no use. The duster was a hoodie that fell to a few inches above my knee and closed by means of a belt. No buttons, no zipper. It was like a combination bathrobe and hospital gown.

And it didn't shut nearly well enough, especially around the hips. I put my black spandex bike shorts on over the tights. OK. I put on my shoes and fixed my hair, then carried my bags to my desk.

"Good morning," said James, the Scottish young man who sits next to me.

"Hi James," I said, rummaging through my drawer with one hand while clutching the duster shut with the other. I found one safety pin. Using it to close the duster across my chest, I asked him whether he had any safety pins.

"I seem to have forgotten my clothing today, " I explained.

We looked at each other and laughed. He had no pins. it was time to be creative.

"I'll be back," I said, grabbing my desk stapler and heading back to the bathroom. Once there, I tried stapling the front of the duster shut. The staples did not hold nearly well enough to instill confidence.

I returned to my desk. The other admin was gone for the day so I looked through her desk drawers for pins.

"Look at JC, poking through other people's desks! First she comes to work half naked, now petty crime!" crowed James.

"M--- has let me in these drawers before, " I called. "And she would understand my dilemma."

No pins.

Just then another co-worker, a woman, came in. She had safety pins and, should I need to resort to it, a sewing kit. I went to the bathroom and pinned the entire front of the duster shut. The total effect was actually pretty stylish. I returned to my desk.

"Looking sharp there," said James, still very much enjoying my predicament.

"I think so," I said. "If I were on a runway in Milan or Paris, couturiers would be gasping at the bold urban edge of this design. People would shell upwards of five thousand dollars for this look."

At one point during the day I lost one of the safety pins fastened across my chest, so I grabbed a paper clip and worked it through the fabric. The head of the department came over to talk about something and as we talked, I saw her eyes flicker periodically to the paper clip. I wasn't sure whether she'd registered that I was wearing bike shorts over my tights. I considered explaining, but opted instead to preserve the mystery, and to carefully cultivate a reputation as a brilliant but eccentric admin.

As I prepared to leave at the end of the day, gathering my bike bag and gear to change for the ride home, James offered to text me a reminder on Sunday to bring my clothes.

"Why don't I just surprise you," I replied.

Is it Monday yet?

2010-04-12T23:33:00.001-05:00

I woke up happy that it was Monday. No, I had not had a large pipe of crack before bedtime.

Friday night I set out to see a 10pm sketch show a friend of mine was in. My car started sluggishly, and I made a mental note to have the battery checked.

On the way realized I was very low on gas, so I pulled into a station. After putting gas n the tank, I tried to start the car, but all I got was a mournful ROOOOOoooooooorrr. ..rrr...r and then... nothing. Great.

Now, one of the upsides to always having owned old cars is that you become accustomed to things like this, and to feeling comfortable messing with your car (I once had an ancient Toyota that had a spark plug that would pop out; I'd stop, shove it back in, and keep going; a VW Rabbit with a wonky choke that I adjusted with metal trash-bag ties.)

I can change a tire, and I can jump a car. Jumping a car will always make me nervous, but it's simple and as long as you're not color-blind, you can do it without blowing anything up. I went into the gas station convenience store, where an older man sat behind a window dealing with paying customers, and a younger man was putting sunglasses on a revolving display rack. I watched as he took each set from a box, removed the plastic wrapping, and stuck the side pieces into slots on the display.

"Excuse me," I aid to the younger man, "My car has died, and need a jump. I have cables, but I need a car to jump me. it will take two minutes. Can you help?"

The man looked confused, then called out to the older man something in a language I didn't recognize. The man, never looking up, replied. His tone didn't sound promising.

"No," the younger guy said, holding out his hands in demonstration, "I don't have the cables."

*sigh.*

"I have cables, I just need a car to jump." OK, and here is a customer of yours, stranded, and you are a SERVICE station, I thought. You could at least be concerned. And what the hell?!?!? You don't have cables? I would so revoke his man-license.

"Oh, OK. Yes, I can help, but it will be a few minutes." and he returned to the sunglasses.

I went back to my car and called a friend of mine in PA on my cell.

"I am sitting at a gas station at 9:30 at night waiting to have my car jumped. Why am I waiting? Lots of customers? Only one man at the till? No. Because the guy has to finish putting cheap plastic glasses on a display case in preparation for the 10pm gas-station sunwear fashion rush. Oh wait; here he comes -- I'll call you later."

False alarm; he was only getting a notepad out of his van. I called my friend back.

"Can one of the other customers help you?" she asked.

"Yeah, but it's a hassle, and for crying out loud, it's THEIR station. Their GAS station. Whatever happened to service and chivalry? "

Still, I kept a lookout for promising-looking customers. Obama bumper stickers.

Finally, Gas Guy came out and pulled his van up. He did apologize for keeping me waiting, and I was nice because what else was there to do? He seemed a little nervous and unsure of the cables, which made me uneasy about letting him near my car, so I took them and clipped them to his engine, likewise to mine, started my car, and voila.

I drove the car to the street next to my mechanic's shop, parked it, and took the train home. Then I remembered I had a vet appt for Amie, my rabbit, the next morning, an appointment I couldn't miss. By a stroke of luck, an iGo car was free three stations away, near the mechanic, so I reserved it and crashed into bed.

The next morning I got up, took the train to the iGo car, picked it up, drive home, picked up Amie, and headed for the vet.

Her teeth were problematic, as I thought, and she got a trim. But.

"Is that a flake I see?" the vet asked.

CRAP. Crap, crap CRAP.

She did a skin crape and yes, our pals the mites were back. Or had never really left.

So I left with doses of Revolution for both rabbits and both cats, and a weekend that would now be devoted to de-infesting my house. Not to mention the bill.

