It’s a Beautiful Sight/I’m Happy Tonight

While no daydreams are necessary to keep me enthusiastic about spending at day at my job at the Writing Center, there are days in my other job at the museum when a little daydream is needed to lift my spirits. Sometimes, I just need a little something to see me through the long afternoons of PowerPoint, data entry, invoices, and appointment setting. This really stinks because it is pretty difficult for me to take a moment to daydream properly here.

The first obstacle is my cubicle. The confines of my cube have a way of binding me to reality; I cannot escape.  In this starchy, pre-fabricated environment, my extra long legs push up against the walls. At least once a day my feet get snared in the computer/copier/phone wiring beneath my desk, causing the keyboard wire to dislodge. I spill water on things; people ask what that “that smell” is during lunchtime when I open my little container of homemade dressing and the bitter, acidic, lovely reek of balsamic assails my area of the office for never long enough. In the one drawer I have reserved for my personal items, I keep extra forks next to extra tampons.

Outside of my cube is a narrow hallway. Directly across that hallway is a glass pane that acts as a wall to my boss’ office. From this glass pane, if she so chose, she could watch my every move. Luckily, she has a life and is cool, so she has better things to do that watch me create line charts in Excel. But still, the possibility of getting caught in the act is a major deterrent from any daydreaming endeavor.  

My boss’ window—in full view from my cube—is of the floor to ceiling variety. It overlooks the posh Streeterville apartment high-rise across the street from the museum. Sometimes when my boss is out of the office or at meetings and there is no other danger of getting “caught,” I am able to gaze past her office and out her giant window into the neighboring apartments. Looking into these otherworlds for a few relished moments, my mind dances like Julie Andrews on an Austrian hilltop.
 
In one unit, a woman cleans her windows with vigor; in another a man scratches his balls with a curiously matched ferocity. A wrinkled, shrunken woman with hair the color of coagulated blood holds a chiwawa up to the window and makes him wave his paw at the world below; the dog’s skin hangs loose around his frame. I realize that many purse dogs have skin that looks similar to that of a relaxed human penis, or the soft sag of a dried plum. I contemplate when I first noticed that prunes were now called dried plums. I remember meeting up with an old friend from elementary school named Andy and how he insisted that I now call him Drew. I like Andy better, but I find the name “dried plums” to be a vast improvement. Although my favorite dried fruit of all time is definitely the fig. I wonder why these most delicious of all dried fruits are not more popular than chocolate. I realize I hate boxes of chocolate and I evaluate for a moment if my taste for chocolate has waned over the years. I decide that this is untrue, since I am still a freak for Cadbury Fruit & Nut bars. I spend a few fond moments remembering my freshmen year in college. FX was starting to rerun Buffy the Vampire Slayer 5 nights a week and my best friend Derek and I were on a quest to tape each Buff in chronological order. Before our episode began, we sometimes walked to the campus party store for snacks. I always got a Chunky and a Perrier. He got Sour Patch Kids and soda. I wonder how his teeth are holding up in recent years and I hope they are well. I laugh at a sudden memory of Derek shoveling Peeps into his mouth one Easter time, playfully screaming “CHUBBY BUNNY!” I let out a short laugh at the mental image before shaking my head and getting back to a thick stack of redeemed promotional offers to enter into the database.

This is how my daydreams typically go—a current of associations sweeping me away for a few precious minutes once a week or so. Yesterday I was slugging through an afternoon of attendance analysis and I needed a breather to maintain my sanity. My lovely boss was in a meeting offsite, so my eyes were happy to peel themselves away from the computer screen to gaze out the window and into the lives of those in the apartments across the street—my steadfast portal to sweet daydreams.

For a brief moment I was confused as to why my boss had put white butcher paper up over her windows. Then I realized that the wall of white I was looking at was snow. A beautiful, chilly blizzard.

While looking at snow through windows has some virtues—not freezing to death, for example—it is best viewed directly. Waiting for train home that evening, I became mesmerized with the swirling flakes. I watched them swirl and fly in glow of the headlamps at the subway platform. I was suddenly hit with a forgotten memory of my dad driving me to grandma’s house for Christmas eve. The world was dark all around us and a nasty snow storm was making my speed demon dad drive like a granny. We were comfortably quiet in the warm cab of the truck, concentrating on the snow. The sight of the flakes whooshing up to the windshield and getting swept away cleanly by the wipers mesmerized me; the dance of the flakes in the headlights left me breathless.

Yesterday the blizzard in Chicago lasted late into the night. Looking in the mirror upon my arrival home, I was pleased at the rosy-cheeked, glossy eyed, black lashed beauty staring back at me. I got snuggly in my pajamas and had sweet dreams of being the benevolent queen of Ice World.

Let winter hibernation begin!
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Does snow make you dreamy?

Dream Life
© The Author, 2005

A wicked, hideous bug is thrashing about inside my gut.

Yesterday my tummy bug hated me so much that I called in sick to work. I slept all day and dreamed of being a rock star.

Shaken to the core with chills and body aches, I went home early from work today. I went to sleep immediately upon my arrival home. I dreamed of getting an “I Tried” sticker from my boss—the same type of sticker you get when you try to donate blood but your piercings are too fresh, or you have visible track marks.

A far cry from rock star dreams.

