I just got back from the travel medicine clinic, where my arms were poked and stabbed by many needles. As of today I can rest assured that I will not meet my end, while on vacation in South Africa or while toiling away stateside, by contracting hepatitis A, tetanus, or polio. I was also given a prescription for drugs so that I will not die of malaria. Also, strangely, a prescription to help in the event that I am stricken with violent diarrhea. I didn't realize that was a threat, but I suppose it's good to be prepared in any case. If anything is to be avoided on vacation, it's violent diarrhea.I HATE needles. I hate looking at them, I hate being near them, I hate having them jabbed into my veins. I see needles located very, very high on the Hierarchy of Evil Things, just above Vin Diesel and just below IVs. (I have never had an IV, but I imagine it to be like the icy fingers of death, jammed roughly and semi-permanently into your arm, pumping the secrets of corrupt foreign governments into your bloodstream.) Needles are sharp and cold, and they are thrust into your flesh by people who usually, as a result of working with needles every day in the way that I work with books, do not understand what it is to fear needles. What I'm trying to say is: ouch.So now my arm hurts and I have 3 little bandaids dotting my skin. There is an upside, though. To reward myself for my good and brave behavior in the face of needle tyranny, I took myself to Origins and allowed myself a treat: a chocolate scrub to replace the dwindling supply of my ginger scrub. Now I smell like cocoa. Or rather, like cocoa on top of vanilla lavender on top of grapefruit. What? All the little jars said "try me." I was just being obedient.
Ahhh... the triumphant return of the Unsatisfying Choir.After two weeks off, two glorious weeks of Tuesday night TV, I returned to rehearsal this week to find that two of my three Choir Friends were missing. My Choir Friends are women in the choir with whom I have bonded over our shared affection for singing, snarky remarks, and meaningful eye-rolls. They are my Choir Friends as opposed to my regular friends because I have no idea if we would even speak to each other outside of choir. I really know next to nothing about their lives, and they know next to nothing about mine. But on Tuesday nights, we're best friends 4ever.Anyway, very sadly, I learned during the course of rehearsal that the reason for Choir Friend #1's absence was that her father had just passed away quite suddenly, and consequently she will not be returning to choir for the rest of the Spring. This is sad for a variety of reasons -- first and foremost, because I think Choir Friend #1 is a very nice person and it sucks that such an awful thing happened to her family. And secondly, because Choir Friend #1 is a very good singer, and she sits next to me (counterbalancing the piercing shrieks coming from the woman sitting on the other side of me) and helps me to stay in tune.Choir Friend #2's absence from rehearsal was unexplained. This makes me worried, because Choir Friend #2 is exceedingly punctual and never misses rehearsal. She is the person I email for rehearsal notes whenever I skip practice -- I mean, whenever I am forced by lamentable reasons beyond my control to miss rehearsal. Choir Friend #2 sits in the back row with me and has perfected a highly dramatic eye-roll, accompanied by a heaving sigh, which she directs at choir members who insist on making the same musical mistakes five times in a row. This entertains me and makes me giggle, and for these reasons Choir Friend #2 is indispensable.Fortunately, all was not lost, as Choir Friend #3 was in attendance. Choir Friend #3 is a bit younger than me, a lovely singer, and rides the subway part of the way home with me. She tells me stories about her crazy family and once spent fifteen minutes during a break from rehearsal quoting Christopher Guest movie lines with me. This is a bonus in any friend, let alone a Choir Friend.Needless to say, rehearsal was considerably unsatisfying without the full array of Choir Friends. In addition, the train was very slow coming home, and I arrived at my apartment too late to start watching last night's special videotaped 2-hour Amazing Race episode with the husband. And consequently I had to spend all day covering my ears and dodging co-workers who, not realizing that I had yet to view the show, approached me with the usual rabid Wednesday morning cries of "Can you BELIEVE what happened last night...?!?"Alas! Woe! Life is hard with obstacles as pressing as these.
