Drove back from Michigan Monday. Got back to life Tuesday. Get back to blog Wednesday.

I have much to say about this trip. Including, but not limited to:

1.) How awesome our friends are.
2.) How an attitude adjustment on my part made Thanksgiving not only bearable but very enjoyable.
3.) How that attitude was not useful at Shaun’s 10-year High School Reunion.
4.) A (funny?) story involving me learning that my great grandma died from my mother-in-law who learned it from a waitress.

For now, though, some overdue pictures from Chicago in November.

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I like it when things looks like the moon.
 
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This thing is too cute to live.
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How was your holiday?

* I’ve had loving encouragement at all stages of my life.
* I have knowledge and curiosity.
* I have a good attitude.
* I have a deep reverence for art and for nature and for stories.
* I have lifelong friends.
* I have crazy luck.
* I have Shaun.

I’m thankful to everyone who played a roll in that. My mom and my grandparents are at the most essential base, but I’ve been nurtured by teachers and family and professors and tutors and bosses and classmates and friends and a partner that just won’t quit. The world’s been good to me, overall.

I’m also so freaking thankful to be out of New York.
And every time the radio announcers say “President Elect Obama,” I do a little happy dance.
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What are you thankful for this year?

I thought nobody had better teeth than my brother Anthony (somehow his gumholes forwent simple human teeth for unprecedented gleaming beacons of hope), but Joe Biden proved me wrong.

I’m not the only one whose noticed the vice-president elect’s pearly whites. Click here for some dental-inspiration.

Amazing, isn’t it? Don’t know about you, but I’m making my dentist appointment today!

I work an odd schedule on Tuesdays to accommodate the needs of the museum’s public evening hours; I have mornings off and I’m writing this on my “lunch” break. I like Tuesdays because Shaun and I take long morning walks together. Today’s morning walk was this:

The lake was thrashing and the sea gulls were crabby and the squirrels were cramming everything into their mouths. Pretty little snow flurries have been sprinkling down the past few days. Sidewalks were spotted with crispy patches of snow. The Chicago wind was everything it’s famed to be.

Yesterday, I went walking along the lakeshore in the bitter cold on my lunch break. I do this a lot. If you’ve ever been to Chicago in the winter, you know this is sort of nuts. That wind! You can hardly stand against it sometimes. When I was a girl, I always chose “Dare” during Truth or Dare. I never grew out of this mentality.

Anyhow, yesterday the cold was screaming into my eyes and nose and mouth and wrapping round my neck when I came upon a little area by Ohio Street beach. The area is landscaped to show visitors what the natural habitat is like: tall beach grasses. I stood in a pocket of sun by the grasses and closed my eyes. For as long as I could stand it, I stopped shivering and stood still and listened to the noise of the grass in the wind. It was louder than cars and busses and cityscape. Louder than waves and wind. It was the only thing around and quite possibly the best thing that’s happened to me in days. Not to say things have been bad lately. But this sound and this light was really something memorable.

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Where did you walk today?

I’ve not been writing anything lately. I’ve got nothing to say.

I’m thinking in pictures.

A collage: Giant Tina Turner thrashes ankle-deep in a crowd of vintage illustrated Chinese villagers.
A sketch: Tangerine. Skin worn thin with rot and hugging each segment individually.
Doodles: Bodies. Trees. Birds. Cats. Umbrellas. Ladies in winter hats.
Photos: The lake. Clouds, gray and brain-like. Flat, gray sky.

I’m cooking.

Soups and curries for the freezer. A weekly batch of quinoa for lunch salads. A stash of cooked lentils. Baked fish. Poached fish. Boiled eggs. Crockpot.
Beans. Beats. Kale.
Mustard greens. Turnip greens. Red cabbage. Spinach.
Steel cut oats. Butternut love.
We eat protein daily now. I struggle to afford hormone-free meat/dairy.  It makes me angry that I have to pay more to not be poisoned.

I go to parties.

New friends, old acquaintances turned new friends, building a permanent life, a feel-good network. Its amazing how easy friends come once commitment to place is made. Is that what’s changed? Is it us? Yes. 