Since I can’t seem to focus on reading and tonight’s television line up is to lame to even consider (a made for tv movie about Pope John Paul’s life?!?! Oh come on!!!), I thought it might prove entertaining to write about the primary thing that seems to be holding my interest this sickness-fouled week: dreams.


In the weeks before my mom married my step dad, a recurring dream that was to follow me throughout life was born. In the dream I am five years old and my step dad takes me to the place that the board game Candy Land was made after. We hold hands and walk in comfortable silence on the colored squares, shaded by lush trees bearing gummy fruits and skittles. Soon, the forest starts to grow thicker and brambles of licorice begin to knot our path. A shack in the distance comes into focus. “That is where the witch lives,” my step dad says in a playful whisper. I smile, not wanting to let on that I’m sort of scared and unsure as to if he is serious or not. The closer we get to her house, the more I notice that each window of it is radiating a different color. Once we are upon the house, blinding hues of orange, blue, yellow, and pink pour from the windows and bathe the forest in violent light. My step dad opens the door to the house and we step in. To my surprise, there is no color in the house at all—it is dark and drab and dreary. A slide projector whirs in the corner and is clicking through slide after slide of white light, aimed to land on the dingy wall across from it. “See?” He asks me. I shrug, not wanting to let him know that I don’t understand. Looking around at the drab, I am shamefully comforted that all the lights, all the fuss, was all nothing after all.

In the weeks after 9/11 I dreamed that the souls of those who had died were in a traffic jam on their way to Nirvana—too many deaths all at the same time and not enough staff in Nirvana to accommodate. The line spilled from the sky into my dorm room. I could have sworn I saw those who had died lined up, waiting irritated and confused along my cinderblock walls. I woke sobbing for them.

In the weeks before my marriage, I dreamed that I accidentally had sex with my gay best friend. For some reason the person I thought was Shaun had a changeable face—like a mask that morphed. It would start out as Shaun, and then it would turn into Derek and I would panic and throw my sheets off my bed in an angry panic, waking my roommate with stupid sleep talking gibberish. I was so appalled at the situation that I couldn’t even look at my friend the next day. He of course knew why and wouldn’t stop teasing me about it, which made the whole debacle worse.

In the weeks (okay—years) after encountering mutant cockroaches at work, I have dreams that there are exactly two roaches in the bed. I throw the covers off and it takes Shaun a considerably long time to wake me from my delusion and convince me that the bed is bug free.

Sometimes I dream that I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer and I invent my own plot lines to enact. I think I’ll go back to sleep now and see if I can wrangle up a dream where I’m Buffy and get to slay bad things. That always seems to make me feel better. This episode will be called “Buffy Slays the Tummy Bug.”

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What do you dream?


::Random Tangent::
Who read Alice Munro’s short in The New Yorker this week? Holy Moley! I like it when Munro takes a break from penning domestic tales and tackles a warped scenario! I totally dug it. You?

Thankful to be Free
© The Author, 2005

Thanksgiving is boring. Excruciatingly, mind numbingly, irrevocably boring. So boring is this stagnant excuse for a holiday that even seriously dull activities provide more of a thrill than Turkey Day. Callus picking, watching The View, linear equations—even waiting for the doctor in the examination room wearing a scratchy paper gown, with nothing but a gigantic poster of the various stages of melanoma to entertain you gives you more of a kick than the gigantic snore that is Thanksgiving day.

I am the Thanksgiving Grinch.

Even though Turkey Day is the dumbest, most culturally insensitive holiday on the planet, it has always been a point of turmoil for me growing up. Am I spending it with my mom or my dad? No matter what my decision was, it was sure to prompt disappointment and guilt. In adulthood, the dilemma has only worsened: will I eat turkey with my mom, my dad, my ex-step dad, or my in-laws? If we spend Turkey Day with the in-laws, will we dine with Shaun’s mom or Shaun’s dad? In my adulthood, there are so many more people to disappoint, and so many more people to feel guilty for not seeing. The whole thing is far too much effort for such a putrid excuse for a holiday. At least Christmas generally makes the effort worthwhile.

Not only is Thanksgiving boring, but also my childhood memories of it are pretty dismal. When I was really small, and still invited to my step mom’s parents for Thanksgiving, I would resort to building card houses, as there were no kids to play with and no one who knew me well enough to talk to me. After dinner, everyone would nap, and the house would moan and creek weirdly in the quiet.

At my now ex-step dad’s family Thanksgiving, things were loud and Italian and as a girl I would seek refuge from the noise and the newness of the family in the basement. I would spend hours looking at the 70′s era toys left over from the six kids who grew up in that house; a Sesame Street doll house, a Barbie with a thick coat of black paint lining her top eyelid, tattered decks of Uno with half the cards missing. Whenever I went upstairs I was overwhelmed and lost in the noise, ignored in the shuffle. It was better to stay hidden.

I have loose, disjointed memories of my dad’s family Thanksgiving, where my cousin, ripe with eating disorders as far back as elementary school would throw up the mass amounts of butter biscuits that she consumed while I waited in the creepy room outside the bathroom, afraid for what was happening on the other side of the bathroom door and afraid of the room I was in, for we were (are) convinced that it is haunted.