A few years ago, the husband and I read Fast Food Nation and decided to forego the eating of fast food indefinitely. Also, we decided to become economic vegetarians. Both resolutions held for about a month, I think, if that. The reason? My sick and overpowering fast food cravings.Yes, fast food is an arm of The Man. Yes, it leads us to early, salty death. Yes, it exploits us and makes us fat. But the cravings? I'm telling you, I have no control.First, there is the godfather of all fast food treats: McDonald's French Fries. Slim hot slices of "potato" goodness, clearly injected with some anonymous meat by-product, coating my tongue with grease and salt and shame. Then there is the Kentucky Fried Chicken dinner. Mashed potatoes, buttermilk biscuits, and crispy-skinned chicken that you can feel clucking away in your belly for about a week after you swallow it down. And let us not forget Dairy Queen, with its abundance of both cool treats (mouth-watering Peanut Buster parfaits, artery-clogging cookie dough blizzards) and hot eats (don't hate me because I like chili dogs).But for me, the pinnacle of all these? That little red-headed waif we like to call Wendy's. I am powerless when faced with the $.99 menu. I want it all: the sweet chocolate Frosty, the tender chicken nuggets, the teeny Caesar salad served with an extraneous breadstick. And until today, merciless cruel sad sad today, the Rich and Meaty Chili.Today, it must all come to an end. Today, the television talking heads interviewed a woman who found a severed human finger in her Rich and Meaty Chili. A human. finger. Floating in her soup. I am going to go take a shower, and then I am going to fill my belly with some nice fresh fruit and re-evaluate my life.
I skipped church on Easter morning, and now I am filled with guilt. Which is interesting, since I don't really go to church. Nor am I Catholic, which seems to be the religion most often connected to Sunday morning guilt. I was raised Church of the Brethren. We don't do guilt - we do potlucks.The husband and I do not have a church that we attend regularly. There are no Church of the Brethren congregations in Massachusetts, and the Unitarian churches we've looked at around here (which is the church in which the husband was raised) seem a little too "hold hands and sing while Sue and Dirk lead the willing in a circle dance" for us. But on Easter, somehow, I feel like we should be church-going folks. Last year, we went to one of the big downtown churches for Easter service, where we were able to blend in with all the other "church on Easter" people, listen to some nice loud trumpet music, and then be on our way. This year we planned to do the same, even set the alarm to facilitate the process... but then ended up sleeping late, going for a lazy morning walk, and relaxing with donuts and a newspaper like the sinners we are.Growing up, Easter was always one of those oddly-appropriated holidays, celebrated more for its emphasis on chocolate and pastels than for its religious meaning. We always got Easter baskets filled with candy and little gifts, and we hunted for eggs that had been hidden throughout the house that morning. Some of the eggs were hard-boiled treats that we had decorated with dyes and stickers the day before. Others were plastic eggs filled with small surprises -- a dollar, some jellybeans, a slip of paper promising "no chores for one day." As we got older, the Easter baskets got consistently less elaborate. By the time my youngest sister was in elementary school (I am the oldest of five), we woke up on Easter morning to find paper plates filled with a handful of fake green grass, each one topped with jellybeans, a few candy eggs, and a lonely-looking chocolate bunny. My parents claim this was because we had gotten older and "lost interest." I maintain that it was because my sister was, shall we say, unplanned (we call her an "oops"; she calls herself a "miracle child"), and my parents had consequently thrown in the towel on active parenting, choosing instead to stash their extra pennies in a secret savings account which, one sweet day, they will use to buy themselves new identities so they can escape their children and be FREE, FINALLY FREE.These days, Easter seems to bring with it a lot of Cadbury. I definitely remember enjoying myself a Cadbury creme egg or two as a kid, but now it seems like the creme eggs are the just the beginning of what Cadbury would like us to enjoy this and every Easter season. Personally, I'm a big fan of the mini-eggs, but there's still a place in my heart for the classic creme egg. Yes, the yolk-like filling is kind of gross. Yes, it oozes. But that's one delicious fake-yolk ooze, if you ask me.Happy Easter. Now get to church, slackers.