I bring pumpkin things parties.

A pumpkin pie. A pumpkin loaf. Cajun-spiced seeds. Not canned pumpkins. Whole, orange, ‘lil guys. It takes forever to peel and roast and puree, but its satisfying in that crazy Martha Stewart way when you know that a pretty pie was once a gourd.

Truly [whispered to fresh batch of pumpkin spice muffins]: You’ve come a long way, baby.

I’m working.

I like my job. I like my colleagues. I like what I do. But I’ve been working way too many consecutive days in a row lately (weekdays–weekends) in order to accrue days off for Thanksgiving. Like most work-a-holics, I have no one to blame but myself. I have 10 days vacation time, but I’d like to save those up for a spring trip to Colorado and a few long weekend early summer trips (my friend Bryan and I are thinking about an upper Peninsula camping/hiking trip in June). The days I accrued earlier in the month allow me six days off in a row for Thanksgiving.

I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving.

We rented a car to drive back to MI. I’m looking forward to piling in and hitting the road. I’m looking forward to going on long walks with my mom. I’m looking forward to sleeping in. I’m looking forward to going to the pub with my Bryan. I don’t get the Turkey Fever (meat-eating is a chore for me that I do for health not pleasure), but I’m looking forward to seeing family. I like talking to Shaun’s aunt Deb. I like snuggling my nephews and reading to them in funny voices (Shaun does a funny recitation of kids books using an faux-academic “poetry voice.” The nephews and I think this is super weird and funny.) I can’t wait to hang out with my brothers and the noisy Pacellas. I’ve got a game to bring over to my family’s to play. Its gonna be fun. I’m mildly curious to know if I’ll see my dad, but I’m not bent out of shape about it anymore. I’ve stopped caring. And not in the way that I just tell myself that I’m over it. There’s honestly no feelings of attachment there anymore. No feelings to disappointment or abandonment or a desire to be acknowledged. That family loves me to the best of their ability. Which doesn’t say much, but which can’t expect much either. Besides: why should I stress myself out to see someone who calls possibly once a year when there are plenty of people around me who reach out all the time?

I’m reading.
Lots of stuff. Whats new?

I’m running and walking.
The bike is put away for the season. Its FREEZING! And worse: too windy. There is nothing worse than trying to bike against a Chicago wind whipping off the lake. Impossible!

I’m trying not to panic about money.
Shaun has another job interview on Friday. Fingers crossed!

I’m trying to stay healthy.

I still go to the medicine women and acupuncture. It seems to be working. If I didn’t already want to do a billion things in this life, I’d become a medicine woman myself. Who knows–perhaps this can be added to my goals for later in life, like after I retire from teaching (something that I still have to figure out how to afford going back to school for). I’ve got a full plate as it is. But still. I think I’d be a good medicine woman.
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What are you up to? Are you thinking in words? What are you looking forward to?

Q: What is this sassy, sassy woman holding?!
 
A: A vote for change, people. Or a receipt for one, anyhow.

Happy Election Day! Now get out there and rock your ballot.

This entry is long and strange. There may be are a few factoring causes:

1.) Last night, I experienced art that shook me to the core.
2.) This morning, I was mortified to read an article that suggested the design festival I worked on while in Scotland has seriously jeopardized the fate of the museum that organized it.
3.) The past few weeks, there have been articles in The Chicago Reader and the New York Times about how this finiancial crisis is affecting cultural not-for-profits in the US. It is not pretty.

When I sat down to write today, I found myself writing a timeline of the last few years. I did not set out to do this; my brain just needed to and took control. What emerged from this stream of consciousness timeline surprised me. For the first time, I realized that coming of age during wartime has affected me in ways I never noticed before. I just thought I’d post it, no matter how weird and rambling it may be, in case it inspires others to think about how living in wartime affects them. 

Timeline
November 4, 2000
For the first time ever, I vote.

November 5, 2000
I am outraged.

September 9 2001
Applied to transfer to NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts for Spring ’02 term.

