My future

Freaking out.

The overly hopeful wish of a week and a half ago has not yet come to pass, for tracking still only says "Status: Acceptance. Your item was accepted at 2:50 pm on December 23, 2005, in Alabama"

I know that the mail is slow during the holidays, but I sent it Priority Mail. I asked the mail clerk how much slower than usual the mail was running, and she said PM was mailing like usual. So it should have arrived at the latest on Tuesday, Dec. 27. The school was closed between Christmas and New Year's, so I expected that it would not actually be in the hands of someone important by then, but I believed at least the tracking would have said something like "Arrived in Chicago," when it hit the general post office.

I didn't insure it--probably stupid--but how can you put a monetary value on letters of reference, and a printout of your resume and future hopes and wishes? I even forgot (after quadruple-checking the package) to include the $50 application fee, so it's not like I'm losing that.

I suppose I'm so freaked out because this is it. UIC is the only school I'm applying to--against most everyone's recommendations. Everyone says I need a backup school, just in case, but, as much as I adore the Loyola program, it's not exactly feasible as a backup school. It wouldn't matter if UIC turned me down and Loyola accepted me. I still couldn't afford to go. I suppose, god forbid I don't get accepted, I'd try to find some sort of meaningful job, and apply again in a year. (Surely they wouldn't turn me down three times when I'm so obviously a motivated individual.)

(They didn't exactly turn me down the first time. I applied medium late and was accepted to their waiting list.)

Anyway, while most people think applying to only one school is a dangerous road, a friend who makes $75K a year but is paying $900 a month for the next 30 years of her life just for her law degree supported me when I told her my reasons. (And #2 being, if I am not able to go to the school no matter what, we can't afford the $50 application fee.)

But it does still up the stress level. And it's only worse wondering now if the application is lost in the mail. Having to redo the paperwork is not a big deal. Losing time by redoing it is. The priority deadline was today. I won't get cut if they don't receive it, it just means other people might get ahead of me in the assessment process, so I'm worried they'd fill up their allotment of acceptances before they find me.

I want to go to this school so badly it hurts. For a while, I was just making myself fit, because I couldn't justify spending so much more money at Loyola even though I really did like their program better, but after talking to the director of admissions/financial aid, I am positively salivating over the UIC program, and am sold on it.

So. At least 6 weeks more of stressing out, wondering if they think I'm good enough. (How could they not? But still. There's always doubt.)

From inside a black and white

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.

78

Today I cleared the closet of my winter shirts, and used them to pad some dishes I started packing. I also went through the bookshelves and selected some books and videos to give away (though, unfortunately, not enough to really make a dent in the huge amount of stuff we'll be moving.) It feels odd to be packing this soon, but it eases my stress. Last time I moved, people were carrying boxes down to the truck as quickly as I could pack them up, and that's an experience I never want to repeat again.

I added up the days left here, and it's 78. Which seems kind of high until I remember it's equal to two and a half months. At work, I have forms clients complete when they want to give me permission to talk to people/agencies on their behalf, releases of information, which last for 90 days after they are signed. Lately I've noticed the expiration date I'm writing is after I'll be gone. It's a strange thing to think about.

I'm terrified beyond belief about how I'm going to find an apartment. An affordable one in a decent location, one that's not too run down or tiny or depressing. All I can picture in my mind is my last apartment, which was blissful in many ways for me, but not great for two people. And with absolutely no closets or kitchen counter space.

I think I've been putting Chicago in the back of my mind for so long (first because I missed it so badly, then because I started to like it here and didn't know if we were going to return, then I didn't want to jinx my school acceptance, and finally I got busy organizing and planning for the beginning of school that I forgot where I was moving to go to school) that I've just woken up and realized it's real, that I'm moving back to the place that makes me happiest ever.

I can bike to school and work and to the Middle Eastern bakery for olives and spinach pies, then Little Vietnam for black sesame balls, dirt-cheap fresh basil, and rice noodles. I can spend the evening at a punk rock bar drinking Maker's Mark without breaking the bank, then get home without worrying about leaving a car somewhere. I can take a blanket to the park and hear the jazz fest, or blues fest, or Celtic fest . . . And I can see my sister and my nephew whenever I want to.