Dropped Amie off, returned the car, walked to my mechanic. I love this place. I told one of the guys where my car was. "You have the Honda, right?" he asked. They are amazing. He took my key and got the car, and while he checked it I chatted with the owner, whom I just adore. We talked about sleep patterns and taking care of yourself, and he gave me tips for my foot problems that he learned, oh, when he was back in Vietnam studying under the Buddhist priests. In the end I got a new battery and paid the bill.

Next stop, pet-supply store for flea spray and a fogger.

Back home I began dismantling the hutch for sterilization, and cleaning in preparation for spraying on Sunday.

Sunday, bleached the hutch pieces in the tub and let them sit while I vacuumed like mad. Then I put the rabbits in the bathroom, cats in the bedroom, turned on the fogger in the main room and left to meet a friend to explore Hyde Park while the stuff did its work. Returned home later, aired out the room, returned the cats and rabbits to the main room, and wiped the floors of the other rooms with bleach water. Followed up with hand-held flea-spray bottle. Sanitized litter boxes, replacing old litter with new. Did ridiculous amounts of laundry to sanitize bedding, area rugs, towels, clothing.

Re-assembled hutch. Sprayed vacuum and floor sweeper with flea spray. Collapsed into bed at 11:30 pm.

Woke up today thinking, "All I have to do today is sit at a desk."

Biked to work. It was a good Monday.

"Obvious" can be so relative.

2010-03-30T22:25:00.000-05:00

Been at the new job for one month now. The people remain very, very nice, I'm in love with the Dutch machine that dispenses free cocoa, and the work itself is not that demanding. What is demanding however (and I find this is usually the case) is the almost endemic aversion to efficiency. A preference for slogging through something in the most labor-intensive way possible rather than ask, for example, "Hey, do I really need to print my emails so JC can file them in a drawer?'

Today I sat with a claims guy to try and see whether there was a better way to maintain internal files (Damn you Sarbanes-Oxley!!!" It was tortuous, and by the end I realized my snappy little process proposal was going in the bin. At one point, he showed me insurance web sites he uses, with the idea that I could look up statuses myself.

"Why don't you just email me a list of the sites," I said. "Start with the one on your screen."

He looked at me blankly.

"Just paste the URL into an email," I prompted.

Confused hand gesture added to blank stare.

So it was today that I realized that part of this guy's problem vis a vis being overwhelmed with work is that he's horribly inefficient. I had to show him how to copy and paste a url (a general ignorance of keyboard shortcuts is widespread in the department; I've had to fight down screams watching people mouse all over menu commands rather than just hit two keys. I came dangerously close to a breakdown sitting next to someone who was showing me something, and who deleted entire sentences by holding down the DELETE key for ten minutes as the letters streamed into oblivion.)

Then there was the guy whose phone bill was tossed accidentally by me into the recycling and was lost. I suggested he just print it out from online. He'd never done this before (he is not an old person). I offered to show him how. Rather than do this, which would have entailed doing something unfamiliar, he called the phone company and had them MAIL HIM A NEW BILL.

I am sent emails by my boss. Emails with attachments. My instructions? Print them. Why? Because there are many of them. Or they are zipped, and rather than ask how to unzip them (two clicks), she sends them to me. Or because she doesn't realize you can highlight them all and print them all at once. This is the same person who has me file her emails in a drawer. Said files moved to offsite storage after a year. Yes, we pay money to store printed emails.

I've given up the germ of a notion that I may be able to help things. I will have a positive impact, but I'm not worrying about the big picture. I don't get paid to.

The Goose

2010-03-13T23:14:00.005-06:00

As I've mentioned, I'd been feeling a bit cooped up now that I was working in an office each day, so to recharge I would take walks during my lunch hour.

Last Wednesday I decided to walk south, following the parks along the lakefront. It was a mild day, and it felt good to be outside. I walked along a path, looking at the trees, imagining how beautiful it would be in spring and summer. I ended up at Monroe, east of Columbus. It's a fairly busy street, with two lanes each way. At this time of day, however it was pretty quiet.

Now, one side effect of the city being bordered by an enormous lake, one lined with parks at the city's edge, is that there are lots of Canada geese that like to hang out. They're very common, kind of like pigeons, only larger and a bit louder.

As I waited to cross Monroe, I saw some in the street, and as the light changed and traffic started to move, they all flew off. All but one. It stood there, directly across from me, staring at the oncoming cars.

I don't know why it stood there. I don't know why it never moved. Maybe it was frozen. Maybe it was confused and disoriented by the cars speeding towards it. I don't know.

The vehicle that hit it was a silver SUV. I'd like to think that it was too hemmed in by other cars to stop or maneuver or slow down. I don't know why it didn't beep its horn; perhaps it was as stunned as the goose. I'd like to think it was something like that.

I stood there as, no more than thirty feet away, the SUV hit the goose full-on. The sound of the impact was like a bat hitting an empty cardboard box at full force. I saw the goose get hit, then fall under the wheels of the vehicle. It rolled underneath from front to back, bouncing between the pavement and the bottom of the vehicle, rolling like a load of laundry in a dryer.

The SUV never slowed or stopped. It kept going. The other cars swerved to avoid the goose and they, too, kept going. I had my hands pressed against either side of my head, yelling, "NO NO NO!" When the cars had all passed, the goose lay in the street.

"Please let it be dead, please let it be dead," I chanted, trying to make it so.

Its head came up.

Oh God.