September 11, 2001
World Trade Center Attacks. My sophomore year of college was just beginning. I was in the registrars office, trying to get the attention of the staff to help me drop a biology class. They were huddled around a radio. “Shhh,” the registrar said, “New York City’s just been bombed!”

Confused, I left the office in search of my friend Derek. I found him looking for me. We went to his apartment and turned the TV on just in time to see the second plane hit the tower. My roommate came over. We were numb. We ate Hershey bars. We wondered aloud if we should’ve saved the chocolates for the wartime to come. My roommate throw a Vogue at me, the thick spine of which cut my forehead. She said my comment was stupid and insensitive. It was. Why did I say it? I left.

I could not get a hold of my boyfriend via phone. Once I did, we fought. He was angry at the passengers for not successfully deterring the hijackers. I couldn’t believe his initial reaction to this was to blame anyone, let alone the victims. I was 19. He was 23.

That night, I dreamt that all the souls of the day’s victims were in my room, looking at me. They wanted to know where to go next but I didn’t know. The sky was quiet that night. No planes flew overhead.

October 12, 2001
Opening day of David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive. Boyfriend proposes marriage in parking garage of movie theatre. I break into a cold sweat. I agree.

November 19, 2001
NYU informs applicants that the admission process is delayed. I am too nervous to move to New York without a formal acceptance. I am impatient. I lack faith. I apply to Columbia College Chicago.

January 25, 2002
Boyfriend becomes husband. As always, I love him. But I do not get comfortable with his new title–or mine–for years.

January 26, 2002
Move to Chicago. I am a student, a wife, a barista, an intern. I struggle to make friends. I am unsure of my new life. I am adjusting. I am trying.

February, 2002
Shaun lands his first job out of college in the publications department of the Art Institute. I receive a letter of acceptance from NYU for the Fall 2003 term. I think of all the time spent on my submission portfolio. I look around at my new life. I save the letter in an old hat box. I wonder if I have any regrets.

March 2, 2002
Four days shy of my 20th birthday, a man named Tom Ridge unveils the Homeland Security Advisory System. Days are color coded according to how terrified we are supposed to be. We live on the 48th floor of a high-rise apartment tower. There is no known evacuation plan. I dream of saving my husband from a wall of fire.

March 2002-December 2002
Months march by. The government tells us to seal off our rooms with duct tape and plastic sheeting. There is a SARS outbreak. We get a pet cat.

January 2003
We move to a small apartment in Wicker Park. We are very poor and cannot afford to eat much or turn the heat up. We reuse tea bags. We play chess. We walk to gourmet grocery stores to dine on samples. We are very happy.

February 2003
Our country is on the verge of war. We get into museums free with husband’s Art Institute staff ID badge. We visit frequently. We go to the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) for the first time to see a show called War (What is it Good For?). I couldn’t stop thinking about it for days.

March 20, 2003–April 2003
Our nation declares war in Iraq. The words “Shock and Awe” physically sicken me when I hear them. I stop watching television news. I start listening to NPR religiously. I visit the MCA again. It is the one place the offers an articulate voice of descent. Contemporary artists are the only ones expressing ideas that I can identify with. I start checking out contemporary art exhibition catalogs from the library. I drop all my screenwriting classes and switch them to art classes. I change my mind and switch them all back once I realized I couldn’t afford to change majors at the end of my junior year. We were poor enough as it was.

April 2003
I land an internship at the world’s most popular daytime television show where I receive anthrax training and a box of rubber gloves to sort the fan mail. Eventhough it is too late to change majors, I decide I cannot work in media.

June 2004
I graduate college. I land my first job out of college at the MCA. I am a part-time assistant. We are still poor, but I am happy to be around art. I am stunned to find myself on staff tours with curators and artists. It makes all the other part-time jobs I have to keep worth while. I tutor English. I shoot and edit video, freelance. A video client of mine gets seriously creepy. I am stalked. I think about bird flu. We go to court with the stalker. I sell my camera to help pay court costs.

November 2004
Bush gets elected again. My mom and step-dad divorce. We decide to leave the country soon. 

