Go now. Go.

Art

2010-11-21T18:11:00.000-08:00

I sit on Tim's side of the bed when he's gone because from the head of the bed, he has a perfect view out the bedroom door to the stairwell where the three uppermost birds soar. It pleases me to see the image I love so dearly in a more visible place than my back, and I love that I was able to paint them in my stairs.

I've decided to consider myself an artist.

My whole life, I have never given myself credit for being an artist because I've always been surrounded by real artists. What I do has never seemed to qualify, is never something that I can frame and hang--as though that's the only qualifier art needs.

But I finally gave myself credit for looking at the world as an artist. Our house is slowly getting filled with things that might prompt a sensible realtor would remind us to consider resale values, but our thick wooden back door is sturdy enough to withstand 56 holes that I put in when I created an installation with old keys.

My art is never going to change the world, or even attract much notice from anyone besides myself, and that's ok with me. I am recharged by the buzz of excitement new ideas give me, and the sense of satisfaction and peace that creation brings.

I need more of those feelings in my life, as work is becoming an increasing black hole where peace, hope, and optimism go to die.

I've decided to give myself the goal of doing one creative thing a day, to give myself something to think about and look forward to when work makes me despair.

My next project is to replace all the ceiling fan pulls (which are currently round medallions at the end of each chain that advertise the fan brand) with beads made out of Sculpey. Next up, I am going to make a futon cover out of oatmeal-colored muslin for the library. After that, I'm going to write a story or two for This I Believe. My long-term goal is to learn how to use audio-editing software and write some podcasts.

It's good to have projects to look forward to. Here's to hope, optimism, and peace!

RIP Fergus

2008-11-28T19:40:00.000-08:00

Tim says how you know you've met the right kitty is that it picks you, not that you pick it.

I've spent hours at shelters before, looking for exactly the right cat, going into it desiring an all-black cat, and keeping my eyes focused for what I thought I wanted. And it was frustrating, seeing all the wonderful cats who seemed only just good enough. Not The One.

And then the right one will come along unbidden.

Fergus found me the summer of 1999. I went to Harmony House for Cats, entered a room filled with black kitties, and one jumped onto my lap, curled up, and fell asleep. I fell in love, but he had a bronchial infection, so I had to wait a week to pick him up. I think when I went back, they gave me the wrong cat, because Fergus never once sat in my lap for the rest of his life.

He was my punk kitty. He loved racing around the apartment (even better when I lived in a two-story apartment with a long, carpeted staircase to the basement), chomping down on my hair while I was sleeping, and climbing my clothes hanging in the closet to perch near the ceiling. He went crazy whenever there was a newspaper to dive under or a box to climb in.

For a long time, it was him and me against the world. He was my rock for a few years. I went through a lot, but I never got lonely at home with him by my side. I'd come home from work, and he'd run to the table to relax and watch me make dinner. While I ate, he'd lay beside me on the table, then curl up on the couch cushion next to me while I read or watched TV. After about three years together, I began waking up in the middle of the night to discover him curled in my arms. I could scarcely breathe; it was so special. He hadn't been a very affectionate cat, which I didn't mind so much because he had so much spunk and intelligence. But for a good year or two, I didn't get much sleep because I'd lay awake, treasuring those quiet, cuddly moments where he deigned to act like a cat instead of a little furry person.

When Tim entered the picture, it was all over for the punk kitty. Tim lavished so much love on Fergus, believing--accurately--that the way to my heart was through Fergus's, and he turned into a little love bug. A year or so after that, Tim was convinced he needed a friend, so we went back to the same shelter, and Olivia found us.

Fergus tried to kill Olivia the first day she was home. But after about a week, the hissing stopped, and after about a month, he allowed her to eat out of the same bowl. I don't think he ever loved her the way she loved him, but there was tolerance, and sometimes he'd give up the fight and let her snuggle him.

The happiest time for Fergus was in Alabama. He'd snake through our home-made cat door onto the balcony and roll around deliriously on the concrete, dirt-sprinkled floor. He'd "walk the wire" of the balcony, and click his tongue at the birds. And he'd spend a lot of time asleep on the World's Most Comfortable Chair, a place he always let Olivia share. I always felt bad leaving that apartment, and his outdoor freedom.

And then we came back to Chicago, and he started to get sick, and that's not something I want to remember right now. I want to remember his wise eyes, and the way I wasn't sure he ever knew exactly what I was saying, but certain he always knew my meaning. How he'd meow a kitty "bless you" every time I'd sneeze, or come running to my side with a concerned look on his face if I ever made a cry of pain or sadness. How he was staunchly anti-laps or cuddling in the living room, but could be counted on to curl his head under my chin at night, or let me rest my head, using him as a pillow, to listen to his purr.

And in the end, Olivia proved a good partner, whether he ever acknowledged her or not. At a time when another animal might have attacked him for being weak, she didn't push him to play, but instead licked his ears while he ate, grooming him carefully.

I think we all have one kindred animal spirit in the world, and it doesn't seem right that he's gone, but I feel lucky to have known him.

On being employed

2008-09-20T16:20:00.001-07:00

Today, I have had a leisurely breakfast at Lula Cafe in my neighborhood with a friend, walked along the boulevard looking at an outdoor-art project, started a new book from the library, and inevitably took a nap on the couch with Olivia. The weather is picture perfect, a glorious 79 on the day before fall. It could be a repeat of many weekend days I've spent this summer, but somehow it is so much sweeter and more relaxing doing it when I'm employed.

Cassette from My Ex

2008-08-15T19:58:00.000-07:00

Cassette from My Ex is a blog I wish I had thought of. Stories about the ex and the special mix tape he or she created, along with actual songs uploaded to the site, so you can listen as you read. Really the only complaint I have with it is that they usually only publish established writers, so I probably couldn't get my story on there.

I started to write my story here, and then I realized I'd written it before. My first boyfriend, my first trip abroad, and my first bout of heavy drinking. And then I realized it's not just about exes. My whole life revolves around stories of music, from nights with friends, to cruising Main, to my fascination with hands.

My latest mantra

2008-07-28T20:12:00.001-07:00

"I accept myself as I am right now."

A Bouquet

2008-07-19T11:44:00.001-07:00

Between me and the world
You are a calendar, a compass

Bei Dao

I love Monday nights

2008-07-14T16:14:00.000-07:00

Monday nights have become my special treat. Coming off the weekend, I'm ready to work again, but about halfway through Monday, I realize it's not this night I have to work, it's the next. No matter how much I like my job, the Tuesday night deadline looms for when I have to put on my pajamas, pack up my overnight bag, and drive to work.

But Mondays, I have off. No matter that most days, and most evenings, too, I have off. There's something different about Monday. I make my dinner and find something to watch on TV. The whole evening stretches ahead of me, and I love being at home with the kitties.

Bored with myself

2008-07-11T19:57:00.000-07:00

I haven't blogged in forever because it's just too boring. I have nothing to say but to bemoan my unemployed state and my near-constant depression.

I don't know why I call it unemployment, though. I forget that I work a lot at the shelter. I guess that's what depression does to you; you forget about the good things you have.

I need to remember, though, because right now it's about all that's keeping me going. I worked out and applied for some jobs today, which momentarily lifted my spirits, but then I couldn't figure out what else to do with my day, so I laid on the floor, watched TV, and napped. It was too hard to even carry on a conversation with Tim when he called. I watched the clock, cuddled with the kitties, waiting for it to be late enough to go to work.

When it was finally time to get in the car and drive up north, my spirits lifted. I walked in the door and everything felt right. If I feel this way about a part-time job, god. I can't wait to be more fully employed.

Too late. Too loud.

2008-06-09T18:39:00.000-07:00

I forget sometimes, how much I love live music. I don't like standing up for a long time, and I don't like crowded, smoky clubs. I think I'd rather lay on the floor of my own home, listening to the CD instead.

And then I went out to this odd little venue called Heart of Gold.

It was hard to figure out at first. The top floor of what appeared to be a business, it looked like an art gallery. The lobby was filled with a variety of stunning art. Maybe it was a performance space; there was also a door that said "recording studio." But inside this colorful room, people lounged about, smoking, and the bartender refused to take my money, pointing me instead to a fishbowl filled with cash for me to make my own change. When my friend B and I waited for the bathroom, a guy filled us in: it was a loft converted into a living space for about seven or eight people. What a living space!

Everyone there seemed to know each other. Three different bands or solo artists played, as we tried to identify the person we were there to see: Bleu, someone a friend in L.A. knew. The night dragged on, and my feet hurt. We sat down, and they still hurt. People milled around me, blowing cigarette smoke freely so my contacts started to burn.

And then Bleu started playing. It was just him with his guitar, a drum machine, and a feedback loop. As we approached midnight, the sound system got progressively louder. His voice coasted on the beautiful edge of hoarse, of cracking. He played his own stuff, and Tears for Fears' "Shout," and the crowd sang with him. I closed my eyes and sang along.

It was too late. Too loud. The vibrations of voices, soundwaves filled my body. I couldn't tell where I ended and the music began. I melted into the night.

On my own

2008-06-04T18:36:00.000-07:00

This week, I got called to interview at my dream social service agency. I was fair in shock. I really never expected them to pull my resume out of the stack of hundreds. I didn't know anyone at the agency, no one who could put me in touch with the right person or vouch for my skills. Lately I've been feeling like it's almost pointless to apply for any jobs when you don't have a connection like that. There's no way to stand out from every other unknown person with the same recent graduation qualifications as me.

But they picked me. That alone was enough to make my week. Forget about the job yet; they just thought I was good enough to consider. Hello self esteem, welcome back.

And then I hit a home run with the interview. Or at least, it felt that way to me, and that's good enough for now. Or . . .

The dangerous part starts now. I haven't felt this way in a while, so I start to question myself. Like at the end of the interview, when I asked about the timeline for hiring, and would I be contacted both if they wanted or didn't want me to continue in the process. "No, I usually only contact those I am asking back for second interviews," she said (which, duh. That was a pretty stupid question for me to ask on only the first interview). "But you can always call me to check." In the moment I said goodbye, but hours later, I start to think, "But you can always call me . . ." Did she phrase it like that as a subtle hint?

I'm ridiculous beyond belief. I know that. But I'm also insecure to the max. I wish I could spend a few more moments basking in the pure joy of feeling good and confident about myself and my abilities. I got to this place by myself. On my own. And that's pretty great.

What I've been doing

2008-05-28T05:56:00.001-07:00

I haven't posted in a while because all the days can all be summed up in a few words: "missing Tim. Stressing about the job search."

That gets boring after a while. I've decided in an attempt to keep my spirits up (though that's almost a lost cause by now), I'm going to think of at least one good thing every day.

Today, I am adored by the current ladies in the shelter. I've been working more frequently, which gives me more opportunities to get to know them. I will occasionally second guess my skills, which I'm going to spin positively and say that's me always striving to be better, but lately it has occurred to me that my real talents lay in relationship building. I like to think that because they can tell I like and respect them, and am interested in their lives, they in turn respect me.

My old supervisor said that once the clients like you, you're sunk. She also worked with a lot of people with personality disorders, so I'm going to disregard that for my work. Things go a lot more smoothly when I am able to get along well with my clients.

Going overboard

2008-05-07T16:14:00.000-07:00

It's no secret. If you know me, you know I go overboard when I get excited about something. Even better, when it's something creative, for someone I love.

Today I made a book for mom's 60th birthday. I asked everyone who knows her to write a something about her, and an overwhelming number of people responded. Their words are the true treasure of this gift, but I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I found some beautiful card stock, and sewed the booklet myself.

If you can read the words, this one is lovely. The woman who wrote it compares aging to an antique barn that silvers with age and becomes more beautiful.

Sisters

Everyone mentioned her lovely pottery

Her beautiful smile and wide-reaching enthusiasm

This one was my favorite, from an old friend of my parents: "I have a million memories of your mom from the first time I saw her sticking her head out of an apartment window on East Lake Terrace to working at the Little King Sandwich Shop with Mike to teaching me how to take photographs with a homemade pinpoint camera on the back porch of their west side apartment to playing in the surf at Palisades with Danny the summer they lived in Michigan to camping in the Rockies and riding home with our heads poking out of the sun deck of Mike’s old VW Bus to riding bikes to the Loop to the last time I saw her at the party at your house and, do you know what, in every single one of those memories right up to the last one, your mom is one of the most beautiful people I’ve ever been lucky enough to know."

Alone

2008-05-06T19:29:00.000-07:00

There is a certain asceticism to being single, and being alone. My meals are simpler, because I usually only go all out when I have someone else to cook for. There isn't bike gear strewn across the dining room table, or other people's paperwork. Just mine. I can even push the bed against the wall since I am the only person getting into it.

It's everything that I loved about living by myself. Quietude.

But this time, instead, none of that matters. I feel like there is a vise across my chest, and it is only barely working to keep everything inside. It's hard to focus on what I need to do for myself, like set up temp work and health insurance, and remember to give Fergus his daily pills, or even on conversations while I'm in the middle of them.

I find myself wanting to interrupt the conversation and make casual acquaintances intimate friends with my confidences: "I don't know how I'm going to survive without Tim." It's been one night of tossing and turning, sleeplessness because his presence next to me in bed is my sleep aid; and 153 more to go.

Today a customer service rep called for him. "My husband doesn't live here currently," I said, wondering how uncomfortable I was making the caller, with my insinuation that something was up, and slightly enjoying it. But then I felt guilty, so I told him about Tim's summer into fall job, that he wouldn't be home until October, and then I realized I was telling too much, but I couldn't stop, because all I wanted to do was talk about Tim. I notice this happens when I miss him; I try to insert him into every conversation I have--I suppose so then it's like he's with me again.

Anything, really, to relieve this punch in the chest I feel every time I breathe.

Full moon madness

2008-04-21T11:52:00.000-07:00

In the ten years I've been working domestic violence, I don't even need a full hand to count the number of times the work has made me cry. It just doesn't happen.

But it did yesterday.

Usually Sundays are quiet. I get a lot of homework done, and I get caught up on TV shows, watching them online. Yesterday, though, I don't think the phone left my ear for more than ten minutes at a time during most of the eight-hour shift.

The full moon brings out the sweetly crazy, and the absolutely psychotic. I talked to more people who were actually in crisis than I usually do, and I heard stories that were more violent and brutal than usual.

During one, I just wanted to put the phone down and weep. What this woman had been through, I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Not on anyone. I had to help her, give her hope and a place to stay.

I drove home in a daze, started dinner, and opened a beer. I felt more exhausted than if I had spent the afternoon in the field, hoeing rows. The water was boiling for corn, I leaned against the fridge, slid to the floor, and started crying.

For a moment I wondered, is this it? Have I reached the end and shouldn't do this anymore? I finally decided it was ok.

Who else was going to cry for her?

2008-04-16T13:15:00.000-07:00

I activated the voice recognition dial program on my cell phone. I say who I want to call, and an automated voice will repeat back what it thinks I said. "Do you want to call [so-and-so]?"

The computerized voice sounds just like the midget on Twin Peaks! It is simultaneously hilarious and creepy.

Big blinking neon life arrows

2008-03-19T15:39:00.000-07:00

I feel like the universe is presenting me with a bunch of enormous, blinking, neon arrows (and did I mention "with bling"?) pointing to this job I just interviewed for.

I got in for an interview because the girl who worked my internship last year now works at the agency. She gave me the supervisor's name and number after I didn't hear anything further from the web submission of my resume.

One of the counselors at my internship said, "Oh, who's the supervisor? I know so-and-so," who, it turns out, is the program director and sat in on my interview. I was able to name drop (fun!), "Oh, I think we have a mutual colleague . . ."

I had mixed feelings about the job, though; preconceived notions that, though the interview smashed through them, were hard to shake.

So I went to talk to my favorite professor. "Is this agency good? Is this position worthy?" She said yes, and mentioned that she thought a former student of hers, D--, might work there. "D--?" I said. "What's his last name?"

It turns out that he is the same man I corresponded with after I was accepted to grad school. He was just finishing up his last year and had volunteered to contact incoming students to answer any questions they had. I had a million. We e-mailed each other for 2 months!

So I called him at work. I think he vaguely recognized my name. He was very nice and helpful (just like two years ago) and gave me his work address so we could e-mail further and I could pick his brain about this job.

The upshot of it all is that, if I don't get called back for a second interview, or even offered the job, I'm going to be seriously pissed.

A good lesson

2008-03-14T13:18:00.000-07:00

So I've been seeing a counselor this semester, on campus, half to address the massive anxiety I have about my future (i.e., what do I do when I graduate and how do I not completely lose it with the stress?) and half to observe and learn more about therapy. I got matched with a man who, well, I would prefer not to see a man anyway, but also, I could, really, immediately, tell I wouldn't feel comfortable with.

But I'm stubborn, and had already waited 3 months to get to see someone, so I stuck with him once I knew he did a lot of work with cognitive-behavioral therapy. I knew that's what I needed, plus, I wanted to see an experienced clinician administering CBT.

I don't know why I ignore gut feelings. I'm pretty ridiculous about that.

I quickly grew tired of his style, and of CBT in general. But I stayed with it at least a month and a half. At our last session, something else came up (a discussion topic) that I wanted to pursue, and since I knew he also did a lot of interpersonal therapy work (another modality I wanted to see in action), I suggested that direction instead.

I have this idea that because I'm comfortable in general with therapy, it can be successful no matter who I work with. But I had to confront the fact that I really am growing more uncomfortable with him, to the point that I started to dread the appointment we have scheduled for next week.

It's not anything in particular (unless you count that I think he talks too much for a therapist, and sometimes I zone out and miss half of what he says), it's more about a personality fit between counselor and client that's just not working.

This is actually not something I've encountered as a therapist myself--probably because most of the families I see are mandated to see me due to community service, and they don't have much of a choice to see another counselor unless they are very difficult and I defer to my supervisor. The therapeutic relationship (though important) just isn't discussed (though maybe that's only through my failing to bring it up).

Something that does happen a lot, though, is that people will stop coming, not even returning my phone calls, and I don't know why. It doesn't keep me up at night, but closure is nice. And I think I now realize why it happens.

I don't particularly want to talk about it with my therapist. I should talk about it, but I don't feel like it. I just feel like stopping our sessions. So I called the center receptionist and cancelled my appointment. And my counselor called me back to reschedule.

I knew he would. I call my clients, too. Even if they say (as I didn't), "I'm ending my counseling. I'm not coming back."

I don't want to call him back and explain, because I can't even figure out why in the past week, I've gone from being somewhat committed to (though unenthused about) counseling to suddenly being unavoidably uncomfortable with the idea of returning. I just don't feel like dealing with it. I don't need closure, or termination, I just have other things to do with my time.

Yet, because I hate it when clients just stop communicating, I feel some responsibility to him to tell him why I'm terminating. So I know that I'll feel really guilty if I don't call him back.

But I don't want to talk to him! I don't want to feel guilty about someone else's feelings and I don't want that to push me to do something I don't want to. I'd lie and say something came up and I don't have time for it, as one friend suggested, but I know that I would, as a counselor, probably push some more to get my client back in session. And I don't want to go through that myself.

Ugh. I feel like an idiot being bothered by all this.

But it's a fantastic lesson on what my clients could potentially be struggling with as well. It gives me great perspective.

Glorious sadness

2008-03-05T17:51:00.000-08:00

Just a small town girl, livin in a lonely world
She took the midnight train goin anywhere
Just a city boy, born and raised in south detroit
He took the midnight train goin anywhere

When I was in college, I had what I thought was a great idea for a short story. I think it was about an abused woman. My boyfriend at the time started yelling at me, "Why can't you write anything happy??" He didn't understand when I said that sadness was more compelling.

