My Early-Morning Adventure

Here is what happened this morning:

I got to my bus stop and sat down to wait for the bus. 

A man got off a different bus and sat down on the bench next to me.

He was very close.

He was smiling way too much.

He said hello.

I thought OH NO.

I said hi.

He said what’s your name?

I told him my first name.

He told me his first name.

He said you’re beautiful!!!

I said thank you.

He said you smell good!!!

I said thank you.

He said can I get your phone number?

I said no.

He said oh, cause I thought I could get your phone number.

I said no thank you.

He said you wanna t-shirt?

He showed me his plastic bag full of t-shirts.

I said no thank you.

He said you work down here?

I said mmhmm.

He said you work over there?

He pointed to the American Apparel across the street.

I said no.

He said you’re beautiful!!!

I said thank you.

He said are you Cinderella?

I said no.

He said are you Snow White?

I said no.

We sat in miserable silence for a million years.

He said what bus you waiting for?

I said it doesn’t matter.

He said nah, it doesn’t matter.

My bus came and I fled.

The end.

City and Country

Last night I got rid of my futon because the futon frame kept collapsing to the ground and flinging my legs up into the air if I sat on it just the slightest bit wrong.  It was kind of interfering with my sleep, so I banished it from my life and bought a twin size bed from my roommate, one she’d been storing, unassembled, in various parts of the apartment for a while. 

I think we were both happy about this arrangement: I get a bed, she gets to move all the pieces out from behind the couch and out from next to her bed and out of the closet.

So now, thanks to having just a twin size bed that’s on a fairly high frame, I get more space in my teeny tiny little city bedroom and I also get up high off the ground.

This means that I can sit on my bed and look out my window with no trouble at all, and I have a wonderful view of:

the community garden!

I am not allowed in the garden because I am not an old person living in the senior citizen home, but that’s okay, because now I can see it anytime I want from the comfort of my lovely new bed.

And look what I saw this morning!  Can you spot it in this picture taken with my cell phone camera which is less than wonderful quality?

Yes, that is a rabbit.  A big fat tan-colored rabbit that sat in the garden and ate vegetation while I watched and sipped my coffee.

Nature exists in Chicago, and it is cute.

I just wanted you all to be aware.

In other news, I have a great new job that I am just hoping turns into something long-term.  But I have to walk almost a mile from the bus stop to my office building each morning (and back each afternoon), which was starting to make my feet and shins complain. 

So I bought these.  They look professional and dressy but feel like sneakers:

They’re Privos.  This is not an advertisement; I’m just really psyched about my new shoes.

(And excuse my veiny feet up there.  Perpetually pale skin plus years of ballet training does not a pretty foot make.)

Peace!

Question of the Day: #116

Is this some kind of new phenomenon I am missing out on?




 I have seen two different men wearing this shirt in the entire month I have lived in Chicago.

In any case, it is hilarious and I love it.

FYI...and a Question

I have accepted a temporary job at a university in the vicinity of the Chicago area (yes, that’s vague), so my posts might be a little less frequent in the days ahead, and I thought my 3 or 4 total readers ought to know.

Weathered bloggers like this one will tell you that you ought to try to post something every day, to keep the page fresh and alive and growing, and I’ve tried to be pretty good with posting at least every other day or every third day (obviously I haven’t been perfect, but I’m trying). 

That being said, does anyone have any advice for making this thing better? 

I’m not going for world fame or anything, but…I feel like this blog is kind of boring right now and I’m not sure how to improve it.  Maybe once I start having friends and an exciting life, it will get better. 

Til then, though, constructive criticism is welcome!

Thanks and love!

P.S.  The blog I linked you to above is one of my favorite things.  On the same note, I am secretly 40 years old.

The Best Thing Ever: #27

Here is what I saw last night:

A restaurant with live music.

The live music was an old man.

The old man was dressed in a business casual grandfather sort of way, in pressed khaki slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt.

The old man was playing the marimba.

By “playing the marimba,” I mean hitting it sporadically, not necessarily creating any sort of melody or rhythm.

The old man was also singing what I can only describe as a “sailor song,” meaning that it had kind of that yo-ho-ho quality to it.

The man’s voice was rather high and warbled.

The restaurant patrons did not look like they were loving the music.

And that is why this was the best thing ever: it made my day.

Ballerina Neurosis

I’ve been getting back to my ballet roots lately by taking adult classes at the Joffrey, which has been fun.  It’s nice to start dancing again and not worry about things like performances, or pointe shoes, or the fact that I don’t have a perfect dance body or very high extensions or perfect turnout.

I can just go and take class and get on with my life, which is perfect.