October 2005
Sick of our tiny gross apartment, Shaun and I move to Ravenswood, on Chicago’s north side. The apartment is bigger. In our new place, only one outcropping of asbestos is visible, only one pipe requires a drip pan beneath it.

January 2006
I am promoted at the museum to a full time position. I buy a new winter coat. For the first time in a while, I am warm. We aren’t too terribly poor anymore. I sign up for writers workshop. I start to make real friends in the city for the first time.

June 2006
Husband is accepted to the University of Glasgow’s MLit program. We are moving to Scotland!

September 2006
We move to Scotland. Husband never wants to leave. Loves his classes. Loves his writerly life. Initially, I am full of hope and joy. This soon gives way to panic. We are poor again. My face breeds a huge outcropping of painful, gory cysts. I have to interview for jobs this way.

November 2006
Despite cysts, The Lighthouse hires me to work on an inaugural, nationwide design festival. I am thrilled to have work–especially work that advances my resume–but adjusting to the cultural differences in    another country’s workforce is challenging. The whole festival is challenging. My skin never fully clears.

February 2007
I am finally enjoying Scotland in earnest. I’ve made friends. I feel close and connected to my colleagues. I have a role here. I am happy. But I am wondering what comes next. Anxiety plagues me. Husband does not want to leave, ever. I am not sure if I can commit to a lifelong, ocean-wide separation from family. We fight. We make up. We enjoy the moment. We fight again.

May-June 2007
The festival is in full swing. I’m so busy it is hard to believe. I drink more than I’ve ever drunk. I’ve come to love the place and friendships are made for life. In-laws also visit and I make a horrible comment that causes mother-in-law to cry. I will never be forgiven for this and I know it while its happening.

July 2007
Festival ends. I contract shingles, brought on by stress and fatigue, and am bedridden for two weeks. I watch Planet Earth on DVD.

September 2007
Husband and I still cannot agree on what happens next. He feels at home in Scottish culture, cannot bear the politics and attitudes of Americans. But our lease has run out. We are homeless, but house-sitting for friends. My work contract is in its final weeks. He is finished with school. We buy plane tickets for Chicago but change them last minute when I am offered a pathetically low paying job in NYC. We look at this new opportunity as a compromise, as a new adventure. There is about ten minutes of thought before we flew into action. Flights are changed. Arrangements are made. Our fight draws to a close.

October 2007
Mom gets remarried. We move to NYC.

November 2007
My pathetically low paying job turns out to be a scam. We temp and look for secure employment. We own next to nothing, as we’ve just come from overseas. We live in a ghetto. We have a major roach infestation in our apartment. Mariachi music plays all night long, punctuated by bullets in the night. Rats are everywhere. This is poverty.

December 2007
We both land jobs. We are relieved but still poor. We look forward to visiting family over the holidays.

January 2008
After the holidays, I fall into a deep, horrible depression. I have trouble eating. I cry every night. I sleep a lot. I want to go back in time. I hate New York.

March 2008
I start working a second job. It is the only way I can save up enough money to leave. I am always tired. Everyday I am swimming upstream.

May 2008
I start to have a small but promising stash of escape money. I put the word out to Chicago friends that I am eager to come back home. A few days later, my old boss contacted me to let me know about a position at the MCA. A week later, I was on a flight back to Chicago. Moved in with a kind friend. Slept on her couch until I could afford a down payment on an apartment for husband and me. For the first time in a long, long while, I could breathe. It was incredible.

August 2008
Moved into new apartment in Rogers Park, on Chicago’s north side. Was joined mid-month by husband. We feel like survivors. I am happy to sleep in a bed again.

September-October 2008
Husband freelance writes and teaches at a university while he looks for a secure day job. We are still poor but the whole world is going broke, so this is nothing unique. There is a declared global financial crisis. We are happy anyway. We are sick of worrying. We are concerned without being afraid. For the first time, it occurs to us that we will soon feel ready to start a family.