I've always been drawn to it. I have that luxury, I suppose, given that I have had a overwhelmingly normal, functional life filled with much happiness. There's a hyperreality to sadness, an idea of, "this is it; this is what it means to really feel."

That must explain why I am obsessed with 80s music. It's desperate and sad, melodies that plaster themselves across a heart and chest that is barely keeping it together. One note away from falling apart. Listening to it summons the feelings, the physicality of it in an instant.

When I was in junior high, I got invited to a slumber party at D's house. I don't know why. Perhaps her mother suggested it. We certainly weren't friends. She was sweet and kind, and popular for those reasons, but she also continually sported a leather jacket from her much older boyfriend (she started dating high school boys when we was in the 5th grade, yet as far as I knew, never suffered any vicious talk behind her back about it). To note that these jackets, the succession of them, were probably Members-Only jackets really puts a damper on how thoroughly bad ass they seemed. For she didn't date the cross country team, the basketball team; she dated the guys who took welding for the express purpose of pouring their creative energies into making water pipes and got caught smoking behind the gym instead of participating in P.E. class. Guys she somehow tamed into watching their language and politely extinguishing their butts when she came around.

This was the girl who invited me to a slumber party. This was the girl about whose parties I'd heard whispered rumors. To say I was rattled and mystified at my invitation is an understatement. I wondered if it was a joke or if she had somehow lost a bet and I was the butt of it.

It was unlike any sleepover I'd ever been to. We got to order pizza, and drink Mountain Dew in her room, making prank calls on her private phone line. Her bedroom walls were plastered with posters of Warrant, Stryker, and Motley Crue. We watched videos on MTV (a channel I had only heard about). D talked knowledgeably about the themes in her favorite song, "Janie's Got a Gun," using words I had never even heard before, and she sighed over Nikki Sixx and Janie Lane.

Then her boyfriend drove past. He and his friends picked us up, and we cruised Main for a while. It was something I knew older kids to do; never imagined I would do it, too. The high school boys blared their hair metal and tolerated us waving our arms out of the windows in the air stream and shrieking.

It was almost too much for my system. Wired on caffeine and newness, the whole evening had a dreamlike quality. It became imperative to cross my arms in front of my chest, holding myself together in an attempt to keep my chest from breaking open and merging with the night. I didn't know how to stop it, how to put on the brakes and regain control out of the heady dizziness that the night became. I didn't want to. I didn't want it to ever end. It was wildly beautiful, desperate, and sad. I couldn't have articulated it then, but I sensed something beyond my experience, beyond my maturity, about the gorgeous tragedy of boys looking for excitement in a dead-end small town, of beautiful, ripening girls, children really, anxiously expanding the boundaries of experience.

Putting it out there

2008-03-01T12:23:00.000-08:00

Tim thinks I need to be specific about what I want out of a job, and put it out into the universe to let it simmer.

For the first time ever, I can be specific. I finally know exactly what I want to do. I guess this is why I went to grad school, but in some ways, knowing exactly what I want to do also blows. If I had a wider view, it would probably be easier to find a job. I could look at the job listings, usually around 25-50 each time I look, and actually find something that looks at least appealing enough to apply for. I wouldn't be crippled with anxiety, wondering what I can possibly do that won't make me feel like I'm wasting my time, or finding something that will at least position me well for what I can do eventually. Now that I know what I love, anything less than that really will feel like a waste of time.

So here goes, universe. Work your magic for me.

I want a job at a community mental health agency, doing family therapy with adolescents. I want the job to allow for some group work, perhaps with self-esteem or social skills training, maybe anger management. Maybe music therapy! Maybe dance! Anything creative that will spark the kids' interest. I want the job to have the room to grow into restorative justice and peace-making circles. I want to be able to some day write a grant for the purchase of a bunch of drums so that we can have drum circles.

I want the hours to be flexible, so I can start late and work late, and still maintain my shelter job. I want it to be maybe Tuesday through Saturday, so I can take my Sundays and Mondays to be with Tim.

And lastly, I'd like it to be within biking distance on warm days. I don't want a drainingly long commute. I won't mind doing home visits, I won't mind if I have to drive clients around in my car. I just don't want to have to drive for an hour or more in bad traffice to get to work.

That's it. This is exactly what I want. This is my job description of heaven.

Edited to say: I thought of something else. I'd love to also be able to run a movie series or book club for teens that had some therapeutic value to it. I am thinking of this as I proofread a library journal, and it seems like the young adult librarians are always doing cool things that I think could somehow be woven into a social worker's job, too.

I always thought I'd become a librarian, after spending years in the cult of ALA. If there was some way to combine the two--no, three, including the editing bits of my life that I miss--that would be the perfect job.

I suppose what it all really boils down to is that I want a job where I can be creative. I never realized what an asset that could be to therapy, and it's exciting to see that I can include that in my work. But I need a place that values it, and lets me run with all my wild ideas.

How much do I love my family?

2008-02-17T16:51:00.000-08:00

I love my family. I knew that before, but I realized it full-force after returning from Alabama.

I'm not just talking about my sister, mother, and father. There is my grandmother, 5.5 uncles (only one who lives all that far away; and the half includes a new-ish, not-yet-married-into-the-family one), 5 aunts (again, only one who lives all that far away), and 10.5 (again, one new-ish, not-yet-married-into-the-family one--who I can't wait to meet!) cousins. (And I suppose it would only be fair to also include a mother-in-law, sister-in-law, nephew; oh yeah, and my father-in-law and his wife.)

I know not everyone is lucky enough to be so close to their extended family. During the lesser holidays, like Easter, when my parents aren't in Chicago, I spend it with my relatives and feel enveloped by warmth and love. It is truly spectacular. If I seriously consider it, I'd say family parties are among the most fun I can have in a large (and I mean large) group of people. There's just such a level of comfort among people who have known and loved me for 31.5 years.

And yet, one of the things I treasure the most is how that hasn't remained static for my entire life. I'm able to be friends with my aunts and uncles now, and my cousins, after not knowing them much since I didn't grow up in Chicago like most of them did, well, they've turned into really awesome adults.

Next weekend, we are going out for a Family Dinner. Deciding on the right restaurant took about thirty e-mails, which is what happens when you have twenty opinionated Polish-Czechs trying to come to a consensus. In the past year, we've started gathering, every three, four months or so, outside of the regular family parties for holidays and birthdays, to try new restaurants and drink a lot of beer (in fact, the restaurant was chosen primarily for its BYOB-ness, since, holy crap, the Bartas can put away the zimny piwo). It's fantastic. I love so much that we're getting together . . . because we want to. You know you have something special when you want to spend time with your family outside of the requisite holidays.

I guess the next opportunity for a party will be my graduation. I have made a lot of great friends throughout the whole grad school process, and I want to commemorate it somehow with them. However, all I can think about is: what a great family party that will be!

"There are so many different ways to be connected to people"

2008-02-06T18:50:00.000-08:00

Tonight makes twice in one week that I've put on the B-52's "Good Stuff" album. I wonder if it's the weather? I'm sick of the snow and slush, and that album brings up memories of the summer of 1992, when we spent nearly every day at the "beach," and every evening cruising Main, blaring it.

Or maybe it's because I'm watching My So-Called Life again, and I am transfixed by it. My past few free evenings have created a bubble of 1994. I had wondered how well it had aged, and it still hit me the way it did the first time, hard across the chest so it was hard to breathe for a while. I'm a different person now, though, so, while I still love Jordan Catalano, I finally realized why all my friends were pro-Brian Krakow.

I don't know where the show was headed before cancellation. The final episode has so many unfinished stories.

You remember--it was the one with the letter:

Dear Angela, I know in the past I've caused you pain, and I'm sorry. And I'll always be sorry till the day I die. And I hate this pen I'm holding, because I should be holding you. I hate this paper under my hand because it isn't you. I even hate this letter because it's not the whole truth. Because the whole truth is so much more than a letter can even say. If you wanna hate me, go ahead. If you wanna burn this letter, do it. You could burn the whole world down. You could tell me to go to hell. I'd go. If you wanted me to. And I'd send you a letter from there. Sincerely, Jordan Catalano

But it also ended exactly right, with Angela riding off with Jordan, watching Brian out of the window, knowing he actually wrote it.

It was a perfect, perfect encapsulation of what is terrible, tragic, horrific, wonderful, amazing, and inspiring about being a teenager.

Thinking back

2008-02-06T11:32:00.000-08:00

The day after I graduated from college, my belongings were packed in the back of a truck, and my parents and I drove to Chicago.

Growing up, every time we'd visit, we'd arrive the same way, from the south, up the Dan Ryan to LSD, and then the home stretch to my grandparents' home just north of the city, in Evanston. Coming up Sheridan Road in Rogers Park, I'd get a thrill of excitement, because to me, Rogers Park was the city. It was the embodiment of everything I believed Chicago to be.

So I was finally there! The city was mine! (Well, sort of. The fact that I lived in what could technically be called a suburb didn't phase me.) Evanston wasn't a typical suburb, anyway. It was a cross between being its own city and a small town.

That summer, I ran the baked streets, getting to know the cafes, vintage bookstores, and thrifts. I worked at a cafe near Northwestern, and I flirted with the intellectual professors who'd spend their Sunday mornings over my coffee and a newspaper. Sometimes nights I'd walk through the neighborhood on the lake, the one with unbelievably fancy mansions and daydream about what it would be like to live in one.

I was lonely still, missing my Kansas boyfriend and worried about job prospects, but it was also a glorious time, filled with newness. The world unrolled itself at my feet, and I could have done anything.

Memories like that rush back at the touch of hot summer wind, or the smell of coffee beans freshly ground. Certain music can resurrect the exact feelings I had at any given moment during that period. The experience is so deeply imprinted upon my psyche.

It goes without saying that there is an entire chamber of my heart devoted to Evanston. I still work here, 9.5 years after that beautiful summer. So I was excited to also do my internship here.
And it's different.

I'm older.

I'm seeing a different side of the city, the one where 25% of the citizens live at or below the poverty line. Where the streets I formerly skipped down, if I turn left instead of right, I discover low-income areas I never knew existed.

Knowing about the urban problems that Evanston's pretty, tree-lined streets cover up sour my memories of the perfect college "town" I used to know. It's hard to enjoy its beauty when I know about the uneasy alliance between the priviledged and unpriviledged.

But sometimes, sometimes sometimes, I'm able to walk into the organic cafe that's near my internship, sit down with some tea, and be transported back, unfettered, in the glorious spell that this place once cast upon me.

Super Tuesday

2008-02-05T19:16:00.000-08:00

I voted today. Did you?

My dearest one says it so eloquently:

"Yes, I am political. My heart swells with pride when I go to vote. So maybe it's not surprising that this brought tears to my eyes. I rarely ever cry when I'm hurt or sad but I do it all the time when I am filled with hope, with inspiration and grace. There's something going on right now in this country, there is a wind of change, and for one of the first times in my political life I am full of hope and joy. That's the kind of feeling you want to pass along."

When I was very little, one year I asked my mother who she voted for. She said, "It's a private matter, who you vote for. I don't have to tell anyone." And she didn't.

I think you should be so strong in your conviction that the person you vote for is The One that you shout it from the tops of buildings, but I've always remembered what she said, and that turned voting into a special thing for me. It makes me appreciate a democracy where I'm not beholden to anyone, and my vote is my own action.

Now I think my mother was close-mouthed about it because we lived in a conservative, wholly Republican area. Maybe she was worried I'd blab to my classmates that she voted for a Democrat? A few years ago, we were talking about the ways that Kansas has changed my parents, made them more conservative in some ways. I think my dad was talking about his job and social services, but my mom pounded the table and said, "I am never going to vote Republican!" I was so proud!

The first time I voted, I was 19 (I think). I just missed Clinton's first term, but I got to vote for his second term. And I'm sure I voted for him. My family (at least on my mom's side--not sure about my dad's) has a long Democratic history that I'm proud of. I'm sorry I don't remember it--did I vote in the town where I went to college, or in my hometown? I don't know.

And since then, I've voted in every election, though the one I will remember most was in Alabama.

Tim and I may have gone about things in the wrong way, transferring our residency to Alabama instead of keeping it in Chicago for those two years. Because of that, we had to pay out-of-state tuition for my first semester at school. But that debt aside, I wouldn't change what we did for anything. Within a month of living there, we had the car tags and license changed, and with that, registered to vote. We were there for the second Bush election, but more importantly, the local election as well. There is no better way to feel like a part of the community than to vote for your representatives, I think.

One evening at the theatre, I mingled with the young professionals of Montgomery at a martini night. A young African-American woman came up to me and introduced herself. "I'm running for circuit judge," she said, and at that moment, I couldn't have cared less what she stood for. I was just thrilled to see a woman who seemed to be my age, striving for judge-hood. I wrote down her name, and included it on my cheat sheet that I took to the polls voting day.

Voting day, I left work early, but it seemed like everyone else did, too. I left my apartment and walked through the park to the Modern Art Museum that sat in the middle of it. This museum was the most beautiful building in Montgomery, if you asked me. The outside was ringed with Greek columns, and the foyer was a two-story high atrium. It was gorgeous and stately.

I got in line behind, I swear, about three hundred people. The line wended its way throughout the museum, and people were able to pass the long wait by looking at the art. I remember the last stretch before the auditorium was the high school hallway, where the more talented students from area high schools were able to display their work. Finally, I reached the auditorium, and walked up to the stage. It was a punch ballot, and I was worried that I'd accidently punch the wrong name, or I wouldn't punch it correctly, and it would be a hanging chad fiasco. I so desperately wanted my minority Dem vote to count.

As it turned out, Montgomery, both the city and county, surprisingly went Democratic (despite the ubiquitous "W - The President" bumper stickers on all the cars), but I was still so proud to have been a part of it all.

Snowy

2008-02-01T10:37:00.000-08:00

We've had a winter storm this week. It's beautiful, the way the snow has blanketed everything in about 10 inches and brings purity to all the ugly winterness, but it's fairly miserable if you want to do anything other than cozying up at home.

It's been snowing a lot this year, which reminds me of being a kid. Is it just wistful memories of snow-filled Christmasses, or is global warming really putting a crimp in winter precipitation?

The sad reality of snow in Chicago is that it's pure white for about 30 minutes, and then it's grey slush as traffic plows through it. And the salt! While I appreciate its qualities for easing my morning commute, it's scary to see the big trucks out constantly, spraying chunks every time it snows. Even after the snow melts and the streets dry, a passing car will kick up dust that lands, salty, on my tongue. Or worse still, the air I breath is saturated with it. My chapped lips taste salty after I walk the few blocks to the train.

When I was a kid, after a big snowfall, I'd go outside with a big mixing bowl and fill it full. I'd pour orange juice or Coke over it, and enjoy my slush. I even remember once at Hannah's house, sweetening milk with sugar and frozen strawberries for our "ice cream." It was such a treat. I loved it so much. I think if I could, I would make my snow slushes still. Adulthood has not cooled my love of slushies.

It verges on tragic, then, what is happening to the environment. Tim reminded me that during wars, warriors would salt the earth to prevent any life taking root after.

Having children

2008-01-12T14:53:00.000-08:00

The most compelling reason I can see for having kids is not my nephew Milo. He is cute as hell, the most beautiful kid I've ever seen (no, really, I'm being objective), and my heart does melt when he hugs me and tucks his head into my neck. (The fact that he even seems to remember me, and didn't start crying when mom left him with me this week to babysit, makes me swoon a bit.) But still, that doesn't make me want to spawn.

He doesn't talk yet! I'm ready to start conversing. Pretty much I don't know what to do with kids if they can't carry on a conversation with me. So he's adorable and all, but he doesn't make my ovaries ache.

What does it--not that my ovaries ache. They don't--is seeing what joy my aunts and uncles, and my parents, find in their adult children. I remember all the crap they went through, heartache during the difficult teenage years, and all my cousins seem to have emerged victorious, on the other side where they are now friends with their parents. It is damn cool to see.

I thought about this all when I was with twenty or so of my relatives for Christmas. It was such a loud, happy place to be. And I thought about what it would be like to introduce some grand-kids (and great-grand-kids) into the mix. My aunts and uncles, parents, grandma, would be over the moon.

For a brief moment--and I blame my unquenchable competitive streak--I wanted to be the one to kick that off. I'm the oldest grandchild, after all, and the first to get married. Why not be the first to have a baby?

My strongest feeling about children is, what if we regret not having them later when it's too late? Ultimately, I don't think that's a compelling reason to reproduce.

But there's just something about a big, loud, happy family at Christmas, even if you have to slog through twenty years to get there.

Done

2007-12-13T17:07:00.000-08:00

Spending the evening cleaning the apartment is a pretty mild (no, nonexistent) way to celebrate being done with the semester. This time last year, I was two pitchers into the evening and on my way to Delilah's with classmates, some of whom have now become good friends, and some of whom, well, I drank too much to remember who those others were.

It's different this time, because I still have to go to the police department tomorrow and instead of the usual slow, lazy Friday, I have four families to see. I don't get a full month off to laze about and forget entirely about the internship. Simply taking away the classes relieves some of the workload, but not a lot.

This semester, I slacked off hardcore. I didn't love school last year, but this year it has been torturous. I'm scared to death about what kind of job I'm going to be able to score come May, but I'd give anything to be there now and not have to suffer through 146 more days. You know, not that I have a minutes, nay, seconds, countdown going in my cell phone countdown function.

I know so many people who would be professional students if they could afford it. I'm not one of those. I'd rather apprentice. There's a certain social work-y sensibility that I'm getting through being in school, one that I definitely didn't pick up as a case worker in Alabama (far from it), but overall, I find most of the classes pretty worthless and the internships as valuable as gold.

I suppose those experiences are what will make me a good social worker, but generally, I'm pretty annoyed at spending so much money (and I even went to the cheap school!) and putting us in debt for years to come. I think if I had gotten a bachelor's in social work, I might never get my masters. But sadly, they usually don't employ social workers with a background in English literature. Plus, I don't think I would have made a very good social worker when I was 21. As much as I gnash my teeth at starting over again in my 30s, at least I have the maturity now. I just would like the money to match that.

I guess I'll start looking for jobs in the next month or so, which freaks me out, but I have a plan that, while not securing Tim and me any health benefits, will at least give me some experience. I'm going to work registry at psych emergency rooms, doing hospital intakes. I suspect they'll hire any fool with a degree to do registry work, so it's a good way to get some experience and my foot in the door. Having at least a teeny plan makes me feel better, not quite as terrified.

So, on to Christmas.

Playing music

2007-11-27T04:49:00.000-08:00

I've started playing the guitar again. I'm not sure why. I was talking with a new school friend who also plays, and I got the brilliant idea of playing together some time. I suppose that made me think, "I better brush up on all my music!" and suddenly I'm hooked again. I find myself longing, in quiet moments, for my guitar and songs in my throat (I'd like to say, "for its familiar touch under my fingers," but in fact, my fingers ache right now from playing. I haven't had my guitar callouses in quite a few years now, and thus my fingers are raw from the wire strings.)

What I love about it is that it's the only time I feel comfortable singing. I really do love to sing, but years of unuse have warped my pitch. I remember church choir in high school and the director commenting on my lovely high soprano, but now I'm a low, gravelly alto, and a woefully out-of-tune one to boot. But somehow, with the guitar guiding me, my voice sounds better. Maybe it's that when I'm focusing on my fingerwork, and hitting the right strings, I don't have time to be self-conscious about my voice.

This summer I heard an Emmylou Harris song for the first time that I loved, and I thought, "I could play that!" It's called "There'll Never Be Anyone Else But You," and I worked it up to play for Tim on ouranniversary. I guess playing him a song I learned special just for him is about the greatest present I could ever give him (well, second best). It was a lot of work, finding the downloadable song online, the lyrics and chords, then playing along to the recording--and adjusting the key signature when mine just didn't fit with the recording. But every minute was fun. It was exciting creating something like that.

