The World on a String

Anti-Cruelty Society Paw-ilates Class

2009-09-02T20:01:00.000-07:00

She looked up at me with her giant eyes and said the four words I hate most of all.

"We have to talk."

"Oh jeez," said I-only I pronounce it like I'm from Minnesota so it sounds more like 'O-cheese'. "What did I do?"

"Look Ann," said Grantley.

"O-cheese, here it comes."

"If it's because I don't want to spend the entire night in bed with you..." Her voice trailed off.

"Whaaaah. You didn't like it?" I ask, my voice betraying my advanced disappointment.

She sighs deeply.
"It's not that I didn't like it. It was lovely. I just..."

"But I'm the one that got all sweaty. You didn't enjoy any of it? Not even the treats?"

It was true that I had sliced up a vegetarian not-dog and left it on the kitchen counter and so I was not appropriately stockpiled like the other women in the basement of The Anti-Cruelty Society of Chicago. Yeah, women. Wherever I go, piles of them. I should write one of those 'Where to go to meet chicks' books or something. Seriously. It's a gift.

Her eyes followed a motorcycle flying down the Eisenhower.

"Are things this bad between us?" she asked.

"What are you saying?"said I.

"I mean, do you think our communication levels are so bad that we have to exercise together? On top of all the walking and whatnot? I thought you were doing fine at the gym. Now all of a sudden I have to hold you up for some sorta crazy double Pilates leg extensions? Don't I already do enough?" she sniffed.

My hand slid over the orange exercise band that had only moments earlier been wrapped around my non-leash holding hand making it smell just like the inside of a balloon.

"Do you not woof me anymore?" asked Grantley as she rested her snout on top of my right shoulder and whispered,"It's a beautiful night. Can you take me to the Burger King on First Avenue? I want to gaze at the Drive-Thru lady until she hands me a cheeseburger of love."

"Okay," I reply as we ignore the Austin exit," So ummm, do you think you could help me with my roll ups next week? I could use you to sit on my feet."

"I'm there." Grantley assured me. "I've always been there for you."

"Awww thanks Grantley. You're the best." I said as I reached down and kissed her on top of her furry head.

"Double cheeseburger." said Grantley.

"Oh cheese.".

Paws-ilates - Pilates for you and your Pet! An integrated program for you and your pet to enjoy gentle massage, Pilates core moves and special time set aside to reconnect, decompress and do something great for you & your dog's bodies. Take care of your posture and your pet's well-being!

Held on Wednesday nights in the Lower Levels of The Anti-Cruelty Society from September 2 through September 30.

To Register please contact Caitlin Peters at (312)644-8338 ext. 307

The World

2009-03-15T19:52:00.000-07:00

The trouble started with the checkbook. There were ads in the local paper about it week after week and I dunno. It just sounded fun. So, I got one and then I talked MK into getting one and then I ended up leaving messages for Le Shish along the lines of: Hey! Get your coupon book already, will ya? Because I didn't want her to miss out.

It was 35 bucks from The Chamber of Commerce. It gave you this ton of checks in different denominations like 15 bucks towards your bill at ________ or 10 towards your purchase at ________. And a lot of the places are place we go. Or places we've been meaning to go. And they're not coupons. They're checks. No strings attached.

Well, we have already received our full value out of it and we've only used two checks.(I promised my Dad he could have the 10 dollars at Brown Cow Ice Cream for his birthday.) The first one was for Two Fish Art Glass and we three went together and had the most excellent time shopping and looking and talking. We really did. It's a cool store. We found these rugs. Hang on a second. Shish found 'em. You recall her shopping advice, don't you? "You have to dig."

For twenty dollars, this is the coolest thing because it's got tons of color AND made of recycled materials AND if it gets dirty you can just hose it off AND you can use it at the beach or the park. I plopped it in the living room after I finally got the floor swept properly.

Then last night, MK and Bob and I went to Trattoria 224 on Harrison and we had the most tremendous dinner. Two fancy salads and two brick oven pizzas and we each paid about 7 bucks each for tax and tip. We laughed because MK and I are all about the value and Bob was all thinking it was an opportunity to have new experiences. ha. Poor Bob. He's so way over his head when he sits between us.

