2006 July

I am sitting in an outdoor café waiting for a car to hit me.  Or: a bomb to explode right now, incinerating newspapers, cigarette butts and the stray page from some organization’s strategic plan that’s been blowing between the sidewalk cracks. 

I’m out this Saturday afternoon looking like a cancer patient – all dark undereye circles and unwashed hair.  I’ve stopped caring that these jeans are a little too short for flip flops and the zit on my right cheekbone isn’t adequately concealed. 

At least I walked out of the apartment building, down N Street to this corner Starbucks which is full of Europeans hanging around the flat screen TV cheering loudly for Germany, now battling Portugal for third place. 

At least I bought a newspaper and new sunglasses to replace my beloved Target pair from the beginning of the summer.  I must have left them behind on a shelf of the dressing room at Banana Republic.  Stupid, I call myself.  But then, more gently – this is what life is all about.  We get things, we lose things.  And so I make an unscheduled stop at Filene’s for a subpar substitute pair.  They don’t block my eyes as much as the lost ones.  I don’t feel as fashionably distant. 

I had planned to walk up 16^th Street to Meridian Hill Park to read, drink iced coffee and maybe meditate a little.  Even though I don’t technically know how to meditate.  I was thinking I’d just sit on some grass and close my eyes or something. 

But after the sunglasses selection and purchase, I felt exhausted, almost defeated, and in great danger of going home and getting back into bed.  After all of my getting out of the house struggle earlier today – the fight to get my feet moving toward downtown and a bra on my chest in the first place – I can’t let that happen.  So it’s here, outside.  

Reading the Style section – “former Governor Mark Warner dined Friday night with some friends at Oya downtown.  They shared appetizers, entrees and bottles of wine.” Oh god.  Something about this fills me with dreadful sadness.  Dinner with friends.  Bottles of wine. 

I put my head down on the table.  OK, now this looks a little crazy, I tell myself.  Why do you have your head down like a sleepy Kindergartener?  This makes my eyes well up.  Well for fuck’s sake.  Crying?  Crying outside at the Starbucks?  There is a car stopped at the stoplight right next to you.  I can hear the car stereo through the open windows.  Why can’t you put your head up so those people know you’re ok? 

Crying at Starbucks.  Well this is pretty low, isn’t it?  I finally sit up and my whole spine aches like I have finished some impressive workout.  The lifting up makes the tears actually squeeze out of my eyes like slippery puppies – down my cheeks before I can restrain them. 

Great.  Now it’s not that I’m tired or dizzy, I’m the girl crying in public.  Again.  There is one man at a table behind me.  What if he asks me if I’m OK?  What will I tell him?   

I start rubbing my temple and the third eye spot as soon as I’ve got the teariness under control.  Headache.  You know these migraines – how they jump out at you from nowhere.  That’s what I’m telling the people who may or may not be staring at me from the Starbucks inside.  Carry on.  Nothing to see here.

The Trouble With Jars

Occasionally, I become paranoid that I'm edging over the line between quirky and socially unacceptable.

In the last couple of years, I've become a little attached to jars.  Chicago doesn't have a recycling program that's worth a damn and, let's face it, everyday chores are enough of a challenge for this girl.  It's not like I'm going to faithfully rent a zipcar to haul a bunch of recycleables to the nearest facility.

Jars are so handy.  I use them for my makeup brushes, spare change, to hold extra soup and sauces.  I use them for the 1 trillion safety pins that come home with the dry cleaning.  And I think they are pretty.  I like the shapes.  I like glass.

But inevitably, there are extras.  There are some in my cupboard, and I've pulled some out and put them on top of my yikky white kitchen cupboards to add a little visual interest.

These guys live in my kitchen

Just tonight, there was a new spaghetti sauce jar and a salsa jar ready for the dishwasher.  I paused before putting them in.  Is this how it starts...my inevitable decline into hoarding?  With jars?  I had a vision of the future -- my family members placing concerned phone calls amongst themselves, "well I knew there was something wrong when she started with those damn jars."

I've already made my sister Ariel promise that if I ever need a hoarding intervention, she'll hire Dr. Zazio.  Her voice!  It's so soothing!