I'm no Mozart, or rather, Jimmy Page. I'm not about to compose my own music. I don't know if I ever would have the skills to. But it's like a puzzle, figuring out the chords that already exist in a song you want to learn; say, if it includes G, and C, then it probably has a D chord in there somewhere, too. And then being able to play it . . . ! It feels like an accomplishment.

And I'm playing the piano again, against my better judgment. All Blindfaith Theatre has to do is say, "we're desperate," and I'm putty in their hands. I don't know how they rated this, but they're doing the world premiere of a Rebecca Gilman colloboration called "Lord Butterscotch and the Curse of the Blackwater Phantom." (Rebecca Gilman, for those of you who don't know--I didn't used to--is a highly acclaimed Chicago playright, and tops the list of playrights whoseplays Tim wants to perform. I would score major wife-of-the-millenium points if I somehow could wrangle an occasion for Tim to meet her.)And there's creepy, eerie music set in the background. They need a sub for a few nights, not someone for the whole run, and I couldn't say no.

Come see it! It's running at the storefront theatre until Jan. 6.
http://www.blindfaiththeatre.org/butterscotch/index.html

Again with the spirits

2007-11-13T20:49:00.000-08:00

A few ladies at the shelter tonight are asking about the presence of spirits here. It's not the first time I've heard it, though, thank god, the rumors started after I'd been working long enough to get solid nights of sleep.

I yelled at them (joking, of course) that I didn't want to hear about it--not when I was about to fall asleep in not-my-own-bed-safe-at-home. There are nights here when the ancient house settles and creaks, or maybe there's something more there. I am comfortable enough now to sleep soundly every Tuesday, but in earlier years, I'd toss and turn, jerking awake at every slight sound. My dreams would be vivid, near hallucinations. (Once I woke in the morning, certain that a man had been walking the porch outside my room all night, and when my boss took it seriously, I couldn't be sure if it actually happened or if it was part of my half-waking dreams.)

I believe that these women believe in spirits, but I can't say for sure that I do. I also can't say that I don't. When I was little, I saw and felt things all the time, but no one ever validated them for me--or assured me that I wasn't crazy--and of course I didn't tell anyone. I chalked everything up to my overactive imagination, too many Nancy Drews and Agatha Christies before the age of 10. So by the time I'm an adult and Tim finally tells me maybe what I thought I saw and felt maybe have actually been what I thought, it seems too late to take seriously.

But still I tread lightly when talking about that, and am respectful of the ideas and others' beliefs. You just never know.

2007-11-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

I moved to Chicago the day after I graduated from college. I couldn't wait to leave Kansas in the dust and get to a place where I really belonged. I spent most of my early 20s trying to forget where I came from. It made sense in my head. In a way I could never exactly name, I didn't feel like I belonged in the place I grew up. I always felt like an outsider. Strange, to spend 21 years in one place and feel your connection tenuous at best.

I'd visit Kansas again on holidays and feel uneasy. The wide open spaces were hard to take in. My depth perception would be wonky for the first day or two of each visit, and I wouldn't be able to look outside at the hills.

Chicago seemed to bring out who I really was, though being a naive country girl suddenly urbanized was an adjustment. I'm sure I made a lot of missteps and tried on a lot of different "me"s before I found the right fit. But it was my city, and I was deeply sunk in a long-term love affair with it. Every experience I had confirmed my love and sense of place. I met glamorous city girls, and dated underground music geeks. One I fell for hard for several years, and when we discussed our future, I only felt a slight twinge that I'd be settling down with another die-hard city boy. Only once or twice did I wish he were the camping type, and after him, I dated boys so urban that if you put a tire iron in their hand and pointed to the flat, they wouldn't know what to do.

It started to seem ridiculous, these skills that I had (I was changing flats at 14!) that I didn't find mirrored in my dates. I stopped revering encyclopedic knowledge of obscure bands above rugged survival skills. And I despaired that I'd ever find a good combination of the two.

Tim brought back my sense of place, only it's no longer Chicago. I can't escape my past. The small town, the rural homestead, lonely flint hills that are the most beautiful lands I've ever seen. I'm fascinated by it all, amazed even now at growing up in an existence so far removed from any kid I know today. I've worked with kids who don't even know where Kansas is on a map, nor have ever seen a real farm. I write so frequently about the past because it intrigues me, and, I think, helps me get to the bottom of who I am today. It may in fact be the most interesting part about me.

In the past

2007-10-26T16:00:00.000-07:00

The last time someone screamed in my face and raised his hand to me, it was nine years ago—almost nine years ago exactly, and thinking about it still knocks the wind out of me.

When I moved to Chicago, I started working part-time at a cafe to meet people and make friends. I loved it. It was a Northwestern hangout, so most of the customers and workers were college students, but one night an older guy came in for coffee. I could tell he was probably about my age.

He was wearing a Dublin tee-shirt, and I asked him about it. Turned out he had studied there during college, too, so we talked about our Ireland experiences.

I remember that night so clearly. I wasn't a coffee drinker because I couldn't handle the caffeine, but for some reason I was hopped up on it that night. I was having fun and flirting with all the customers. The other worker wandered over and wondered who I was talking to, and I made a joke about Ireland or cute boys or something. I only worked once or twice a week, so I was excited to go back, hoping to see this guy again. It was a few weeks until I did, but he seemed to recognize me, and we sat and talked. Kevin was an aspiring writer, like me. We had a lot to talk about. A few meetings later, he gave me his phone number, but I didn't call him because I had a boyfriend.

I later found out he had gone to the cafe every day after our meeting in hopes of seeing me again. Not because he thought I was cute (though of course he did) but because whatever I had teased him about had angered him to distraction. He prepared a cut down for me, and went back to the cafe to use it on me. As days passed without seeing me, his anger lessened, and then I was so friendly and interesting when we spoke for the second time, he decided to save it.

(I didn't know that until deep into our relationship. I wonder if it would have made a difference if I had known earlier.)

For we did start dating. He was intelligent and witty, could debate about anything. I was skittish, though, not wanting to commit to anyone after the recent breakup with somebody I had loved. We slept together for the first time on Halloween afternoon of 1998, and lying in bed afterwards, I said, "You know we're not exclusive, right?" That evening I went to a party, made out with a much older man, and started dating him as well.

If I had to articulate it, I'd have said I didn't particularly like Kevin that much, if at all, and used my last breakup as an excuse to end things right before Christmas. There was just something about him that was dark and ugly and hurtful, and I could feel it. I didn't like him and I didn't like myself when I was around him. The breakup lasted a few weeks, though. I was lonely and needed a friend. There was also something about him that drew me near, something that made me overlook the darkness.

We got back together and got serious immediately. I got drunk at a blues club and said, "I love you."

"I know," he said.

Then came the day things changed for good. He lent me his car so I could drive him to one of his friends' houses for a party. On the way down we discussed my friend Heather. Heather had told me she wasn't that comfortable around him, that there was something about him that made her uneasy. Kevin wanted to hang out with her, he said, independently of me. He said he wanted to get to know her as a friend, not as my friend. I refused to give him her phone number and skirted the issue, for I didn't really want to tell him that Heather didn't like him.

He started yelling and pressing the issue. Said that I was insecure if I thought he was interested in her. I was surprised he brought that up. Jealousy wasn't in my nature.

I'd never argued with a boyfriend before. I'd never had one so angry at me before. I was terrified. I dropped him off, went back home, and sobbed for the rest of the evening. I decided to break up with him. I practiced what I was going to say, and picked him up again after the game was over. He grabbed me and hugged me tight, so tight I couldn't get my words out. I didn't know what to do, so I rode home with him and he spent the night.

Looking back, I could say that was the moment when I knew I gave up and gave him permission to be abusive, but what did I know then? I just didn't know what to do. (Would you believe I was volunteering for a battered women's shelter then? If I had let myself make the connection, I still probably would have thought, "but my situation is not nearly as bad as the women I'm talking to in crisis . . .")

He hated all my friends. Particularly a girl that I worshipped and adored. She was an amazing, unique individual, and I didn't understand how he could hate her. He also believed I was having sex with all my guy friends, and would yell at me about it until I'd say, "Fine. That's what you believe? Go ahead. I don't care," because saying, "No, of course I didn't sleep with them, don't be ridiculous," was like talking to a wall.

The last time I socialized with any of my male friends was a party I threw with my roommates in the spring. After I finished talking to one of them, I went to sit next to Kevin, and he grabbed me hard and said, "Tell me you love me. Say it." He had a smirk on his face like he had won something. He tried to start a fight with them when they left, and then we screamed at each other all night. We stopped going out, because I couldn't deal with being in public with him. Not because we'd argue around other people, but because I felt terrified going to a bar or club with him, like being seen in public as a couple would make it more real, and I'd have to give in to the feelings of doom and suffocation that I'd been pushing away to the back of my brain and do something about it.

We'd argue all the time. He was so good at it. I've never met anyone who could hit me so hard using only words. I don't remember if our arguments would end up with me against the wall, him in my face, or if the words just make me remember it like that. They got under my skin and tore at my flesh. I had no recourse but to batter my arms against him to push him away and leave the argument. I remember at that time some discussions with some online friends about hitting. One woman in particular I remember stating unequivocally that it was absolutely never acceptable to hit anyone, even hitting back in defense. I thought, "You lucky bitch. You have no idea what it's like. How words can hurt worse until the only way you can escape is by lashing out with your fists." But of course I couldn't say it. Of course I didn't want to make it real by telling other people.

I'd try to avoid sex with him and lay in bed feeling a huge weight pressing down on me until I couldn't breathe. I couldn't envision the future past the next day, because I'd think about ways to kill myself to get out of being with him. Yet . . . and yet? I thought I couldn't survive without him. I didn't have many friends anymore, for those connections had been tenuous at best, and he had made me sever them. One day the next fall (about 6 months after we'd started dating), I was watching a movie with Heather, and started sobbing. I couldn't lie anymore. I told her I had to break up with him.

A few days later, I told him. I said, "Kevin, I'm not happy in this relationship. I want to break up."

He said: "No. We're not breaking up."

I responded, "But I'm not in love with you."

"No. You haven't even given me a chance. We've never talked about this before. We're not throwing this away."

I said, "But I'm not attracted to you anymore. I don't even want to have sex with you."

Yet somehow he battered me down with his words. He was so good at talking. In the end, I didn't even question the idea that breaking up should be a mutual step. I didn't know I had the right to put a stop to it, by the time he was done talking. I agreed to try.

It lasted a week. I couldn't try. I knew I needed to be away from him. The next breakup was slightly better. But he lived with my roommates and I, so getting out was tricky. The night we broke up for good, he said, "it's going to be so hard to sleep in my own bed. . . ." (we still had our own bedrooms in the apartment) and I thought, "I need to hurt him as little as possible," so I could slip out as easily as possible, and let him continue to share my bed. Then it became a habit until I moved out a month later. I was never tempted to stay with him. Oddly, we really did seem to get along better as friends, and I started enjoying the time we spent together again.

Until one night when he said, "Tell me the truth. Are you still attracted to me? Have you at all considered having sex again?"

He wanted the truth? I told it, and it felt good.

No. No, not for one single second.

He leapt out of bed. "Liar!" and then he left.

A few minutes later, he came back, and poured a pitcher filled with ice water and cubes on me under the covers. I started screaming and jumped on him. He threw me off, and dragged me into the living room. I was hitting at him, half angry for the water, and half just trying to get him away from me. He backhanded me across the face, and I shut down, went numb. He grabbed me to hug me, and I couldn't move. I couldn't even tell him to get away from me, to never ever touch me again. I let him herd me back to bed, where he put new dry sheets on the bed, tucked me in, and curled around my stiff, uncomprehending body. Before we drifted off to sleep, he started laughing. "I'm sorry, but that was thoroughly enjoyable, that water."

I moved out, and we stayed in touch a little bit, mostly because I was scared of what his reaction would be if I cut things off entirely. In the end, he gave me a reason to, and I stopped answering the phone. After a very, very long while he stopped calling. After, I unlisted my phone numbers, and kept my name off apartment buzzers. I breathed a sigh of relief when I got promoted at work and got a new extension number he wouldn't know. We never spoke again.

I've seen him three times since. The first, two years later, he was walking in my new neighborhood, the second place I moved after leaving him. I kept my head down--luckily, I was wearing a hat--and was terrified that he had moved into my neighborhood. I had a panic attack every time I saw a turquoise Ford Focus driving past me on the street. It became instinct to scan the backs for the particular bumper sticker I remembered.

Nine years later, I doubt he's still in Chicago, or even has the same old car, but I still lose my breath at turquoise Ford Focuses.

The second, a year or two after the first incident, I was volunteering for a concert at my guitar school. I was sitting near the sound booth, keeping track of the set list. I was hidden in back. I saw a guy up front. He shook his hair out, raised his arms to tuck his hair behind his ears, and my stomach dropped. It was a specific gesture I will remember as Kevin's forever. It is branded on my brain. I spent the rest of the concert reminding myself to breathe, and ran out the back door afterwards.

The third and last time, I was on a date. This was perhaps four or five years after we broke up. The date was going horribly already and near the end of it, I got up to go to the bathroom and walked past the bar. Kevin was sitting there, waiting for a table with a woman. I don't know if he saw me. I went back to my date and started crying. We left. How do you explain to a second-date why you start crying after returning from the bathroom?

I don't think much about him anymore. I made pretty specific choices to date guys a whole world of different from him. I don't flinch at anger anymore and bow my head. But it's surprising how quickly I can remember it all like it was yesterday.

Shaggy-haired boys

2007-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

Today I set up community service hours for a boy who--if I were still a 15-year-old girl--I would have been all over. He would totally have been my boyfriend. I would have sighed with happiness over his shaggy hair and band tee-shirt. That's the adult me talking, though. In reality, who I was at 15 probably would not have been able to handle a little juvenile delinquent, no matter how adorable—multiple arrests and a drinking problem in the boy I mooned over.

I like working with adolescents because I remember so vividly what it was like to be a teenager. There was a lot about that time period that sucked. Just plain sucked. I was painfully shy, didn't know to talk to boys; I was so sheltered and naive that I missed a lot of experiences that could have been really valuable. Being naive also caused me to be extremely judgmental about things that, in the end, weren't such a big deal. As time goes on, those fall away and I remember more the wonderful times that I had with an amazing group of friends. Everything is new and important and life changing when you are in adolescence.

I still remember what it was like to hear Eddie Vedder's voice for the first time when I was 16. My tastes have changed in some ways--no longer do I own an Amy Grant CD (purchased at a church retreat when I was 14 or 15)--but my heart still breaks with longing when I hear him sing. That has never changed. Listening to a live album I picked up a few years ago at a used record store, I remember being a senior in high school and learning Pearl Jam was coming to Wichita. It was the first time I knew a band enough to follow them--and I was smitten enough to take the enormous step (for me) of trying to get tickets. I even talked with a few guys in my class, boys to whom I'd otherwise have nothing to say, and arranged a ride with them if I scored a ticket. The logistics of that--how I'd be in a car for an hour each way with two hot guys I only nominally knew--didn't even concern me; such was my love for Eddie Vedder.

This is the way that story should end: I scored a ticket, had a moshingly-good time at the concert, swooned and screamed over Eddie Vedder, and in the dark car ride home, found myself a grungy hot new boyfriend.

This is how the story actually ends: I was on the phone all night calling Ticketmaster, listening to a busy signal the whole time. It wasn't until I was 22 that I saw Eddie Vedder for the first time, but since I also walked past him in the crowd after his performance, it somewhat makes up for missing the show at 17. And at 17, simply trying to get a ticket was a big enough step.

So I set up community service for this kid, and it's a good thing I'm not also his therapist.
Deep down, a part of me will always have such a weakness for boys like him, and Eddie Vedder.

Fall is here!

2007-10-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday when I got off work in the morning, I went to my grandmother's apartment for the few hours before my internship started. She wasn't home, so I made some green tea and curled up under a blanket on the couch, watching episodes from season one "The West Wing." It was grey and cool outside, and I felt toasty warm and cozy inside. I wished for a moment that I didn't have to work, or go to school, and I could spend my days relaxing like this. It was so wonderful and worry-free.

Processing

2007-10-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

had supervision yesterday and we discussed a case I had last week that reduced me to a hot mess of panic mid-stream. I did a process recording of it, which is essentially a word-for-word account of the session, and my reactions to it. Not my best work, but I figured if my supervisor didn't know exactly what went on in the session, she wouldn't be able to guide me through the next one. (And I had to remind myself that I'm just a student, and this is all a learning experience for me that I have to take advantage of.)

After the session last week, I processed it with a classmate, and with my dad, and while they both gave me some incredible insight to it, talking about it didn't exactly make me feel better. In fact, it raised my blood pressure. So I was already a little on guard when my supervisor and I started talking.

About thirty seconds into it, I started to get hot and my pulse was racing. Then my biggest fear came true: I felt my throat start to close up, my words cracking, and I just knew I was going to cry.

I guess I'm not entirely opposed to crying--I just didn't feel comfortable in front of my supervisor. She's not the warmest person in the world, and even though I'm a student blahblahblah, I still want to come across as professional and experienced with her. I don't want to look like a freaking crybaby who can't handle one tough session.

But of course, she's a skilled therapist, and could tell I was close to losing it. "You look like you're close to tears. Do you know why you're having this reaction?"

And suddenly, I did. It occurred to me that my reaction to this particular family mirrored experiences I'd had in Alabama. I told her about being unassertive, and the disasterous results of that, including details about that one client who walked all over me with her steel-toed manipulations, and what that felt like for me. How that made me feel about myself. (God, how I did hate myself for allowing people to treat me that way!) And that now when I encounter someone trying to intimidate or manipulate me, I have an extremely adverse reaction to it, and am not quite such a doormat anymore.

But it led to some pretty serious countertransference in the session, which really obstructed the beginnings of a therapeutic alliance with one of the family members. (It also made me realize other instances when I need to learn how to curtail that reaction and not let it affect my work.)

My supervisor's response was, "Do you want me to take the case over?" She said sometimes this happened with students, and she didn't want my learning experiences to be stuck with an unmanageable case--that she'd prefer I get more meaningful experiences with families whose sessions I didn't fear and dread.

Before supervision, I worried the whining words "I just don't know how I'm going to get through another session with them" might spring unbidden from my lips. The moment she gave me an out, though, I realized I didn't need it. Not going back for the next session had never occurred to me, and I knew I could continue on. I thought about the alternative--sitting in the next session with my supervisor as we tranferred the case to her, and I thought I'd rather slit my wrists. I can do this.

Cell ringtone

2007-10-11T10:05:00.000-07:00

It's about time Sprint shows me some love for sticking by them all these years.

Now whenever Tim calls me, AC/DC's "Back in Black" blares from my tiny old phone.

I cannot even properly describe how happy it makes me--hearing that song and knowing it's Tim calling. Perfection is not even a strong enough word.

In the thick of it

2007-09-19T17:43:00.000-07:00

I started seeing families this week. It seemed foolhardedly early, only my sixth day at the placement, but it was presented to me in a way that seemed inarguable. Well, I wasn't given much choice, no moment in which I could say, "wait, wait! Me a therapist??" I was just assigned cases.

My supervisor seems cold sometimes, but I think I'll thrive under her sparse tutelage. I'm getting the sense that she give superior guidance, but primarily expects me to to be able to do the work--to have confidence in what I'm doing. If anything, my previous experiences with supervisors have been the overly kind and generous type, which sometimes can crippled my self-confidence.

