George Singleton: Read This Now

Before I lived in Chicago, I lived in northwestern Pennsylvania.  Before that, I lived (briefly) in the pinkie finger of Michigan.  And before THAT, I lived for 15 years in Kentucky. 

If you pull out a map, you might be like, Hmm.  Haven’t really strayed too far from the Great Lakes region lately, have you?  No, I haven’t. 

But I think I’m truly a Kentuckian at heart.  Every time I go back, it just seems like I’m supposed to be there.  Don’t tell my family, though, because they already beg me to move back to Lexington all the time, and if I were to actually do that, I think I’d get sick of it really quickly and not love Kentucky anymore.  So I’ll stick to living in Chicago and going home on a regular basis.

Anyway.

What was I saying?  Oh.  So, I stopped at Powell’s Bookstore in Hyde Park some months ago.  Powell’s is a small chain of bookstores that, somehow, has the ability to sell regular ol’ books for half or a third or a quarter of the original price.  Most of the books look new, and there are some real steals in there, so don’t ask me how they do it. 

I picked up five or so books for about twenty bucks, including a book of short stories by George Singleton, These People Are Us.  The reviews (you know how they take words or phrases from reviews and stick them in quotes on the back cover?) said that the stories were really funny, and the book cost five dollars,  so into the basket it went.

Well, I found something magical that day.

If you enjoy humor even a little bit, and especially if you’re from the South, please, please, PLEASE read George Singleton’s work.  He is a master of the human condition, particularly humans who are average Joes just trying to get along in life without causing too much trouble.  His protagonists are almost always men, roughly in their late thirties, nearly always married to strong, sensible women or at least dealing with the heartbreak that comes from losing a strong, sensible woman.  They have manual-labor jobs and enjoy a drink or two.  They all live in the same area of South Carolina, where racism is still rampant (though Singleton’s characters are happy to crack the heads of anyone who’s okay with it).  They don’t see themselves as particularly smart, but they work hard and just try to make sure everything turns out all right.

So far I’ve finished two of Singleton’s short-story collections (These People Are Us and Drowning in Gruel), started a third (The Half-Mammals of Dixie), and devoured a novel (Work Shirts for Mad Men).  I cleaned out Powell’s entire Singleton collection and plan to supplement the rest on my Kindle.

These books make me so happy that I plan on giving all my hard copies away, so that I can share that happiness appropriately.  They are nothing short of perfect.  Please go out and read some Singleton immediately.  Thank you.

The Best Thing Ever: #7

This weekend I had to go home to Kentucky very suddenly.  The reason was sad: my sweet Uncle Jack (who was actually a great-uncle) had died, and his funeral was Saturday. 

My family is huge, and even though I never got to know Uncle Jack very well, I knew he always meant a lot to my cousins, aunts and uncles, and grandparents.  It was important for me to take off work and be with them.

And because Jack was a beloved man who lived a long, successful life, the event was more of one of those “celebration of life” funerals than a somber affair.  There was singing, and dancing, and remembering, and laughing.  No one wore all black.  I wore a fuschia dress, for heaven’s sakes.  It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to.

Coming from Chicago, and with only a few hours to prepare for a trip home, I had to think quickly.  And that’s when the Megabus and I became friends.

Megabus is the best thing ever.

Here’s the secret of Megabus: it’s better than Greyhound. 

It’s a giant blue double-decker bus.

It doesn’t have “stations,” per se.  It just has stops, which consist of little blue signs in cities and towns throughout the East and Midwest.

That allows it to be monster cheap.  When I say monster cheap, I mean that I got a round-trip ticket from Chicago to Cincinnati, day of travel, for $82.50.

And the best part comes when you get on the bus, and maybe you have to cut in front of a person or two, but then you can sit on the top level in the very front.  Then you can take dorky pictures like this one:

You’re welcome.

And bless you, Uncle Jack, for a life well-lived and a family who knew that a fun, rollicking funeral was the kind you’d like the best.

Andersonville, Andersonville

Today my roommate and I visited Andersonville, the North Side neighborhood of Chicago known for its Swedish heritage.  (Shout out to my friend and fellow blogger Brittany: if you come to Chicago again, WE NEED TO VISIT THE SWEDISH AMERICAN HERITAGE MUSEUM.  That is all.)

Here are a few other things I learned about Andersonville:

It has a pretty strong Middle Eastern population, judging by all the Middle Eastern cafes we passed by.

It has a lot of design-y, arty stores where you can buy trendy end tables and such. 

It’s not the kind of place to go when you feel like browsing a bunch of boutiques, which is what we were going to do, but whatever on that.

I did find this sweet old Polish woman selling jewelry, and bought a gorgeous green amber ring:

Then we stopped at the bookstore Women and Children First, which yeah, borders a little bit on anti-men sentiments, but still had a lot of interesting books and things.

Finally, we had gluten-free crepes at Icosium Café, which is Algerian, and had $3 glasses of juice.

I had pomegranate.

Roommate had mango. 

We ate our gluten-free crepes and talked about our dreams for the future.

Thanks, Andersonville.

The Sister Post

My little sister came to visit me this weekend.

When I say “little sister,” I really do mean it.  My sister never ages beyond eight years old or so, even though, chronologically, she is fully 21 years old and can buy adult beverages.  She’ll never not be my baby sister.