October 30, 2008
I stay late at work to see Jenny Holzer’s nighttime projections on the face of the Museum of Contemporary Art. A text-based artist, Holzer created the projection using The End and the Beginning, a war poem from Polish Nobel Laureate Wislawa Szymborska. I read first few lines, “After every war/someone has to clean up. Things won’t/straighten themselves up, after all,” and thought of how I came to this point in time. I realized that coming of age against the backdrop of war has influenced my decisions, has affected me more than I thought. I was reminded of how I first came to love the MCA. I was thankful that now, days before this election, the museum is a place where I find connection once again.

    I’ve not been blogging. I’ve been busy. I’ve been worried. About my health. About my finances, my county’s finances, the world’s finances. About the toxic social repercussions of Facebook and pop-culture’s massive abuse of irony. About the election. About the environment. About the world, generally, you know, crumbling. My health seemed like the easiest thing to fix, so I focused on that.
    In July I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, although I had no symptoms aside from not ovulating.
    Recently, I was talking over rye and gingers with my best friend Bryan.
    “So, what’s new?” he asked.
    I answered in my June Cleaver voice: “Well, I’m barren!”
    We laughed ’till it hurt, but Bryan knows my secret heart. For the first time ever, Shaun and I just started to get to the point where a fetus would have been anything other than a total disaster.  In fact, if a little one joined us, (s)he would be very welcome. Even when we were paranoid back seat teenagers, we always thought that having a kid someday was a fetching idea. This fall, someday seems to have found us; we are relatively confident that we’d be able to nurture another little human’s identity and well-being while still supporting our own. Shaun and I know how we fit in this world, or at least know how we want to and are well on our way. We like the idea of our funny little family. A lot. Is this maternal instinct? No. Its more logic-based. My material instinct is a lot mushier and totally spoils  any attempt at a cool public persona. If any of you have ever seen me interact with my little brothers, you know what I’m talking about.

    Anyhow, it was totally irritating that the minute that thought enters my mind, my womb decided to throw a hissy fit. Not that my life would be unfulfilled if I missed the mommy train, but I was sincerely fearful of what it would mean for my long-term health if I was indeed out of functional girl-hormones at 26. My doctor wanted to  set me on a path of crazy, lifelong synthetic hormones. The thought of that made me sick. I sought the help of acupuncture and a holistic medicine woman.
    After a long consultation and over the course of two appointments, the holistic medicine woman hooked me up with a bottle dropper of an herb blend, liquid seaweed, cold spoonfuls of Cod Liver Oil, whole-food vitamins, a jar of fermented beet juice, and recipe for a breakfast shake made of berries, green power and whey. I sip her prescribed loose-leaf raspberry tea thrice daily. There is a bottle of Chinese herb pills on my kitchen shelf called Woman’s Precious. I pretend to be Gollam when I take them. I’ve also been seeing a lovely acupuncture man every month. I don’t fully understand what it is that he does, but I leave feeling like a million bucks.
    My research into hypothyroidism told me that if I take my temperature in the morning over the course of my treatment, I could gauge how it was working. People with hypothyroidism tend to have a waking temperature that is hovers around 95/96. As my treatment progressed, I happily recorded my temperature raise to a totally respectable 98.6. And this weekend, my uterus finally did its lady thing. Excluding a tiny handful of minor pregnancy scares over the years, I’ve never been happy to get my period before. It was totally weird. Like, “YAY! I’M HEALTHY!”
    Its funny the things you take for granted. I’ve started to pay more attention lately. Functional muscles, for instance. I’m super happy to have them. Running, biking, swimming, hiking: it all just wouldn’t be the same without them, you know? And I’ve gotten used to how things are.
   
   
    In other news, I wrote a poem today. I’m a totally lame poet, but I only do it for fun. As far as I can tell, bad poetry is pretty harmless. So if my health problems haven’t given you enough of a distraction from the global financial crisis, feel free to read it. If you copy it and turn it in to your Comp teacher: I feel really bad for you.

Cherry Festival
by me

We want to ride The Zipper.
Again! Again!

We rattle dangerously in our junkyard cage.
Skinny thighs slam against steel lap bars. I accidentally bite my tongue.
You’re older and breathless.
I’m whip-lashed. My mouth looks like a worm.