So my first family session, it didn't really go anywhere near the way that I planned. Aside from that, it went amazingly better than I expected. I waded into the family fight and said, "Stop! Stop yelling!" . . . about fifty times. I held up my hand when their tangents drifted far afield and brought them (sort of) back on topic. And at the end of it, no arguments were resolved, and I expect they'll continue more of the same next week, but I could tell they didn't resent me for being forceful with them, and I know they'll be back. Next time, I won't let them argue, and I believe they'll respect me more for it and feel more comfortable with me.

(It's a strange feeling, raising my voice in a therapeutic setting, and wondering if it's the right thing to do. It's contrary in my mind, as I compare that session with every counseling session I've ever been in (as a patient). Therapy is quiet and reflective, not filled with hollering. But it's different with families in crisis, and I know I did the right thing--now just need more of it.)

Today I was supposed to see two more families. One didn't show up, and the other called to reschedule. I think it was a good lesson for me. I was nervous. I had prepared--writing down how I wanted the session to go--but I was still antsy, not knowing exactly what to expect from people whose problems I'd only read about on a police incident report. Then to not have them show up--. I realized it was pointless to worry about it ahead of time.

This feels real. Like a job I really could hold. That while I might be clinically--and hopelessly--inexperienced, I know how to connect to people, which might be the most important thing of all.

From inside a black and white

2007-09-15T19:11:00.000-07:00

I did a ride-along with a police officer at my internship. We started around 3:30, just when Evanston Township High School was letting out. LG, the field training officer I was riding with has a regular shift at the school, so we parked on the south end of school. A block down, she said there was another car posted; a paddy wagon cruised in front of the main entrance, and one or two undercover detectives circled campus. I couldn't believe it. It seemed excessive, but LG said there were fights there nearly every day. We sat there for 45 minutes, but the kids all filed peaceably past.

About halfway through our watch, a white car filled with boys and booming music pulled up to the light next to us. Immediately LG said, "that car's on a special watch," and punched the license into her computer to verify. I guess someone a few streets over called in to complain that this car was speeding on the street, and the boys in it were smoking weed. I got momentarily excited, because I thought LG might go after them, but she said she couldn't move during school duty, and we'd catch them later. (We didn't.) She said if she came across them again, she'd find a reason to pull them over.

That instigated a really interesting conversation about drugs and the law. Evidently if an officer pulls a driver over and has suspicion of illegal activity (like smells it or something), they can say, "Would you step out of the car, please?" and when the driver and/or passengers do, that action gives the police the legal right to search the car. And if the driver refuses to get out of the car, officers can do whatever they need to in order to remove the person from the car.

LG also told me the difference in smells between burnt and unburnt cannabis. I kept my mouth shut. It's a good thing if a cop thinks you're too naive to know about that.

Then we cruised Evanston, and I got to see all the bad parts. (I had no idea Evanston had an underbelly!) Once there was a bank hold-up call, and LG decided to race to it, despite being all the way on the opposite end of the city. She said it's usually a false alarm, but in case it wasn't . . . By the time we got there, the call had been cancelled, but it was pretty exciting to be in the car with the sirens going, speeding through rush hour.

After that, she pulled over a woman who illegally turned right on red--right in front of us! LG said that if she pulls someone over, she's going to give them a ticket, no passes. LG wants to be a traffic cop. I thought that sounded pretty boring, just going after driving offenses, but she said that it included doing accident reconstructions.

That was about the highlight of the afternoon. It was pretty slow. None of the calls were for us, though we did check on two other incidents (two boys fighting, and a drunk, injured man) to see if the officers there needed help. We cruised past all the parks where kids usually hang out and get into mischief, though no one was that day. LG took me to one of the parks where the Latino gangs usually are, and pointed out, "That's so-and-so. He's a Latin King. And that's so-and-so. he's in Los Locos." She told me a lot about gangs, which was super interesting. I guess when a Latin King murders someone, he gets to tattoo 5 dots on his hand, like on a dice. Those who specialize in thievery get to tattoo 3 dots.

Towards the end of the ride, we came across two drug officers who LG is friends with, and we parked in a community center lot and talked for a while.

LG said I should do a ride along on a Saturday night. It would definitely be more action-packed than this afternoon was, but it was really nice to see more of Evanston, and get familiar with some of the areas where my future kids (clients) hang out.

Beach wedding

2007-09-04T14:29:00.000-07:00

This weekend, we went to Michigan for a wedding. It was at a cottage on the dunes, with airy rooms, a hammock, and a private beach. We ate and drank, swam, played in the sand, and thoroughly relaxed for three days.The couple invited 15-18 of their closest friends, and it was small and intimate, with a huge sense of comfort that every person there cared deeply about the couple--was in fact the "family" that these two people had cultivated in their lives.

Tim performed the ceremony--his first ever--and it was just about the most meaningful, exquisite ceremony that ever existed.

Weddings usually remind me of my own. Before ours, we attended one or two, and spent the receptions talking about what we wanted out of our own ceremony. After, each ceremony would remind me of our special day.

What I realized this time is that I was able to fully participate in the ceremony (the designated kleenex bearer, Official Witness, and spur-of-the-moment bouquet holder during the ring exchange) without thinking back on ours.

It used to be the definitive moment in our relationship--and I suppose it really always may be--but now we have so many quiet happy moments together, the wedding day no longer overshadows everything. I kind of like that, for of course a relationship is much more than the wedding day. At any rate, it confirms my feeling that every day the decision to wake up and love fully is the right one.

Party spread

2007-08-26T07:42:00.000-07:00

The menu

Peach pie

Carrot cupcakes

Chocolate cheesecakes

The table

I like grown-up presents! They include things like lots of bottles of wine, exotic dark lilies, and candy bars like the Black Pearl:

It was a good, small-ish party, filled with good conversation with people I love, who braved the terrible storms to come celebrate with me. Altogether perfect.

Party

2007-08-23T14:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of preparing for my birthday party tonight, a dessert extravaganza. It just stopped lightning-ing and thundering, and the air is now cool and drizzling. It reminds me of late-summer Kansas.

Preparing for the party reminds me of Alabama. My main social outlet for a while there was having parties. I'd spend the afternoon planning the menu, shopping, and preparing. I'm like pathologically organized, so there usually weren't any last-minute scrambles. The party almost wasn't the point; the preparation was.

When I've told people about this party, their usual response is, "but it's your birthday! You shouldn't be the one making everything." They don't realize that it's the best present to myself--getting to daydream about what deliciousness I'm going to cook, poring over my overstuffed recipe collectiong, preparing the food, and hosting the party.

The party starts in two and a half hours, and everything is mostly ready. Pictures to follow.

Getting to know you

2007-08-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

When I was a freshman in college, I was hanging out a lot with a guy named Tony who got a new roommate halfway through the first semester, Gene. Tony spent a lot of time away from the room, because he didn't know the guy--thought he was weird. One night I went over there when both of them were home, and instead of going out, I had both of them settle in, and I gave Gene the third degree. For the next few hours, he talked about himself and answered every question I could think to ask. (It was fairly easy; I quickly discovered Gene really liked to talk about himself.) By the end of the evening, Tony knew Gene inside and out, and Gene was my new best friend.

College was conducive to getting to know people. Everyone seemed eager to throw everything they were at everyone they met, "this is me, this is me!". I remember hours and hours of bad poetry (most of it mine), shared in cramped dorm rooms. For a long time, that's how I began relationships (what did I know? Then I was a novice.)--by reading all my tortured poetry, and listening to theirs. Once an entire (albeit shortlived) relationship revolved around sharing Jim Morrison lyrics.

I felt I'd miss out on friendship and relationship opportunities if I didn't spill everything. Or that there couldn't be any secrets; someone couldn't really get to know me unless they knew everything.

The older I get, the less comfortable I am with that. Who I really am is a protective layer, and I feel too exposed to share it all too soon. Thus, I am somewhat taken aback by people who share (what I think is) too much, who become friends too quickly. Sometimes I find people with whom I am immediately comfortable. I talk and talk, and while I should take that as a sign that I've met a compatible soul, later, I'm still a little embarrassed, to realize how much I've revealed.

I'm drawn to the quieter, more reticent people. (It's a trap I fell into all too easily when dating, believing it was the shy boys who held the real mystery. My friend Bob said, "maybe they're just boring," but I always believed I was the one to whom they'd open up.) It does seem more exciting, finding things out slowly, and infinitely more satisfying. It's getting to gradually form an entire picture bit by bit in your mind yourself, rather than being presented at once with the entire thing.

But sometimes it makes for surprises. I have a friend from school whom I adore. It's taken a while to get to know her, but now we are fairly close. The only thing about her that I can't reconcile is that she hates cats and dogs. The idea I have in my head of her, the one that's been constructed by slowly getting to know her (and other friends agree) is that she most definitely would be a cat lover. It baffles me that my assessment was wrong. But I suppose that's the interesting part of it, too, reconfiguring who I believe she is.

Appeasing the vanity

2007-08-06T15:47:00.000-07:00

Though I usually forget about it, seeing a picture of myself reminds me of it like a smack in the face. My nose has been spotted for the past ten years, marked by my third nose ring, an ill-advised silver stud that tattooed its tarnish into my right nostril. I am paralyzingly self-conscious about it when I think of it. I believe it looks like rot on my skin.

And for years, my dad has supported me (yet solidifying the insecurity) by saying he'll pay for me to have it removed. For some reason, I finally took the steps this summer to have it done.

It's appallingly expensive, how much laser procedures cost. I finally found a place that is less pricey than others I researched, but still run by doctors. It's located on the Gold Coast in downtown Chicago, a swank clinic led by the most bosomy, golden-skinned receptionists I've ever seen. The whole office is posh, and I felt a smidge out of place there in my cut-off jean shorts and dirty tennis shoes.

Mostly, though, I didn't care. I was paying for my own procedures, just like the glossy, manicured ladies who sat next to me, waiting, on the velvet couches. I don't have time anymore, to feel self-conscious. If I really cared about what others think of my appearance, I would have to spend more time applying makeup and deciding what uncomfortable shoes to wear.

That might not appear true, however, considering I'm getting a sort of cosmetic surgery. However, a big grey spot seems different than sun spots on my cheeks, or even a pimple. It just looks unnatural. And I'm getting sick of people saying, "um . . . you have something on your nose," or even (and I'm not even lying, this has actually happened multiple times) licking their finger and trying to rub the spot off themselves. (Obviously, those people were strangers, who did not know what the spot was--which is even more disturbing.)

So I was photographed in a "pre" shot, by an employee who cheerfully told me about her own breast implants, done eleven years ago, then ushered to a cubicle with the machinery. The door opened, and I thought another patient was passing by, but it was actually the nurse. She was a blonde goddess, with flawless skin and fabulous, indubitably silicone, cleavage. She bent over me with the laser gun, sting, sting, sting, my right eye emptied a waterfall onto my cheek, and less than five minutes later, she put away her tool and dispensed some skin care advice. For that whole experience, I paid $150. (And there's even no guarantee the laser will break up the spot and make it disappear, since the doctor who consulted on me has only ever done ink tattoos. There's no precedent for silver tarnish tattoos.)

I know, I know, I know about the dangers of sun damage, but I just can't get myself all worked up over her words of doom about "age spots." I kind of don't care. I have more angst over my eye wrinkles right now. I'm not going to wrap myself up like a mummy every summer. I don't mind the aging process (in some ways!). I feel like it's a slippery slope to start worrying about those kinds of things, anyway. Millions of dollars later, and hours spent in close examination at the mirror, I'm still going to continue to get older, and my body will show that off. It's nice to realize I'm not kowtowing any longer to society's pressure to maintain youthful perfection. So much less to worry about.

Anniversary

2007-08-05T15:09:00.000-07:00

I was in Door County last week, celebrating our third anniversary. While Tim was in rehearsal, I got a picnic from the bakery who catered the wedding, and we went to the theatre garden and relaxed.

Potato salad, turkey salad, thai pasta, blueberry muffin, the yummiest fruit on the planet, and Baumeister's rootbeer.

During the picnic, this little guy came up to our blanket. We gave him a few blueberries, until he got greedy and wanted to climb all over our food.

The next day, Tim showed off the reason for his unfortunately orange-bleached hair, and yeah, he was right. It was perfect for his costume as Ariel in The Tempest.

I'm as bad as a crow

2007-07-25T13:49:00.000-07:00

Yes, that's me. I'm like a crow. Only my bright and shinies aren't actually bright and shiny--usually.

Mine are pens. They wink seductively at me from the mailroom office supply shelf, whispering, "Wouldn't I fit perfectly in your fingers? I'm the answer to all your ink-blotted scribblings!" And they wind up in my fingers, in my pockets, in my desk drawers at home, in my mouth as I gnaw on them pensively, thinking. (Usually thinking, "well, no one will want to use this now that it has my saliva on it; I might as well keep it . . .")

Or maybe I'm more like a squirrel. I find pens I love and store them away for emergencies. I find a pen I love, and use it to death. I have backups for my backup pens.

I can't write unless I like my pen. But I'm not terribly posh in my taste. Rollerballs make my handwriting messy. My favorite end up being the cheap ballpoints, with a firm, not too fine, line, and leaving no splotchy blobs of ink at the upswings of my loops. The right pen makes my handwriting legible, sometimes even downright romantic.

I'm married to an actor!

2007-07-25T10:10:00.000-07:00

My baby's a real live professional actor. (Also, he's the proud owner of a continually waxed handlebar mustache.)

I've seen him in "Tartuffe," but not "The Tempest" yet. My parents and Busia have been raving about his performance as Ariel. Pretty much any time I gather with my extended family, they won't shut up about what a talented actor he is. (It really sort of gets old for me.) No, actually, I am exceedingly proud.

And now he's been offered a real role (two, actually, minor ones) at the Writers Theatre in Glencoe, in "As You Like It." He told me about the audition right after he had it (drove five hours from Door County on his day off just to audition), and it sounded like he knocked their socks off. He knew a few of the people in the room (casting directors and such), which is always a good thing. After he did his monologues, they asked if he minded doing a cold reading. This isn't something they always request--it's a good sign when they do! They gave him a part of "As You Like It," one he understudied at Alabama. After he did it, they marvelled at him being able to do it without really keeping his eyes glued to the script, and he was all, "well, I'm pretty familiar with the play . . ."

So now he has a real contract for January rehearsals, and February and March for performance! It pays a living wage and everything!

It's just about the most exciting thing that has happened lately. It's an excellent, well-respected theater, and will give him some great connections! He's getting known, at least on the audition circuit, and that can only bring wonderful things.

I'm so proud!

Night owl

2007-07-25T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've never been a night owl. Not even in college, when all my friends were pulling all-nighters. I was still in bed by 10 or 11. There seemed to be something exotic about it, and I was hopelessly boring--needing my good eight hours of sleep.

As I've gotten older, I realized my perfect amount of sleep is only seven, but that still doesn't turn me into a late-night bird.

Until recently. I think it's the busyness. I come home late, and catch a second wind to stay up doing the things I normally do during regular evening hours. Cleaning, preparing meals for the next day, listening to music, watching NetFlix. It seems to be the only time I have totally to myself. Ironic that I can say that, considering my summer and the apartment are all my own.

But these late hours have become special to me. I'm tired in the morning, hitting the snooze many times, but it occurred to me that no matter how much sleep I get, I am always still sleepy in the morning and reluctant to get out of bed.

Regina Spektor

2007-07-23T13:27:00.000-07:00

Having restricted (by chance) my dating pool to music nerds (or nazis) has left me feeling somewhat insecure about my own musical tastes. Therefore, I usually refer musical suggestions to Tim and defer to him on all new music.

I think it's safe to say, though, that I am not misguided in my love of Regina Spektor. Usually it takes me a few listens to fall for an album, but I was not 30 seconds into her Begin to Hope when I was utterly smitten.

Personal growth

2007-07-11T09:12:00.000-07:00

So I am a nonconfrontational person. People can sense that, I'm sure, which leads me to get disrespected and taken advantage of quite a bit. This typically happens in the very situations where I excel: being a social worker, in which I treat people with a great deal of respect (it's not as though I believe I am automatically accorded respect because of my position or whatnot. It's more that I expect respect given should be reciprocated by at least treating me like a human being). It's always odd to me, a shock to my system, to be awarded blatant disrespect at moments like that. I never know how to deal with it in the moment because I'm so surprised, thus I think people get away with a lot more than they should. It's often hard to address rudeness and disrespect when it seems like I've been accepting the treatment for a while--thus becoming the norm.

And I hate hate hate that this is the thing I am worried about. It strikes me as being an extremely negative, cynical, and perhaps even dangerous way to approach my work.

But I also hate my lack of assertiveness. I get seriously down on myself at times because of this (what I consider) personality "flaw." It occurs to me occasionally that my kind, gentle nature and willingness to believe the best of people should be an asset to social work! But I get hung up on the negatives.

However, I think I need to be easier on myself. Continual self-reflection, I suppose, is a good thing. And if I think more deeply about it, I guess I can see where I am taking steps towards changing (albeit small, but hey! Still growth!).

Evidenced by this: an instance of extreme rudeness, three or four consecutive interchanges where I could feel the anger emanating off of someone in waves, directed at me for a reason I couldn't fathom. Dealing with that--and her--made me feel like I was kicked in the stomach. I thought about the anxiety that would result in me addressing it, compared to the anxiety of not. I remembered in Alabama, how being treated like that without sticking up for myself would tear away at my self-esteem until I hated myself so much, I believed I was worthy of the awful treatment I received. So after the next instance of rudeness, I stopped, took a deep breath, and said, "You don't have to like me. You do have to respect me and the rules I have to uphold." It was not exactly the phrasing I had wanted, but still. I said something! I stood up for myself! And it led to a conversation that cleared the air and restored a relationship. I really do believe that this particular woman respects me more for speaking up than for cowering under her rudeness. Since then, I have felt more confident addressing necessary things with her when they come up.

It seems like a little thing, and for a lot of people, it probably is. But for me, wow. Huge. I was just so proud of myself! I never would have had the nerve to say anything like that in Alabama (aka, my first experience as a real social worker). I just have to remember that when I think I'm not growing and improving at all.

Talking about work

2007-07-11T08:52:00.000-07:00

So I know I'm not really supposed to talk about work. (You can't, after all, review confidentiality policies with clients a million times over without absorbing a bit of the seriousness of it.)

And I get that. It would take some serious dense-ness to reveal client info like names, etc.

But I wonder, too, if even talking in vague terms breaks the code of ethics I am professionally obligated to abide by. It makes me wonder, in extreme instances, about coping.

My coping mechanism is this: I talk to Tim. Sometimes I don't even need him to listen. I just need his physical presence beside me as I open my mouth and release all the (couched in vague, unspecific terms, of course!) pent-up stress of the day. (Because keeping it inside will kill me, and that would make me pretty ineffective at my job, right?) Then sometimes I need him to coach me. This typically occurs when something happens at work--whether it be with a client, co-worker, or supervisor--that I am unsure how to deal with. At my previous job, it was usually coaching about how to stand up for myself, because I am generally shit at doing that.

I always feel so much better, so much more confident after those talks. How could that be wrong, or unethical, when it helps me be a better person/better social worker?

But my gut will usually tell me if I've crossed a line, and I think I may have with an earlier post, venting my annoyance about a caller. I was wondering it a bit when I wrote it, but ignored that and hit "publish" anyway. It was confirmated later, though, when I suspected a classmate of mine, one whom I respect to a bothersomely worshipful degree, had found my blog. Immediately I panicked. "I don't want her to read that post!" I thought, and then the following thought was, "then I shouldn't have posted it."

So I guess I should be more circumspect.

Now all I'll say is, hypothetically, there may exist a genetically timid person who is scared of confrontation, who may have broken up an argument last night, and while not resolving the bad feelings between the arguers completely, at least may feel proud that she assertively addressed things so issues are out in the open now, instead of pretending like she did not hear the yelling.