Only 78 more days!

Football season

I love football season. Football, I am indifferent. But football season I love.

It hearalds the fall, newness, and the memory of high school games. Racing to the stadium an hour early for pep band. LeAnn and I careening down Main street, pulling on our uniforms as we drove. (Well, I was able to wiggle into my flag corps outfit and flash passersby; LeAnn had to wait until she could stand up straight before being buckled into her straitjacket of a marching-band uniform.) In the early days of the season, the late afternoon sun would still be hot, and we'd stretch across the concrete steps amidst a cacophony of brass and woodwinds warming up. Then we'd line up by the locker room, instruments aloft, flags whipping in the breeze. The toms started pounding out our school song, drumbeats on the warpath, and the football players would stream through our tunnel and onto the field. There was a glorious feeling of belonging, of togetherness. Sometimes catching glimpses of a grass field crisscrossed with padded, uniformed players, and rickety stands holding family and friends makes me nostalgic for my own Friday Night Lights.

(It wasn't until my senior year that I could even follow the game, that I understood the direction our team was running pointed to our goal. I still don't know which positions stand where on the field--and I really don't care--but at least I have some sense of what happens.)

In college, the season signified lazy Saturday afternoons in the dorms, distant cheers from the stadium and, for one year, a glimpse of the field from my room. Rising late, lunch in a nearly empty cafeteria, and trips to Walmart in the afternoon. Blaring Alanis's "Jagged Little Pill" while preparing for a night out, drinking screwdrivers from plastic mugs if we were lucky enough to corral a 21-year-old before the liquor stores closed at 9 p.m.

After college, it took me a few years to lose the fall expectations, to get used to life continuing as usual, no school year to begin. And football became related to my relatives, turkey and stuffing, ham, kielbasa, and sauerkraut. Holiday dinners.

This weekend, I treated the apartment to a deep cleaning. Tim didn't have class. I scrubbed the stove while he exercised in the living room. He had the game turned on while he lunged, squatted, and did various exercise-y things. Alabama spanked the hell out of South Carolina. Periodically we'd chant: "Roll Tide! Roll!" (I feel that since Alabama is paying for Tim's degree, we should have some school pride.)

It was a perfect, beautiful day. In the evening, we went to a class dinner; at 7 p.m., twilight had already settled in, and the night vibrated with excitement, with beginnings. The biggest, orangest, Georgia peach of a full moon sat on the horizon.

I love football season.

Specialization

I dreamt last night that a woman from Loyola called me to say, "We've looked over your school records and don't think you'll be able to hack it here, so don't even try."

Just my insecurities manifesting themselves in dreams, I guess. The older I get, the less sure I am of my intellectual capabilities. That and I haven't done school work in a good eight years. But besides that, I'm worried about what to specialize in as a career. I have the vague idea that you're supposed to know it before you do grad school, so there you can hone your skills, but since I don't know yet, I'm hoping grad school is the place where I can explore what specialization I want.

I might be burnt out on crisis.

Dr. D, she of hip psychologist fame, says the common thread running through my speech when I talk about work is wanting to help people feel safe. I wonder what job in which I could participate in that? (That's not crisis work, I mean.)

Music

I wish I had discovered The Cure in high school. I think they would have helped me get through a lot. I would probably be a different person today, though.

I wish I had been exposed to more types of music then. I had an incredibly musical childhood (which accounts for my love of folk music), but it was all the influence of my parents. They had all the essentials (Dylan, the Stones, John Renbourn, Joni Mitchell, Fleetwood Mac), but by the time I was a kid, the records were gathering dust in the closet, and we mostly listened to the radio. Oldies in my dad's shop; NPR in the house (symphonies and opera during the week, Prairie Home Companion on weekends, and Hearts of Space in the wee hours of the morning). I remember sitting in the lunchroom in early grade school, agreeing with my class, "yeah, Michael Jackson is awesome!" and then wondering who the hell he was. I don't think it was until age 13 that I listened to contemporary "rock" music (if Bel Biv DeVoe counts as rock).