At the end, we tumble out.
Again? Again.
We want to ride The Zipper.
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How are you distracting yourself? How’s your health?

Just a quick blog before work. Quick, though, ‘cuz I got shit to do.

I promised myself I’d not blog about the election too much because–most of the time–I hate political blogs. I like political conversations, but blogs just seem to incite rude-o screaming matches in the comments section. People write things that they’d never say and everyone just ends up sounding stupid. I can invite people over to potluck to brainstorm ways to change the world; but if I started political discussions online, any old jackass can chime in. Ultimately, I didn’t want to write about the election because I don’t need another stress and I found that political blogging isn’t a fun or productive spend of my time. In fact, it mostly makes me angry and there is enough media in the world to do that already. I promised to take my political activities elsewhere, strictly offline. But I’m breakfasting to NPR and just heard something that’s instigated me into political blogging.

First, I can’t tell you how ANNOYED I am that America is just catching on that feminism is a political issue. I am also furious that Sara Palin has somehow become our spokesperson for this, twisting the feminist message to mean something along the lines of “women–even though they are stupid and without credentials–deserve the same opportunities as men.” Makes me sick. How Hilary has contained herself from public teeth knashing, I’ll never know.

But what REALLY got under my skin was the NPR report that said that both parties were trying to woo women by doing the following:
1.) Visiting beauty parlors (Obama ‘s plans for this weekend)
2.) Cooking ribs with Rachel Ray (McCain)
3.) Plastering the Oprah Winfrey Show with ads (which both parties are crazy about).

Because if there is anything we know about women its that they really like to get their hair done, cook, and watch daytime television. So I guess I just won’t be wooed because, like most women I know, I’ve got to get my ass to work. I’ve got 8 miles to bike to get there and a department to run once I arrive. Its my husband’s turn to cook dinner tonight and I’ll be reading Gravity’s Rainbow this evening instead of watching re-runs of Oprah.

A note to Obama and McCain: you’ve got us ladies all wrong. It’s 2008. Just like our friends with penises, we’ve got shit to do.

Edit: I was a hellbeast of rage biking to work this morning. I thought a blog would purge me of my policital anger, but turns out: it was just the warm up.

You want to woo me? Here’s what my vagina and I want:

1.) Equal pay for equal work

2.) Equal opportunities for educational/professional development, scholarship,
business loans, and promotions

3.) A choice as to what is and is not permitted to attach itself to my uterine
lining

4.) An economy where single-income families can survive. If my husband needs to
take time off of his career to tend to an ailing parent or friend, see our
child through toddlerhood, or go to effing graduate school: I need to feel
confident that I can support us. He wants the same for me. We want the same for
our gay friends.

5.) Job security when/if I take maternity leave, which ideally: is 6 months
paid, with a 6 months unpaid option. Think this is crazy? Check in with what
the rest of the world is doing and get back to me.

6.) Government protected “flex time” to tit-feed my child and later, send
them off to school. This is not a wild notion; we are one of the only
“developed” countries not doing it.

7.) Both parties keep
trying to “play nice” with each other and say, “we
can all agree that fewer abortions would be nice.” So its adoption, yeah?
I want government protection for gay marriage and adoption. Newsflash: men can’t make babies with other men. But they can make wonderful
fathers together. Same for queer mammas. So let’s protect their families, for
christsakes!

8.) An end to abstinence-only education. This is a joke. Except its not funny
because it breeds babies and STDs. Is sexuality so far removed from everyone’s
lives that they have completely forgotten how old they were when they lost
their virginity? On average, its 16 for us ladies; 17 for guys. Most people I
know, including myself, fall into that category. There’s a lot about the world
that 16 and 17 year olds don’t know. That’s why they go to school. Let’s teach
them the reproductive biology of mammals, shall we? Let’s teach them how to
take care of their reproductive health in a way that is realistic,
comprehensive, sex-positive, and helpful.

9.) An environmental policy that makes certain the future generation won’t
inherit a toxic wasteland. Also: I want an environmental policy that makes sure
that I actually can reproduce! I know an alarming number of twenty-something
women with reproductive problems that I have a hard time thinking are unrelated
to the hormones in our food, the pervasive number of plastics in our
environment, bleach in our tampons, and other toxins in our environments.