I have few memories of Thanksgiving with my mom’s family, as they moved away when I was still really little. There is a picture of my grandpa carving the turkey while the man who is now my ex-step dad and was then my mom’s boyfriend holds me close to him. I remember that happening: the excitement of the electric carver punctuating the scary thrill of this new dad holding me tight.

In recent years, Shaun and I have decided to skip the whole dreary, dull shebang altogether. We have our own tradition on November 24. In our house, November 24 involves no real cooking. Instead, we pig out with a deli spread and watch movies. We do not associate with family. We do not watch football. In essence, we ignore the holiday all together. It is grand.

This November 24, our plan is to go to see the movie Bee Season (a movie based of the lovely, lovely, perfectly lovely novel by Myla Goldberg) and to dine from the following menu:

• Turkey Sandwiches made with yummy bread from Red Hen Bakery & yummy cheese from the Swedish deli on Clark
• Good olives & pickles from the Mediterranean Grocer on Winamac & Clark
• The Vegetarian Cookbook’s Asparagus and Red Pepper Salad
• Rachel Ray’s Crab Salad in Lettuce Tacos
• Rachel Ray’s Everything Seasoned nuts
• Vegetarian Express’ Banana Chocolate Maple Ice

This November 24, my mom is coming from Michigan to join us in our reinvented celebration. At first, I think she was disappointed to hear that we refuse to cook on November 24, but once she is here, I think she will be pleased. She’s introduced a new element to anti-Thanksgiving: a Turkey Trot. So now our newly invented holiday will include participation in an 8K run to raise food and money for Chicago shelters as well.

The 8 k run and my mom are both fantastic additions to the day’s events if I do say so myself.

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What are your plans for November 24?

::Random Tangent::
I hate Christmas shopping for grown ups. It is thoughtless and it makes me feel like a zombie. Homemade gifts mean much more to me to give, but I wonder if people like getting them. Last year, Shaun and I co-wrote a cookbook for our adult family and friends (kids, of course got toys, games, or books, which are fun to shop for) and had it nicely and cost effectively spirally bound. Some loved it, but some expressed lightly veiled disappointment.

What are your thoughts on homemade gifts? For or Against?

Timshead tagged me to post this. I hope you all have a jolly laugh at my expense.

Five Bizarre-o Facts About Chicago Art Girl 23

1. I frequently tell the very naughty Aristocrats joke exclusively using the plucky characters from the show Seventh Heaven

2. I have dreams in which I am Buffy the Vampire Slayer, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar. I slay everything and save everyone.

3. When disaster strikes, I will be the leader of the New Free World. For this reason, I am stockpiling food. So far I’ve got a box of couscous, leftover Halloween Baby Ruth’s, old trail mix, and thirty-seven dollars. Join me!

4. When people first meet me they say at least one of three things:

a.) “What’s the story behind your name?”
b.) “I bet you play basketball!”
c.) “Are you a model?”

I answer differently depending on my mood and my first impression of the person asking/if I’ll ever see them again.

5. When at the beach when I was a little girl, my cousin and I had a particularly innovative way of relieving our full bladders. We knew that peeing in the water was bad (we called the warm spots of water “decaffeinated”), but who has time to trek all the way to the bathrooms? We simply raced to the sand, sat down, and buried our pelvises beneath it, creating a lovely utilitarian sculpture we liked to call the Sand Diaper. We pissed into the sand diaper and then stood up, leaving crusts of wet, pissy sand in our wake.

Don’t worry. We don’t do it anymore. But it’s still funny.

Consider anyone reading this tagged. Leave your weirdness in my comment box.

Jim Crow Goes To Hollywood
© The Author, 2005

The problems with makeover television shows are almost too numerous to count. On top of the fact that makeover shows define beauty by white, upper-class standards and successfully drive hordes of women into debt as they try to shop away how horrible the most recent episode of What Not to Wear made them feel about their appearance, makeover shows also make paramount a character that I positively loathe: bitchy gay guys.

Now I know that you, my very cool and liberal readership, are collectively gasping in horror thinking, “that horrible little Chicago Art Twat is a gay hating bigot! The rise of gay visibility in the media is wondrous evidence of society’s growing acceptance of queer lifestyle!” But think of my dissent this way: would Fredrick Douglass consider Sambo or Pickaninnies a move in the right direction for black acceptance?

My guess is no.

The fact is, that although Six Feet Under is able to accurately portray the queer lifestyle as it actually is (aka: normal, everyday life), there are an overwhelming number of reality based programs—most of them involving makeovers—that rely heavily on the gay equivalent to Aunt Jamima for good ratings.

Straight America is wildly entertained by the gay man. It’s just so quaint how he thinks his way is better than our way; look how he “pooh-poohs” our interior design—it’s so adorable! I just love his witty remarks! Look how he cringes at our fashion choices! Go ahead—let him into your closet to scorn your clothes; after all, he likes it in there!

Dance, gay man, dance.

And yet when gay men abandon the parodies of themselves for one fucking minute to ask for something as simple as civil rights, America’s canned laugh track comes to a screeching halt.

It makes me sick.

There is something so wrong and so deeply ruined about a country that pulls this sort of crap time and time again; we are a disgrace.