There was almost no traffic, but I held my hands up and yelled "STOPSTOPSTOP!!" as I ran across to the goose. It was on its stomach mostly. I could see its black webbed feet crumpled under it, a small amount of bright-red blood contrasting against them. Intestines showed from under its wings. I wanted to get it out of the street, but I was afraid of hurting it further. Its head was weaving around, its beak wide open in a soundless scream. I noticed that there were ridges on the edges of its beak, and felt that I was looking at something intimate, private, a secret I should not know, because I should not be sitting next to a broken goose gaping in disoriented agony.

"Okay, okay, okay," I said softly. I didn't know what else to say. I knew my presence was probably making it more afraid, and I felt as helpless as the goose. I circled its neck gently to prevent it from being able to bite me, and kept talking gently to it, looking at its ruined body and wondering how to move it. Then its head slowly faded to the pavement, and, mercifully, it was gone.

All of this -- from the initial impact to the death -- took less than a minute. We talk about a short time feeling like it lasts forever; I think that what really happens is that most of the time we register every third or fourth second. With this, I registered every single second in perfect clarity, and was present in every one. I felt every second from beginning to end, no distractions, no condensing.

I vaguely registered that my back was to where traffic would come from when the light changed, but I didn't seem to care, although part of me found it curious that I didn't. I picked the goose up by getting my fingers under the edges of its wings and sort of pressing my hands together to suspend it. Its feathers were so very soft. They were mottled white and brown and looked so clean. I placed the goose's body on the sidewalk and arranged its head so that it wasn't crumpled. Its insides still peeked out from under its body, but there was very little blood. A minute ago it had been this beautiful, sentient thing; one car had turned it into trash.

I walked away into the park on the other side, my body feeling like a jangling mass of pieces that all wanted to explode in separate directions. I decided to call SP, knowing that he would understand and not make some remark about what a nuisance geese are. While I looked at my keypad for the number, I saw a man walking toward me out of the corner of my eye. I was in a pretty busy area, but my section of the park was deserted. I could see the goose beyond, lying on the sidewalk, people reacting with revulsion as they passed it.

The man was closer, and he was walking straight toward me. I was in no mood to be mugged. He had on some ID around his neck. He was wearing a T-shirt and had long hair. I turned to face him, bracing myself.

"I saw that you tried to help that bird," he said. "That was nice."

I was caught off guard. "I think the Park Department will come pick him up now. He didn't have a chance, but I couldn't just let him lie there. At least he died quickly," I stammered.

"Well, anyway, that was a nice thing to do."

"Thanks."

I walked away and called SP, who was a good listener, and who knows that sometimes I just need to talk.

And then I went back to my office another way. I haven't walked that way since.

First Two Weeks

2010-03-12T22:38:00.000-06:00

I'd been nervous about how I'd adjust to a return to a regular office job. The answers: very well and not so well.

Day one: "Onboarding," in which a twenty something woman hands out some prepared information packages and proceeds to be unable to answer any questions after rapid-fire run down of every item in the package. The group (there are about ten of us) sits in stunned silence. Once again, my theory that HR people fill any Special Needs EOE requirements is reinforced.

We did go around the room, introducing ourselves and saying our new role. I noticed a far more diverse group than at my previous company, which pleased me, not least because I got to hear the Chinese woman next to me say "catastrophe analyst."

An hour or so later and I was upstairs at the client's office, situated at my desk. It's a mellow crowd. I work in the Risk Management group, not known for spontaneity and horseplay. The admin who is teaching me is a lovely woman, and we get along very well. She's about ten years older than I. The thing about it, though, is that she has a trait that I've found often in my travels: she knows her job but cannot explain something to save her life. Worse, she can't glean from my questions exactly what I'm not understanding, and adjust her information accordingly. Here's a sample exchange:

HER: Oh, they don't need to fill that part out. It's IFM. We don't have an agreement with them.

ME: What's IFM?

HER: Facilities Management.

ME: We manage the facilities for a chain of retailers and we don't have a written agreement with them?

HER: Well, we probably do, but we don't have it with the person requesting the certificate.

ME: But isn't the person sending me the request one of our people?

HER: Yes, but they're not the ones asking for it.

ME: They're not? They sent it to me.

HER: Yes, but they're only asking because the mall asked for it. We don't have an agreement with the mall, so they don't have to put it in.

ME: So if we don't have an agreement with the mall, why are we sending them a certificate?

HER: So we can go on the premises.

ME: Of the people we are contracted with already.

Her: Yes.

You get the idea. This entire conversation could have been avoided if she had said, "Our client, whose facilities we manage, rents space in a mall, which is the property owner. We need to go into our client's shop to fix their air conditioner, but before we go onto the property, the property owner, the mall, needs to see a certificate of insurance to show we're covered in case we do any damage while we're there. So our employee is requesting it to give to the mall so that we can go onto the property."

This has been going on for two weeks.

How shall I describe my job? In a word: mindless. I take large Excel sheets and break them up into separate files for people. I organize hard files that have been neglected forever. I scan old binder contents to send to storage. I print files for people who email them to me (yes, I do). I take requests for certificates and forward them to insurers, and when I get them I send them back to requesters.

So on one hand, it's not stressful, and for that I'm grateful. It's just a lot of data, and learning what data goes to whom, and in what form.

So it's not crazy, and the day goes by pretty quickly, and they are being careful not to overburden me. Nice. But it's not exciting, not by a long shot. After a year of living on unemployment, I'm thrilled that I'll be getting a paycheck come Monday (yay!!!) Im also happy to see that my skills have held up, and that my work standards remain high. I think I could be a rock star here. Famous last words, I know. It has been only two weeks, after all.

The not-so-good: Adjusting to being inside all day, at one place, SITTING. The sitting all day is awful. No matter how many trips to the beverage station or the bathroom, I still feel like a big slug. My legs ache from the inactivity, and I've put on a few pounds. I look at the other women, at the prevalence of what I call "office butt," (and the male equivalent, "office gut,") and I vow to start riding my bike in next week. The city bike garage is directly across the street from our building.