I just spent an hour and a half on the subway, traversing the five mile stretch between my workplace and my home. AN HOUR AND A HALF! My daily commute involves a transfer, and it was on the second leg of my journey this evening that I encountered problems. By problems I mean, of course, that the train lurched to a stop about a minute after I boarded and then proceeded to sit motionless on the tracks for fifteen minutes. The train was packed to capacity because, as usual, it was running late. As with any packed subway car in my city, there was a healthy handful of crazy folks on board to make things pleasant, including Crazy "Why Isn't This Train Moving? Why? Why?" Lady, Crazy Week's-Worth-Of-Body-Odor Man, and Rosemary's Baby screeching out from a massive mansion-sized baby carriage. I'm telling you, this thing came with a moat. So there I was, trapped in the motionless subway car while my aforementioned friends made with the crazy, when I heard the little chime that sounds whenever a member of the train personnel is about to make one of their newsworthy announcements - you know, like "Please take your newspapers with you when you leave the train," or "When you leave your newspapers behind on the train, you are littering," or "Don't litter." Today, though, the announcement truly was newsworthy. As if from the heavens, a voice sounded out to illuminate the situation:"Attention: this train will be going out of service. Um... we'll get back to ya."I'm sorry -- we'll get BACK to ya?? Are you kidding me? Not to get all Chandler Bing on the situation, but could they BE any less professional? Like, I would love to see that phrase accepted for use by other service professions.Library patron: Do you have any books on the Harlem renaissance?Librarian: (after sitting silently, staring down at her desk for 15 minutes) I'm not sure. I'll get back to ya.Fast food customer: I'll take a double cheeseburger and fries.Cash register operator: (after drumming fingers against register for 15 minutes) Hmmm... no can do. Let me get back to ya.Ten minutes later, the train finally crept into the station and, indeed, was taken out of service. Leaving the contents of an entire full-to-brimming train standing on the station platform. Twenty minutes and three too-full-to-board trains later, I was finally on my way again.These are the days when the empty roads of rural Indiana don't look half-bad.
Sorry for the lack of original content today, but this is quite possibly one of the funniest things I have ever seen:Melinda, Gangsta-styleTranslate your own webpage into Snoop-speak here. Try it with the White House official site - I found that to be quite refreshing.And remember: Don't hate; congratulate.
I Love the U. S. of A. Here's Proof:Bold states are ones in which I have lived. Italicized states are ones that I have visited*. The bold and italicized state is the one in which I currently reside. (I saw this on BlogExplosion the other day and wanted to try it, because I'm a joiner!)Alabama - Alaska - Arizona - Arkansas - California - Colorado - Connecticut - Delaware - Florida - Georgia - Hawaii - Idaho - Illinois - Indiana - Iowa - Kansas - Kentucky - Louisiana - Maine - Maryland - Massachusetts - Michigan - Minnesota - Mississippi - Missouri - Montana - Nebraska - Nevada - New Hampshire - New Jersey - New Mexico - New York - North Carolina - North Dakota - Ohio - Oklahoma - Oregon - Pennsylvania - Rhode Island - South Carolina - South Dakota - Tennessee - Texas - Utah - Vermont - Virginia - Washington - West Virginia - Wisconsin - Wyoming - Washington D.C. (* Having "visited" a state, in my opinion, means that the state was either the final destination of a trip and/or the visit included at least one overnight stay that was not in a hotel en route to somewhere else. Therefore... the day in which I drove to Maine, ate lobster, and came back that same night totally counts, while any rest stops and/or diners I may have stopped in in Colorado en route to the Grand Canyon totally do not.)So there you have it. I've lived in 5 states (or 4 and a "district") and visited 28. I'm so patriotic you might as well just start calling me Uncle Sam.I would like to aspire to visit every state... but, when it comes right down to it, I've got no pressing need for Delaware. In any way, really. Or South Carolina. I know that whenever someone says something like that about Indiana or Iowa I get all "you have no IDEA about the complexities of the I-states, elitist freak!", but still. Just being honest. Montana would be nice, though.33 states. Can anyone top me?Damn. Now I've got that "Fifty Nifty United States" song going through my head...
