Don't Wait Too Long

I tore out this picture of Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan from last week's New Yorker and tacked it up above my desk. 

I did this for two reasons. 

Then/Now

October in Chicago has been sunshine and honeycrisp apples in oatmeal and a slow easing into the weather change, like wading into a lake. 

That girl running on the lake path today, singing this under her breath?  That was me.





I follow Tavi's style blog. I get this weird pleasure from her posts extolling the virtues of Sassy Magazine, Hole and the movie Heathers. I was her age when all of that stuff was breaking, and one part of me is freaking out, feeling old and bewildered at how much time has passed. The other part of me is vowing not to miss out on Doc Martins this time around.

Dreamlife

I need to quit sleeping so much. 

I wigged myself out this morning with a two-part dream in which a little girl, about 7 years old, killed the Pope (oddly, JP II, not Benedict) and all of the cardinals and nuns standing nearby.  She walked up to him wearing a grey schoolgirl uniform and a beret, gave him a sweet hug and when she pulled away, he was a dried up, shrunken corpse.  All of his attendants dropped dead simultaneously. They were laid out, their skins like a blackened banana all around the outdoor altar we were gathered around.

The second part of the dream took place in a mansion or a compound.  I was trapped there with several other people, who decided to start eating the pets when the food got low.  I rescued Andromeda, Odin and a gray Burmese that was almost hairless.  All three of them went into the same cat carrier, and I walked through the streets with them, promising them that I'd never let anyone kill them. The new cat could talk, she told me she was scared.

Sleep is my drug of choice.  I didn't want to wake up this morning and deal with the logistics of attending a wedding in the suburbs tomorrow with only enough money to either rent a car OR spend the night...not both.  So I kept going back to sleep and to the creepier, more desperate choices of the dream world. 

September, je t'aime

Today was one of those weird days where you can see the moon in broad daylight.  Staring at it, I felt like an alien who had landed here, taking in the skyscrapers against the clear sky and wondering where it all ends up.

September's over.  I'm back at my desk in my treehouse (or, as I sometimes call it, the Kit Kat Club)  The computer situation is partially...mostly solved.  I've been ripping out recipes for braised pork shoulder and spiced cakes and pasta dishes heavy on mushrooms and red wine.  Looking forward to October, to writing my damn book and to hot apple cider with whipped cream.

Technical glitch aside, writing here every day has been great, great fun and good practice for me.  I may not be back every day, but if a week goes by without a post, by all means -- give me the business.  Sitting down and forcing myself to write something, anything before midnight comes has been a better exercise than I anticipated.

Big shout-out to JP at Buttered Noodles for hitting the big 3-0 (posts) today, too.

Knots to Untangle

OK, it's not the absolute worst time for my computer to go tits up, but it's far from ideal. 

I'm back at Winston's on the shared machine, the only one of the two that doesn't have the same virus as my laptop.  Looks like I'll be dropping some unexpected cash on a new computer sooner than I'd hoped. 

My dad and stepmom recently divorced after more than two decades of marriage.  One of the hardest parts has been counseling my dad through the random shit that happens in life -- things that my stepmother used to just deal with for the both of them.  He gets so upset when an unexpected credit card fee pops up or when the Internet service he ordered and paid for turns out to be spotty at the river cottage he moved into this spring.  He takes it personally, and spins into rages at these little indignities.  "Dad, this is life, these kind of things happen all the time and they happen to everybody," my brother and I found ourselves saying over and over.

And tonight, I'm having to say it to myself.  Over and over.

grrrr. 

Bloggus Interruptus

I did not forget to post yesterday.  I wrote very dutifully about Little Ed and my crazy upstairs neighbor last night.  But posting was thwarted because my computer is infected with a virus or some type of malware (which is a very badass word). 

My five year old computer has been dying without dignity since January.  I'm taking her in the shop again tomorrow, but I fear the end is near.  I am posting this tonight from the free public computer at Winston's -- the leather-bar-turned-24-hour coffee-shop a couple of blocks down.  I may be the first patron in the establishment's history to use this computer for something other than cruising "HoTT BuTTs" or "Sinagaporean Sloppy Sluts." Or, you know, Facebook.

Anyway.  I will be back on track through Thursday, either on this borrowed machine or on my own computer now living on borrowed time.  Say a few Hail Marys for us, won't you?