The people in my department are all exceptionally nice. I think one of the guys has a little crush on me, mostly, I suspect, because I've walked out with him and chatted with him, making conversation. We share an interest in cycling. He's very sweet but socially awkward and very stiff in his affect and his motions. I suspect a bit of Asperger's. I've had another person with this crush out on me before; I guess I have enough affect for the both of us...

Happy Weekend!!!

An Embarrassment of Bunnies

2010-02-23T23:24:00.002-06:00

So Chicago Animal Care and Control (aka the city's pound) has had some budget cuts and, as a result, has stopped doing rabbit adoptions. This leaves Red Door pretty much the only shelter that does this now (many other places will take surrendered rabbits, but they do not house or put them up for adoption, instead turning to places like the House Rabbit Society or Red Door to take what they can, and euthanizing the rest.)

Red Door put out a call for foster homes to expand its capacity, and I decided to help. I don't have tons of room, but I've been wanting to do more for this excellent shelter. Plus, Easter is coming, which means things will only get worse.

At Red Door I asked who needed a break the most.

"Angelica needs a vacation," the shelter president told me.

Thus it is that Miss Angelica now calls my small dining-room home. (I call her Angelica Divine, because I believe every rabbit should have a tranny/stripper name.) Initially shy and skittish, Angelica D. is settling in and becoming quite the sweet girl. Like many rabbits, she's a bit territorial, and grunts if I mess with her litter box or "stuff," but she loves head rubs and has let me pick her up with no fuss, so we're on our way.

I have to keep her separated from the other two bonded rabbits, because rabbits don't take to each other all the way at first, and Leroy's exploration of her pen has led to some face-biting attempts. Amie hasn't bothered, but sits in her hutch calling, "I DON'T KNOW WHERE YOU COME FROM SISTER, BUT THERE IS NO 'BIG LOVE' IN THIS HOUSE!!!"

So I step over a large cardboard barricade that keeps the peace, and I hope for the call that says Miss Angelica has a home of her very own.

The Show is ON!

2010-02-23T23:12:00.000-06:00

Mid-Life Maniacs opened last Friday. Now, because we are not a theater troupe with an established following, and because we are performing sketch and not a play that people recognize and are drawn to, we are relying heavily on word of mouth.

I knew a lot of my friends were coming on Saturday, but not many on Friday (opening night), and I was curious. I asked the director how many tickets had sold for Friday.

"Four," he said.

So last Friday, as the cast stood backstage, we tallied the people we knew would be there. It soon became clear that it would be a small house. Our goal became to have more people in the audience than on stage.

We got our wish: seven on stage, nine in the audience. Yowza! The audience, for its small size, was appreciative and engaged, and we had a great time.

Saturday saw us go from famine to feast, with an almost full house. The audience roared, clapped, and had a great time, and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. After the show, as I collected my things backstage, I heard a former coworker yell out, "JC, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?!?!" and then she appeared backstage. She had had a great time, as had my friends and former co-workers, all of whom were effusive in their praise for the show and my performance. It was a good night.

Now to get us an audience for this, our final, weekend!

Heading to the West and Beyond

2010-02-21T22:23:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I suggested to my friend Jen H. that we check out the Garfield Park Conservatory. She's relatively new to Chicago, and hadn't been, Sine she lives in the West Loop, we met at the Clinton Green Line El stop.

The conservatory, like most, is a wonderland of beautiful plants and wonderful smells. And it's WARM. Perfect for a winter day. Looking at all the plants, I felt so looked after, so fortunate, that the world makes things like this. For free.

We hit the gift shop, where Jen got some air oil, and then we headed to Oak Park in search of a cafe (The Conservatory is beautiful, but it's not in a great neighborhood, and the gift-shop lady told us there were no local cafes.)

Oak Park is very beautiful, home to Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright and lots of lovely shops. Massachusetts people: think Newton, in Prairie style. Yuppie Town.

We went to Red Hen bakery, and I ordered my decaf and a spinach/cheese croissant. They were out of that, so I told the young guy I'd take a pan au chocolat. He apologized profusely for being out of my original choice.

"It's not the end of the world," I assured him.

He brought my decaf over, and there was about an inch of room from the top.

"I can make more for you; I'm so sorry this is all that's in the pot," he said. I assured him that was perfect, as it left room for milk. He continued to apologize.

"Hold on," I said. "I really don't mind. You see, I'm not from Oak Park. I'm from the other park -- Rogers Park. The Peoples' Park. This stuff doesn't undo me."

He informed me that I was fabulous, and Jen and I sat down by the window to "Yuppie watch," as Jen said. Oak Park is really very nice, but if you depend on public transportation (which I'm certain very few in Oak Park do), you'd have to travel through some pretty rough areas to get there from he city. Areas which at night are not a good idea.

We checked out various shops; one specialized in olive oils and balsamic vinegars. (Who knew there were such options?!?) We sampled oils and vinegars that were heavenly. The woman had us try a meyer-lemon oil mixed with a currant balsamic. To die for.

"I think I actually have a buzz from this vinegar," I said, after tasting an 18-year-old brew.

Jen bought some, and I'm determined to go back once I start my job, because this stuff was amazing.

One of those days...

2010-02-21T22:08:00.001-06:00

Did you ever have a day where you just could NOT do anything right the first time? Where you consider taking a remedial class in just walking?