It took me extra time to get the rug unrolled because I had to get my muffler fixed and no, it wasn't my muffler. It was the pipe that ran between the catalytic converter and the muffler and I didn't break it, it had rusted out. That cheered me up for some reason. And I have been busy.

This blog is going to go into semi-retirement. If there's something irresistible comes up, I'll be sure to put it up here and if I can direct you toward my writing someplace else, I'll be sure to post that up here too. I wanted to see if I could go for 365 days and if you count the weak ones, I passed that goal a long time ago and I'm on to some new ones.

MK was not 100% loving her rug selection. Hey look they're plastic, they are not for everyone but when I looked up from watching teevee and saw this?

Ahhh. Perfect.

The Office

2009-03-12T20:49:00.000-07:00

Today I wrote a grant.

Actually re-wrote it. Jazzed it up. Infused it with positivity. And I did it under a tight deadline which was dammed impressive.

Part of me wants to smack it up here and show ya but I have a feeling there's some privileged information in it that's not mine to share with is a bummer because it's a kind of a good and happy story and I'm in it.

I'm sure there's more where that came from.

Lawd willin.

In Front of the Laundromat

2009-03-11T20:29:00.001-07:00

While most people are waiting for Spring? I have been waiting to fall.

It's not that I wanted to wipe out because who would wish that for themselves? But I usually manage to wipe out at least once a winter. People assume it's Grantley related but it never is. She's retractable. Plenty of slack.

I've done about 26 of those Fa-joink Fred Astaire Elbow Souflee manuvers where somehow my toe reaches out and saves me from going down. You know like when acrobats fly off an apparatus and that flourish they do with their entire body? I end up like that only without the sequins or the phoney smile.

Today not so good.

(Oops we've activated the Maternal Worrying System. I'm fine Mah. Not to worry.)

I was commuting, just dashing past the yucky 24 hour laundromat and my foot hit the tiniest patch of black ice. Kablooie. Down I went.

Bam. Hit the sidewalk. Knee then hands followed by the rest of me.

The sidewalk is much colder and harder than you give it credit for when you get that close to it.

The happy thing is that there was a car filled with laundry doers and they stopped and gestured to see if I was okay. I gave them the international Good Lawd Have Mercy How Embarrassing signal that it appeared I was going to live another day and then very slowly I got up.

When I got to work, one of the women who said she really missed her children was packing me an ice bag before I could roll up my pants and survey the damage and the rest of the day I was trying to remember if my Dad called these kinda scrapes Strawberries or Raspberries.

The Shish was excited because ya know, any occasion to slather someone with Neosporin is a happy day for her. (In another life she was either a surgeon or medicine (wo)man.)

2009 was the year to fall forward in spring.

The Gym

2009-03-10T19:36:00.000-07:00

I sampled a new class tonight at the gym. (Which is another way of saying, who is going to help me get out of bed in the morning?)

I was between something called SPLASH! and something called TurboKick. I asked Grantley which one she'd go for and she remained silent 0n the topic but I recalled that she side-stepped some H2O just moments before(in the blogosphere, I mean)and my Mah? When kickboxing first came out and I said I wanted to do it? My Mah was like...oooh nooooo. That's tooooo violent.

Which (even tho it's like 80 years later)means I had to try it. Right?

Plus I've been feeling very irritated. Not irritable because that would be my fault, correct? Irritated. I think maybe it's the time change or maybe it's those other annoying things.

Yeah you know. People.

But I digress. Off I went to TurboKick. I did my usual 'trying to chat with someone who looked reasonably pleasant and/or nice' as we all waited for Edna (yes, her real name)to complete the previous class which is known as Ab Blast.(Notice I haven't sampled that one yet. There's scary and there's scary, no?) The lady I selected to cheer me up did not fill me with joy and/or optimism. Which was rude because it was so clear that I needed a little bit of each.

I inquired, "Is this really hard?"

And she said, "Yes."