Those SUV driving, flag waving Americans who say that we are free are obviously not gay. They are obviously not poor. They are obviously not anything but white and privileged. Freedom is just a trophy for those who are rich enough to buy it or those who hate themselves enough to pay for it in other ways. Just ask the bitchy gay man. He is free to “be himself” on television, just as long as it sells.
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So, what are we going to do to stop this horrible cycle?

::Random Tangent::

December 9, go see Broke Back Mountain. The gay characters in it are not subservient to a larger plot about straight people. The gay characters are not bitchy mannequins, but actual people, with actual pulses and actual sweat and actual tears. This movie matters; make America recognize that with your spending power.

The Bell Tolls for Me, Biotch
© The Author, 2005

Vacations are bliss. Especially when they don’t involve cuddling up with mutant dust bunnies on a friend’s decrepit apartment floor or sponging room and board off relatives even though you suspect you may be getting a bit too old to be pulling that kind of crap. It’s nice every once in a while to simply be like Jake, bite the bullet, and pay whatever bill your search for happiness may rack up. (Jake lives in Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises and he is immensely cool. Even though he is impotent. Intrigued? Of course you are. Read it. Live it. Love it. Back to my point…)

I’ve only been privy to a few samples of a grown up vacation, but every time I get a nibble it tastes like rich chocolate and Pez candies; vacations turn me into a hopped up, maniacally happy little toddler. I get so giddy that I nearly piss myself just thinking about vacation plans. I definitely drool a little.

Real grown up, eh?

Regardless of whatever retardation vacationing may bring me, I am unequivocally excited over every stage in vacation going. The researching, the booking, the planning, the packing, the red eye, the strange food encounters, the subsequent bowel issues—its all a rush to me. Even lugging suitcases and heaving overstuffed carry-on bags on the subway to O’Hare makes me feel like a superstar. I like looking at all the ordinary people riding on their way to work, school, or some other boring place to rot and thinking, “I’m outta here, suckers!” I like figuring out how to manage once our plane has landed somewhere new. I like the noise of different dialects and languages clicking in my ears. I like uncorking our hotel room for the first time and peeking under the bed cheekily to check for dead bodies; I like pretending that the place is probably haunted. I like getting dizzy from seeing fresh everythings. I like feeling full from new foods and drunk from new drinks. I like talking to other travelers, even those who say things like, “Chicago, eh? I’ve got a cousin that lives in Illinois Do you know her?” (Note: Pronounce the “S” in Illinois for full effect.) When it comes to vacationing, I dig it all.

With that said, there is one stage in the vacation process that I like to spaz out over best: The Count Down.

The count down begins after the travel has been researched, booked, and the purchaser has made a conscious decision not to be bothered by the horrifyingly imposing numbers that are soon to appear on their credit card. The count down starts in earnest with a cute little drawing on the purchaser’s calendar on the dates of travel—a smiley face or perhaps something of geographic or cultural significance to the place soon visited. As time progresses, the doodles around the travel itinerary grow. Plans are traced and re-traced until they become bold, crazy balloons more fitting for declarations of love on a sixth-grader’s Trapper Keeper than in the calendar of an adult. If stickers are in close proximity, they are added to the pages.

Once the pages of the purchaser’s calendar are thoroughly embarrassing, the purchaser moves on to nicknaming the trip. The nickname has a loose association with the actual trip—the type of free association only acquired through complete slap happiness—and it serves as a sort of bond between the travelers, setting the tone for the immense fun to commence. When nicknaming the trip, anything goes; a camping trip with strictly platonic friends could morph into a trip entitled “Sexxy Camping,” while a romantic honeymoon in Spain may suddenly be dubbed, “The Bell Tolls for Me, Biotch.”

Once the expedition has been adequately dubbed, and all those participating in the trip are in on the joke, it is time for the count down to evolve into numbers. Depending on how impatient you are, you can either count down by weeks (it makes it seem like less time because it is a smaller number) or days. The participants email each other with updates on the official countdown, their excitement punctuated by little factoids or pictures about their vacation destination scavenged during lunch breaks. The numerical portion of the count down can be grueling: philosophical questions must be answered like, “how am I supposed to live through 14 days until I get to feel the surf gurgle between my toes?” and the ever popular, “Why hasn’t time travel been invented yet?” However trying the numerical count down may be, the explosive release that such anticipation building entices is always worth the struggle.

The explosive release happens once you are in the seat of your vehicle of transport on the first day of your excursion. You buckle your safety belt, tear into a fresh pack of mint gum, and squeeze your travel companion’s hand tight. The smile that plasters itself on your face at that moment will stay glued on until one of you becomes dehydrated, lost, or in need of a bathroom when no such facilities are present. At that time, the smile evaporates and the issue is immediately the other person’s fault on some level. But alas, so strong are the powers of the smile of the explosive release, that once the crabby traveler has been watered, found, or waters, the smile finds its way back where it belongs with ease.

So what has me so jazzed? Californication 05/06. The day after spending X-Mas with family in Michigan, my husband and I are off to spend thee nights of romance and hiking in Sequoia National Park . After that, we are going to hop in our rented Ford Escort or Similar Model and cruise down to LA to meet up with our good friend Allyson. (Psst! Click on her link and see what an incredible artist she is. You will be floored. I promise. I owe her a full blog later, but seriously, click on the link to see how she rocks. Hire her! She does freelance illustration and graphic design.) Our friend Beth, currently stationed in Baltimore while pursuing her masters, is also meeting us in LA. Together, we will all party like its 2006, because it will be, seeing as how New Years Eve is an integral portion of this vacation and all.