Today was the day for me to pick up the rabbit I was going to foster from Red Door animal shelter. Chicago's pound, Animal Care and Control, in response to budget cuts, has stopped rabbit adoptions, so the pressure on Red Door as increased. I don't have all kinds of room, but I've been wanting to do more for this shelter, so I got out the puppy pen, packed the pet carrier, and headed out. First stop was at the local grocery store, so that I could pick up some more litter. As I hit the car door, I felt my keys slip from my gloved hand. I stood there, outside my locked car, looking at my keys sitting on the driver's seat.

"NO." I said. Because studies have proven that a commanding voice gets the best results when addressing inanimate objects.

I began to walk the five blocks home. On the way, I called my neighbor, and asked whether she could give me a ride back one I picked up my extra key in the apartment. She was happy to help, and also needed to go to the grocery store, so it all worked well.

I got to the building, and stopped. I called my neighbor again.

"Yes, and of course I forgot that my house keys are also on the key chain, so if you could come down and let me into the building, that would be great. How I manage to breathe is beyond me."

Fortunately, she also has a key to my apartment, so I got in and got the key, and we drove back. I got my litter and headed to the shelter. The rabbit I took is called Anjelica, and she is adorable. A small, English spot/lionhead-y girl.

We packed up, and I headed back to my place. I got there and went to grab my bag.

Yep.

Back to the shelter, where I'd left it, got the bag, then back to my house. Got Anjelica settled; Leroy was very curious, and there was a lot of nose-touching, and then the pissiness began, so I had to hutch up Leroy while I got ready for the gym. Amie just stayed in the hutch, muttering something about "I'm not O-freaking-Lan."

I biked to the gym, then to the grocery store for food. Got all the way through checkout and realized as I was about to walk out that I'd not paid for the soy milk tucked into the bottom of the cart. Turned around, went back, paid, and really wished I could stop having this horrible sense of impending insanity.

Back home, arranged some cardboard to prevent Bunny War, then proceeded to make a dish from my new vegetarian Low-GI (low glycemic index) cookbook. the good thing about the recipes in this book is that they are simple, low-cost, and best of all, make enough to feed my entire building in the event of a national emergency.

Now to finish cleaning up the aftermath of Harry's urinary-tract infection. And look forward to a new week. My final week before work starts.

Rehearsal and rehearsal and rehearsal...

2010-02-18T00:27:00.000-06:00

After two months of a ridiculously heavy rehearsal schedule, I am sick to death of the sound of my own voice. We had our first tech rehearsal tonight, and the other girl and I agreed that we just can't find anything funny about the show anymore because we've heard it every day for the past two weeks. It's become a form of mental torture.

Dear God, please let us not suck.

Countdown to J-Day

2010-02-18T00:23:00.001-06:00

Our sketch show opens this Friday. I start my new job March 1. Am I having any anxiety dreams about the show? Nope. Instead, my subconscious is preoccupied with presenting me with various first-day job-disaster scenarios. My favorite so far is arriving to discover that Anna Wintour (Vogue editor who famously inspired The Devil Wears Prada) is my boss. I notice her horrified expression, look down, and discover that I've managed to wear a blue top with wide pinstripes, and a brown skirt with narrow pinstripes. Black tights and shoes.

"I'm trying something new," I said.

Kid Visit

2010-02-11T17:27:00.000-06:00

I forgot to mention that I paid a visit to The Babies (TM) a couple of weeks ago. I was missing them, and arranged to stop by while their dad was caring for them.

As it had been a few months since I'd sat for them, I wondered what things would be like. Would they remember me? Would they care? They had just turned two, so who knew.

The father opened the door, with the kids right behind him. "HEY!" I called out. The grins I got in response were almost as wide as their heads. The boy used to like to have me chase him, so as I took off my coat, he stood ready, practically vibrating with anticipation.

"RAWR!" I called, my signal that the games had begun. He took off, laughing, and I followed, finally catching him and eating his face.

The next hour was spent catching up: toe-eating, nose-stealing, song-miming (they still remember all the moves to"Don't Cry For Me Argentina," "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Out Of My Hair" and "I Don't Know How to Love Him.") They also still pull their shirts up when I call out "Mardi Gras!" much to dad's chagrin.

They talk more now, and are much more deliberate with their actions, being careful with pretzels, picking things up, being more orderly. Feeding me. They are becoming less babies and more children. At one point I turned to the boy and suggested we read our favorite book, "Fish Kisses." He disappeared up the steps and came back with it. I was impressed. We had a good, good time. It's a lot more fun being the playmate than the babysitter. I hope to go back soon.

Dear Chicago,

2010-02-11T17:07:00.004-06:00

I've been here almost five years now, and I love it here, don't get me wrong; but I have a few thoughts I'd like to share with you:

"Diversity in the workplace" does not mean that you hire both Cubs AND Sox fans.

An "upscale" restaurant does not mean that the wall TV plays only major league, not college, sports.

A "balanced diet" does not mean hamburgers AND hot dogs.

A foot of snow is not a snowstorm.

Being proud of government corruption doesn't impress anyone.

Wrigley Field is not a ball park; it's a huge keg party with a ridiculously high cover.

Men: Dressing up does not mean that your shirt matches your baseball cap.

Women: Dressing up does not mean that your dress matches your baseball cap.

No matter how many times you tell yourself differently, The Wisconsin Dells waterpark is not an exotic getaway.

Walking never killed anyone. Neither did a vegetable. Or subtitles.

All the world's a stage. Or at least, a rehearsal basement...

2010-02-11T16:56:00.005-06:00

So my unemployment status pretty much killed a lot of extracurriculars: no more stained-glass class, no more associate artist and its attendant fees. That's OK; I knew it was not forever, and I've kept in touch with people.

