En Route

Recently, in honor of SUMMERTIME!!!, my hours got changed slightly at work.  Not dramatically—I just come in and leave a half-hour later than usual—but it’s enough to give me an extra half-hour’s sleep, and it required me to learn The Rules of my new commute. 

During the rest of the year, I’ve pretty much had my commute down to a science that involves a healthy combination of reliance on the CTA Tracker and my own experiences with each bus and/or train.  I’ve also gotten to know some people quite well, even though we are strangers.  Seeing them for a few minutes every day is enough for a lifetime.  Know what I mean? 

Here are a few of the characters I’ve gotten to know, and whose faces I doubt I’ll see again until September when my schedule returns to normal:

The Ceremonial Smoker.  Middle-aged woman, slight, with a dark, bobbed haircut.  Every morning we get off the bus together and she makes a beeline for the awning of the Chase Bank, where she lights a cigarette and huffs it down before getting to the train.  I can just imagine her being like, This is MY time, dammit.

The Boy Next Door.  Nicely-dressed young professional.  Muscle Milk drinker.  Totally adorable.  One time this other guy drove by while the Boy Next Door and I were waiting for the bus at 6:30 a.m. and demanded directions to Magnolia Ave.  Boy Next Door said, with the slightest Southern drawl, “Magnol-ya?  Ah don’t know.  Ah apologize.”  My heart died of happiness.

Peanut Butter.  A thirty-something nurse with a Peter Pan haircut who rides a crowded bus eating a peanut butter sandwich on a regular basis.  Kudos on a healthy breakfast, but that early in the morning, in a crowded space, there are few smells more nauseating.

Rat’s Nest.  Older woman, petite, rides the bus to Hyde Park.  She reads books on a wide variety of topics and seems utterly normal except that her hair is always a gigantic mess.  What’s going on?  Does she not brush it?  I don’t know.

Angry Face.  I used to think this guy who rides from Hyde Park to the Loop every afternoon was a musician or something because he likes to gesture emphatically with his hands and face, and I thought he was conducting music in his head.  But now I think that he’s just having a fantasy argument with someone he hates.  Probably one of his coworkers.  I feel bad for Angry Face because I think he hates his job.

The Bear.  My favorite bus driver of all time.  I usually catch him on the way home from Hyde Park.  He’s a big guy with dreadlocks and a drawling voice.  When you say thank you to him, he says, “Uh-huh, watch your step,” really adorably.

Farewell til September, commuter friends.

Why I Eat Meat

Today I bought some ground bison and some hickory-smoked turkey bacon and some wild-caught salmon fillets, and I got to thinking about meat in general.

Oh man.

OH MAN.

A while ago the New York Times ran a contest of sorts where people could send in essays about their ethical reasons for eating meat.  Obviously, there are plenty of ethical reasons NOT to eat meat.  For some people it’s a religious thing; for others it’s political; for others stll, it’s environmental.  For a lot of people it’s a health issue.  Some people just plain don’t like it.

I get all those, but if I don’t eat meat, I feel like a sad little anemic red blood cell.  My insides have frowny faces if I don’t get a regular dose of hamburger.

Also I’m training for a 10K, and while it’s totally possible to be vegetarian or even vegan and have a really hardcore athletic lifestyle, it just wouldn’t work for me.  I promise.

I don't know when the Times' contest closed, and honestly I don't really have a good ethical reason to eat meat; I just need to eat meat.

I’m also not sure why I feel the need to defend my omnivorism.  I suppose it really only comes down to the fact that I wouldn’t mind eating steak for breakfast.  In fact, I have eaten steak for breakfast.  And I feel like a lot of people would judge me for that.

Here’s a poem I wrote a few years ago about the process of cooking a whole chicken: 

Dinner for Two

 A knife, and you: the bird lies in the sink

A pair of shears, the yellow, mottled fat.

Insistent hands tear bone from shiny pink

Muscle, and I toss some to the cat.

I never knew a “tender” was a part—

I just thought fast food chains devised the name.

You show to me the kidneys and the heart,

 The wishbone sits to dry, our little game.

The Pope’s nose cut away, the spine thrown out,

The pieces, two by two, lined on a pan.

Defrocked, defiled, the skin is strewn about,

We scoop it up, we dump it in the can.

By ten o’clock, our dinner’s nearly done.

I don’t mind eating late—my heart, you’ve won.

(I don't love this poem but some people have told me that they do.  So whatever.)

Trying to Be Fun

This weekend a friend and I went to Chinatown for dinner, where the two of us ordered five enormous dishes (duck, beef, and crab for the proteins, with green beans and baby bok choy alongside) and I had the misfortune of ordering what turned out to be a child’s drink.  It was labeled in the menu as “Japanese Soda.”  When I ordered it, the waiter informed me that “that’s for a baby,” and then enjoyed bringing it to me, snapping a rubber nipple-type thing on top, and letting me drink it:

It was fine.  It tasted like orange soda.  It was full of high-fructose corn syrup.  I was only briefly humiliated.

Anyway, back to the story.  We planned to watch a movie after our adventurous dinner, and to make that happen we had to make sure we were fully stocked with wine and ice cream, and then by the time we did that, and watched our movie, I was nearly asleep.  At this point it was suggested to me that I should stay the night.

This had me a little bit panicked at first, as the following thoughts went through my head:

HOW WILL I BRUSH MY TEETH?

I DON’T HAVE ANY SPARE CLOTHES!

I DON’T HAVE MY SPECIAL ALLERGEN-FORBIDDING PILLOWCASE!

I DON’T HAVE MY MOUTHGUARD AND I WILL BE GRINDING MY TEETH ALL NIGHT!

Then I decided, screw all that, I’m not going to die.

So I slept on my friend’s plush, wonderful couch.  The next morning I splashed some water on my face and we went out for pancakes.  I wore all the same clothes I’d had on the day before.  And we had a grand time.

Sometimes I’m anal, and it takes some work to get me out of my funk.  But it’s worth it.  I’m fun.  I promise.  I ORDERED A CHILD’S DRINK!

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.