We booked our tickets last weekend and I am undoubtedly in the Count Down phase right now. Check it out:

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Where is this crazy, beautiful world taking you this winter?

*

::Random Tangent::

Why are there so many haters of the serial comma? I’m not just talking about the British who live by Fowler’s Modern English Usage guide (on page 588 Fowler calls the serial comma “otiose,” or for those of us who speak plain English, “pointless”).

As an admirer of the Chicago Manual of Style (14th Edition, see page 173, 5.57 for details), “I went to the store to get eggs, diapers, and syringes,” has more merit to me than the un-serial comma-ed, “I went to the store to get eggs, diapers and syringes.”

Serial Comma: For or Against? Discuss!

My Cinnabon Essay Contest Essay

Mydogischelsea tagged me to write this. While I highly doubt my fuzzy Cinnabon memory is what the marketers are looking for, winner of the contest gets free Cinnabons for an entire year (oh boy–just what I always wanted: Diabetes!!!). So, submitted for Cinnabon’s approval (but more importantly because nothing good is on TV tonight…) is my Cinnabon Essay Contest Essay, describing my most memorable Cinnabon experience ever:

In a suburb far, far away lays a mystical place where capitalism runs rampant, consumer goods tempt even the brokest of hoes, and where cinnamon rolls waft their warm, diabetic-coma inducing love into the olafactories of passersby all. This holy place goes by one name and one name only:

THE MALL.

From swishy-swooshing track-suit clad seventy-something’s out for their morning walk, to multiply pierced and pimpled teens, THE MALL is friend to none, but loved by all.

Pedaling cute cat calendars, lame lava lamps, overpriced compact disks, junk jewelry, and an endless array of trampy, lycra based clothes suitable for underage bar hopping, THE MALL is frequented most regularly by those desperate to purchase its shitty goods (or desperate to get away from their pathetic homes). These consumers, nearly lobotomized by the Muzak that relentlessly permeates the area and disheartened by the horrendous markups on mediocrity, need refuge from the storm; THE MALL understands this. For these tired, weary, huddled masses yearning to break free there is one oasis: THE FOOD COURT.

The FOOD COURT offers the weak caffeine, the fat lipids, and the thin malnourishment. Where else might one indulge in the grotesque dipping of a nacho chip through the thin layer of skin that forms atop aged nacho cheese to lavish in the lugubrious neon yellow creaminess beneath? Where else might one order a Chalupa appetizer and follow up with a Whopper main course? Where else might one find a hot dog crammed so lovingly on a stick? And most importantly, where my fellow Americans, where else but the FOOD COURT may you find a cinnamon roll so large that roll is not even a word big enough to do it justice? A cinnamon roll so gargantuan it must be called a CINNABON?

THE FOOD COURT, ladies and gentleman, THE FOOD COURT.

My love affair with the FOOD COURT has been a long and torrid one that, like any health and sanitation conscious person, never happened. But there was one moment in time when I thought things could be different, when our caloric worldview might be disregarded for the sake of taste and pleasure.

I was seventeen years old and I worked part time at the Hallmark across the hall from the have-a-picture-of-your-ugly-child-put-on-a-mug-or-sweatshirt booth at THE MALL. I would arrive at the Hallmark late, 6:30 pm or so, after having been at school since dawn and after my extracurricular activities ended. I was tired, and most often, unfed.

One dreary evening, after struggling to find a parking spot amidst the Christmas shoppers, I found a snug spot in THE MALL parking lot closest to the food court entrance. I was greeted by a snarling female(?) in a Cinnabon uniform, her(?) face plastered in what must have been a good quarter inch of makeup.

“Sample?” The face asked, smacking her(?) neon green gum loudly. I looked at her, curious as to how she could keep her eyes open under the significant weight of her Tammy Faye inspired mascara.

Just as I was about to lift my hand to her platter to sample a morsel of her sugary goodness, she turned away from me, distracted by a man-child to the left of us wearing a giant, puffy Hornets jacket and multiple gold chains and shouting the following:

“Ho, snap! Da bitch gots da buns!”
“Shut up, Devonte! You stupid,” the Cinnabon peddler countered.
Davonte grabbed the crotch of his pants, which was all the way down by his shins. (Quite the torso, this guy.)
“What you say, bitch? Suck it!”
“You want me fired?”
“Suck it!”
“You want me fired?”
“SUCK IT!”

At this point the repetition of the dialogue outweighed whatever merits the players creative costuming might have held for me. It definitely outweighed my desire for a Cinnabon sample.

So you see, it was that night that I was denied my entry into the world of THE FOOD COURT. That night I dusted the Precious Moments and stocked the Cherished Teddies on an empty stomach, wondering all the while if that one morsel of sugary goodness might have been enough to make me feel loved and nourished by the protector that most everyone else knows and loves: THE FOOD COURT.
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Cinnabons: For or Against? Discuss!

Death to October
© The Author, 2005

Friday, September thirty was a payday—not a big payday—but a payday and I was feeling the safety and contentment of this little cushion of cash when I crawled back into bed and cuddled up to my cleanly compact and sex-hushed husband. I kissed the thin ridge of his cheekbone, “we had a good September,” I smoldered. He smiled then snored softly to sleep.