September 27: The Visitor

I have just gotten back to sleep after a breaking up the 6am cat war that is fought in or around my bed every day when the sun starts to rise. Someone is banging on my door. That can’t be right. I don’t know a single person who would be banging on my door at 7:30am on a Friday.
“Hello??” Bang bang bang.
I recognize my upstairs neighbor’s baritone with its dramatic flourish, “Hel-OOO??!”
Here’s what I know about my upstairs neighbor: he writes poetry, he has a pet bird that he frequently shouts at to “Shut up! Shut UP!!” He spends a great deal of time out on his back porch, directly above mine. He appears to be about 70 years old, with an entirely bald head and dresses in sandals and button down shirts from the Frank Costanza cabana wear collection. I sometimes wonder if my cats and I are going to get contact high from the clouds of earthy pot smoke that waft in through my open windows and from the hallway. His musical tastes run from The Little Mermaid soundtrack to Donna Summer.

I open the door a crack, trying to keep Odin and Andromeda from darting out into the hallway and leading me on a chase up and down stairs to retrieve them.

“Oh, hi!,” he drags out key words like he’s doing an impression of Joan Collins. “Listen, I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to be banging around upstairs for a bit because there is a squirrel in my apartment.”
“A squirrel?” I wonder for a minute if I’m still dreaming.

“Yes, I had my screen door open yesterday and this squirrel just ran right into my dining room from outside! Well, I tried calling the City and they said they’d send someone but that was yesterday and of course they haven’t done a goddamn thing. So I called our management company and they sent someone over, and I thought I heard it run out the door so I sent him away. Well then this morning, I walked into the dining room and I heard this grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.” he makes a low growl that I’ve never in my life heard come out of a squirrel. “So, he’s still in there!”

I think I get it now. “OK”, I say as cheerily as one can when one has been roused from sleep by cats and strange neighbors. “No problem, thanks – “
But now he’s launched into scolding. “Do not keep food on your back porch. If you keep any food out there it attracts animals. That’s why I had this squirrel run into my apartment."

This kind of pisses me off. I don’t keep food out on my porch – why would I? “OK, I don’t keep food out there, but thanks.”

“You shouldn’t because it attracts all kinds of critters.”

“OK, I won’t,” I say, guiltily remembering the night I put out a dish for a sweet stray cat that followed me up from the laundry room and the 2-3 times I’ve put my trash bag out on the porch overnight so it won’t fester in my kitchen overnight.

I have never seen evidence of squirrels in the garbage. I’ve never even seen a squirrel on the back porches. Not that it would be surprising, we live right at tree level on a street lined with old sugar maples and oaks.

This also isn’t the first time I’ve gotten a dubious lecture from Mr. Upstairs. He came down one day after I lit my charcoal grill and claimed that the smoke was flooding into his apartment and that if I followed his technique where you light just four coals, let them get ashy and then pile up the rest of the coals around them, there will be no smoke at all.

I didn’t point out to him that what he was proposing would make twice the ignition smoke and take twice as long, just like I don’t point out to him now that the reason the squirrel ran into his apartment is because he had his back door wide open.
I agree through clenched teeth, and my neighbor, satisfied by my promise, goes upstairs and bangs around. Presumably the squirrel gets the message, I didn’t hear anything else about it all weekend.
Tonight, I came home from the office, and pulled the trash out of the can. I put it outside on the porch quietly, remembering the dire warnings I received last week. “Whatever, dude.” I think to myself.

Shutting the back door, I notice that one of the jars on my kitchen windowsill has been pushed almost to the edge. Cats must have been up here. I move it back into place, and come face to face with a black, eager little eye.

This isn't THE squirrel, just A squirrel.  A cute squirrel.

It’s the goddamn squirrel! He sits on my windowsill, looking straight at me then scurries halfway up the side of the drainpipe toward the upstairs deck.
Laughing, I retrieve the trash bag from my porch. Point: upstairs neighbor.

The little squirrel comes right back. Even now, he’s curled up, sleeping adorably on the outside ledge of my kitchen window with his tail wrapped around the top of his body. Part of me wonders if he has rabies. Part of me wonders if he was a pet or something – am I just imagining the longing on his face as he peers into my kitchen? Part of me wonders if maybe…he’s a little hungry. I think of the almonds in my cupboard.
Anthromorphizing animals and other objects is an old, old habit of mine. When I was in Kindergarten, I wrote and illustrated my first book, “Little Ed Under the Bed” about a little girl who brings all of her stuffed animals into the bed to sleep with her, but forgets all about Little Ed under the bed. She’s wracked with guilt when she finds him the next morning and promises to never leave him down there again.

And so I keep checking on little Ed out there on the window. Wondering if he’ll be gone in the morning.