But I was feeling restless and in a rut, and the Chicago winter did nothing to help. I sorted through clothes, re-organized my files, tidied up, did laundry... but that didn't really satisfy the creative bug. I'd been thinking I'd wanted to get back into some performance, so I auditioned for a sketch show, and I got in. Great. It wouldn't cost me anything but time, and I'd have some regular camaraderie. And fun!

So there are 5 men, including the (writer/director) and two women (the other woman plays the "hot" chick, and I play -- well, the other chick). They are all really nice people. As usual, I'm the loud one, cracking jokes and being a general wiseass. There was one other guy who was similar, and our scenes together were really fun. One in particular dealt with a woman discovering that her husband had a problem with internet porn.

"I want this done playfully," said the director.

"This is so guy," I told him. 'Oh, honey, I never touch you, and when I do, I have to take Viagra, but when you find I've been watching porn all the time, I want you to find it kind of funny.' "You realize, of course, that this is purely a male fantasy."

Still, we did it his way, and it worked fine, mostly thanks to the actor. Very cute. Then my co-actor started to feel unwell. He has a problem with asthma, and chalked it up to that. Then a few days ago we came to rehearsal and the director told us that the actor had gone to the hospital for emergency triple-bypass surgery. We opened in 11 days. I reflected that I'd done this for fun. Stress-free fun. I also reflected on the dark humor of the Cosmos.

So we got another actor who will take 4 main scenes, and the others have been divvied up. I now also play an army sergeant and a teenager. I wondered whether Streep or Dench had to pretend to play Modern Warfare 2, and decided that if they did they probably researched the game and played it ten hours a day to prepare miming it perfectly. I also realized that I'm too lazy to be that good. I practice saying "dude" a lot.

All in all, the show is fun and pretty well written, I manage to keep my Inner Bitch deep inside where she can't feast on anyone's blood, and I get to dance to Led Zeppelin, so how bad can life be? I know the director is stressing over the sick actor, and I'm proud of the way the cast has pulled together to pick up the slack. If this new guy can pull through, the audience should not be able to tell that anything's amiss. I'm so glad I took improv.

Dude.

So much can change in a month...

2010-02-09T23:51:00.000-06:00

So when impending homelessness loomed, I'd called my real-estate agent, and told him I thought it might be time to try to sell my place. He came to my house a few days later, with statistics on local home sales. He watched silently while I looked at them.

"There is no way I'm going to be able to sell this place," I said.

"No," he replied.

He then proposed several solutions, which included me renting the place out for less than my monthly mortgage payment (to bring it in line with market rents), combined with renting a room in one of the houses he and his wife owned nearby, at a ridiculously low rent, which would make it possible for me to earn the difference on my place with a low-paying job. The cats and rabbits would be accommodated.

Again, the kindness of people amazes me.

We agreed I'd put together a plan within the week.

And then, when things looked darkest..

A fellow condo board member saw a job posting in his office, forwarded my resume to HR, and I got a call from a dubious-sounding HR rep.

"You're resume doesn't list Access. You have to know Access."

"I've used Access very little, but I did have some training in it along time ago, and I test well in it. It's not a very hard program, from what I've seen."

Now, anyone who's dealt with HR departments knows that they are frequently the least technologically savvy people in the company, and because of this, they assume that every software application is mind-bogglingly hard.

So it seemed clear by this woman's demeanor that she was talking to me as a courtesy to my friend, and after a very terse conversation, I was sent an online test module. Word, Excel, Access. So I took them.

Long story short: I aced the tests, I did well on my telephone interview, and passed my two in-person interviews with flying colors. And I start my job on March 1. I'll be making about 10K less than my old job, but 25K more than unemployment, so I'm happy to have it.

I am now making it my mission to find jobs for people I know who are still looking. There are lots of great people out there, and it's become clear to me that the best way to get a job is to have a little help from your friends.

(I'd also discovered that my unemployment was extended regardless, so my situation wasn't as dire as I'd thought. But it never hurts to have a plan.)

And I'm glad to stay in my place, at least for now. She's old and she's creaky, but she's a gorgeous tiny old thing, and I do love her. And my neighbors have been amazing. In fact, so many people have been amazing, and generous, and thoughtful. Friends who hired me for "jobs" they needed help with: packing their apartments for a move, bringing their laptops in to tech support, freelance proofreading. It's kept me afloat, and I feel a strong sense of not only obligation, but desire, to pay it forward.

Adversity Meets Insight

2010-01-15T00:45:00.005-06:00

So I sat down with my Exel spreadsheet, took the balance left on my unemployment, the amounts paid every two weeks, and calculated that my financial doomsday hits in March. I called the Loss Mitigation number for my bank, and got a nice guy -- Gary, in Arizona -- and I talked with him about my options. I mentioned my IRA and that I'd been doing odd jobs to make ends meet, but once the unemployment runs out I will essentially stop being able to pay my mortgage, and was there anything the bank could do to prevent a foreclosure?

Gary talked about options and numbers, and said a couple of things that made a lot of sense. One was that even if the bank could extend some kind of payment reduction, if I couldn't even pay that, what was the point? I might consider trying to sell my place, but if I couldn't, I might be better off "walking into the bank, handing them [my] keys and saying, 'I can't make my payments, I just have to give it up.'"

He also said, "I heard you mention an IRA. Don't spend that on your place. If you spend it all to stay in your place, what will you do once it's gone? If that is all the money you have, keep that for yourself. Use it to take care of yourself."

I explained, as I find myself doing more and more (those of you who have been in this situation may understand) that my credit score is 812, that I've always paid my bills, that I'm not someone who takes her responsibilities lightly, but I can't seem to get anyone to consider me for a decent job.

"Look," said Gary, "a new chapter is being written for a lot of people. A lot of people like you, good, decent, responsible people, through no fault of their own, find themselves having to do things they've never done before. If you have to do it, do it. Take care of yourself."