In thirty thirsty September days we moved, with the help of only our own sinewy and tired arms; we made house home. In seven hundred and twenty autumn-sun soaked minutes, we let ourselves free fall into the routine of this place we newlywed, daily life reinvigorated and special. We were charmed by floorboard squeaks, dazzled by the mummified beetle squatting grossly near to our front door buzzer, humored by the asbestos bubbling water damage spewing forth from our shower wall, relaxed by the hour long subway commute into work.

“Even the spiders are different here,” I marveled, “they seem much bigger!”

September was the first full month we could enjoy the meager monetary rewards of my miniscule raise and hour-increase at work. In September Shaun started moonlighting as an editor; news of publication of one of his stories was confirmed. September we started new writing classes. September I got new students to tutor for the fall term and I was invited to co-author a chapter of a book. Sorely missed west coast friends visited in September and Shaun’s parents popped by for a weekend. Shaun’s birthday is in September. Days were lazier, longer, flooded with feeling.

Instead of lounging languorously in our plush success on September thirty, it might have been in my best interest to reach over to our bedside bookcase and knock heartily on wood.

During a family dinner when I was six my new step-dad looked over at me and said with disgust, “you look sick!”

I wasn’t physically ill, but when I am over-tired, emotionally exhausted, or jut simply sun-starved I have a tendency to acquire a yellow, scurvy-seeming sheen to my skin, accompanied by two purplish crescents contouring the space where eye socket meets nose. This homely infliction was highlighted by the fact that when I was a girl, my body was alarmingly skeletal and my favorite outfit was my black leggings and turtleneck that emphasized all my urchin-like qualities. In short, I looked like a child you might feel obligated to help for fifty cents a day, so it was completely without malice that my new step-dad assumed that I was ill. However, my young, unaware ears heard my step-dad calling me disgusting and ugly: an unfit, putrid excuse for a daughter. Stung, I threw down my forkful of dry rice-pilaf, burst into tears, raced upstairs to my room, and slammed the door shut to wail in privacy.

I’m reminded of that scene each time I am confronted with a mirror this October. I look sick.

Like every fall, shorter days and plentiful rain showers make jogging a challenge, leaving my body feeling sluggish and slothful; my upper thighs and ass start to remind me of haunches on a big, imposing animal instead of the sleek and toned stalks I usually tread on. My hair is a shaggy, lame mess. To say my skin is stressed is putting it lightly. My clothes are ridiculous, mismatched, un-flattering, wrongly sized clearance rack and resale items, but nothing is new there—my unfortunate fashion choices just seem amplified when the body wearing them looks and feels like utter shite.

Like every time I look sick, I am drained and off-balance this October. The idiosyncrasies that were September’s sweetness are October’s thorn in my side. The hour commute makes me irate. The rotten bathroom wall has begun to leek a moldy stench that I am convinced is the cause of my flaring allergies and the little, jumpy black flies that have infiltrated our home.

However gnarly the apartment stuff sounds, the source of my discontentment is not at home, but with life outside it. The crumbling apartment, like my unfortunate fashion choices, just seems to amplify my unrest.

The chapter I was co-authoring in September turned into an ugly mess of legalities and burnt bridges. My jobs make me feel like gnashing my teeth for unblog-friendly reasons. Shaun’s moonlighting and grad school application process combined with my hairy schedule has left us with Netflicks rentals gathering dust on the entertainment center, a nagging reminder of just how little we are just hanging out together lately. Thoughts of throwing our life, jobs, and finances into upheaval next year for the grad school move are proving less romantic as the reality of them becomes tangible.

I know that my life is spiraling out of control when the exhaustion of the day makes me so nauseous at night that a puke bucket is beside the bed becomes my security blanket. It’s a far cry from the kiss covered nights of September, that’s for sure.

Yesterday evening I breathed a sigh of relief as I tumbled into our apartment after work, letting my heavy shoulder bag crash to the floor and kicking off my tall, brown boots. I scooped up the fluffy cat meowing his greetings at my feet and headed straight for the comfort of my unmade bed. Giles Alejandro Scimitar cuddled up beneath my chin and we napped happily for a timeless time.

I dreamed that October ended. It was a short dream, liquid with an elusive plot, but in it, October ended.

In the dream, I was naked, standing at the refrigerator, staring at my calendar illustrated with classic Pez candy advertisements. My brows were furrowed as I tried to decipher my own scribblings in the date boxes. It was important to me in the dream to do this with some speed, as I was in full view of the neighbors to the west of us who can easily see into our large kitchen window. I grumbled and shook my head, trying to clear the cobwebs that had made me suddenly illiterate. Soon, I heard the neighbor’s car pull into their parking spot. My pulse quickened—Oh no! Now they’ll see me! I thought. Then it dawned on me, I was looking at the wrong month—October was over, it was November now. Relief rinsed through me and I threw my head back and laughed out loud. The neighbor family was in the alley below, curious to see who was laughing. I ripped the dreaded month from the calendar.

“October is over!” I exclaimed, rushing to the window holding the ripped page for them to see. The neighbors laughed and congratulated me before turning away to enter their house.