Wow, huh? Is it any wonder that I captured the center spot of the coveted back row? Okay painful learning experience here: Altho you're relatively safe from the rest of the class hooting at your dorkliness when you're safely tucked away in the back row? You also can't see the teacher. So there are layers of spazmosis. There's the 'I can't do this yet' thing layered on top of the 'What is she doing now?' thing. It's bad. Believe me. (Not tooth extraction bad. More like decreased Girl Scout cookie box size bad.)

We got to the '30 minute/considering walking out because we are so incredibly floundering/too afraid to run into everyone afterwards in the locker room' interval and then once you get to minute 31? Well, you're thinking, okay I'm more than halfway done. Might as well hang in there for the next bit. Maybe it'll be good. (Plus there's always the joy of the cool-down to look forward to. It's like a poor mans massage. Kinda+sorta+if you squint. And the clapping at the very end. I like that.)

A first night in a new class puts me in the mind of trying to enter a twirling double dutch jump rope. You oh so totally want to be leaping around like everyone else but no matter what you do there's going to be a period of time when you're standing to the side kinda pawing like a polar bear beckoning for marshmallows.

Beckoning burns calories.

Who knew?

11:27 PM

2009-03-09T21:27:00.000-07:00

I think I'm still adjusting to the time change. Am I the only one?

Puddles

2009-03-08T21:10:00.000-07:00

Sometimes your dog does these tiny things that amaze you.

We have a trick for long walks and it's called. "Hop up." And that means: let's make this walk more interesting and the phrase is actually shorthand for: "Hey Grantley, jump up on this elevated wall of concrete." You know, like a curb-only something that might be holding a garden in, or just a short wall. She likes it. Hopping up.

We did one near the library where the wall got progressively higher until it was way too high for her to safely jump down so I scooped her up and settled her on the sidewalk and I remember it, because she was all wet and I was thinkin' to myself, how da ya like them muddy wet apples, ya big show off?

We were out strolling post monsoon. It's been so wet that individual sidewalks squares are completely submerged and so, without any prompting from me? Instead of walking through this giant puddle? She hopped up. All by herself.

Good girl.

Taize

2009-03-07T16:40:00.000-08:00

Last night was PH which stands for pretty hectic. There was a food drive at the gym and your ticket in-to the first Zumba class ever at this particular gym-was to donate a pound of food for the Greater Chicago Food Depository. Naturally, Shish and I took that extremely seriously and I determined that we'd get the most volume at Aldi.

If you recall, MK and I volunteered on the packing line of the food depository a couple of weeks ago and the first thing I noticed is that when you're getting supplemental food? You don't get name brands and happy colors like the Cheerios they showed on The Biggest Loser the other night. What ends up in the big cardboard boxes of stuff, label-wise is pretty mysterious. In the food depository, Charlie the Tuna turns into Mr. Fishy. That's just the way it is.

I made the executive decision that it would be better to have two big cans of regular-ish Aldi tuna rather than one dinky fancy store albacore. (Hey that's very loaves and fishes of me, isn't it? When you come to think about it.)

Shish was in charge of saying not to get the lite brand of the canned fruit they were asking for. She decided that if people were getting apricots? We were gonna give them apricots. I was good with that. We're an awesome team, no?

You know us. We had fun deciding what to buy. We even sprung for those glamorous 25 cent Aldi bags to carry the stuff AND Shish treated a man in the parking lot to our shopping cart without taking his 25 cents. Everyone derives their joy from different things. We got ours.

We went to Zumba.

If someone had ever mentioned to me that in the year of our Lord 2009, I would find myself in the front row of a 'fitness program based on Latin dance'? You coudda knocked me down with a feather but somehow I got pushed from my comfortable space in the back row right up to the space behind the teacher. Oh. My. Stars. (And. Planets.)

I've been doing this fitness class stuff long enough to know there will come a point within the hour where I will wish I'd never been born. You see the hot cha cha/ooh la lah teacher doing everything so fabulously right and then your eyes reluctantly slide over to your own sorry ass. All frumpy lumpy dump with droopy shorts and an ill-fitting top and physically uncoordinated and a half o rama and then? If you're smart? (or experienced, as I now am) you'll let your gaze slide around to the rest of the room.

You are not the worst.

Glory Hallelujah.