I didn't expect this level of personal concern, and I was taken off guard. Gary was so kind, so understanding, and I thought of all the stories he must have to listen to every day. I was grateful that instead of being jaded, he was empathetic. I got a little choked up, thanked Gary, and sent an email to my real-estate friend to talk about putting my place on the market. Now, the chances of me selling the place quickly are crazy slim; however, on the bright side, it's nicer than when I bought it, and it's cute.

This is emotional for me. It's not that I can't part with the place, but rather the notion of having to make a new home again, of moving my stuff agin (GROAN). And this is the first place I've ever bought completely on my own. And it's so. Very. Cute. I've made stained-glass windows for it, take hot baths in my lavender-tiled vintage bathroom, eat at my four (!) windows overlooking the ornamental pear trees in the courtyard, drink wine with neighbors as we look over Lake Michigan on summer nights. Listen to the waves as I lay in bed. It's purely lovely. And yet --

I've been thinking about why I moved here. To have a better quality of life. Yes, for what I have and where I am, I'm paying a lot less than I would in Boston. But compared to renting, I'm paying a lot more: I could get a 1-BR with heat included for easily $300-$400 less per month.(The apartment above me, same layout, is for rent for $810 per month, heat and hot water included, because they've owned it forever. Not as nice as mine, but...My outlay is close to $1300, because our assessments are high.) The jobs I've looked at that paid too little for me to live on would be doable, if not excessive, if my housing outlay were reduced like that. And it struck me: By buying this place I'd locked myself into exactly the job rut I wanted to avoid. Don't get me wrong: owning has a lot of advantages, as far as equity and tax deductions. At least, in a normal economy. But I don't need to own here. I'm pretty sure I'm not going to grow old in Chicago - my sister could never live here.

I realized that if I rented again, I could ease my housing burden. Even if I got a job, selling may still be the preferable option: I'd rather spend money on movies and restaurants and traveling, and a life. I won't have to worry about condo boards and long-range planning. I could pay down my credit card. I could expand my job possibilities. When I thought about that, I realized that, as sad as it will be to leave my cute little condo and my great neighbors, it may be for the best. I like the idea of not being tied down. Ask my ex-husband.

Of Cat Food, Crashes, and Christmastime

2010-01-10T23:04:00.004-06:00

A few days before Chirstmas I drove to Parkview Pet Supply to stock up on cat food. I chatted with Joe about Christmas plans, then decided to stop a couple of blocks away to check out the boots in Payless. Nothing tantalized me, so I returned to my car, which was parked on a side street just past the corner. Someone had parked a red Monte Carlo directly behind me, creating a very tight fit between it and the car in front of me. It was clear I'd need to to the back-up-slightly-turn-slightly-pull-forward-back-up-turn-slightly routine until I was clear.

As I was doing this, the driver of the Red Monto Carlo got inside the car and started the engine (the lights came on). I was one backup away from a free-and-clear pull out, and I didn't want the Monte Carlo to pull forward while I was pulling back. I watched the car closely as I slowly backed up, and then I pulled out.

Of course, what I should have been looking at then was traffic. I wasn't. So it was that I pulled out into an orange Honda Element passing by. I felt the impact, and saw the Element judder to the left before pulling forward and stopping. It all happened so fast, and all I could think was, "Oh no, no no. I'm so stupid."

I got out of my car, dreading everything I was about to do and see. My entire bumper had been ripped off and lay in the street amidst a small lake of little broken pieces of my car. The driver of the other car had stepped out, He was a small man, who despite obviously being good and grown had a childlike look to his features.

I'd met him before. I racked my brain trying to think where. He was gay, that much I knew.

"Didn't you see me? " he asked quietly.

"No," I said, dying inside a thousand times. "I really didn't. I'm so sorry. Let me get my information." I felt absolutely awful. His front passenger tire was torn open, and a long deep gash ran on the passenger side from the front to the back. It was a nice car. Argh. He assured me he was unhurt.

Back in my car, I opened my glove box, thankful that after a bad cop experience a fews years back I always keep my insurance card there.

It wasn't there. A copy of an old policy was there, but not the current insurance card.

I tore everything apart. Nope. Not there.

CRAP. When the cops arrived, I was going to be in deep doo. the last time this happened, I'd had my license confiscated. The old policy had my agent's name, so I called and got my current policy number and the claims phone number.

I went to the other car; the driver said he'd called the police, so we just needed to wait for a cruiser to arrive. I explained my dilemma with the insurance card, but assured him I was insured and that it would all be covered. I gave him my insurance info. He was having similar trouble locating his insurance, so we were in the same boat.

"You look familiar," I said.

"Yeah; you do too," he replied.

We brainstormed, but couldn't figure out where we'd met. His name was Eddie.

"Well, I hope it was under better circumstances; I'd hate to think our meetings are always so dire," I said.

We sat in our cars and waited. It was cold. the street was near an El stop, so periodically, groups of people would pass by and stare. Several made sure we were OK. That was nice.

After over a half hour the cops still hadn't arrived, so I decided screw it, I was going to clean things up. I got out of my car and dragged my bumper assembly to the curb. I then took my plastic snow shovel from the trunk and began to push the small bits of stuff to the side of the curb to keep them from ruining someone's tires. As I pushed the debris to the side with my pathetic shovel, I caught the eye of a passing woman.

"What you now see is the perfect metaphor for this entire year," I said.

A man stopped. He owned a body shop. He suggested he drive Eddie to the police station, I could follow, and we could file our report there. He could then take Eddie back and see that his tire was fixed so he could drive home. Since it had been at least an hour and it was getting colder, I agreed. We called the police (again), told them of our plans, and after getting my bumper into the trunk, drove to the station.