I hate shoes. Mostly, I hate them because I have big clown-feet, and as such shoe-shopping is a consistently depressing and fruitless venture. This weekend, I have been trying to buy shoes. There are no shoes to be bought. My big feet are sitting in a back corner of the cafeteria at lunchtime, gazing wistfully across the room at the cool kids in their cute little sandals and Mary Janes. My friend S. assures me that she knows of a local store that specializes in cool shoes for the clown-footed, but until she takes me there I present:Shoe-Shopping: A Haiku QuartetI fondle the flats,stroke the black ballet slippers,turn to the salesman."Do you have these inan eleven?" I ask him.He smirks, cruel man-childof the tiny feet."We do not carry that size."Shamed, sad : my cold toes.Poor, unadorned feet.One day we'll stomp all overthis harsh, sized-down world.
This afternoon as I was walking to the subway, I heard just the slightest trace of The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony" playing on someone's car radio. This song is one of those songs I call my soundtrack songs, tunes that, when I hear them, instantly transport me back to a particular place and time -- in this case, Scotland in early 1998. It seemed that the entire UK couldn't get enough of "Bittersweet Symphony" that Spring; it was played on every radio station, in every bar, and over every shopping center loudspeaker in all of Scotland. Hearing it this afternoon made the air feel a little bit hazier, made the men around me look a little bit shorter and hairier, teased my nose with imaginary scents of Cadbury chocolate and fried fish with salt and vinegar.The whole way home, I thought about soundtrack songs. I'm not talking about songs that simply remind you of a moment -- I'm talking about songs that put you back in that moment, a visceral experience you can't deny. Like, for me:"Total Eclipse of the Heart" by Bonnie Tyler. These days, this song is a karaoke anthem. Back then... well, it was still a karaoke anthem. But it was also the song that wailed from my radio as my first love walked out of my house for the last time, bound for a far-off college. Bonnie sang "Turn around, bright eyes" to my departing boyfriend's back as he walked out the door like she TOTALLY understood my pain. Even though whenever I hear this song now I am usually either drunk or "singing" along with a car radio, it still gives the heart a little tugalug."Birdhouse in Your Soul" by They Might Be Giants. This was the first song played at the first concert I ever went to, performed by the first band I ever really loved (80s hair bands not included). I was 17 and had driven for hours to get to the show; I reveled in the geekdom around me and danced my brains out. I remember feeling like I had never been that happy before, ever."You Needed Me" by Anne Murray/ "She Believes in Me" by Kenny Rogers/ "Sometimes When We Touch" by Dan Hill -- medley. Somehow over the course of my life, I have become the master of All Things Lite FM. No one can touch my knowledge and skillz when it comes to "the greatest soft rock hits of the 70s, 80s, 90s, and today." The only person who even comes close is my college roommate C. During our freshman year, we instantly bonded over the great expanses of cheesy ballad lyrics we carried around in our collective brain. We sat around in our dorm room and sang them to each other, often using a low, growly "devil voice" because we thought it was funny and ironic. We sometimes call each other and do this over the phone, because we still think it is funny and ironic. IT IS funny and ironic."Iowa" by Dar Williams. It is purported that Dar Williams actually wrote this song about the stretch of highway that leads to my small Iowa college. When I was a sophomore, she came and sang it for our student body. We all put our arms around each other and swayed back and forth like Unitarians at a peace festival. I think that secretly, many of us think that parts of that song were written just for us. I know I do."Coming Up for Air" by Patty Larkin. During my senior year, the husband (then the boyfriend) and I decided to break up. He remembers this in a sort of Ross Gellar "we were on a break" way, but I remember it as a Break. Up. And I was devastated. While we were having the talk that led to the break-up, I had Patty Larkin's "Perishable Fruit" album playing on repeat, and this song somehow stood out to me. The next day, I listened to it over and over again, hibernating in my room. I'm not sure that it is supposed to be a sad song, but it always will be for me."Hey Kind Friend" by the Indigo Girls. My friend S. and I tried to learn to sing this for our senior talent show, right before we graduated from college. Ultimately, there was something weird about the guitar part and we ended up doing a different song, but the song still brings me back to the way it felt during those weeks before graduation. I remember feeling alive, ferociously in love with my friends, and utterly clueless as to how I was going to get by without them."Fireflies" by Lori McKenna. I had just started working at the anti-violence nonprofit here in Mass. I came home after a night spent doing an "intake" on a tiny 19-year-old girl who was covered in cuts and bruises from her boyfriend. She was quiet and didn't cry, but her baby son did. I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. I came home, turned on the CD player, and this song came on."I Am a Man Of Constant Sorrow" by the Soggy Bottom Boys. The bluegrass band at my wedding reception played this song, and my dad asked me to dance. My dad, who never dances or shows affection to me in public, asked me to dance. It was awesome.Anyone want to share their own soundtrack songs? Maybe we can put together a compilation CD...