Unlike most good dreams, I was thrilled to realize when I woke that it was true; November is nearly upon us. In celebration I put some funky Samba on the stereo and took a nice hot shower. I pinned my hair up and added a thick, lace headband, ala Clara Bow.

I dressed up in my pirate boots, rolled up jeans, vintage-looking black tank, and black long gloves. I painted myself some china doll lips with lipstick and painted my eyes like a geisha. Shaun came home as I was in the bedroom, dabbing on some sample perfume that I had acquired somewhere. His eyebrows went up in that funny Buster Keaton way he has.

“You look good!”
“We are going out tonight.”
“Yeah?”
“We are celebrating the end of October. It’s almost over, you know.”

He came up behind me and slid his arms around my waist and we gazed at each other in the mirror of the dresser vanity. He kissed my neck before pretending to bite it like a vampire. I slapped him away, laughing and soon we were playful and in good spirits as we headed out for some margaritas, tortilla chips, and a late night concert at the Metro.

As crappy as most of October was, last night we managed to compound all the glory of September into one night, making October not so bad, after all. Still, I am more than ready to be rid of this month.

I am revived and ready, November. Bring it on.

How was your month?

*

Random Tangent

Go see Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang immediately. Robert Downey Junior plays a petty thief turned actor turned private eye and a plump Val Kilmer plays a character called Gay Perry. The characters are fresh, the plot is snappy, and the dialogue made me pee a little it was so damn funny. Just go see it—I promise you will be happy.

Our Way Back Home
© The Author, 2005

The night was cold in that blustery, damp, endless Chicago way. Waiting for the crosswalk to turn at the corner of Michigan and Chicago avenues, I was flagged by my husband on my right and my grandparents on my left. We were on our way to the subway to go home from an evening spent at the Museum of Contemporary Art.

Grandma stood prettily—her cheeks perked like little rose buds, her eyes sparkly in the city lights. Grandpa seemed like a bird, chest puffed and eyes inquisitive.

My grandparents have a sleek and dignified British carriage, but the starched and proper ridged-ness is replaced by a happy lightness, a soft tread. Beside them Shaun-san and I looked bulky, clumsy, young and American; a tattered library book spilled and sagged from Shaun’s coat pocket, my giant shoulder bag looked as if it were about to rupture, so full was it was magazines, novels, a sketchbook, a messy journal and leaky pens.

The shocking shiver of autumn bit into and tranquilized my giddiness from our romp at the opening party of the newest exhibition to grace my museum, Tropicalia: A Revolution in Brazilian Culture. Grandpa surveyed the surrounding buildings, the pristine brilliance of the Magnificent Mile.

“When you leave this place, you’re really gonna miss it.”
“I know. Especially if we move to Iowa.”
He chuckles, “That’s right.”
My eyes lingered over the city gallery at the Historic Water Tower.

I remembered the first time I had traveled to Chicago as a high school senior on a field trip with my school choir. My mom chaperoned the trip and while the other girls were ecstatic over the prospect of a three story Gap store, my mom and I couldn’t wait to check out “that little castle place” that was the city gallery. I don’t remember what show was there, but I remember loving that it was a free little castle with art in it. I was thankful that my mom was as excited as I was to venture into this little castle, this sparking gem; it felt good to have her get me. We were the same in our different-ness and nothing has ever been as soothing to me, nothing makes me feel safer.

The rhythm of the city was punctuated by a street drummer pounding on a bucket to the south of us and a saxophone player droned “When the Saints Go Marching Through”—the only song he knows—to the west.

“The cost of living in Iowa should be lower at least,” I offered.
I looked at the taxi’s streaming past, their “vacant” lights welcoming and pretty.
“…But we’ll probably need a car there. I guess that will add up.”

I looked at Shaun for confirmation and made a mental note to stop looking at him for that because it makes me look weak and un-confident and unsure and pathetically female. I looked away.

“…But it will be worth it if that is where we choose to go. The writers program at the University of Iowa is amazing. Shaun says that Vonnegut taught there. Can you imagine?”

The weekend prior, when Shaun and I took the Amtrak to meet my grandparents in Michigan, where they were visiting my mom and brothers on the first stop of their midwestern vacation, I learned that my grandpa hates reading books.

“They always remind me too much of school and school spoiled books,” he told me as we shucked the shells from a pile of warm shrimp for the Peruvian dish my grandma was preparing.

I never knew that my grandpa hated reading.

In my grandparents house there is a tall bookcase in the guest bedroom brimming with musty hard cover books that I have always loved thumbing through. Its weird how easy it is to assume that someone loves something as much as you do.

The light at the crosswalk changed and we moved quickly across the street, the crisp wind fresh off the lake licking at our heels.

“Besides,” I tried to justify, “in a college town there is always something interesting going on. It’s like a little bubble of a universe.”

“Well yeah—you’ll have plenty going on,” my grandma chimed.

I wasn’t convincing anyone.

Over the course of three days my grandparents, my husband and I enjoyed one another’s company while stuffing ourselves at my favorite Thi food restaurant, reveling at a brilliant new exhibition of art and ephemera from Brazil, and delighting in an amazing production authored by one of my all time favorite Japanese fiction writers at the Steppenwolf. The global perspective and the cultural smorgasbord that Chicago pulsates with are not the driving forces of Iowa City, I’m sure.