And it wasn't until the middle of high school that I started discovering my own music. (Well, R.E.M. for high school misfits was pretty de rigeur, but still.) And suddenly I had an outlet for what I was feeling. And then Pearl Jam (which came to Kansas terribly late); and my friends and I had a particular fondness for Soul Asylum, too. In college, I was affected particularly by Tori Amos, and later, Ani DiFranco. But I can't help feeling like a fucking cliche. What sensitive eighteen-year-old girl was not caught up by Tori and Ani?

I just feel so left out whenever Tim talks about his connection to music. His life was defined by which music he discovered when. Listening to Led Zepplin is a holy experience for him. When we met and he played me one of their albums, I got so pissed off that I was twenty-six and only just then discovering Zepplin. So left out of a life-changing experience.

It wasn't until I was living in Chicago that I discovered my musical connection. One night the first winter I lived here, my new friends Bob and Dan took me a small club in a warehouse district of the city. It was an old house converted into a bar and music venue. Part of the excitement was all the new experiences, being in the city, finally knowing people, making out with one of them, but when the band started playing, I thought, "Oh my god. I'm home." It was a bluegrass band! Something I had grown up with, hearing at festivals. So I started going to alt-country shows. Most of the audience were overall-wearing hipsters, the girls in thrift-store sweaters and trendy cats'-eye glasses; and I wasn't like that. But I still had a connection to the music scene, and I loved it.

Uncle Tupelo didn't exactly change my life, but their version of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" did inspire me to learn the guitar.

Done

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.

Semester two

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.

Then, and now

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.

Jobs jobs jobs

Before school, when I was just preparing, I felt aimless because I wasn't working any longer. While it was hard not bringing in any income, it was even harder to feel like I didn't have any purpose (starting school in a month, a week, a few days didn't strike me, at the time, as purpose).

And then I started, and though I became overwhelmed with the courseloads, it seemed like most of my classmates had jobs. It seems like the schedule is very accomodating (to a degree) having a part-time job.

So I got two.

I'm going back to the shelter, to do overnights again, on Tuesdays. I remember what vivid nightmares I had there, sleeping on a Murphy bed a foot from an unsecured window that opened onto a creaky veranda. How I'd fall asleep by entertaining visions of an abuser tracking down his woman and breaking into the shelter through my window. One medium-strong kick would propel him right through. Or a recurring dream about locking the front door yet people opening it up and walking right through. After two years of working days at a shelter that felt like Fort Knox, it will be hard to feel safe in this environment again.

And yet. Going back there to fill out paperwork reminded me why I endured so long last time. Walking into the office fills me with peace. No matter what stressors are bothering me before work, no matter what kind of mayhem I might (and am likely to) encounter at the shelter, I feel like a weight has been lifted and my mind is clear when I am there.

My other job is tutoring once a week at a westside Chicago elementary school. Unluckily for them, they did not ask me if I was any good at it. I suspect I will not be. I tried to help at girl with her homework at my internship yesterday, and it was pretty pathetic. I did not know how to lead her to answer "In what city is the White House located?" after it was clear her little 3-page article on the government did not hold the key. (Because I'm pretty sure just telling her was not a good method. But my "Do you know who the first president was? . . . Do you think maybe they might have named a city after him?" was pretty ham-handed, and besides, the girl didn't know anyway.)

But I think it will be an interesting time. More experience working with kids, at any rate.

Ups and downs

There are times when I feel like I'm settling in, and others when I think I'm hopelessly flailing.

Occasionally, I feel like I have a handle on school, but that really means I start studying right when I get home, or after dinner, without even thinking about it, or wishing I could instead goof off or relax. I just do it. And I adore my internship. Getting up at 5:30 a.m. is less difficult on the days when I can go there instead of class. I got to do my first psychosocial assessment yesterday, and it was a little nerve-wracking, but also eye-opening in how not difficult it was, because hey! I've been doing social work for the past two years. I'm back in familiar territory (albeit with a different population and responsibilities). And I'm already scheming to work there after I graduate.