At least that’s how it is in theory, because the first night of class, I was nervous enough to do this to my fingernail:





I had to very poorly edit this in MS Paint to recapture how much blood there was.  Apologies.  I don't have Photoshop.

Remember that scene from Black Swan?  I considered finding it on YouTube and posting it here, but I just didn’t want to put myself through that part of the movie again. 

I did the same thing yesterday during a job interview.  I had a big bloody hangnail by the end of it.  Luckily there was a big table in between myself and the interviewer, so he couldn’t see how my nerves were being represented on my body.

Oh, and I got the job, so there’s that.  J

How to Feel About the Homeless

The title of this post is ridiculous, and I did that on purpose, because there is no one way and no right way to feel about the homeless, if you’re a person with any sort of soul.  And that’s what I’m here to talk about today.

I never had to think about them very much, living in a semi-rural part of PA, but of course here, there are jobless, homeless, foodless individuals all over the place.  Sometimes I go down to Michigan Avenue just to walk and clear my head and distress, but seeing these people around every corner provides me with a different kind of stress altogether. 

What are you supposed to do?  I’m hardly able to help a person in a significant way; I’m a student with very little disposable income and my own expenses to worry about.  And plenty more people are just like me.  You can’t help the less fortunate all the time because you simply don’t have the means.

Dig a little deeper, though, and there are more ideas at play.  I’ve heard so many times that homeless folks are alcoholics, druggies, or just lazy people who don’t care to work.  It’s true often enough to be a valid concern, and it’s the reason why I haven’t blown my student loans on taking care of these people.

It’s just not true often enough for me to ignore the homeless completely.  Sure, if someone is openly drunk and begging for change, I’ll be happy to avoid them (the same goes for the ones with cigarettes, heartless as that may be).  But how can you tell, just by glancing at someone on the corner, what they do in private?  How they use the handful of dimes you give them?  How important is it to find out?

I am very easily (too easily) swayed by the opinions of others.  One person will say that giving to the homeless is a waste of time and money, which quickly leads me in the direction of cold cynicism towards homeless people.  Then someone else says that he gives what he can, when he can, and instantly I begin to see through compassionate lenses again.  And—much like the generalization about the homeless themselves—neither response is true or good enough to work all the time.

So now, I try to follow my instincts.  It doesn’t even have to include homeless people; some young boys selling M&Ms for their Little League teams got some of my change, and so did an old man sitting in the hot sun near the river yesterday.  The sun was in his eyes, and I’m not sure if it was the bright light or something else that kept causing him to tear up.  (It wasn’t because of me and my extraordinary generosity or anything; this was before I gave him any money, just so we’re clear.) 

I don’t know his story, and I’ll likely never see him again, but somehow it just seemed right to help him out a little bit at that moment. 

Everyone has their own way of responding to these issues: you help, you don’t help, you feel guilty, you don’t care, you want to do more and can’t, you could do more and don’t, you rationalize, you justify, you cry, you hope, you pray.

I don’t know the right answers.  I just give a little bit when it feels right, and I hope that it does whatever little amount of good it can do.

My fellow city-dwellers, what do you do?  What do you think?

Things I Miss About Pennsylvania

Yes, in fact, there are a few things I miss about my former life in a semi-rural area of northwestern Pennsylvania.  Here they are:

The post office.  No kidding.  I love almost everything about life in the city, but the post office is not so wonderful.  It has long lines, impatient employees, and very different ways of doing things.

I miss the man at the post office in the tiny town where I used to live, who’d chat with me while he rang up my purchases and whipped some packing tape on my boxes.  In Chicago, I didn’t expect the same level of friendliness, but I did understand the packing tape as just something that goes with the territory: you bring in a box (or buy a box), you fill it, you label it, and the cashier puts tape on it.

Sadly, in Chicago, you must purchase a roll of tape in order to receive approximately a foot and a half of it for your package.

I was not aware of this.  Live and learn, I guess.

My cats.  Okay, they aren’t really mine, they’re my dad’s, but I’ve been around them since they were kittens, over 13 years ago. 

Here’s Baltimore, rolling in a puzzle I did over the summer:

What a weirdo.

And here’s Ottawa, being unusually calm:



Mrrow.



They’re named for the Baltimore Orioles and the Ottawa Senators, two of my dad’s favorite sports teams.

Baltimore is fat, cranky, loud, and needy.  Ottawa is skittish and shy and never learned to meow properly.  I can’t really describe the noise she makes.  It’s sort of like the sound of a small door with rusty hinges opening very slowly.