Mildred and Agnes are partaking in ungodly humpery once again, but the husband has the camera with him in Australia so my efforts to capture the phenomenon on film have been thwarted once more. Until I get my live pig-action web-cam up and running, busy yourself with this nugget of Dirrrrty Pigdom, courtesy of Lee:Pigz Gone Wild!
This morning, I settled down on the couch to enjoy some breakfast and watch a little bit of "Good Morning America." I watch "Good Morning America" because CBS's Early Show has Julie Chen, who is annoying, and NBC has Katie Couric, who is Evil Incarnate disguised as cute and fresh (example: in a recent interview with the MIT prof who walked out of the conference in which Harvard President Summers made sexist remarks, Couric cocked her head to one side and said "Don't you think you might have overreacted?").Anyway, I was enjoying my Trader Joes' pumpkin raisin scone when a "news" "story" flashed across my screen. It was called "Condi's [a word I can't remember that also started with C] Clothes," and it was intended to inform me about the vital importance of Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice's wardrobe choices. In this story, a CBS "reporter" guided me through a selection of outfits worn by Rice over the past few years, taking care to point out that as Rice's political capital grows higher, so too do her hemlines. Did you know that our Secretary of State does her own make-up and hair? Well now you do.Let me make something perfectly clear. I am no fan of Condoleeza Rice. I think her politics suck, I think she makes bad choices, and I don't understand why she, an African American woman, chooses to serve and support an administration that systematically works to degrade women and African Americans.HOWEVER.She is the freaking SECRETARY OF STATE. Under what set of circumstances do professional journalists deem it appropriate to A) refer to the United States Secretary of State as "Condi", B) allow lingering floor-to-waist camera shots of the Secretary of State's legs, and C) hypothesize that a recent meeting between said Secretary of State and an unnamed foreign dignitary went swimmingly in part because of the Secretary of State's choice of outfit? I'll tell you what set of circumstances: when that Secretary of State is a woman.How high does a woman have to climb before she earns the right to be referenced appropriately by her professional title (rather than by her first name or, worse, by a faux-familiar nickname), or to be acknowledged solely based on her achievements (rather than by her wardrobe, her parenting status/style, or how she reacts when her husband cheats on her with an intern)? NEVER in a million years would CBS, or any network, run a story on Colin Powell's suits called "Colin's Cool Cumberbunds." Never would you read a story insinuating that perhaps Donald Rumsfeld's press conference would have gone better had he not been wearing taupe. Never would you hear a television journalist refer to Rumsfeld as "Don," "Donnie," or "The Donster of Love." Although I, for one, have called him much worse in the privacy of my apartment.Not that I have an opinion on the matter.
The husband left yesterday for Canberra, Australia. He was invited there to present at a conference because he is, as Diane Court's dad would say, "one brilliant person who is so special that they celebrate [him] on two continents." He will be away for a whole long week, and far away, too -- so far away that it is already Tuesday morning where he is, even though I just got home from work Monday evening. The husband and I have been living together for 5 years. While not so long in the grand scheme of things, this is long enough so that I feel off-kilter when he is not around to shoot glances of faux-mortification towards whatever appalling behavioral trait I am exhibiting during a given moment. The way I see it, though, there are pluses and minuses to this whole "week without a husband" scenario:Minuses:1. The dishes in the sink are already stubbornly refusing to wash themselves.2. I am used to sleeping with another warm body next to me, so the bed now seems cold. I could try to solve this problem using the guinea pigs, but that just seems wrong. And speaking of... (the pigs, not the wrongness...)3. I am now a single mother to Mildred and Agnes. I demand pig support!Pluses:1. As if attached by magical hinges that swing both ways, the doors to our kitchen cabinets are all closed. Like, closed, all the way. Who knew they were even capable of such feats?2. I can watch as much trash TV as I want with no guilt, because who's going to know? (Unless you're reading this, O Husband, in which case I am totally being productive and am not under any circumstances watching repeats of Newlyweds with Nick and Jessica)3. I can look forward to his return next Monday knowing that he will have spent an entire week surrounded by people who are freakishly obsessed with RNA, thus making him all the more excited to return home and shower his comparatively normal wife with affection. Plus he might bring me back a boomerang!