Alone for the summer

2007-07-05T13:13:00.000-07:00

I feel some guilt admitting this, but I don't really miss Tim. He's been gone nearly a month. I was dreading this summer so much, remembering how miserable I was the first two times we did the distance.

I've been so busy, really, I don't even have my own time, so it's something of a relief to have the house to myself. I come home late from the show, and zone out for a little while before going to bed. I don't have to plan and make meals because I don't really eat them regularly anymore. As much as I love living with him, I like being in the apartment by myself again. It reminds me of the four blissful years I was able to live alone. Additionally, the cats are so very needy with him gone--particularly Olivia--so I get cuddles all night long from one kitty or another.

I don't know what it will be like once the play is over. It's what's occupying most of my time outside of work. Finally I'll have some evenings to just lay on the couch and stare at the ceiling, doing nothing and loving it.

Even though I have no free time whatsoever, I'm also doing more socializing than I used to. The friends I made in school are now friends I don't feel like I have to qualify by saying "school friends." And when there are things to do, invitations to accept, it always feels like such a luxury to be able to turn them down to settle in at home. (Very different than when settling in at home is the only option.)

The only problem is that when I'm running at full throttle, every now and then, I feel this twinge, an empty ache inside. I've identified it as barely hanging on--that when the frenetic pace of life slows, I'll have nothing tangible to hold onto, because then it will occur to me that I am by myself, and the person I usually curl up to and get my peace from is away.

Mary of the underpass

2007-07-04T20:24:00.000-07:00

At a Kennedy expressway underpass, the one at Fullerton, there's a shrine against one wall to the Virgin Mary. I didn't know why until Tim explained that someone thought they could see an image of Mary in the waterstains. I bike past it daily, but didn't think to look more closely until tonight, when I saw three people standing at it.

I could see her. There was a ghostly pattern there that, given the suggestion of a face, was clearly visible.

I have always loved the idea of Mary. I love that in all the male-dominated spirituality that's out there, she has such a devoted following.

And I love roadside shrines. Handmade shrines have always been special to me. They're a place to lay tangible mementos of your spirituality, and a place to collect and center your thoughts. Far removed from gold-encrusted cathedrals, they are accessible to commonfolk, indeed, created and cared for by them.

July 4th

2007-07-04T20:05:00.000-07:00

"Gorey Stories" opened tonight, and I was disappointed by the timing. Running until 9:30, we missed almost all of the fireworks set off from Navy Pier. Disappointed because in all my many years in Chicago, I've actually never seen them, and this year I was right at the lake doing the show.

I had forgotten, though, that sometimes the civilian fireworks are just as spectacular as the city's. Biking home, west on Fullerton, the night spread out before me as a sparkling jewel. The last mile home was particularly livid. I biked through a fug of gunpowder and falling embers, and nearly hit a few parked cars as I swerved on my ride, watching the sky.

I love how into the holiday this city is, though given the high density of undocumented immigrants in my neighborhood, I suspect the fiery celebrations are more for a love of pretty explosives rather than the history of this country.

This time last year, I was also sitting under a shower of fireworks, but at a Biscuits game in Montgomery. As soon as the last play was completed, every light in the stadium was cut, and music started up as the pyrotechnics blasted. For a good ten minutes or so, the sky lit up. Finally, "Sweet Home Alabama" was played, and the crowd went wild for the finale. Tim and I grinned at each other, deliriously happy to be in that spot at that moment.

And forever since then, that song makes me happy. It reminds me of a time when I felt like part of a community. I felt like I was an Alabamian, like that sweet home was my home. For a little while, it was.

And I love that now any time I see fireworks, that's what I'll think of.

Corridor of smells

2007-07-03T06:55:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I think I could ride through Chicago with my eyes closed, still knowing exactly where I am based on the smells.

I bike to work via Elston, an industrial diagonal that's quieter than expected during rush hour. It cuts through factories along the interstate and Metra lines. Within the first few blocks on my route, I pass Home Depot. Sometimes if they're busy, the fresh scent of sawdust will waft out to the street. A few blocks later, Dunkin Donuts' sugar and Popeyes' oil compete for air space.

The Metra has a stop at Ashland and Elston, and squealing brakes burn metal. At North, Stanley's fruit stand spills out onto the sidewalk. Last week the ground was littered with pineapple cores and rinds.

Further south, after Elston runs into Milwaukee, I pass the Matchbox, Chicago's smallest bar and the scene of frequent hijinks in my early twenties. And it's clear that, though I have moved on to more sober pursuits, there were many behind to take my place.

Somewhere in the area is a bread factory, but only my nose knows where.

I've reached River North by the time I start smelling chocolate, slightly burnt, like you'd smell from hot cocoa. Blommer's Chocolate Factory is where I leave the diagonal and plunge into Loop traffic, the frentic pace causing me to lose touch with smells and focus solely on watching for impatient morning drivers so I don't get hit.

Newest favorite

2007-06-30T18:28:00.000-07:00

I am consumed with beet-lust. I didn't know much about them until a few years ago, when Hannah introduced me to her teriakied beet recipe. I liked it a lot, but grating the beets was a hand-staining bitch, and I always had to pretend like I didn't think beets tasted like dirt in order to eat them, so I don't make the dish frequently.

Regardless, I bought a few beets last week because they were on crazy sale, and roasted them. I made a beet, mandarin orange, toasted walnut, and goat cheese salad. Insane. It was so amazing. But I'm a bad judge with how many dusty beets will turn into one dish, and bought too many.

With the leftovers, I made red beet risotto with mustard greens and goat cheese. I am fairly certain never ever in my life have I tasted a better dish. I may have even licked my plate.

Red Beet Risotto with Mustard Greens and Goat Cheese

1/4 c butter (I used olive oil to healthify it)
2 beets, cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 1/2 c chopped white onion
1 c arborio rice
3 c chicken or vegetable broth
1 tb balsamic vinegar
1 1/2 c chopped mustard greens
1 (5 1/2-oz) pkg soft fresh goat cheese

Melt butter/oil in heavy saucepan over med heat. Add beets and onions. Cover; cook until onion is soft, about 8 minutes. Mix in rice. Add broth and veingar. Increase heat; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to med-low. Simmer uncovered until rice and beets are just tender and risotto is creamy, stirring occasionally (I stirred fairly nonstop. This is risotto we're talking about!), about 15 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Spool into shallow bowls. Sprinkle with greens and cheese. (Epicurious/Bon Appetit)

Serve with one bottle of sauvignon blanc. Enjoy.

2007-06-29T07:17:00.000-07:00

Q: How many glasses of wine does it take to get me to dance?

A: When it involves a perfect, chilly summer evening celebrating a friend's birthday at a free concert under the skyline at Millenium Park, to the irresistable booty-shaking sounds of Seun Kuti, son of the fabled Fela Kuti, with whose band Egypt 80 he performed--no, went totally berserk on stage--in what could have been his first appearance in the United States, well, the answer is: not very many at all.

Does ten years make me an expert?

2007-06-27T10:50:00.000-07:00

Or just tired?

I think I'm reaching the end of my tether with domestic violence. I guess it's important to know when to quit. The problem is, I really like my job, I need the extra few dollars a month, and it's not 100% always like this.

I took a "crisis" call from someone who just needed to talk. Generally, I have no problem with those calls, and enjoy them usually. It's extremely gratifying to be able to be maybe the first person a caller has ever heard "I believe you; I support you" from, and to be able to give resources and foster empowerment. But this person was really needy, and immediately asked for my name (I can never think fast enough on my feet to make up a name--which I really feel more comfortable doing), and then kept saying, "Ellie, tell me what to do. Ellie, what should I do, Ellie?" She didn't accept my "I'm not here to tell you what to do; I'm here to discuss options with you." She talked without breathing, like she never had any opportunity to talk and felt like she needed to get everything out at once.

Names have power. That's why I try to use them on the phone if the caller tells me hers. I have a very hard time when someone unknown uses mine.

I tried talking about options. I tried, "what do you feel like you are ready to do?" I tried discussing safety plans, and then the guy she's calling about came home. I told her to make sure she's safe, and call me back, but she insisted on continuing our conversation, no matter how much I tried to make her realize this was a terrible idea. "Don't leave me, Ellie!"

And so I had a hard time caring whether years of emotional abuse had rendered her manipulative and needy, or if that was her natural personality. I just knew I needed to get her off the phone before the conversation went on for hours. (Honestly, I had that reaction about 30 seconds into the call, and it took half an hour to wrap things up.)

I feel supreme guilt and shame, and try to tell myself that I've been in the field long enough to discern someone who is immediate need or danger, and someone who just needs to open her mouth, regardless of who is on the receiving end, and my role is to help the former.

But still. Maybe I've been doing this work for far too long.

Camp

2007-06-09T19:21:00.000-07:00

I listened to This American Life today; it was a rerun from 1998 about camp stories. It reminded me so much about my own camp experiences, and my heart ached a little at missing it so much. Things ended really badly for me--no perfect final summer to round out my memories--so for the longest time, I pushed thoughts to the back of my mind and when I thought about it at all, it was while sleeping, in nightmares.

But the truth is, mostly camp was a little crystalline bubble of perfection, an escape from the normal angst of teenage years, a wooded oasis of peace for six summers. I'd give anything to be able to return in some capacity. Like maybe there's a summer camp out there in the wilds of Wisconsin or Michigan who needs a social worker on staff?

I felt like I was a completely different person there. Still me, I suppose, but electrified. (The things I would do to make a kid laugh . . .) Maybe I remembered being a camper--of course I did--and as a counselor I wanted to make sure the kids took away wonderful memories like I had.

Two things stick out in my mind as important and special. The second year I counseled, during a junior high week, we had Invitational during vespers. The invitational was the one night during the week where we took communion and invited everyone in camp to accept Jesus into their heart. For campers who had been coming back summer after summer, this was a meaningful tradition, and the cabin chosen lead vespers tried its hardest to make the service a tearjerker. The counselors stayed behind to talk to any kid who needed it. Technically, this was for discussing spiritual issues, but inevitably kids who had gone through rough patches, like losing a friend or having parents get divorced, would stay to cry on someone's shoulder. I don't remember what happened at the service, or after, I just remember going back to the cabin and putting the girls to bed and laying down myself. A few minutes after I turned out the lights, one of my girls got me, and said another camper was crying. I crawled up to the girl's top bunk, and said, "sweetie, what's wrong?"

I wasn't the type who called people "sweetie" or "honey," but the girl was crying so hard that it slipped out of my mouth before I knew what I was saying.

"Sweetie, what's wrong?" and I gathered her in my arms.

She said, with difficulty through her sobs, that she didn't know whether or not she had Jesus in her heart. How do you know if you do?

That was a conundrum for me as well. I was supposed to be some sort of spiritual advisor for these girls, yet I wasn't even sure how I felt about things myself. At that very moment, I didn't know if I had Jesus in my heart. Was he supposed to wave and say hi once he got there or what? And since he hadn't, did that mean he hadn't shown up? I was only 18 or 19, fairly new to Christianity myself, and not 100% sold on it. Honestly, I think I was a camp counselor more for the kids and less because I was an avid Christian.

But you don't say that to an 11-year-old kid in spiritual crisis. You don't admit that you have no answers when she's sobbing and looking to you to ease her pain somehow.

So I asked her things about her belief, and I talked about how you never know anything for sure--you just have to believe. And believing makes things real. She stopped crying, and thanked me, and we both went back to sleep.

I don't know why this ranks up at the top of my experiences, but it seems so special to me.

The second thing happened my final year of counseling, for the most part, a pretty miserable time because of my co-counselors, not because of the kids. Senior high week towards the end, we had a closing ceremony for the graduating seniors--yet another opportunity to wring the most possible tears out of an evening. This particular class was special to me. They had been freshman when I was a senior, so I had been both camper with and counselor to them. After the ceremony, one boy said he had something important to talk to me about, and could we go for a walk. We ended up sitting by the lake under the stars. I was slightly nervous, because I knew I had to be careful about anything with the slightest hint of inappropriateness, and a counselor and camper of opposite sexes off somewhere alone could fall into that category. But he and I had been friends since we'd met, at a youth rally four years before.

He talked about meeting me then. As a senior, Kurt Cobain and grunge had finally hit Marion, and I embraced the combat boots, flannel shirts, and what Hannah called my "elephant" pants. I ran around the youth rally, according to him, this really cool person, unlike any Christian he had ever met. Like him, he thought, and he decided he maybe could find a place for himself in religion. (It didn't hurt that he was a hot little skater punk. I have a weak spot for them.) He said he considered me his spiritual mentor. I didn't know how to respond, how to let him know that no one had ever said anything more wonderful or meaningful to me in my life. How to thank him in a way that conveyed how honored I was. I don't remember what I said.

I'm not the person I was back then. But I suppose I don't have access to the same environment, and the world seems like a harder place now--no place for the same blissful summers where you're closed off from the real world, existing in a special dream place like camp.

The first summer counseling, I felt alive and hypersensitive every single moment, drinking in the experience. I made friendships with my co-counselors that I thought would be rock solid for the rest of our lives, but the intensity that camp fosters rarely translates successfully to the mundane world. I thought I'd fallen in love, too, and remember like it was yesterday a walk we took, on the way to the chapel, revealing our feelings and the tragedy that we could not be together (for myriad reasons).

Oh, everything was so dramatic and important back then. (Maybe it came from being 18, too.)

My last summer counseling was night and day different than the first. I felt I was on one side of a canyon, my co-workers on the other, and I couldn't figure out how to build a bridge across to them. It didn't seem like they were trying to connect with me, either. I felt so isolated, and threw myself into the work, ignoring the importance of connecting with them. The tone was different, too. I always looked forward to immersing myself in a deeply spiritual summer and making new friendships, but suddenly the space was no longer safe. I was no model Christian during my college years, but the woods were sacred to me. The other counselors were profane, disrespectful, pretty much assholes, really.

The hardest week was senior high. I was 20, so not much older than some of them, but a few of the counselors were where I was two years previous--just a summer out of their own camping experience, and good friends with some of the very people they'd have to take charge of. S, the boys' counselor I shared a cabin and responsibilities with, he was my age, with a year or two of counseling experience, thus theoretically more capable than some of the younger counselors. Yet he was one of the worst. It was more important to him to be liked, and he took inappropriateness to an extreme.

In the middle of the week, he supervised the kids who wanted to drag their mattresses out to the communal porch to sleep. I stayed in my bunk on the girls' side with a few of the campers who didn't want to brave the mosquitos. The porch crowd didn't get much sleep, and I didn't close my eyes all night. I don't know what reality S was experiencing that made him think that sex, sexist, and race jokes were somehow appropriate in that setting, but nonetheless, that's what he was telling. Then he started talking shit about the other counselors. I could hear everything clearly through my open window in the quiet woods that night, and I felt like I was being kicked in the stomach over and over and over. Today, though, I don't remember if he said anything bad about me. Everything about the night was so horrible, him talking cruelly about me would not have made things noticeably worse. I don't know if it was an idea that has only come to me over the years, or if I thought it but couldn't execute it: I should have gotten up, gone out to the porch, and asked S if we could take a walk. The kids, of course, would have known as soon as we were out of earshot, that he would be in deep trouble--or so he would have told them later. I was so meek and passive that I probably couldn't have said how I really felt. Or maybe I would have just started crying.

I am slightly proud to believe if this happened today, I have grown enough that I would have addressed it. Back in 1995, though, I stayed in my bunk, crying and praying all night.

And then I think of the "Footsteps" poem, and I felt God with me that night, but what I would have given not to be there, listening to hatefulness where there should have been love.

I wanted to leave the next day. I was leaving early anyway, to study in Ireland, skipping the last week of the summer. I only had a week left before then, and I didn't think I could make it after that night. The only person I felt close to was the camp director, and she asked me not to go.

So I stayed, and got through the end of senior high week, and the next week. I don't know how, or what happened. That night was burned so deeply on my consciousness that, more than ten years later, it's really the only thing I remember from that hellish summer.

I relived it in dreams for years after. My photos are stuffed far out of sight; last time I checked, it even hurt to look at them. My whole love affair with camp was obscured by that last summer. It seemed so unfair that I couldn't even locate my good memories of it; my sleep self only recalled the bad.

But ten years have passed. I'm a different person now, which is good. Maybe someday, back in Kansas, visiting for the summer, I could go back and make peace with the woods again.

Movies at the juvie

2007-06-09T19:07:00.000-07:00

I volunteered for my first movie night at the juvenile dentention center tonight. I didn't know what to expect, so I was a little nervous. In the end, it reminded me a lot of the psych hospital, in that it seems like this big deal, but then the kids act normal, just like kids, and make you forget what they did to get in there. Not that I knew. We weren't allowed to talk about it with them.

It was wonderfully fun. The volunteers did an introductory game for the girls, where we each told two truths and one lie, and the girls had to guess which was the lie. That was almost the most animated part of the evening. They absolutely loved it. And for some reason, they wanted to know how old we all were, then kept insisting that none of us were really as old as we claimed.

Then we watched part of Akeelah and the Bee, and did an art project involving scrabble letters and posters. It reminded me so much of the groups I'd led in the hospital, but more fun. There were no reprimands because they were talking loudly (the professor in charge actually encourages that), no stern reminders about how they needed to focus on the task at hand. We were just there to have fun with the girls and take their minds off their grim lives for three hours. And that, in itself, I suppose, is pretty therapeutic.

It was such an amazing environment to foster. The first time I met most of the volunteers was last week at a training, and they seemed nice, but I was still shy. The event made me feel more comfortable with everyone, so I feel a bond with them already. It is a unique and wonderful experience to be with woman who are happy and supportive and love what they're doing. It's energizing, and makes me excited about the path I've chosen.

Softball

2007-05-21T18:09:00.000-07:00

I started softball practice today. I was a little nervous. I've never really played, and no amount of playing catch with Tim really equals a game. Luckily, 9- to 12-year-olds aren't really that great either. They sure do have a lot of attitude, though.

(I did go to one or two theatre softball games in Alabama, but I got heatsick pretty quickly from all the exertion. I hope it's not too bad in Chicago this summer, though I think I was even more out of shape that usual down south.)

It was fun. I was glad I'm good at catching already because then the girls didn't question why I was there. And I've been around Tim long enough to pick up a few things, so I was able to give them some pointers. (Um, mostly the ones I've heard him give me, like "watch the ball go into your mitt.") Most of the girls seemed to accept me pretty quickly; a few of them kept wanting to practice their throwing and catching with me, even during the water break.

I think after a few practices, I'll feel more confident with them so I can do more coaching. I'm still not sure what kind of dynamic S wants. She's the head coach, and has been doing it for seven years, so she knows all of the old girls, the rules of the game, and how to run practices. She mostly recruited me and a few other classmates because she needs bodies at the practices and games. I'm sure that will all get worked out soon.

It feels good run around in the sun and shake the grey winter off.

Helping others

2007-05-03T14:47:00.000-07:00

On the bus today, I held the back door open for a women who, when she exited, said, "tell the bus driver to call 9-11 for the boy in the back." When I asked what was wrong, she said, "Just look at him; you'll see."

Another girl who was huddled in the stairwell with me overheard, and we peered through the crowded bus to a young man who was rocking in his seat, looking unwell. In my observations, he looked tired and drunk, or coming down off something. But in my opinion, not in need of an ambulance.

But who am I to judge? Isn't it better to be safe than sorry? This prompted a discussion between the girl and I, who told me she was a med student at the same hospital where I interned. I suppose between a social worker and a doctor, you've got the two people most likely to intervene on another's behalf, but we didn't. We watched him for a little while, then fell to discussing the weather, and Chicago traffic. By the time I exited the bus, he was the last thing on my mind, and I forgot to say anything to the driver.

But obviously I didn't completely forget, and I'm still mulling over how far you should go to help another person. I feel like I'm fairly good in crisis, and had this been one, my instincts would have taken over and I would have known what to do. But it didn't seem very much of a crisis.