Ottawa normally stays away from everyone, but when I was living with my dad last year she became friendly with me at night.  As soon as I went to my room to go to bed, she’d zip in there and curl up on the bed. 

If she had extra energy she’d make rusty door hinge noises at me for a while.  So comforting.

And finally, I do miss certain aspects of privacy and solitude.  As much as I like the hustle and bustle of this city, people do get close and it makes a person cranky.  This morning a man was rapping very loudly next to me on the train and there was no way to avoid it. 

These guys can appreciate a quiet summer night in the country:

There are interesting smells, too…not always bad ones, but I mean, you can usually tell what your seatmate on the train had for lunch.  And it often involves ketchup.

That is all.

The Best Thing Ever: #78

SUNGLASSES are the best thing ever.

I am notoriously bad with sunglasses.  Every pair I have ever owned has either been lost, broken, or horribly mangled and melted in the dryer.  (That really is true.)

This is why I have never owned a pair that’s cost more than $12—and even that is pushing it.  My average price limit is $5.  Because I just know that within a month or two, I’ll have to buy new ones.

I spent the last five years in northwestern Pennsylvania, where the sun is insanely bright in the winter, so you have to wear sunglasses pretty much year-round.  I don’t know how different that might be in Chicago.  Looking forward to finding out, and to discovering where I can still buy $5 pairs in this big city.

Anyway!  Why are sunglasses the best thing ever?

1.  Obviously, they play an important role in protecting your eyes from sun and wind.  These ones especially.  See how big the frames are?  You can’t even see my eyebrows in these, and with my eyebrows, that’s saying something.

2.  Even the cheap ones can be pretty cute and stylish.  I found this particular pair in a consignment shop in Lexington, Kentucky.  They were $10.  I don’t know what brand they are or why they were consigned, but they’re awfully cute. 

Check out the sophisticated gold detail here:

And the fabulous pinkness here:

3.  Sunglasses can help you avoid awkward moments with strangers.  (This is very important in my life.)

In addition to never being able to hold onto my sunglasses, I am also pretty awkward socially.  Not in a debilitating, I-have-a-diagnosed-social-condition way, but just in the fact that I’m shy and never really mastered the art of Successful Interaction With People You Don’t Know Well.

I go running outside a lot in the summer, and now that I’ve moved here, I walk around my neighborhood pretty frequently, too (more on my cozy, sweet neighborhood in a later post).  Downtown you don’t have to look at anyone because there are too many people and no one cares, but when the street is pretty empty and there are only two or so people coming toward me, I feel panicky.

You know what I mean: Should I smile?  Should I say hi?  Should I even make eye contact?  Uuuuugggghhhh.

Sunglasses solve that problem.  You can stare at the person coming toward you and size them up, wait for them to make eye contact if they wish, and respond appropriately. 

And no one will ever know you’re doing this, because your sunglasses hide your eyes completely.  Otherwise, you have to do the awkward dance of pretending to concentrate very hard on anything but the person, and then just as they're about to pass, you pretend you just realized they're there and give them a pleasant smile. 

This is why I try never to leave home without my sunglasses, and this is why they are the best thing ever.

The Surprise

This morning, I woke up to a job offer.

I’d applied for a receptionist position downtown, and someone from the company got back to me extremely quickly and explained more about the position, what it entailed.  Essentially, I had the job if I just provided some information.

Are you suspicious yet?  Wait, there’s more:

This job consisted largely of handling jewelry sales for an international company and then wiring the payments to Switzerland.

Now you’re DEFINITELY suspicious.

As a part-time remote personal assistant, I would receive a 10% commission on each sale.  Also, the “Financial Representative” from Switzerland who supposedly wanted to hire me was using a GMAIL ACCOUNT and wasn’t too concerned about spelling or punctuation.

Yeah, I got scammed.

Obviously I didn’t reply.  But keep in mind I already applied for this job a few days ago, meaning I sent in my resume, which has my address and phone number and most of my work history on it.

So now I’m just going to sit on my hands and hope that my identity doesn’t get stolen.

There is no moral to this story, except be smart.  Yes, I applied for this job through Craigslist, but that doesn't mean it's a bad route to take.  Craigslist is as full of valid, respectable jobs as it is full of creeps and scammers. 

I really need a job, you guys.

And on that note...Happy Labor Day!

UPDATE, 9/6: This happened again.  Different job, different scam attempt, another stressful deflection on my part.  Am I really a moron?

I am never getting a job.   I am going to stay in school and live off federal loans forever, because the world is out to get me.

The Best Thing Ever: #19

The best thing ever is BAKING SODA!

Baking soda is my favorite invention.  It can do everything.

Besides its obvious function in baking delicious things, baking soda can:

Clean your coffee maker.