And then at other times, I sit in class and I feel so incredibly stupid. Like I've lost--or never had--any critical thinking skills, or reading comprehension, or even the ability to talk like I'm halfway intelligent. I've always struggled with the plainspeak towards which I'm naturally inclined versus the "grad school" lingo that my peers seem to slip into like it is second nature.

I know logically that I am/can be/will be very very good at rolling up my sleeves and actually doing social work, but the classes are doing a number on my self-esteem. What's hard is that everyone who knows me assumes that I will be just fine, or do spectacularly well. I thought that grad school would nurture a writer and thinker like me, but every class grades on participation in discussion, and my mind works slower than that.

Surely I can't be the only one feeling lonely and lost in my class, but it's hard to look past my own insecurities, or even admit them to my classmates. One of my classmates whom I'd like to make my new best friend, she's quite possibly the most articulate person I've ever met. And it's no good trying to start a friendship feeling highly inferior.

Grad school

It really feels like the closer I get to grad school, the less I know what I want out of it. I recently turned in my field placement questionnaire, which asked my interests so that my advisor could assist me in finding an internship for my first year. Pinning down one agency for an entire year . . . and the only thing I know for sure is that I want to work with women, and I'm ready to experience something besides domestic violence.

I'm stressed out. Part of me wants my advisor to say "Here. This is it. This is the place you will work," but then I hear myself piping up, "but what about the addictions field? What about working with adolescent girls? What about the LGBT community?"

I've been corresponding with a second-year student in the past few months who is a month away from graduation and feels similarly adrift looking for an area to pursue post-graduation. He told me he discussed this with a professor who said, "the paradox of social work grad school is that by leaving more confused/unsure of what direction to go now, you can be assured that you are being educated in social work."

I'm not sure how I feel about that, but I'll keep reminding myself of it as I try to grasp firmly for a concrete idea of my future.

Lately, I've been thinking more about therapy. I have always thought that's the direction I'd end up, but I have been doing so well with case management that I considered seeking out more opportunities for that. It keeps me busy. It sooths my problem solving brain. I like hearing someone state a problem and being able to figure out how to "fix" it. The idea of wading through a nebulous conversation about feelings terrifies me slightly. Check that. A lot.

I don't know why. I'm no stranger to therapy myself. I suppose the idea that I wouldn't be able to offer neat, tidy answers to people's questions (Unemployed? Have children? Apply for Public Assistance!) sets me on edge.

But lately, I've also been paying closer attention to the kinds of interactions I enjoy more with my clients. Some breeze into my office and say "yes, no, maybe" when I ask what they've accomplished in the past week, and I give them assignments for our next meeting. Others spend time going over issues or paperwork I can assist with. And still others sit down to just talk about emotions and feelings they have.

And it's the talky ones I enjoy the most. I feel more connected to them, involved in their situations, and less bored with my job. I think I should explore therapy more.

Money

Tim's grandmother Liz worked for nearly 40 years and was brilliant at saving money. She's the reason he was able to go to New Zealand after graduating from high school, and why he emerged debt-free from college. When he started his first year of grad school, she gave him a check that was nearly equal to one-third my yearly salary in Chicago.

I've never been around money like that. I know a lot of people who have inheritances. I knew that was never my lot in life. When I'm feeling particularly greedy, though, I daydream about my grandmother loaning me money for grad school, then forgiving the debt in her will.

It's shitty to think like that. But money will do that to you. After the first year, we started to expect another check the second year. It slipped grandmother Liz's mind. Or maybe she never intended to fully finance us. We didn't exactly ask her about it, and planned our budget on Tim's stipend and my salary. We get by. We cut corners more than I'm used to, and live more luxuriously than Tim's used to.

But the idea of money in the family is hard. As soon as Liz got sick, I started to think, "what if she put Tim in the will? Maybe we'd get enough to put a down payment on a home." I knew family was important to her--it seemed completely plausible that she might do that. I felt like an asshole. This was Tim's grandma, his last surviving grandparent, but instead of worrying about her health, I thought about her money.

It turns out, her two sons were the sole beneficiaries of her estate. Tim's uncle is a multimillionaire. For real. And his dad does well for himself. It just doesn't seem fair.