Tim and I were driving home from a party last weekend late, and a woman who was obviously developmentally delayed walked through the cross walk in front of us. She was walking stiffly and awkwardly, but it seemed more like her personal gait rather than any recent incident. A guy on a bike came slowly rolling up next to her, and I could read his lips as he asked her if she was ok. She ignored him and kept walking. He pedaled slowly next to her, and continued talking to her. It didn't seem to me like he was being solicitious in his remarks, but rather bothersome. Then the light changed, and we drove off. I turned and looked out the window after them.

Tim could tell what I was thinking. "I think she could take him," he said. And maybe she could have. He was a scrawny little dude. But I still worried. What if we had driven off right before he attacked her? What if we had stopped? What would I have said? What would we have done?

It's so hard to know.

2007-05-03T14:38:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I feel like it is just way too easy being me. Aren't things supposed to be harder than this?

I say this after knocking out a scholarship application that required me to write a two-page paper describing a social need or condition that I've recognized and how I've acted upon it. I wrote about violence against women. Easy as pie. And who could turn down a scholarship application from someone who talked about how she's working against domestic violence? It seems like a gimmee, really.

Then it occurred to me that maybe this is what it's like to be an adult. I have worked and worked to learn things and get good at them. It always seemed as though that would be a lifelong struggle. That I'd never get to the point where I was no longer the one asking all the questions, but rather the person being asked.

And I realized that I know more than I give myself credit for. I feel like I'm a late bloomer, at 30 just now going to grad school and fixating upon a career that I love, and it's hard, because I feel too like I'm just starting out. But I realize that my previous years in domestic violence weren't just a gateway into a good graduate program. They were foundations of experience upon which I can build.

In my end-of-the-year evaluation, my supervisor raved about my professionalism, and I was confused, until it dawned on me that with my age has come wisdom. I know what I want to do, and how I need to do it. Rock on.

My kind of party

2007-04-29T09:15:00.000-07:00

I wasn't looking forward to the party we went to last night. There are always a lot of people I don't know at parties like this, incurably hip people who annoy the hell out of me. The reason we go, though, is that these parties are thrown by one of Tim's childhood friends, J, another impossibly hip person who is also a Really Good Person, and his girlfriend K.

Tim thinks I go overboard when we have friends for dinner. I spend a long time mulling over the menu, and come up with much deliciousness, including fabulous desserts we'd never make just for ourselves. Sometimes I think that our guests can be slightly uncomfortable at the amount of effort I put into things, not realizing how happy I am planning and making sumptous meals.

But this is nothing compared to J and K. They go so very far overboard that it is ridiculously fun to see what they come up with. In an "oh my god, I get to eat this food?" way, and also in a "oh no, they didn't!"

Last night there was a grill going all night, churning out charred vegetables, marinated tofu, pork skewers, flank steak, many different sausages. Out of nowhere, a skate wing appeared, just because it was on sale, and J wanted to try it.

In the dining room, there was an immense table filled with fresh watermelon and pineapple, rice, corn salsa, shish kabobs. In the living room was the bar area. All the liquor you could hope for, and a huge soup tureen filled with sangria made with blood-orange soda, among other things. In the freezer, homemade sangria baby popsicles.

Planted in the middle of the kitchen was K, standing over a deep fryer. Knowing of its presence, we brought hush puppy batter. But the dough sat next to the fryer for a few hours, while K first shaved sweet potatoes into the boiling oil, then sweet potato fries, and finally, yellow tomatoes dipped in a beer batter she whipped up on the spot.

Finally it was time for the hush puppies, and I spent about half an hour watching over them, and listening to people rave. By that time, it was late, and the drunken suggestions about what to fry next were pouring in. J got out a vacuum-sealed can of Pillsbury croissant dough. He and Tim fashioned them into circles, and golden doughnuts soon rose to the top of the boiling oil. Sprinkled with powdered sugar, I swear I have never in my life had a better donut!

Meanwhile, K was still in the kitchen, chopping rubarb stalks and warming strawberries in a pot with fresh ginger. She poured the strawberry mix over the rubarb and put it in the oven to make a crumble.

We couldn't stay for it. I was getting tired.

K's friends are used to her staying in the kitchen, and will drift by through the night to chat. It was the kind of party I've always wanted to host. To be in my kitchen all night, making deliciousness for friends who have come to visit. Yes, that's my kind of party.

My Daemon

2007-04-29T07:46:00.000-07:00

This is quite possibly the coolest concept for a Web site and movie promo I have ever seen.

Anyone else excited for "The Golden Compass"?

Help me pick my final daemon by clicking below.

Chicago weather

2007-04-23T15:13:00.000-07:00

I love Chicago more when it's beautiful outside. This weekend, it was shorts weather. We biked, took walks, spent time hauling out the big plants to the back porch, repotting, pruning the dead leaves, just enjoying being outside.

I never realize how much I need the outside until the warm spring winds come and blow the grey off of everything. Now I have a hard time staying in.

The end of this school year is so close I can taste it. Only one more session of two of my classes. My most hated class closed today after we convinced (with not too much work) our prof that we should do evals today and skip next week. One big paper to finesse, and two short ones to crank out. It's been remarkably stress-free.

Perfect evening

2007-04-01T16:15:00.000-07:00

If You Want Me to Stay, Sly & the Family Stone
Beast of Burden, Rolling Stones
Oh Shit, The Pharcyde
Brother Sister, The Brand New Heavies
Boogie On Reggae Woman, Stevie Wonder
Mama's Got a Girlfriend Now, Ben Harper
Gold to Me, Ben Harper
She Caught the Katy and Left Me a Mule to Ride, Taj Mahal
Frankie and Albert, Taj Mahal
If I Only Knew, Tom Jones
Black Betty (2003 remix), Tom Jones
Burning Down the House, Tom Jones & the Cardigans
Don't Stop 'til You Get Enough, Michael Jackson
Thriller, Michael Jackson
Dreamin', G. Love & Special Sauce
You Be Illin', Run DMC
Just Dropped in to See What Condition My Condition Was in, Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

Saturday night was Hannah's last in Chicago, and we had the best evening. Beautiful weather, good food, lots of wine, and a great soundtrack for a dance party. There's no other way I'd rather spend a Saturday night.

Family resemblance

2007-03-31T15:15:00.000-07:00

It doesn't occur to me that often that I resemble my family. When asked, I remember that Katie and I have the same smile, and the same body movements. I know I share skinny little chicken legs with my dad, but I don't know what else.

Once in college, a girl on my floor told me my mom had been by to see me earlier, when I was out. I asked how she knew the woman was my mother, and my friend said, "She walked like you." And though I had never given much thought to my gait, I knew instantly the stride she was talking about, for it was a characteristic very much my mother.

This week, I was in a restaurant restroom, washing my hands after lunch, and I looked in the mirror. Coming off an overnight at the shelter, I was tired, and I sighed deeply and ran my hand across my face. Immediately I saw my mother's face looking back at me. I think the hand gesture was her as well, and that's what caught my eye, but I looked so much like her, more than I've ever realized.

I don't think we ever know what we truly look like except in relation to others. And my measurement has always been "not." Not dark haired like my dad and sister. Not tall like my parents. It takes a whole reconfiguration of my consciousness to think of myself as looking like my mother.

Quiet Riot

2007-03-31T15:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes the only music to clean to has to be heavy metal. Since I haven't had a tape player in about 5 years, that's about as long as it's been since I've been able to listen to my favorite: Quiet Riot's Metal Health album. So I downloaded it from online today, and now I'm jamming out to "Love's a Bitch" as I straighten the living room. Perfect!

That reminds me how I found Quiet Riot, anyway. When I was taking guitar lessons from Old Town School of Folk Music, one of the jam sessions included "Cum on Feel the Noize," and I loved it. Of course, learning it in that context made me think it was a folky song. So I was pretty surprised to request it at kareoke some time later and discover it rocked harder than I ever imagined.

Finally

2007-03-29T07:19:00.000-07:00

The past month and a half has been so stressful. I felt like I was suspended in limbo, waiting to hear back on internships, and it didn't even dawn on me until after that it took so long. My whole body was clenched tight the entire time.

And then I found out that none of them wanted me. What a big blow to my self-esteem. It seemed like a waste of an excuse, saying, "well, that's what happens when you apply for the most competitive ones." I started to mistrust my gut, which had told me at least two of the three interviews I went on were really fabulous. In fact, one of them, I just knew I nailed it. I went really quickly into the anger stage of grief with that one. How couldn't they pick me? They must not be the quality agency I thought, if they could turn down someone so obviously perfect for them.

Though I really hate it when people say, "everything happens for a reason," and I generally felt like punching Tim throughout the past six weeks when he did say that, now everything has fallen into place and has seemed like a lead-up for the internship I did finally get.

I think I had focused so heavily on the first three that I didn't allow room in my brain for not getting them, or for considering others. So when I had to, I felt like I was striking out blindly, just randomly picking places to look into because there's no getting around having to do a second-year internship. I randomly called a woman at the Evanston Police Department and she said, "I just offered the spot to someone yesterday. But I haven't heard from her yet. If she doesn't take it, I'll call you back." And an hour later she called me and we set up an interview. Then in the interview, they said, "What do you think of this place? Think about it and call us tomorrow." I wasn't sure, since I'm ignoring my gut right now, but that didn't sound like the other closers to interviews that I've heard lately, which is: "We'll let you know."

I might be back to trusting my instincts, though, because when I called back this morning and said, "I'm very interested in your placement. What's the next step?" the response was, "Well, you just accepted the internship!"

I'm not jumping up and down, I'm just chill. Which of course makes me think that this isn't the right thing for me. But maybe I just burnt out too much emotion with the earlier options, only to have them snatched from reach?

Throughout this whole process, I've been torn. Should I go back to working with adults, or stick with adolescents? I thought internships were for choosing your whim, and getting to do something you might not ever be able to be hired for, but it seemed like most of the places I interviewed needed me to choose firmly. I had so much adult experience, why did I want to/was qualified to work with teens, the youth services organization wanted to know. And with the adult counseling center, I thought, "Now I can get back to my first love, working with women," but felt a pang at the thought of no more teens.

I just couldn't decide, I couldn't pin myself down, and probably that's why, in the end, none of my first choices worked out. But in the end, I can't believe my luck.

I'm going to be working through the police department, with youths aged 12-15 and their families, primarily doing family therapy. What I didn't realize as I started the selection process earlier in the semester was how much I like working with families. Back then I had barely done any family work at the hospital, and now, a few families later, it's striking me as the most difficult, yet most interesting part of therapy. And this program I'll be in is a phenomenally progressive idea. Prevention and intervention work with youth and families in a police department? It really strikes me as working on change from within the system. I love that the police department is supportive of the idea, which really puts the focus on positive interaction between youth (potential) offenders and the police, rather than punitive, "afterwards" interaction. And there are no mandated clients. Everyone is there voluntarily.

Hmm . . . come to think of it, I am pretty damn excited about it! I can't wait for next fall!

Relaxation

2007-03-27T10:12:00.000-07:00

Yesterday it was near 80. I went out to see the in-laws. After a big mistake of going to Brookfield Zoo (massively busy), we went to Portillo's, got cheeseburgers, fries, and malts, and sat in the backyard enjoying the weather. In addition to the delicious bad-for-me meal, I also got word that I scored an interview at a new internship placement this week.

Later, I took a movie up to the attic, turned on a fan, and laid down on the futon with a kitty, and blissed out. It didn't take very long for me to attempt to identify what was going on.

Relaxation? I felt perfectly at peace, restful, and relaxed.

In the evening, I made a birthday meal of grilled chicken pesto pasta for my sister-in-law, with coconut cupcakes for dessert--melted truffles drizzled over. Sauvignon blanc and lexia flowed freely. We ended the evening in the backyard again, where Tim lit a fire in the chiminia and we were hypnotized by the glowing coals.

I had almost forgotten what relaxation feels like.

I had many plans of working head on schoolwork, and a to-do list a mile long for this spring break. I think, though, that I need to just unwind and not worry about anything. God knows the stress lately has been fixing to kill me.

No touching

2007-03-23T14:58:00.000-07:00

There's a no-touching policy at the hospital. I can understand it. Once a boy snuck into a girl's room and they had sex without the staff knowing and DCFS threatened to yank all their wards for good (which is not a bad idea, because it's a freaking hassle and a half dealing with DCFS kids and their slow-ass bureaucracy).

But there's a girl there--and she's not alone in this--who radiates the need to be touched. You can see it emanate from her in waves. She's crumbling inside with her desperate need for affection. She'll try to hug the staff, and with varying degrees of kindness, they'll remind her of the rule. When she approaches me, I don't have the heart to discourage her, so I let her rest her head on my shoulder, and put one arm around her to guide her back to whatever she should be doing. Her thin body pulls all the warmth from my fingertips.

I remember, way back in the days of being a camp counselor and blanketing the chapel with inspirational messages, one said that you need four hugs a day for survival, eight for maintenance, and twelve for growth. To be missing that most basic of human touches, my heart hurts for those kids.

Projects, projects, projects

2007-03-19T18:28:00.000-07:00

One down, one to go, then spring break! I think it's pretty ridiculous that professors at the same school don't discuss when they're going to assign their big projects and come to some sort of agreement that they won't all be due at the same time. I know it's grad school, but still. If you want our best work, don't spread us so thin. My prof for Wednesday expressed some worry that we weren't going to do all of our reading, and I thought, "are you fucking kidding me? Get over it! Of course I'm not going to do any of the 400 pages you assigned us, because I also have to do a group project that day!" Let's be realistic here, people!

Anyway, my group on Wednesday is presenting some mind-numbingly dull stuff about the Safe and Timely Interstate Transport of Foster Children Act of 2006, and because I was the one who wrote up the presentation, I turned it into a script for a talk-show, and I am the host. It includes gems like, "welcome to Policy Hour, your number-one rated show on cable-access television about social policy! And now a word from our corporate sponsors . . ." and "thank you for your poignant and informative perspective! It's important to hear how this bill is affecting real people!" and "As a special thank-you for our studio audience, I will be passing out a handout summarizing this law and its pros and cons! You too can become an expert on the safe and timely interstate transport of foster children!"

I'm currently searching for an empty cardboard tube for toilet paper that I can turn into a mock microphone.

Sometimes I crack myself up so much, I can barely type out my next thought.

Oh well. I figure at least the class will die of laughter, and it's more entertaining for us to present than a PowerPoint.

Springtime

2007-03-11T18:36:00.000-07:00

It's here, it's here, it's here!

For this weekend, anyway. Hannah and I biked to the Bongo Room for breakfast, and browsed a used record store. She got a Tori Amos album I had never heard of, so I loaded it onto my computer, and now I'm listening to it.

I'm ready for this season. It's windows flung open to a slight chill, green buds on the trees, candles flickering in a dark, clean apartment, Tori Amos singing on the stereo. Salads for dinner, and white wine. It's a season I like to spend alone. This evening Tim is with old friends, playing music at a bar, and I'm revelling in having the apartment to myself. The cats are still asleep in the window sill. It's not too chilly for them, though I'll need to close the windows soon.

I'll go to bed, a new crossword puzzle in my lap, and I'll fall asleep in the quiet dark, and tomorrow the spell will be ruined, for it will be schoolwork and stress, papers to write and the wait for internship offers. But for now it's perfectly still, perfectly cool, and perfectly spring.

I must confess

2007-03-11T18:22:00.000-07:00

That I love reading people's blogs in a way that is slightly obsessive. Slightly obsessive? Try "to a stalker-ish degree." Like if you have a statcounter, you've probably contemplated getting a restraining order against my IP address.

I really wish everyone would post on a daily basis, because that's about how often (if not more) I check them. It's so fascinating to me to get to read everyone's thoughts. It's also a good way to keep track of old friends.

So get to posting, people!

Also, can you see a vertical black line separating the left and the right columns? I was feeling up for a change, and I do so love these new colors, but I think the middle black has disappeared. Oh well.

Happy International Women's Day!

2007-03-08T19:25:00.000-08:00

I am celebrating (if you can call it that) today by preparing for my internship interview tomorrow with an agency that specializes in working with sexual trauma. I am beyond nervous. I wrote up possible questions and role played with Tim to practice. He pulled out all the stops and acted like it was a real interview, and I don't know if it was that or what, but I got so nervous and tense that my body actually started spasming. Sometimes I feel awkward talking shop in a pretend way, with people I know. It just doesn't feel natural. I hope that's what it is, and not a preview of how the real interview is going to go. I am simultaneously 100% terrified of this internship and committed to having it for my very own.

Ack.

Edited to say: wow. The potentially most nerve-wracking interview ever, and I left there bouncing up and down and couldn't stop smiling! There was a group Q&A period (seven of us), and then we each took turns interviewing with two different people. They really were racing through it, so I had to make sure to really put as much of myself into each answer, and add things when they didn't ask. I'm glad this wasn't my first interview--I've learned a few things since I've started this process.

I interviewed first with a woman, and it seemed to go well, but when I interviewed with the man, I knew that things were soaring. He had lived in Mississippi, so we bonded over the south, and when I asked what he was looking for in an intern, pretty much everything he said fit exactly who I was. Also, he said that when he and the woman were looking over resumes, they'd put either a check plus or a check minus on each one (for whether they wanted to interview the person), and rarely did they have the same opinion. Then he showed me my resume, which had their checks plus plus on it!

(It occurs to me later that if, like they said, they had 50+ applicants and only interviewed 12, probably all of us twelve were the check plus pluses, but in the moment, it gave me great confidence, and I settled down and felt very comfortable in the interview.)

Everything their agency does is amazing and terrifying, and I want to work there so badly. It would position me incredibly for finding a job after graduation. I would learn SO MUCH there.

There's just one issue I have, and I wasn't sure whether or not to bring it up, but I was feeling so comfortable with the man that when he asked if I'd seen their web site and was there anything on there I was nervous or uncomfortable with, I was honest. I told him it was the fact that their agency seemed like a private practice, and since they essentially were, and the interns exist mostly to help the DCFS-mandated clients, Public Aid, and others who can't afford it, do they feel like they're doing a disservice to the underpriviledged?

I worded it better than that, though, and he wrote down my question before answering, so I think he was impressed I brought it up. He said yes, and it was a struggle the agency was constantly dealing with, and I can appreciate that.

I don't want to help people who can afford to pay me a lot of money. I want to work with those who can't afford it. It makes me uneasy to think about working in a private practice, but the place also really excites me for the therapy opportunities it presents. No way could I turn that down.

At any rate, I left feeling on top of the world. I was only with six of the other eleven people they interviewed, but out of that group, I felt very confident that I was the perfect fit for the internship.

How to make your own olives

2007-03-07T08:34:00.000-08:00

Start here:

First, order fresh olives online. Make sure they go to your in-laws' house so that you don't miss three consecutive deliveries and have to trek out to Lombard, Illinois, during rush hour on a Friday night to the FedEx handling facility.

Twenty pounds should be good.

Put them in a big-ass plastic bucket (not metal or any other business like that).

Pick out the ones that have obviously gone bad.

Mix a lye solution to pour over olives. Be careful. Lye is serious caustic!

Fill the bucket, covering the olives with the lye, and use a towel to push down on the floaters, making sure each olive is completely submerged in liquid. Let the mixture sit for at least 24 hours, until the lye has been absorbed by the olives, changing the color from spring green to olive. Open a side of the bucket, and pour out the lye liquid.

Take out the towel and rue the day you decided to use a formerly celery-colored, nice bathroom towel to tamp down the lye and olives.

Refill the bucket with clean water.

Do this once a day until the water runs clear (usually 3-5 days).