This weekend, at the Unsatisfying Choir concert, I had one of those quintessential Boston Moments -- moments when you step back, look around you, and think to yourself, "Only in Boston could I survey this scene." Native Bostonians experience these moments differently, I'm sure, than do we imports, we temporary residents. I would imagine that folks who have lived here their entire lives experience Boston Moments as flashes of pride, or as feelings of comfort, of the rightness of the order of things. For me, Boston Moments sneak up behind me, give me a wedgie, and then whisper in my ear "You live in the WEIRDEST city."So, the concert? Let's watch.The curtain rises on a choir dressed formally in their best black tuxes and dresses. They are poised on risers in the front of a church, ready to begin their performance. Two pianists are in place to accompany them. The musical director is ascending to her perch, conducting wand in hand.Enter: woman. Woman quickly walks out to the front of the church and addresses the audience. "Hello audience," she says. "Thank you for coming out on this snowy day. I have some unfortunate news. I have just been informed that the city is going to begin enforcing snow emergency parking restrictions, as they need to make room on the streets for the snowplows."A good quarter of the audience rises, puts on coats and scarves, and rapidly exits. As do two men WHO ARE IN THE CHOIR, CURRENTLY STANDING IN TUXES ON RISERS, SECONDS BEFORE THEIR CONCERT IS TO BEGIN. They simply walk off the front of the stage, down the center aisle of the church, and out the back door. The musical director turns and stalls for a few minutes, summarizing the program notes on the concert's musical selections in order to allow time for audience members to return. After a few moments, she announces that the performance will begin "momentarily' and then descends from the stage, leaving the assembled choir to stand in awkward silence, staring out into a blinking audience for a full three minutes before she returns.And... scene.I live in the WEIRDEST city.
I am a person with sleep issues. First off, there is the insomnia. It comes and goes, is sometimes mildly irritating and other times completely debilitating, and I'm sure will be the subject of an entirely different post when I have ten hours to list all of the woes associated with this condition. Look forward to that. But the real sleep issue I want to discuss this evening? Is the crazy dreaming.When I was a kid I used to have horrible and elaborate nightmares, all of which I would remember with total clarity upon waking. Many of them involved family members being maimed or killed in gruesome ways. There was the one in which my little brother thrust two forks deep into his eyeballs while under my watch and couldn't remove them; the one wherein the same little brother and my mom rode a motorcycle around our backyard until they crashed into the evergreen bushes behind our house; the one in which a giant disembodied nose jumped out of a television commercial (I remember the commercial was for cold medicine) into our house and chased me and my family members around until it sucked us into its giant nostrils. Shut up. It was totally scary.During my sophomore year of college I endured another strand of nightmares, although these were a whole different brand of Scary. In these dreams, I became sexually involved with a different person every night. All of these nocturnal suitors were actual members of my college's student body, and each one was more frightening than the last. I slept with the math major who had crazy I-was-just-electrocuted hair and wore shorts every day in the dead of Iowa winter. I slept with the SCA guy who wore a cape, carried a foam sword, and shaved half of his body to symbolize the fact that he considered himself to be a lesbian trapped in a straight man's body. I could NOT stop these dreams from happening, no matter how much I stared at pictures of John Cusack before bedtime. It got to the point where I was afraid to go to sleep at night because I did not want to deal with the morning-after memories.I no longer have weird sex dreams (at least, not many...) or terrifying nightmares. These days, my dreams are more of the That's Seriously Messed Up variety. Like last night's dream, my impetus for writing this post, in which I gave birth to an alien-baby. I went into labor at my parents' house and had to ask my mom to drive me to the hospital. She was reluctant, as she and my father were engaged in a heated argument over whether or not they should join a local swim team. (If you know either of my parents, you understand why this is hilarious.) But I eventually convinced her to take me. The whole birthing process part of the dream is kind of a blur, but I do remember that one of the women who shared my hospital room gave birth, stretched out on all fours, to a fat toddler already dressed in a onesie. I, on the other hand, gave birth to an alien. The alien had no mouth, one eye, and a pig nose marked by plastic nostrils. I was afraid of it, so I gave it to the fawning nurse, who was overjoyed on account of the fact that she had not been able to have children.I woke up and told the husband, and as it turns out he is still willing to father my children. If I start up again with the weird sex dreams, though, it might be a different story...