Besides that, Iowacitygirl24 really doesn’t have the same ring to it.

It’s not like University of Iowa is the only place that Shaun is applying to pursue his master’s degree at. Emerson, Oxford, University of Glasgow, and University of British Columbia in Vancouver are all likely places for us to become indebted to next fall.

But I suggested Iowa.

So many times had the writers program at University of Iowa been endorsed to me, that I am convinced that it’s a great school, one deserving of Shaun’s talents.

And it won’t be forever.

This morning I woke up chilly with our fat cat purring noisily in my ear. I snuggled close to Shaun and I whispered warmly, “I can’t wait to move to Iowa with you.”

And it’s hard to tell if that’s a lie or not.

______________________________________________________________________

With the whole globe to choose from, how did you find your home?

***

Random Tangent
Everyone has at least one iconic image that he or she identifies with. This can be a character, a place, or a symbol—anything that represents your ego.

My icons are the cowgirl, the tribal chief, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Shaun’s is the Shaman.
What are yours?

While I Don’t Want to Start Any Blasphemous Rumors…
© The Author, 2005

I am an actress. What am I doing in Chicago? I should be in New York, especially since I live there and everything! Haven’t you seen me in that one comercial? Well, you should have. I was hot.

On my way home from work yesterday evening, I ran into a chica on the corner of Michigan and Chicago who I apparently went to high school with. She cheerfully stopped me and informed me that we were classmates (“we totally had English class together!!!”). I vaguely remembered her nose—a cute, mushroom shaped dollop sitting perky on her sweet, clean face—but aside from that I can’t say that I have any memory of her at all. This is not to say that she is unmemorable—I’m sure she is quite a catch. This is to say that I was an extraordinarily noticeable high school-er (what else do you call a 6 foot tall girl who wears 5 inch platform shoes and mini skirts to school and befriends every queer guy within a mile radius because no one else will belt out show tunes and torch songs with her quite like they do?), but I had a very limited social life and friends nonetheless. After all, being noticeable in high school does not necessarily make you popular. In my experience, it was exactly the opposite.

Anyhow, the chica who recognized me was a sweetheart. I’m not sure that we had too much in common (a conclusion I came to after noting her brimming Neiman Marcus shopping bag and subsequently listening her drone on about fashion designers as if they were her best friends. Also, there were comments she made about how her parents will financially support her while she does her internships until she is ready to move in with her boyfriend—things that are completely beyond my comprehension), but it was nice to be surprised with a bit of conversation with someone so friendly.

One particularly interesting bit of information that this lovely gal gave me was that in my hometown, it is rumored (mainly among people who I apparently graduated with but have no recollection of) that I am an actress living in New York.

I wish my life were that glamorous (well, not really, seeing as how I got out of theater and into writing because I was fed up with memorizing other people’s words and I got much more of a kick out of having people recite my writing. Plus, the life of a theater actor is really not all that glamorous: the shitty pay, the working nights and weekends, the schmoozing, the day job waiting tables…it’s really not my bag). Instead, I’m just a Chicagoartgirl with a job and some writing projects up her sleeve.

When I set my cute ex-classmate straight about my mythical life, her face fell a bit before doing the socially obligatory, “oh wow—that’s great” bit. It’s funny—the things that other people find impressive about me, real or imagined, are not the things that I dig most at all.

For example, during college I had an internship at a very famous television show that I can’t name explicitly because I singed a legally binging document that specifies that I can’t. But if you know anything about Chicago and the shows that are made here (trust me, you do), you’ll know what show it was. Everyone was (and still is) floored by my internship there. To me, not quitting it the first day was the most sell-out, degrading, and unimpressive thing I have ever done.

People have also been wooed by my acting, even though I’m not a genius actress. My worst scripts are ten times better than my best acting. But scripts never seem as impressive to people, I’ve found.

Maybe I just don’t want people to like me. Perhaps there is a sick part of me that likes scorning their awe.

What a pig I am.

But I’ve got to say, the role of misfit has always just been more fulfilling to play. Don’t you agree?

I gave the hometown chic with the good intentions my number and told her that we should eat lunch together sometime, since she is interning just a few blocks east of where I work. We rode the bus home together and I looked at pictures of her boyfriend on her phone and at her new sweater from Neiman Marcus. My phone does not take pictures. My clothes are from the thrift shop. Will we dine together some noontime? I don’t exactly know why, but I hope so.

Even though I had to unbury my yearbook and turn every page in search of her face in order to discover the name of the person’s number I had plugged into my cell phone, I’d like the chance to have another girl friend in this city, especially one as open and charming as her. I’d like to let her get to know the real me; I hope that she will enjoy my reality more than my rumors. And I hope that I will be able to see beyond our differences in class/place in life and fully enjoy her company as well.

________________________________________________________________________
So, what is rumored about you?

*

To give purpose to all the idiosyncratic things I scribble down over the course of a week but that really have no place in my writing, I bring you a new segment of the Chicagoartgirl23 blog entry, the Random Tangent.

Random Tangent of the Day
There are two types of people in this world—those who love Neapolitan ice cream and those who are constantly bitching that there is always too much strawberry and never enough chocolate.

I’m proud to say that I am the former. You?