Refill the bucket with a salt water mixture, and let the olives sit for a few days. Remove a bunch of them to marinate. Pick over them first to make sure they are ok. A lot of them (probably at least 1/8) will be soft or swollen with rot. Get rid of those. Put the good ones in a vinegar/olive salt water bath. Add as much garlic as you can stand, and other herbs like rosemary, thyme, red pepper flakes, lemon zest. The more the better. Let it all marinate for 3-4 days. At that point, add as much olive oil (or slightly less) as you have marinade. This will mellow the flavor and slow the marination process.

Eat. Or give to many grateful, salivating people as gifts.

Working with families

2007-03-01T12:28:00.000-08:00

In my interview last week for an internship at a youth-services agency, they asked me what I liked about teenagers, and what the challenges working with them were. I love teenagers because they're living through possibly the most formative time of life. They can still have the innocence of children (wellll, not so much the ones I work with), and some of the wisdom of adulthood (ditto). And I remember what a glorious yet angst-filled time that was for me. Plus, some of them respond really well to my sarcasm, and others to my sympathetic side, so we just really get along.

What I don't like about working with them is their parents. So many of the kids are in the hospital and diagnosed with bipolar disorder or intermittant explosive disorder because their families are just pretty fucked up. So rarely do I actually believe their mental health diagnosis is actually a chemical inbalance and not the response to a difficult, traumatic upbringing.

But today I led a family session that went so well. The mom was upset but still willing to support her son. First I asked her how she wanted to see his behavior change when he got home, and she listed a bunch of things. We talked about the supportive services he was already receiving. Then I brought him into the room and asked him to tell his mom what he had been working on while in the hospital. He said his anger issues and coping skills; and I asked him to elaborate and give examples about what skills he's learning. Then I gave both of them a copy of a poem called The Meanest Mother in the World. (It's pretty cheesy but it's a good way for kids to reflect on why their parents do things like impose curfews, make them do chores, etc.) I had him read it outloud and then explain what he thought it meant, and how it applied to his mom.

Then I brought out a art project the son had done during a therapy group about suicide. It was a funeral program. He read it to his mom and explained how he created it and why he included the things he did. It was a really amazing program. I said, "What do you think it would be like for your mom, if this were a real program for your funeral?" which generated good discussion.

I wasn't planning on the next part, but the conversation led up to it really well, so I asked the two of them to do a reverse role play of mom and son. The mother really got into it, acting like her son wanting to go out and hang with friends. I think the son was irritated by the exercise, but he responded as his mom would, and afterwards, was able to articulate some good thoughts about the activity.

Then we made up a contract of behaviors, what the son would work on when he went home, what the mom would do, and some things I'd be able to help them with. The son was able to come up with his own ideas of how his behavior should change that mirrored what his mom said, and she was agreeable to the things he asked her to do, like being there for him when he needed to talk and to not blame him for things before asking first if he caused them.

Finally, I gave each of them a saying about attitude and had the son read it. Then it was over, and the family hugged. One of the nurses asked me a little later what had happened, because evidently the kid came back to group with a really bad attitude. So maybe he didn't get as much out of it as it seemed, but I don't really care. The mom was pleased with how it went, and she's very supportive of him, and will allow him to come back into the home, so that's the important part. And it made me feel really good about my (slowly but surely) improving skills.

Four years

2007-02-27T18:12:00.000-08:00

Today is the four-year anniversary of when Tim and I got together for good. I am not bored yet. I am vaguely surprised by this, but not. I just never anticipated loving someone for this long.

I know it's not that long in general. But for me, it is.

Four years ago, I needed some comfort, some change, and he was there and a good friend. And then about a week after that, I woke up in the morning and couldn't see for the stars in my eyes. Just like that. I went to bed, glad he was my friend, and woke up so crazy in love that I couldn't stop smiling for about four months. I just remember that time as a haze--just existing for and within that circle of our love. Things change as time goes on, though I do still sometimes miss that first heady rush of infatuation. But I wonder if maybe the solidity of our life together now is even better. I just love being so certain and never doubting. When I think about us not being together, it's because we're old folks and one of us is not around, not because we decided we needed to separate.

Though of course we've decided that we have to die at the same time. I don't think I could live without him.

I Am Very Healthy

2007-02-20T06:15:00.000-08:00

I had my follow-up visit with the doctor yesterday. I think I love him.

I have had such bad experiences with doctors in my life that I am always so surprised when I get a good one, one who actually takes some time to explain things to me.

This one said not to worry about the cholesterol number, that it's partly so high because my good numbers are high. To keep doing what I've been doing, eating healthy and exercising. Also, he promoted alcohol on a regular basis.

Now I know it's common knowledge that red wine is so very healthy for you, in regular moderation, but I've never had a doctor actually push the consumption of alcohol.

He had some risk assessment that he did on me, calculating several variables including my test scores, and it turns out I have a less than 1% chance of having a heart attack in the next ten years, so in other words, I Am Very Healthy. Whew.

Speaking of wine, I've been trying to have a glass every night, but it's a struggle because finding a good cheap wine is a crap shoot, and the tastier stuff just isn't cost-effective (particularly when it spoils after a day. I'm fairly certain drinking a whole bottle in one evening negates the healthful effects.). So saying I was overjoyed to find a suitable wine is not even an understatement.

A red version Katie and Chris served at their wedding, and Tim and I served the sauvignon blanc. We opened a bottle of the cab/merlot last week, and it lasted for at least five days before it became undrinkable! And the magnum is only $6.50 at CostCo, $6.99 at Tim's favorite discount liquor store! What an amazing deal.

This is how the website describes it: "Ruby-like, bright in color. Fruit forward with red plum and varietal characteristics. Medium dry, medium body and harmonious with a good finish This wine marries two of the classic Bordeaux grape varieties: Cabernet Sauvignon offers character, complexity and longevity, while Merlot adds softer tannins and elegance. Patterned after the same classic blend that distinguishes many fine chateaux of Bordeaux, this superb red wine complements the heartiest foods, especially red meats, barbeque, savory pasta dishes, and pizza."

School and stuff

2007-02-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

I haven't been contributing much to class lately. My classmate S and I were discussing the general lack of good conversation and insight overall in our program, and so I resolved to speak up. I didn't say anything ground-breaking, but I think I raised a few good points yesterday. Once, I was asking for clarity on something the professor said, but instead of just asking what she meant, I explained why I was confused from a historical perspective, and asked how that meshed with her statement. (Yes, very deep. ha!) I don't think she understood where I was coming from, but I didn't feel like pursuing it, so I just nodded at her answer and said, "fine."

Afterwards everyone gathered with their project groups, and S and J (in my group) both said, "I knew that look!" Evidently they could tell by my response and my face that I was unsatisfied by the professor's response but was trying to politely hide that.

It warmed me to the cockles of my heart that they knew me well enough to pick up on that. I have friends!

In addition, there is another classmate in our group who is super cool but suffering the aftereffects of being friends with a superbitch last semester. Now that the bitch is gone, the rest of the class has embraced her. I made an effort to strike up a conversation with her several times during the day, and once she did with me, complimenting my hair.

It's like How to Make Friends 101. It's really pretty funny to recognize exactly what's going on, but it's also awesome to see someone making an effort for me.

I had forgotten that last semester I slipped into a little depression, and I feel it happening again. There's just SO MUCH insecurity that blankets me in mostly all I do involving school. The internship has ceased to be the joy of my existence and has become something highly stressful. I'm in the midst of finding a new placement for next year, and as I talk myself up, writing in cover letters that I excel at working from trauma-informed perspective, I wonder still why anyone would give me a hard-core therapy internship. How could I possibly be a therapist? I am abjectly terrified of it, yet I couldn't bear to try anything else next year. I must get a therapy placement.

Skyline

2007-02-11T09:58:00.000-08:00

This week, coming home on the train earlier than usual, I caught the sunset by the time I got to my stop. Some of the glass-faced buildings downtown were glowing reddish gold. They looked like they were aflame.

My el runs straight downtown, so I have a perfect view of the tracks running into downtown. After I got off the train, I waited until all the other passengers had gone down the stairs, and I stood by the rail and gazed at the city.

I felt a rekindling of my previous love affair with the city, and it made me happy.

Vicarious sugar rush

2007-02-07T15:42:00.000-08:00

My class wants to have a Valentine's Day party next week, and since we have a frivolous influence on our Policy teacher (a breath of fresh air compared to other classes, apparently), we will. One of my classmates requested my White Russian cupcakes, then I started daydreaming about other options.

Thinking about what I'm going to cook is almost the best part. I've decided on also making Samoas and Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes. I only found drink recipes online, so I guess I'm going to just wing it, using the old-fashioned chocolate cupcake recipe from Cupcake Bakeshop as a base (with darrrrk chocolate, of course!).

I was toying with the idea of using that cupcake recipe to create my own: raspberry curd filling with a milk chocolate cream cheese frosting, but Tim made a throw-up face at that, so I'm not trying it now. (Anyone think raspberry curd would be a good complement to a chocolate cream cheese frosting? I think so-ish. I am not certain.) I don't think I'll actually partake in these cupcakes, so I want to make ones that others will enjoy.

Getting to feed people and make them happy really is the best part. I think I'm actually not so much a chocolate (or sugar) junkie as I am a cooking junkie. Throughout this new eating-healthy business, I haven't really missed sweets much.

New addiction

2007-02-01T17:47:00.000-08:00

It's really not been as hard as I expected, giving up cheese. I still eat it in wee amounts (to avoid illness brought on by guilt), like a sprinkling of feta on my leftover lentil soup I ate this evening, or the not-as-cheesy-as-usual nachoes I made in a pinch for dinner a few days ago because we were starved and hadn't planned a real dinner. Even still, my habit of coming home for a cheese and crackers snack was surprisingly easy to move past.

Because I found something new to fixate upon. Last week I was grocery shopping, in the cereal aisle to find some generic shredded wheat for Tim, and came across the toasted oooooats. Ah, generic Cheerios! It was kind of a splurge, because the generic isn't that much cheaper than name brand, but still, I wanted some.

And now I've eaten them every day for the past week. They're a good substitute for pre-dinner, "I have low blood sugar" snacking, and with frozen blueberries, just about the most perfect dessert I can think of lately (seriously!), as well as a good "I can't go to bed hungry" snack. I look forward to my daily bowl in a way I haven't ever done before (well, except for cheese, but that wasn't so much a treat as an entitlement).

Though a doctor once told me Cheerios spike your insulin more than some breakfast cereals (I think he was advocating Special K or something), I still feel like it's pretty healthy, and with blueberries and fat-free milk, my body wins like three times over. Good deal.

Green things

2007-02-01T17:03:00.000-08:00

I can't bear to let go of green things. I rescued a tall straggly palm-like plant from my in-laws' trash bin. It was leaning over on its muddy roots, and probably had suffered a freeze, but the leaves still had some green, and I couldn't just leave it there. I put in a yogurt container and now it's thriving in my kitchen window. There is also an old, gnarled rosemary plant that we've carted across the country and back, and it finally suffered a freeze in Chicago. We keep it around because periodically, we'll see microscopically tiny, bright green shoots in the bends of what looks only like dead root. The brown, dusty stems now shelter a buried garlic bulb that started sprouting, and, yep, we couldn't bear to throw out.

Every time we move, invariably my beloved elephant begonia (that huge, gorgeous baby on the right) loses a few arms, and I reroot them to start new plants.

And, sadly, it has endured so many moves and clippings that it's about half that size now. But it lives on in many incarnations!

So I'm in agony right now trying to figure out what to do with this stupid pointsettia that my mother-in-law passed on to me after Christmas. I don't want it in the house because, well, Fergus eats just about anything he can wrap his jaws around then throws it up later, and I don't want those leaves to wreak havoc on his delicate guts. But I can't seem to put it out with the trash. Right now the leaves are drying up and falling off, and I sweep them up, and continue waffling on what to do with it. I suppose it will sit on the kitchen counter, getting in my way every day, until I figure that out.

Editing

2007-01-28T10:22:00.000-08:00

So I'm a writer. It's generally acknowledged that I'm good at it, and I believe it, too.

But I think even above that, I'm an editor. It's so ingrained in my consciousness, I can't even read a novel but for seeking errors.

I have a two-page paper to write today. It's a pretty nothing sort of paper, something to be knocked out in about 15 minutes, honestly--if I had a handle on what I was going to write. But I'm sitting at the computer, and I can't think of an opening line.

So I went to the articles I would be discussing, and I picked a concept to talk about. I found a potential quote, typed it into my word document, and looked for the citation. Then, before even expounding on that quote, I created a new page and started my references. Just typing it up, making sure it was formatted in the proper editoral style, with all the necessary periods and placement of reference data, calmed me down.

I have a handle on my references. I can now begin to write.

Preparation

2007-01-25T15:36:00.000-08:00

I think one of the great things about being married to Tim is that I have gained a handle on preparation.

I didn't own any snow boots until he came into the picture. Actually, not until now. Six years in Chicago awful winters, and I never wore snow boots.

Each day at the office, I'd get low blood sugar and start shaking, barely making it home before I collapsed, face-down into a pile of cheese and crackers. It wasn't until we explored the South Beach diet that I was able to control that, and arrive home each night not feeling like death.

Now I don't leave the house without an energy bar (homemade), a nail file, hand lotion, and enough layers to deal with whatever the weather throws at me.

I make granola a few times a month so we have breakfast (and snack food for when the low blood sugar sneaks up on us). Our cabinets are stuffed full of canned vegetables and falafel mix, so if we come home without an idea for dinner, we don't have to go out.

Preparation has bought me a great deal of calm, and I love it.

Revision

2007-01-25T15:20:00.000-08:00

I got the results of a second cholesterol test, and it's 28 points lower than the first one (done one week previous). I don't know . . . well, anything really, about cholesterol, but that seems like a drastic dive in only seven days. But I'll take it. Still in the high-risk zone, but it seems much more manageable than the first score.

And I am taking extreme measures with my diet, so I have high hopes that a healthy score is within reach in a few months.

So I'm exercising, and understanding why people get addicted to the post-exercise exhaustion/happiness hormone rush, but it's still hard to get excited about actually doing it. I've been in a serious funk the past few days, though. It's hard to figure out whether it's PMS-induced, or cheese-withdrawal. I was actually so pissed off for some unknown reason a few days ago that I said, "fuck this cholesterol noise, I'm having cheese." And it wasn't just plain old cheese, it was Boursin. And I loved every single tiny (for even in my "I deserve some happiness!" indignation, I still couldn't put out of mind how I really shouldn't be eating it) bite of it. God it was delicious!

As much as I love being around my classmates again, this school business is getting on my nerves. I have little motivation to sit down and study, when really I should be vigilant so I make straight As again, thus hurtling myself to the top of the scholarship list. Being awarded big sums of money for doing my work well should be good motivation, but right now it's not getting me off my ass in front of the computer to sit down with a textbook.

Plus, I've gotten a few back-to-back freelance jobs (which I suppose should bolster confidence that I'm not actually losing my skill since leaving publishing), and in choosing between reading something that I'm getting paid for, or something that I'm paying for, it's hard to dedicate time to schoolwork.

Semester two

2007-01-18T20:08:00.000-08:00

I started on Wednesday. I was a little anxious, because I hadn't seen most of my classmates in over a month, and you know how I get shy and stuff.

But it's so good to be back. It was like no time had passed, only better, since we all bonded at the end of last semester.

I have about five exercise partners now (though one I may have to fire, because she's 22 and built like a toothpick; and she took the elliptical next to my treadmill after class, and started chugging away on it like it was no big deal, and I just can't deal with the superfit when I feel like a saggy, out-of-shape old lady) and I have most of them convinced we'll be taking up racquetball, and a few want to swim laps, and we all want to start an intramural volleyball team. Hopefully each of us will want to impress the others with our dedication and stick-to-it-iveness so we'll continue, instead of the group devolving (as most groups I tend to be involved with) into a beer-drinking one. (I managed once to dismantle a book club with one fell stroke by saying, "It's easier for me to talk about this book if I have a beer," and that was really the last book we ever read together, but the first beer of many.)

The professor (the same one as last semester) simultaneously horrified and thrilled me by saying when we have our group projects for the class, she's not going to assign me to a group but instead will auction me off to the highest bidders. Reminded me of adolescents, when the girls reeeeally don't want the boys to know they're smart, and I used up my yearly supply of embarrassment with that comment. Of course I want people to think I'm smart. I just feel uncomfortable being singled out among my classmates. You're never too old to resent someone else for being teacher's pet, and I just want to be liked.

I have the exact same classmates but for one addition, and with the same professor, so we didn't have to do any introductions about what school we went to, what our field experience was, blah blah blah, but instead introduced ourselves to the new woman by telling new and unknown things. There were many jokes and laughter, and when one classmate revealed that it was another's birthday, we spontaneously broke into song, and it all just made me really happy.

I really didn't expect this from grad school. Not that I expected any social work program to be really cutthroat and competitive, but I've heard stories about general grad school experiences where people vie to put in their two-cents and try to be better than others. My class is so supportive of each other.

In fact, last semester, I was amazed sometimes at how open people could be. There were a few people who shared experiences that, if they happened to me, I would never in a million years verbalize to a class of 30. One girl had a sister who was travelling in South America with her boyfriend, and they were mugged and the sister was raped. She told us all about it one day, as explanation for why she had missed a few days of class. I think everyone was shocked that she opened up, but she must have felt an outpouring of support because this week, she gave us an update on how her family is doing. I think it's pretty amazing to foster that kind of trust in such a large group.

Edited to add: Now, a few days after class, I've started getting e-mails on the class listserv about people who feel like they didn't share enough in class. Someone's self-proclaimed "generic" revelation about how she likes to travel was put aside to say that she's had a difficult past six months, and being in our supportive class has helped her get through it. I'm so grateful to be a part of this group.

Franziaaa . . . the wine in the box

2007-01-18T19:39:00.000-08:00

For what seemed like every single day in Physics class senior year of high school, David Rowe sat behind me and sang this jingle. I remembered it the other day when I was thinking about how I needed to start drinking red wine on a regular basis, but how it probably defeated the health purposes to drink a whole bottle in one sitting because I don't want it to go bad. So really the perfect item for me would boxed wine that wouldn't turn to vinegar if I only had one glass a night.

Oh, if only it was good wine!

I thought about the red wine because I need to start eating heart-healthy. Because I just found out my cholesterol level is currently on red alert, danger zone.

Though it could primarily be from genetics, I do eat what could technically be defined as an ass-ton of cheese. It is, after all, my number one favorite food. And as much as it kills me to cut down on the cheese, and despite the genetic predisposition, I just can't wrap my head around going on medication when I'm only 30.

Like I blogged about earlier, my resolution is to maintain calm in the face of stress, so my first thought was, "(damn it) I'm going to have to start an exercise program (damn it)." And so I did.

And then I decided to get rid of all the unhealthy food in the apartment--by eating it. (Don't want to be wasteful--and Tim sure isn't going to polish off that half-pound of sandwich ham!)

And I announced to my classmates my newly discovered condition, and that I was starting an exercise program, and several of them said they'd join me, so now I have to stick with it.

But the thing about remaining calm is that it doesn't always work inside. My head knows all the logical things, but I guess I didn't give myelf time to acknowledge what a potentially huge thing it is to have proof that there is something terribly unhealthy and dangerous in my life. Dad says, "well, it's not like you're going to drop dead from a heart attack tomorrow . . ." but doesn't that happen to 30-year-olds sometimes? I mean, it's not outside of the realm of possibility or anything.

And I do eat a lot of cheese!

So I'm upset and depressed, and scared, and I'm worried I'm going to develop an eating disorder. I came home with low blood sugar tonight and needed to stuff some food in my face just so I wouldn't pass out. Normally, that would be cheese and crackers. But instead I looked for something healthier. I found a Trader Joe's frozen bag of chicken fried rice (and all the ingredients were good) and made that. And then ate it worrying that I used too much of the spray olive oil in the pan to fry it, and what about the fatty bits on the chicken, and is white rice merely not the greatest thing to eat or is it in fact raising my cholesterol by fractions of a point as it heads down my gullet?