10.) Access to public healthcare. Did you know that birth control is free in
most other “developed” nations? You wanted fewer abortions, didn’t
you?

Finally, I want many, many things that my breasts and ovaries have nothing to do with! I want a competent leader who will stop embarrassing me
with things like a fence across the Mexican boarder. I want us to get the fuck
out of this war and an to end
to the horror show that is Guantanamo.
(Is it so much that my president respect habeas corpus?!?)
I want regulation. I want a real-world switch from globalization to local
economies. I want a reform to the farm subsidies program. I want public transit
to become a viable option for Americans again. I want equal distribution of
taxes for public education. I want an America with a healthy middle
class. I want politicians who understand that I read newspapers, I listen to
the radio, I have opinions that weren’t even engineered by Oprah. You want to
woo me? Understand that and respect it.

Last week, Shaun and I started having Thursday Night Recession Potluck at our house. Every Thursday evening, our doors are open to all of our city friends/aquantnces we’d like to be friendlier with. People don’t have to come every week, just when they feel like it–when the week suits, we’ll be open for business. Potluck is a very casual, totally low pressure evening of shared plates, drinkies, and conversation and was born out of a few ideas:

1.) Bringing Scotland to ‘Merica
Potluck allows us to open our hearts and home in the way that is a true reflection of how we feel for our friends and all the beautiful people that we enjoy. For what good is thinking “you know–that person is really cool.”? One must act! Show that person! Scotland taught us that. Scotland is full of that. In my experience (Shaun’s too), Scottish society hinges on it. America needs more of it.

2.) Breaking A Bad Habit
My favorite things include: biking, running, swimming, reading, writing. Alone-type things. Shaun is similarly solitary. But we are humans! We need people! We love people! Its just easy for us to fall into a habitual hermit-type life. Potluck offers a built-in safe-guard against seclusion. We need to get out of ourselves. Communities nourish people, if we let them.

3.) Going out = Money. We Don’t Have Any.
We live well, but not well enough to spend much money on socialization. If we’re all going out to the pub or to a restaurant to enjoy each-others company, lets just skip the price mark ups and gather ’round  my kitchen table. This week, I made a summer vegetable soup to feed an army for about $12. Plus, the case of PBR we’ve started to keep on hand for those interested in sucking down a cheap beer or two over the course of the evening. We’ve still got loads of both left over. See? Economical.

4.) Urban Living = Isolation
Cities are filled with young people, away from the family and friends of home. Its hard to make friends as a grown up. Especially in a culture that emphasizes work, work, work. You’re at work so much that you rarely meet people outside of work. And even when you like the people that you work with, after you’ve just spent 8 hours with them, do you really want to grab dinner together and unwind over the weekends? Sometimes you do, but its nice to make your bubble bigger, more diverse. Its great to keep the conversation fresh, the ideas new and percolating. It feels good to introduce people to new friends. And since people in cities tend to relocate at an astonishing rate (myself included), its nice to have as big of a support system as possible. I think it just might help people calm down and stick around for a while. Or at very least, allow social groups to replenish.

5.) Sharing Ideas = Changing the World
Okay. So far, we’ve not figured out how to stop Sarah Palin’s horror show or how to end our addiction to oil. But we just might get there. The voicing of opinions with our actual voices–not through blogs or texts or even articles/essays–feels so good. And changes things–it changes us a little bit. Plus, it just plain feels good.

So far, both Potlucks have been really fun. It looks like Potluck has a dedicated little group of 4-5 ladies and Shaun. Every week holds new potential, new ideas, and something positive and pure. It makes me happy and is really easy. I made sure to indicate in the invite that things would be really casual, so aside from wiping off the table, making a big batch of something to eat, and running the dishwasher, the night runs itself. I’d recommend them to anyone. We’re not alone in this world. Our iPods just make it seem that way sometimes.
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How do you foster new friendships? What are your thoughts on the role of friendships in adult life?