Which brings us to Taize. I was a little late, so MK got us a nice spot and then MK's friend Vanessa's friend(stay with me on this, won't you?)Maria had scored us an even better spot? And so we finally settled in and I started looking around and while you were supposed to have been beginning your deep meditation and mindfulness? I poked MK and whispered: Hey look. A nun.

MK was raised Catholic. Nuns do not come as a surprise to her. So, when I found two more actual nuns with the outfits in a different section of the church and alerted her to their presence? Dissapointingly, she wasn't nearly as excited as I was. Between you and me? I think I was a little too Zumba'ed for the solemnity (is that a word?)of the entire occasion.

It got to the part when everyone is doing this hardcore group prayer shout-out type thing(of course and naturally nobody actually shouts. It's not Baptist, ya know.), in which the leader of the service has gone through a list of very serious requests like, ahh ya know, world peace and the end of needless human suffering and ya know, just assorted stuff like that, and then he asks the congregation in an extremely serious voice,"And for what else do we pray for on this night?".
See if you can find me in this picture. I'm right there. Just behind the nun.

Guest Artist

2009-03-06T21:24:00.000-08:00

Tonight's guest artist is Le Shish. The other day she rang me at work-everyone pays a lot of attention to the ring of my cell phone at the Senior Center because I went with the old fashioned ring, so in the rare event that it goes off every single head perks up.

When I see it is Le Shish and that's exactly what I see because that's how I've got the famous artist logged into my cell phone, I answer, "Bonjour Le Shish!" just because I am perennially foolish and when I came back from the hallway where I could actually hear and get some privacy, one of the older women asked, "Just who were you talking to in French?" like it was some sorta conspiracy theory.

This is Grantley as seen by her mother in law at Starbucks last summer. It's not the same expression I get out of her, is it?

Madison St.

2009-03-05T22:10:00.000-08:00

Sometime in December is when we noticed it.

I think we were awoken by a quiet rumbling that grew louder by the minute. The street we think of as our own small quiet urban/suburban interlude was quietly becoming an actual landmark. Yeah, there's the video store on the corner but the small, privately-owned video store in Forest Park has just gone out of business and the Jewel has installed one of those red box video dispensers-which even I was kind of excited about until I saw the selection of movies and uhh yeah no thanks-so that's been a good landmark up until now but nothing you can hang your resale value on.

Then there's the 7-11 across the street. Need a Chicago cop? There's always one parked at the 7-11, except when there's a robbery-go figya.

There's The Jewel, of course, but that's not on our actual street. We have a laundromat and Nick's Auto Body and The Car Wash but we have reason to believe that those businesses have been bought out by Fenwick and pretty soon it will be only us.

Imagine our great joy in December when we saw the full length posters in the former insurance office across the street. Just the thing to return my street to greatness. In tremendous lettering we stood back and read: COMING FALL OF 2009 CHICAGO'S FAMOUS...

(and here we insert a drum roll -just for effect)

CHICKEN AND WAFFLES.

Wait what? We thought. They're gonna have breakfast and lunch at this place? That's the idea? The questions sent us to our keyboard where we managed to dig up this.

Now we spend our days wondering if this qualifies our block as having landmark status, we wonder how long it'll be until we're bothered by traffic jams and limos, we wonder what people will do with all that extra time they'll save by consuming two meals at the very same time but most of all, we wonder how long it'll be before we decide to be the first in line to try it.

Gulp.

In The Street

2009-03-04T19:52:00.000-08:00

We get out pretty early some days. In the zone between six and seven anyway. Okay, closer to seven. (Who invented the snooze alarm, anyway? God Bless You Sir or Madam.)

We've been noticing three figures trotting down our street for a couple of months now. They look so jolly together. And not in a matchy-matchy outfits sense. Just maybe sort of something you'd observe and think, hmm that looks nice.

Two women and a dog and they jog down the street and the ladies are not exceptionally fit or anything-they are joggers tho, but it's the dog. He's like an attractive piece of luggage between them. White, short hair, pointy ears, very alert. Trot trot trot.

The ladies chat and it seems like the dog kind-of keeps up his part of the conversation by trotting along in the designated space between them. It's always looked kind of appealing from afar.