But I realized that getting money ourselves wouldn't have been much better. If Tim had been bequeathed a thousand dollars, I would have thought, "one thousand?? Why didn't he get five?" If five, why not ten?

Ten? Why not twenty?

No amount would have been enough. In the end, I am really very relieved we didn't receive anything. We'll get by on our own, and be happier about it.

Staying in Alamaba

So this woman that I wrote about previously. She was told today that our services to her would end on June 10. She got angry, demanded money she had given us for savings, and said she'd leave the next day.

I can only hope. I felt strange after the meeting, like I was scared to believe it had really happened, that we were really taking a stand against her, not allowing her to treat us like trash.

I can only imagine how much less stress I'll have after this is all over. Well, different, more manageable stress.

That will be a good thing. I've started thinking about beginning grad school while I'm here. It seems like it would give us so many more options, because then with my degree, we could move anywhere, instead of just a few places where I would be willing to go to school. I knew of a Saturday program that took place at DHR, so I pursued it. It appears to be the same program of study I was accepted to at the University of Alabama last year, only distance education. I thought I was looking into it way too late, as I wanted to start in the fall, three months from now. But the timing is out of my hands, as I discovered this is a new program that only accepts one class at a time. The current one is halfway through, so I wouldn't be able to start classes for exactly a year.

With that, I'd start classes a few months before Tim graduates. Which means we'd have to stay here two extra years. The thought of that, well, it's not my favorite one. There's no guarantee that he can get work with the company as a professional, though the incoming artistic director seems to like him very much. (I know there's a difference between liking him as a person--because who wouldn't??--and thinking his look and acting style could fit a wide range of parts.)

But regardless, it seems like this is the best thing for us to consider. I compared in-state tuition for the program here to the program I want to attend at the University of Denver. Here? Slightly over $9,000 in tuition (not counting that for the first semester, I'd continue working full-time). Denver, slightly over $55,000, and I would go full time, no work, unless it was part-time. We could pay for Alabama from our savings and not have to borrow a penny. Denver, I'd be an indentured servant paying off loans for the rest of my life.

And still, I don't know. While we'll probably swing towards staying, the thought of being around friends in Denver, going to a well-regarded grad school with a gorgeous campus makes me so happy, the cost of it is overwhelming.

And I'm doing things here to be happy. I think we could make it here.

Because I don't talk enough about the weather

I went walking outside last night, and the weather reminded me so much of what I grew up with in Kansas. I can't believe I'm finding it down here; I love it.

There was something powerful about the melancholic dark dampness of Kansas springs. In Chicago, it was grey for months, and then suddenly in the summer, hot as hell. In Kansas, and Alabama, the springtime sun dips behind a cloud, and the sky turns into rumbling dark moments of thunder and rain. It reminds me of high school. As much as I think, in theory, that high school was something to be endured, survived, and forgotten, there were times of incredible brilliance, too. My favorite memories are enclosed in a rainy day.

Prom. Junior, senior year? It doesn't matter anymore. They both took place during a spring storm. Suddenly school hierarchy melted away, and everyone was best friends. I attended both with my girl friends, no dates, and there was something fun and carefree about it, rather than depressing because of the lack of boy attention. I got to dance with someone I'd never admit to having a crush on. The (junior) prom I engineered ended up a masterful success. At an after-party, the class asshole taught me how to use a lasso, and we were friends for a brief moment. (That could have, of course, presaged our random drunken one-night-stands in college, but who knew at the time?) The after-after-party, the first party I ever attended that had beer (I was sheltered!), and an NC-17 movie. We ran barefoot in our princess dresses through the puddles to our cars, and we all drove home at dawn, still raining, to sleep for the whole weekend.

In Chicago, the grey-ness of winter drags at the soul, and it seems interminable to even hope that the sun is just in hiding. The grey days here have power behind them. A hint of menace, and thunder, and an exciting promise. Spring, rebirth? Seems like such a fucking cliche. But still.

Playing music

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

Glorious sadness

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.

Alone for the summer

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.

Super Tuesday

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.

Projects, projects, projects

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.