Help scrub disgusting oil off the bottom of the pan after a popcorn crisis.  (I promise it looked way worse before.)

Baking soda can clean just about anything, and it makes your hands soft and smooth in the process.  When it’s fresh, it smells like nothing, which is the smell of clean.

After a month sitting in your spice drawer it will start to smell like mint and cinnamon…just FYI.

Thank you, baking soda, for being amazing, even though I think I used you incorrectly when I made cookies last night and they turned out looking like this:

Oh well.

Some Southern Hospitality, Far From the South

Today an awful moment turned into a wonderful moment.

For some people—many people—what happened would have turned an awful moment into an even worse moment, but for me it was sublime.

Let me back up.  For two days now it has been HOT.  And I mean insanely, disgustingly, I-want-to-die hot.  So after a night sleeping in a pool of sweat and spending the next day curled up by the air conditioner, I resigned myself to the fact that I needed to go to the university at which I am enrolled and pick up my UPass, the nifty little transit card that lets me go on any bus and any train in Chicago for a low price.

Today they were giving out UPasses until 6, and they wouldn’t be open again until Tuesday, so when it got close to 4 I decided to be brave and go outside.

I got to school and realized, right when I walked up to the correct building, that I didn’t have my student ID with me.  Gah!  I needed that thing in order to get my UPass, so I had no choice but to go back home (about a 20-30 minute commute) and get it. 

On the way home, because I thought it would make me more productive, I stopped at the grocery and bought a few things for my dinner (to be discussed at the end of this).  By the time I got home and dropped off my food and got my ID, it was close to 5 and I knew I’d better hurry.

Back outside, I hopped on a bus and then caught another train to campus.

All this time, I was very hot.  Sweating, my clothes sticking to me, the whole deal.  I was also getting very hungry and thirsty.  I was cranky about forgetting my ID before.  And then at one of the train stops on my way to campus, one million people got on who were coming from the Cubs game, including maybe 7 or 8 tourists.

These guys were from Dallas.  Most of them were very large and very loud.  (Sadly, I have been in Chicago for less than 2 weeks and I already feel snarky about tourists.)  They filled up the car and made me even crankier, but I consoled myself with the fact that I was getting off in a few stops.

So when I was almost to my stop, I stood up and politely said “Excuse me,” so I could get by.

And a Dallas tourist drawled, “Yes, ma’am.”

And then I was not cranky anymore!

The way that stranger from Dallas spoke to me reminded me of home and happiness and nice people, and got me through the rest of the day.  I am still feeding off it.

I got my UPass and went home and cooked these, with a few alterations (I’m not a big fan of green chiles or tomatoes), and it was one of the best dinners of my life.  The weather has also cooled off considerably since this afternoon. 

Some people, I understand, would not appreciate my adventure on the train today.  A lot of women my age don’t like “ma’am” because it makes them feel or seem old, and people who aren’t from the south might not like it at all.

But it sure made a difference in the life of this lady.  Thank you, Dallas stranger.  You made my day.

How to Live in Chicago

1: Do your first load of laundry in your new apartment.  Discover that the dryer does not dry clothes completely.

2: Decide that you need to buy a drying rack because there are not enough door frames and chair backs and coat hooks in the apartment to finish drying your clothes.

3: Look at Target’s website and find out that they have lots of drying racks to choose from.

4: Print out a map from Google with directions to the closest Target.

5: Take a bus and then a train to get there.

6: Get off the train and realize you are in the shadiest part of town ever.

7: Go inside Target.  Walk to where you think drying racks should be.

8: Find every laundry accessory known to man except for drying racks.

9: Ask a stock guy where the drying racks are.  Listen as he tells you to go back to the exact location you were just in.

10: Go back to that location.  Look around some more.

11: Call CVS and ask if they have drying racks.  Smile with relief when the guy says they do.

12: Leave Target.  Walk back through shady neighborhood to the train station.

13: Wait for the train and read the sign at the community college, which says that it is 84 degrees at 8:36 p.m.

14: Get off the train and decide to walk home instead of taking the bus so that you can save $2.

15: Walk past a cemetery in the semi-dark in the sketchy part of town and totally regret saving $2.

16: Decide that if you aren’t murdered or raped or overcome with shin splints, you are going to buy a ton of ice cream before going home.

17: Go inside the blessedly air-conditioned CVS.  Go to laundry section and do not be surprised that they don’t have any drying racks.

18: Buy toothpaste, face cleanser, and two boxes of ice cream products.

19: Go home, let you clothes sit damply on the bed, and eat ice cream in self-imposed peace.

THE END.