Pardon me while I indulge in a little cheese.I've had this blog now for just under 2 months. I get to log in, spew words about whatever is on my mind, click the "publish" button, and there it is: me on the web - hairy legs, hang-ups, and all. And THEN, people - some friends and some people I've never met - look at it and leave comments. And sometimes they even get my references to Christopher Guest movies. How cool is that??Thanks for reading.
Dress rehearsal last night for the Unsatisfying Choir was predictably unsatisfying, made even more so by the fact that there was some kind of demon snowstorm blowing around outside and we still did not score an early dismissal. Crazy woman kept us there from 6:00-10:00. It was, and is, very cold. This was, and is, unsatisfying. But what is NOT unsatisfying, however? Is life with my new Ipod Shuffle. Cuteness? Check. Portability? Why yes. Sound quality? Perfecto. How can you not love a commute that is set to your own private soundtrack? And what's even better is that I keep getting surprised by songs that I forgot I put in the mix. Like today, when I was standing crammed into a packed subway car and suddenly heard the plaintive cry of Pat Benetar's "Love is a Battlefield." Awesome. In other not unsatisfying news, I am making soup for dinner for myself and the husband tonight. A great sign of compatibility for any good couple: "we both love soup." (Anyone who gets that reference gets a gold star AND a cookie.) And finally, if we're going to talk about things that are satisfying -- PEOPLE, did you watch "The Amazing Race" last night? If not, I'm telling you - watch it next week, and we'll discuss it afterwards. It's for your own good.
Friends and strangers: this week may be low on posts, at least substantive ones. With eight hours of scheduled rehearsal time and a concert on Saturday, I'm currently a slave to the unsatisfying choir. I'm feeling deep and creative, as I am sacrificing for my art. Except for the fact that my art, right now? Is crap. So, hey - do you want to come see a show?
One stroll down Michigan Avenue, two chili cheese dogs, four airplane sodas, and countless interactions with excessively nice Midwesterners later, the husband and I have returned from Chicago. The trip was actually very good, productive, and promising. Before leaving home last week, we did some research into particular communities in and around Chicago that might be up our alley, eventually coming up with two that sounded like they could potentially be good fits. Saturday morning, we got up early and explored both of these areas -- and they actually both kicked a little ass. The first area we looked at was a neighborhood in the northern part of Chicago, known as Andersonville. The neighborhood has Swedish roots, and is marked by a very sweet main drag featuring Swedish delis, a Swedish-American museum, and a Swedish bakery that - I kid you not- operates exactly like the DMV, requiring would-be patrons to "take a number" upon entering the store and then wait until a flashing digital display announces that it is their turn to be served. The area also has lots of cute restaurants and coffee shops, nicely spaced houses on relatively quiet residential streets, ANDANDAND a lesbian/feminist bookstore that ALSO doubles as a progressive children's bookstore. People -- they had season 1 of "The L-word" available for rent. They had an entire section of children's books listed under the heading "Good Touch/ Bad Touch." This, THIS, is what I am talking about.The second area we picked out, a western suburb called Oak Park, was also great. A couple of readers responded to my last post with comments about this neighborhood, so we felt all the more excited to check it out. It was cute, small (less than 50,000 people), and right outside the city -- super accessible by car and public transportation. We walked around the center of town and were happy to see lots of young people milling about. It was busy, with a good mix of restaurants, bookstores, a huge public library, and a movie theater. It was also refreshingly free of urban sprawl; we saw hardly any fast food chains or strip-mall-esque stores in town, and we had to scour the place to find a supermarket.I walked away from the trip feeling good. We have options, good ones. If we move to Chicago, we will not have to live in a shoebox efficiency next door to the White Castle. Things are going to be ok.One last highlight of my trip? Was the very lovely, very gay male flight attendant who worked our outbound flight. He is, decidedly, my new boyfriend. See, I am afraid of flying -- I hate it, it turns me into a stupid child, I will go to great lengths to avoid doing it. My new boyfriend the flight attendant, though, made me forget all that, on account of the fact that he was SO SO FUNNY. Like, laugh out loud, pee your pants hilarious. During the safety presentation, he said things like "Your seat cushion may be used as a flotation device. I don't know why it's just the cushion and not the whole seat, but whatever. In the event that you need to use it in such a manner, remove the cushion, put your arms through the straps, and kick-paddle, kick-paddle to shore." After the plane landed, he announced. "Welcome to Chicago. For people who are connecting from here to other flights, good luck. We don't really care." And he sent us on our way with a hearty, "No one loves you OR your money quite like Southwest Airlines." I loved him, and I told him as much when I stepped off the plane. I know our love can never be, but we'll always have Chicago...