I entered the station first. I approached two police officers, man and woman, who sat behind a counter that ran the length of the room. It was topped with granite and came up to my chin. Now, there is something so pervasively hostile about Chicago police that one chooses one's words carefully, not to ingratiate (that's impossible), but to avoid drawing the sadistic abuse of power they seem to enjoy. Yes, there are many things you can say, but let me tell you now that walking up to a chin-high granite counter, placing your hands on it and saying, "Hey, this is just like German Expressionistic Theater!" is not your best choice.

The woman behind the desk glowered down at me. The desk ran the length of the room, which was very long and very high; it was relatively modern, cavernous, and pretty empty.

"What can I do for you." Deadpan.

OK. I should explain that when I'm wound up or nervous or have done something like hit someone else's car, I get this sort of compulsive smartass Tourette's. I can't shut myself up, and I listen in despair as my insane self spews forth one-liners.

"I'm the perpetrator. I hit his car," I said, pointing to Eddie as he came in with his Samaritan.

We stood before her (no kidding; stone counter top, at chin height), while she asked us details of the accident and filled out a report. Her entire demeanor suggested that she had about a million things she'd rather be doing than helping us. When we didn't understand the question, or when she was unintelligible, we contorted in agony while we asked her to clarify. These requests were met with a steady glare and a repeat through clenched teeth.

As we waited for our insurance companies to fax us our proofs of insurance, my nervous compulsion had me making small talk and wisecracks, in a suicidal determination to get this officer to relax. Eddie and I chatted a bit, and I kept apologizing profusely for hitting him.
We all started talking about movies. The officer was becoming clearly relaxed; she was smiling,
making conversation (I think I got her to crack with discussions about unemployment and how it affects everyone -- I suspect I hit a good nerve there.) She told us that she liked action movies (shocker). "I like that movie 'Twelve Rounds.'" Yeah. She was almost scarier when she was confiding.

A very cute young black man appeared behind the counter. i was surprised at first, because he was dressed in a hoodie, a knit cap, and baggy clothes. Then I saw the ID around his neck.

"Don't say it." I begged myself. "Pleasepleaseplease, keep your mouth SHUT."

Feeling the urge grow, I satisfied it by turning to Eddie after the man had moved away.

"He's a brother undercover."

After all the information was in, I turned to Eddie and apologized once more. And here is when I got my Christmas present. He said, "You know, it sounds crazy, but it's been such a hectic week of running around, getting things ready, all the holiday madness, that it was actually nice to be forced to take a break." And he hugged me.

(I should also mention that the car was his boyfriend's. The BF called me a week or so later to follow up on my insurance submittal. We had a nice conversation, and he was very nice about it all. He wants us all to go to dinner after things are settled, so that we can figure out how we all know one another. He would drive, since I don't have a street-legal car.)

People. Can be. Amazing.

Yes, Folks; She's on the Board.

2009-12-13T11:25:00.003-06:00

(Posted in Laundry Room, beside sheets of paper on which have been taped a dryer sheet, dryer lint, and a Doritos bag):

All this was found in the recycling bin. I’ve taken trash out of this bin THREE times now. What do you need to make recycling a no-brainer?? A big, bright-blue recycling can with a huge “Recycling” logo on it? A clear, brightly colored sign? Oh wait – YOU HAVE THESE.

I’m sorry I can’t stand here and throw your trash out for you, or explain the difference between a plastic detergent container and a snack bag or a handful of dryer lint.
I’ve done just about everything else I can, though, so if you could exercise just a little initiative, that would be just swell.
Blue can = recycling. It’s not hard.

Joy C, irritated JOTL secretary

Running into the law in the RP

2009-12-06T00:20:00.002-06:00

The other day I was driving back home from running an errand. As I came to a busy cross-street, I followed a car across it and continued down. I was familiar with the neighborhood, and suddenly, something didn't feel right, but I couldn't put my finger on it. I noticed that the car in front of me was an unmarked police car. It had slowed down, and I could tell that there were two people in it, driver and passenger. Through the rear window I could see the silhouette of the driver as the car stopped and he threw his arms up in the air in a questioning manner. I wondered what he was discussing with his partner, and idly considered the amusing fact that, since unmarked police cars were all so distinctly alike as to make them instantly recognizable as police cars, they seemed beside the point.

The car continued down the street, slowly, as did I. A bus came up from the opposite direction, and we both pulled over to let it pass. As it did, I marveled at how tight a fit it was.

The driver's window of the cop car rolled down and the driver motioned me forward. I thought that was nice, and began to pass, when he gave a quick BLAT on the siren and motioned me to stop when I was abreast of his car. I stopped and rolled the passenger side down. The man at the wheel had on dark glasses.

"Why are you following me?" he demanded.

I was completely stunned. What? Following him? What was he on about? I was on my guard, and some instinct told me to do the improv thing: take it in a new direction.

I smiled broadly and cocked me head. "Because you're cute."

He paused and looked away. "Well, thank you, but I can go down this street; you can't."

Then it hit me.

"Oh my God, is this a one-way street?"

"Yes, and you have to turn right here."

"Oh, I'm so sorry - OK, I'm turning; thank you."

Now, I'm sure there was a Do Not Enter sign at the end of the street; in fact, I recalled that I'd never gone down the street that way. But there are a lot of shop signs, and an overhanging traffic light, and a very busy streetscape, and that, combined with seeing a car ahead of me go down the street had caused me to overlook the sign and passively follow.

I have to say, I've encountered a fair few cops since I've been here, and they are rarely friendly.

And he wasn't cute. But he seemed the type who would think he was. Unmarked Crown Vic; dark glasses. Someone's a badass in his own head.