It's pretty ridiculous, I know. I know what's healthy, and that we do eat very healthily. (I guess I did marry someone who is beyond anal when it comes to the food he puts in his body.) But I suddenly feel paralyzed and in the dark, like I forgot all of that, and as though I was just deluding myself into thinking we were healthy when actually we subsist on McDonald's supervalue meals.

I guess that year of mozarella sticks and hot wings, aka 2002, is catching up with me.

"My senses exist to witness your beauty"

2007-01-08T14:20:00.000-08:00

I have a box of letters under the bed. One of my secret desires of old was to be someone who inspired love letters, and it's very satisfying to have fulfilled that. The oldest is from 1994, and the latest are ones from Tim, our anniversary letters to each other.

I went in it last night to see what it contained for the purpose of writing this post. Otherwise I hadn't looked at it in a while. Usually the box existed for post-breakup self-confidence boosting. If ever I was down about someone rejecting me, or wondering if anyone would ever be interested again, reading through the old letters was good for that.

At home over Christmas, organizing my old things, I came across two enormous boxes filled with all the letters I'd ever received from childhood up through college. I was a prolific writer back then, and so were my correspondents. (I think the box filled with three summers of letters to me at camp was the same amount as the rest of my childhood combined.) Since college was included in that collection, I found a few from a guy I had wanted to date but never did.

Reminiscing is only good if you have no regrets. Though I'd like to have none, David was one.

I met him early in the first semester of my senior year of college. LeAnn and I lived across the street from a laundromat, and we went together to wash our clothes. It was manned by a short, muscular guy in hippie attire with long hair and thick sideburns. Too bad David was so short, for he was exactly my type. Nonetheless, I found ways to flirt with him as LeAnn hissed at me to ignore him. The next time I did laundry, it was early afternoon and the place was dead but for him. We sat in front of the TV, watching a soccer game on the Spanish station, and he wove me a hemp necklace with a melted copper squiggle of a pendant. In the midst of it all, I started dating someone else. We hadn't had The Talk yet, so when David asked if I wanted to go to a poetry reading with him, I accepted. I wasn't sure how to handle things (hadn't yet developed skill enough to date multiple people), so I had a talk with the other guy, and we determined that we were exclusive. So the date ended up being a nondate, and I told him about my boyfriend when we went for drinks after the poetry.

But still. There was something there. A few months later, he went to Egypt to study field mice for a year (he was a bio grad student), and he wrote to me frequently. Once he even called me to hear my sexy, throaty, cold-induced voice. I took over his place at the laundromat, and eventually started working with his best friend Doug.

Doug and I become good friends, and eventually he strong-armed me into dating him. (I say that because I had utterly no intention of dating him. I was still hung up on his best friend.) David visited one week, and I found out later that Doug had given him strict (if paranoid) instructions to stay away from me. That was the nail in the coffin--for both me and Doug, and for anything with David.

As the years passed, I'd occasionally Google him, and once I discovered him living in an apartment not three blocks away from where I had just moved! Or so I thought. After leaving a message on his machine, I wondered if that was really his voice, and then a few weeks later, a guy returned my call and it wasn't him.

Oh how I wished things had gone differently. Being with him instead of Doug (who turned out to be controlling and insecure, a real bother), or having a second chance. I daydreamed about randomly running into him at a bar in Chicago, for I knew he visited often. Finally, after way too long, he faded from my thoughts, and I only Googled him if the subject came up of old flames.

So I didn't like reading the ancient letters I found from him. They reminded me of things I didn't want to think about, because there was nothing to be done about them. I think regrets are stupid, and I don't want to think about having any.

But Googling is a good thing. I finally tracked down a photo of him online, and it completely erased any lingering thoughts I'd had of him. Whew. Aging is sometimes unkind.

Magic

2007-01-08T13:34:00.000-08:00

There are things I believe. Things I don't. And a lot of things I don't have the energy to determine whether or not I believe them.

I don't feel comfortable enough to articulate that I don't believe in God. I definitely don't have any certainty that I don't.

Tim's old boss, Witch Doctor Bob (a naturopath, actually) does things that can never be explained. A lot of his remedies don't work on me, because I don't believe in them.

Being so skeptical, though, doesn't account for me believing in Tim's magic. I can't explain it. I just do. To put it into words sounds ridiculous. Like how our bedroom had an off-putting vibe--I never wanted to spend time there--so I asked him to do some magic in there. Now I am drawn to spend time there.

He says a lot of what is called magic has to do with energy. At my old job in Alabama, I encountered a client who threw more venom at me than I'd ever experienced in my entire life. Just the sight of her would put me in major crisis mode, and every interaction with her would sap me of my strength. I put a lot of effort into deciding how I needed to handle her, and things I could say to attempt to take a stand against her taking such supreme advantage of me. Tim told me of a spell to try.

I was, of course, skeptical, but since I didn't have anything to lose by that point, I tried it. He told me to envision a shield in front of me, to spend time fully fleshing out what I imagined it to look like. Then when I went to work, think about holding it. The next day, I was ambushed in my office by this client. I didn't know she would be showing up at that particular time, so I didn't have a chance to think again about my shield.

But this time things were different. Instead of glaring across the desk at me, waves of hatred emanating from her body, she behaved more reasonably. Not like I was her favorite person in the world, but like she could finally tolerate my presence and perhaps respect that I could help her.

Of course, logically I thought something had happened on her end. Maybe she finally decided it took too much effort being so hateful. But I decided not to discount what I had done. My own magic. I think if I acknowledge it and believe in it, then it must have some power.

Break

2007-01-08T13:19:00.000-08:00

I have been relaxing and cooking like I used to--really taking advantage of my break. Not feeling guilty about my excessive laying around watching TV or reading. And I thought, "I could really get used to this. Damn us not being independently wealthy!" How I'd love to be a lady of leisure, rising late, being able to spend time making my home beautiful and lived in, gourmet cooking when the mood strikes. My non-existent stress level has made things utterly lovely for Tim and I. Our weekends are lazy and filled with happiness and cuddles.

And then, when I started to freak out that I had just a week and a half left until that whole world would be turned on its head, and school would start, my internship, my second part-time job, I also started to get a little restless. So now I'm ready. Good timing, that.

Only I found out today, third-hand, that three of the supervisors at my internship (my direct boss one of them) all quit and their last day will be Friday, before I even return. Talk about a world being turned on its head. I don't know what my future will hold there, now. I reeeeally like my boss, and she is/was the only LCSW on staff--a certification needed to sign off on intern's hours. There are five of us students in total, so I hope we get taken into consideration when planning how to proceed with new hires. I love the placement, so I don't want to get shuffled off to a new one.

And I also hate the timing, for I wanted my boss's job when I graduate--in 1.5 years. But I know there's some hospital fuckness, the extent of which I'm not even sure, so I'm sure she and the others have a good reason for leaving. (But despite the horror stories I've heard, I still harbored the desire to at least get my foot in the door, to get some experience there.)

I'm trying to spin it positively (because I haven't yet heard any details) and think that maybe this is a good opportunity for me to take on more responsibility. Or maybe she's going to a cool new place and will take me with her. I don't know. I'm trying to chill out and not worry about it.

My New Year's resolution is to remain calm and relaxed when things get stressful.

Speaking of tattoos

2006-12-14T13:21:00.000-08:00

Speaking of tattoos, I think this week's revelries in honor of the end of the semester were a nice gateway to getting to know my classmates better, and them me. I feel hobbled by my shyness at times. I am definitely comfortable around them all by now, but I'm fairly soft-spoken around most. Not the loud mouth I am around real friends. I know that deep down, I'm an interesting, fun, funny person, but I feel like I'm really bad at showing that to new people. Most people are pretty surprised when they find out I have more than tattoos than the average social worker, or that I have a wilder past than my mild demeanor would suggest.

That's why alcohol is the great equalizer. There are just certain barriers that need to be broken down before you can proceed any further getting to know someone, and it helps immensely. I probably would not have had such a long, in-depth conversation with one of my male classmates (with whom I'd never before exchanged two consecutive sentences) about Chicago neighborhoods, race issues, and the theatre scene had we not shared several pitchers of beer. And there's one girl who I always thought was super cool, but I never before knew much what to say to her. I have this vague memory of us on Diversey, our conversation reaching a fever pitch over our love of Thai food. Not that I'm probably going to be quite that animated next time I see her, but now we have a comfortable foundation.

I may have been dancing a little obnoxiously while we played cards at Delilah's, but I feel pretty comfortable knowing the most of my wildness is in the past, and my drunken antics aren't that embarrassing. (Besides. Dancing obnoxiously is part of who I am--er, the part I only show Tim however.)

Tattoo talk

2006-12-14T11:01:00.000-08:00

I never really thought my tattoos were particularly symbolic. I know they're "supposed to" be, and I might be dismissed by people truly into tattooing, but I really just like them visually. I want something pretty tattooed on my body for all eternity. Though color really works well on other people, I don't want any in mine. I don't want any of them to ever be mistaken from a distance for a sorority-girl-butterfly or anything.

But really, I think they all do have quite a bit of significance. My first is an ode to my background, a Kansas one. I lucked out quite a bit. Ad astra per aspera is beautiful in the Latin and the English: "To the stars through adversity." I love it. I could have been stuck with Alabama's "We dare to defend our rights," or Maryland's "Manly deeds, womanly words."

My second was a me tat. Gotten on a whim after seeing a letter on the ankle of another woman, a script initial. It's just plain beautiful and delicate, and in a bitch of a spot that sure to inspire awe among those who know the most painful parts of the body to put a needle to.

My third was the wedding image. I love sharing a tattoo design with Tim. It too is very striking, beautiful, and meaningful. Doubly so, since mom designed the art for her wedding with dad, and we used it for all our wedding graphics. (Ever since I saw their invitation as a very young girl, I vowed that, should I ever get married, I wanted to use the exact same thing. I was very lucky to find a partner for whom the image fit perfectly.)

And the fourth is one I've wanted for yeeeears. Since I was 18. It's a reminder of who I was back then, who I wanted to be, and who I've become. Staggeringly meaningful, I suppose. This week, a few classmates and I were discussing tattoos, and they asked me about my wrist; I'm sure I drunkenly babbled a portion of that explanation but in a less articulate way. I almost forget at times that the image is one Tim also has tattooed on his back, so lest anyone think I copied two of his tattoos, I have to tell the full origin of mine.

Each time but the last, I swear the pain is enough to keep me away for good. And so far I've gotten everything I've ever thought of tattooed on my body, so maybe this is it. But it's true, what everyone says: you get addicted to it, and I still have a spare ankle and a spare wrist . . .

Done

2006-12-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

So I'm done. My final was Monday, my group project due today, and my last internship until next semester was today.

I feel a little shell-shocked. I don't know what to do with myself. The first order of business was recovering from a massive hangover on Tuesday, and today will be spent recovering from a night at the shelter, but after that, what? I don't want to completely waste my break and be bored. But after three months of non-stop stress, I really just want to lay on the couch and watch movies. Damn the lack of movies at my house. I don't even feel like getting out to pick up any.

Stress

2006-12-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

Maybe stress is so embedded in my life now that I fail to notice it affecting me. But Tim does, which led to a big meltdown and discussion last night. From what I was saying, he mentioned that a lot of the feelings I have towards school right now are ones I've told him I struggled with in the past, in school. It's horrifying to realize that, at thirty, I'm still working on the same insecurity issues I had at thirteen, sixteen, eighteen . . . Humiliating, too, for I thought I had grown up and become stronger.

The one social place I feel safe and comfortable in right now is the theatre, doing Gorey. Tim thinks it's because a lot of people escape to the arts to get external validation for their insecurity, but I don't want to be reduced to a simple (and slightly insulting) explanation. I think it's because I know the role through and through. It's not new to me, and I feel comfortable and confident that I can successfully do it. (That everyone likes me and appreciates me there is almost secondary to feeling confident about it.)

But as I say that, I realize that the shelter is also a safe haven for me, too. I know what I'm doing, and I can tell that I'm good at it. (This will be the sixth year that I've worked there.)

Which makes me fully realize how off balance I have been for the past three months. Thrust into so many new situations, which, no matter how much I think I enjoy them, still make me feel inexperienced, insecure, and just generally bad at what I do, since I don't swoop in and become immediately successful.

Not just job-wise, but also making friends.

It feels like almost everyone in my class is outgoing and gregarious. (Perhaps that's the typical nature of social worker, and I'm just an oddity.) And they naturally gravitate towards each other. I feel that my quiet nature works against me, and I'm losing the opportunity to make good friends.

That's not true, of course. I know a few classmates who value me quite a bit. But the stupid insecurity in me still thinks that's not enough. I guess I think that I am a pretty cool person, who does have a lot of interesting things to say, if given the chance. And that strikes me as confidence. Right?

Identity

2006-11-20T16:15:00.000-08:00

We had a pretty interesting discussion today in my Human Behavior class, talking about culture and identity. After hearing someone mention the specific area of her home state that informed her identity quite a bit reminded me that a good portion of my own identity is based on my upbringing as a country girl, and trying to assimilate that into the city girl that I am now. So that's what I mentioned (hey, my first tattoo was even a Kansas-related one!), and wished I'd waited, because I thought of more things.

A lot of people mentioned family connection. And that's important to me, too. Tim in fact sometimes thinks it's weird that my extended family gets together so frequently (in that he's just not used to that). But my identity is also influenced by the fact that my parents both essentially left their families to strike out on their own. It's not like any other relations live in Kansas--or anywhere near by. That's a wicked streak of independence that my parents probably sometimes wish I didn't inherit.

And the thing that I reeeeally wish I had mentioned (because any other time, it would just seem like bragging) is that part of my identity is formed around social justice. My relatives are probably the reason why I am a social worker today. I am so very proud of coming from a legacy of social work, social policy, and charitable works in the name of religion. I am frankly amazed that I have a grandmother who went to grad school in the 40s, for social work. And my grandfather was one of the founders of the National Center for the Laity (a principle at the heart of which says "A critical virtue for the laity is social justice"), along with his best friend, my grandmother's brother. There really were some powerhouses in my family, and I'm so proud to be carrying on the legacy.

Man, I'm so disappointed I forgot to mention all that.

Gorey

2006-11-17T05:55:00.000-08:00

It might have been folly to agree to do this, since I'm winding up for finals, but I'm playing piano again for Gorey Stories. At least this time around, I didn't have to do the grueling daily rehearsals for several weeks before it opened. It was more stressful this way--opening and wondering if we're going to make it through the show--but after we did, it's all cake from now on.

AND, we were picked for Critic's Choice this week! I wish the picture that was in the paper was also online, but it's just the review. And despite the fact that it does not have a string quartet but a string trio and a piano (one of its integral parts, in my opinion!), the review is pretty awesome.

Two scenes are online at YouTube, recorded in 2003. The visual quality isn't great, but the audio is. The Insect God and The Gilded Bat. (Which made me discover that the Mystery! opening credits is also online in several incarnations!)

Then, and now

2006-11-05T15:25:00.000-08:00

This has been stewing in my brain for a while. A few months, really, since I started school and really got absorbed back into Chicago.

This time it's different. I've started to distinguish my Chicago lives as in Single Chicago and Married Chicago, and while that's not necessarily always the best descriptor, it is mostly apt. There was an excitement, an unpredictability, a wildness to Single Chicago. I was discovering everything for the first time. I don't know if I expected to pick up where I left off by moving back.

I'm seeing a whole new part of the city now. A part that feels old and settled, and not so flighty. More real. For one, I live further in the city than I used to. School takes me to an area I've never been, as well as my internship on the south side, and my school tutoring, on the west side. These areas and existences are so far removed from the (it seems like, now) priviledged life I used to have.

Sometimes I miss the constant rapture, the moments where I absolutely lose my breath over the fact that I live in Chicago. It feels more solid in my bones. Not something I even think about anymore.

And I think about what I used to love about the city, and most of it revolved around a life I don't have anymore. One that I can't afford to have anymore. It gives me a different perspective, not having money to do the things I used to. But really, I used to have the money to do whatever I wanted, and now I just have the money to do what I need to do.

I don't think Married is any better than Single, or vice versa. Just different.

Meme from Lesley

2006-11-01T15:17:00.000-08:00

And Hannah and Jen.

1. List two things that are true of you that are not stereotypically true of members of some group that you belong to.

I think if someone wants to commit suicide, they have the right to, and it's not always my place to talk them out of it.
I don't give money during NPR pledge drives. I change the channel instead.

2. List two unusual talents that you have.

I can fix vacuums
I can whistle at an ear-piercing volume

3. List two unusual weaknesses that you have.

I never think anyone wants to really be friends with me
I still can't watch scary movies

4. List two unusual things that you aspire to.
I want to be a lounge singer like Mary Steenburgen in The Butcher's Wife
I want to someday walk a red carpet because Tim is a famous actor

5. List two words that you use more than most people do.
"So anyway . . ."

6. List two foods that you dislike and most other people like.
Mushrooms
Banana-flavored anything

7. List two strange habits that you have.
Any time I am around adhesive papers (like a sticker sheet, or a page of stamps, or a FedEx package), I have to take all the excess off, like the edges of the sheets, and put them on the back of my left hand. Maybe this is only strange because I am occasionally allergic to adhesives.
I like to drink soda from a straw, not sip it. And I like to squeeze the straw shut so it's hard to suck the liquid through.

Still dreaming

2006-10-25T09:06:00.000-07:00

Still dreaming. I had another one last night, after nearly a year. This time we were both students at Emporia. I was sharing a dorm room with him and some other guy, sleeping on the floor so I could save money. I was trying to be cool, a friend, and then he told me he was dating Jen, who was a single mom in the dream. What did she have that I didn't? (I think my justification for being jealous was that she doesn't have any many piercings as I do--though now awake, I don't know if that's true).

Still trying to be cool, and wait it out, we walked to the cafeteria, and ran into Gabe on the way, who I knew I could date in an instant if I just said the word. But I knew it was poor form to hook up with the cousin of your crush, and besides, maybe Jen was a passing fancy.

And then I woke up, and was still actively jealous of Jen for a few moments until I remembered the real world.

Good in crisis

2006-10-25T08:51:00.000-07:00

I'm sick right now. Open my mouth to breathe and I cough up (painfully) a lung. I missed a day of class and internship this week, but I couldn't call in sick to work. Not only is it hard to find a last-minute replacement for an overnight shift, but I make a little over a hundred dollars per night, and we can't afford to lose that.

So I dragged myself there, tossing and turning all night. Luckily it was quiet. Until the morning. One of the ladies was in a bad way, dizzy, disoriented, couldn't stand up. I watched her slide to the floor and bang her head against a table before I knew what was going on. She said it was because she hadn't taken her medicine, but then her meds didn't seem to help. Maybe it was because she hadn't been to her methadone clinic in two days. But also, she was losing feeling on the right side of her body. Another woman and I helped drag her to the bathroom to pee, and dressed her, then I called for an ambulance. When the paramedics arrived, I gave them her medicine and a note about when she had taken each one last.

I can't help but feel I was so cool in the situation because I wasn't all there. I hadn't slept well, and my chest was burning, and I didn't have many extra resources to expend freaking out.

But then again, in retrospect, the situation wasn't that stressful for me, and I knew what to do.

I feel capable. I think my whole working life, I've waited to feel capable. I've never done anything long enough to feel so capable. But now I'm reaching a point where I do have enough experience that I can handle unexpected things that come up. It's an awesome, awesome feeling. And it's so gratifying to be able to see how far I've come, and how I've improved.