We had the most brilliant time, and the truth is, we didn’t do much that I hadn’t done several times before.  I always take my visitors to Millennium Park, for example.  We shopped at H&M, which I only discovered after I moved here and have never looked back.  We went to the Sears Tower (no, I’m not going to call it Willis Tower) and it was the third time I’d been there since I moved to Chicago.

But it was completely awesome, because I was with the person I’ve grown up with since I was three years old.

I moved out of the house when I was 17.  Since then, visits with my sister have always been in the context of holidays or family get-togethers.  Of course we always spend plenty of time together, but usually in the company of at least one or several other people. 

This time was different.  Just about everything we did, it was just us two.

Here’s a smattering of things we did:

Watched a Cubs game

Ate cinnamon rolls at Ann Sather

Slept in my twin bed for two nights

Watched a movie while sitting all tangled up on the couch

Rode the trains around and around the city

Took pictures and Instagram-ed everything

Talked about everything

Laughed about everything.

Sisters are wonderful things.  Everyone should have one.

How to Run Your First 5K

      1.       Join a running club.  Doesn’t matter how big or important it is, just join a running club     so that you’ll actually feel obligated to run.

2.       Spend an obscene amount of money on fancy sports bras.

3.       Start running.  Become somewhat preoccupied with the thought of running when you’re at work, at school, wherever.  Google “mile splits” so that you can understand what everyone else is talking about.

4.       Start feeling superior over non-runners because OH GEE, YOU CAN RUN TWO MILES.

5.       Donate your old pants to charity because they start being all loose and mom jean-looking.

6.       Start feeling superior over non-runners because OH GEE, NOW YOU CAN RUN THREE MILES!

7.       Sign up for a 5K.

8.       Look down your nose at anything cotton.

9.       Run five miles on a whim and consider yourself the champion of the world.

10.   On race day, get up obscenely early.  Eat four Twizzlers for breakfast.  Drastically miscalculate how long it will take you to get to the race location.  Stand around when you get there, awkwardly waiting for the race to start. 

11.   When you cross the start line, run like hell for 3.1 miles.  Feel superior over the people in their vehicles who have to wait for ten minutes at an intersection so that you and everyone else can run past.

12.   Do a decidedly mediocre job at finishing.  Gorge yourself on pizza at 9:00 in the morning.  Decide that you are once again the champion of the world and you can’t wait to do it all over again.

Look Ma, I runnededed!!!

The Best Thing Ever: #100

The other day, it was payday, and I stopped by Nordstrom Rack.  After a week of scrimping and saving, I wanted to splurge a little bit.

I looked through a few dresses and sweaters, picked up a new bag, and thought maybe it’d be fun to get a new wallet to go with it.

That’s when I found this:

And my heart stopped.

It was perfect.  It was brilliant.  The little Degas-inspired ballerinas  reminded me of my years and years as a ballet dancer.  The leather gave it a sophisticated edge, and the way the leather was shaped and puckered gave it kind of that unique, artsy feel.

Then I looked at the price tag.  I died a little bit.  It was $80.

But it was too late.  The little ballerina clutch had already taken up residence inside me.  It was a part of who I was.

I pretended to deliberate with myself for another minute or two, then took a deep breath and walked up to the cash register.  The sweet cashier took the ballerina clutch delicately out of my hands.

“This is beautiful,” she said.  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“I know!” I squealed.

She rang it up.  “And today is your lucky day,” she said, “because this is one cent.”

I stared at her for a few seconds.  “Um…what?”

“Yeah,” she said, and shrugged.  “Sometimes they put them in the system wrong, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  This costs one penny.” 

“Okay,” I said, after a moment of stunned silence.  “I’ll take it!”

Yes, this clutch is just a material object.  I don’t normally rely so much on material objects for my self-worth and completion of myself as a human being, but this clutch is just something.

I’ll love it forever.

And it cost me one cent.

It was the best thing ever.  The end.

Chicago Dentistry is Hardcore

I am one of maybe seven or eight people out there who don’t hate going to the dentist.  I never have.  It’s just one of those things, like doing laundry, that (for me) is a more or less tolerable chore where at least you get a fresh, clean reward at the end.

Turns out when you live in a big city and are occasionally lonely, going to the dentist can become quite a pleasant thing.  Someone nice massages your jaw, pokes around in your mouth, and compliments you on your flossing habits.  Win!

Also, turns out that Chicago dentists are really hardcore about what they do.  Seriously, the other day, I thought I was just going in to my new dentist for a routine cleaning.  Instead, here’s what happened:

They took 18 x-rays of my mouth with a bunch of sharp, hurt-y things.

They stuck some instruments in my mouth and said things like “3…2…3…4…3…2…3” for five minutes.

They stuck a camera in my mouth and took fancy snapshots of my teeth.

Then the dentist sat and talked with me about my teeth.  At first, he was like, your teeth are AWESOME!  You are the flossing champion of the world!

And then he was like, oh, but I need to put some fillings in.  Six fillings, to be exact.

I have never had a filling.

The fact that I needed fillings at all was news to me.  But as the dentist showed me, teeth can sometimes be disgusting.  More specifically, teeth are funky-shaped (this is a technical term, look it up, people) and sometimes even the flossing champion of the world can’t reach every nook and cranny.

Not that YOU care, but I have to make myself feel better, okay?

I thought about showing you guys a picture of one of my better teeth, but then I decided that would be disgusting.  You're welcome.