This weekend, the husband and I are going to Chicago. We are going there on a hastily arranged last-minute trip, thanks to an online airfare special from Southwest. We are going to scout out neighborhoods, to get a feel for the city, to drive around and walk around and take the subway and see what we think. And the reason we are doing this is because the husband is defending his dissertation in May, thus effectively rendering him Dr. Melinda's Husband instead of just Mr. Melinda's Husband -- and also forcing us into making a decision about What To Do Next. A couple of months ago, the husband interviewed for a post-doc at a Chicago-area university and loved it. Although I promised, and am trying, to be open-minded about it (hence, the upcoming trip), I have never envisioned myself living in Chicago. I am not a city girl -- at least, that's what I always say, even though ever since college I have done nothing but live in major cities - 3 of them to be exact. Chicago is one seriously BIG city. It is apparently the third largest city in the country. I do not anticipate being able to achieve my dream scenario -- quaint home, quiet street, berry bushes, tire swing, lesbian/feminist bookstore down the street next door to the Mennonite church, cute dog to walk in perfectly safe local neighborhood park, no crazy people -- in Chicago. Ok, so maybe I can have the cute dog and the Mennonites, but the rest are not guarantees.The pluses, though? We would be so close to family we could just about reach out and grab them. For me in particular it would mean living within a 2-hour drive of my family for the first time in almost 10 years. Also, there are lots of interesting library jobs in the Chicago area. And John Cusack maintains a home there, so there is that. There is always that.This whole business of balancing two different careers in one family is tough. I mean, I can be a librarian in any number of places. Minneapolis, Iowa City, Burlington,VT -- these are all places where I would love to try and make a go of it. But the amount of universities doing research in the specific area of science in which the husband works are limited. I haven't even been married 2 years yet; I'm still pretty much a newlywed. This - this learning how to negotiate and sacrifice and make joint decisions instead of making them just based on what you want - I guess this is what it means to be married. Funny, when I signed up for it, I was thinking more along the lines of having someone with whom to share my ice cream for the rest of my life...
Do you ever feel like you must have some kind of hideous rash on your face, toilet paper clinging to your shoe, or a neon sign hanging above your head declaring, "Stare at me, for I am clearly somehow freakish!"Well I do lately, but only when I am at the gym. Over the past month or so, not only have I been plagued by the continuous appearance of Crazy Lady Who Is Appalled By Unshaven Legs, but as of this week there is a new addition to the locker room fold: Crazy Lady Who Furrows Her Brow and Stares Critically At Me In The Mirror While I Apply Hair Product. Both yesterday and today, she showed up in the locker room post-workout at the same time as me, blow-dried her hair by my side, and then proceeded to distractedly fuss with a few strands while TOTALLY GLARING at my reflection in the mirror, looking quickly away each time I met her gaze. I wanted to be all "just because you are staring at Reflection Me instead of Actual Me doesn't make it any less STARING." But instead I just moved the hair product application endeavor into the bathroom.I would like to attribute this sudden burst of gym-related attention to my extreme hotness, but the fact that both Crazy Ladies are generally directing huge frowns at me seems to indicate otherwise. Will you all promise to let me know if, the next time you see me, I have some kind of huge blemish hanging off of my face?
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