It depends on how many times we bonked the snooze alarm and when I saw 'we' I mean my partner's not all leaping out of bed either. She's trained to snooze for exactly seven minutes without changing the warm space she's established on her bed. But, for whatever reason, we're usually about 15 feet away from the dog joggers. Maybe in front. Maybe behind. But never within sniffing distance, until today.

They were close to the curb and I had Grantley long on the retractable leash from the sidewalk and I watched her. It seemed like she had been waiting to befriend this fine white specimen-k9 for ages so she does her sweetest/most irresistible/Hail Fellow hello hello hello wag-a-thon thing that she does so well and that white short hair bastard went psycho/nut-job/coocooberry pie on her jovial Welcome Wagon-ing approach.

And it was the coolest thing. She didn't hesitate, consult a life coach, enter therapy, go out for lunch with her bitches-I mean girlfriends, have her chart done, go to the relationships section of the library and drag 900 why isn't this working books home, score some botox, get her nails done, shop for collars. Nope. None of that.

She jacked up her hackles and told him to piss off (in dog language naturally).

I was ever so proud of my brave girl. Taught her everything she knows.

Funny/Sick

2009-03-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

Let us now discuss my gentle mother taking time out of her day trying to decipher exactly what the joke was in yesterdays post. It took us 3 back and forths. Myself-I think that is So Funny. Seriously. I'm sitting here like Santa ho ho ho-ing.

I'll try and explain it here. See, whenever I sweep the floor? If I rest the broom up against something even a little bit unstable like let's say for instance, the wall? Grantley is so outta there in a pre-Chicken Little/The Sky is Falling Sort of Way. She's scared of the broom falling on her. And so, every time I see her dash away in fear, I think, if I was going to break into someplace that had guard dogs? I'd just bring a broom. And maybe some hard salami.

Same thing vacuum cleaners. Dogs are frightened of them. So, I've always thought, the intelligent burglar would eschew an Uzi sub machine gun and push an ElectroLux.

Now, I saw this ad for the pet hair repellent dryer sheets (ironically as I was doing my actual laundry at the WLL) and I thought: Eureka! Yet another way to drive animals out of your path. (I know it's an exaggeration and I've told you 10 thousand times never to...heh heh heh.) So, then I thought, yeah, if the burglar wore a Bounce sheet around his face in place of the traditional black bandanna? Would the snarling Dobermans guarding the imaginary diamonds not be officially repelled(not to mention the lack of static and the April Fresh Scent)?

As they say in the art/humor business: It didn't read.Today I have for you a self portrait of my Mah. I am sure you can see the resemblance.

Sunday Paper Coupon Section

2009-03-02T19:48:00.000-08:00

Bounce, the fabric softener dryer sheets from Procter and Gamble has come out with a new product that's supposed to get "unbelieveable pet hair repellency for just pennies per load."

I was thinking of a potential market that they probably haven't tapped.Right?

Imagination

2009-03-01T20:07:00.000-08:00

You probably didn't know I took Hat Design at the Art Institute of Chicago.
I call this one: Crocheted Tissue Box Head Cover Chapeau 2009

(Red nose sold separately.)

In Bed

2009-02-28T08:21:00.000-08:00

If you really want to test the limits of your fortitude, what you need to do is, re-catch the cold you had last week on top of four really intense workouts at the gym-and when I say 'intense', I mean the instructor has to say 'BAM' at least twice within the hour-anything less and you're not going to set yourself up properly for this.

If you want to heighten the stakes for yourself, do a couple of long dog walks in a downpour of seemingly spring-like weather and then come out the next morning to see a worm frozen to the sidewalk. Walk through that without mittens because you've sent them into premature retirement.

Venture to Trader Joe's where their doors are malfunctioning (stuck open)and it's so cold that you have to keep blowing on your hands and you're not even in the frozen food aisle. Buy twice as much stuff as you usually do because the weirdest things sound tasty to you. Bread and Butter pickles. Indian food. Chocolate cereal. Not-dogs. Oh and daffodils for $1.69 for ten. You gotta get those. It's the law.

Attend Oak Park River Forest High Schools Empty Bowls project and do a little recruiting for your day gig while you're there. Choose a soup and then decide it tastes like wet newspaper.

Run to Molly Malone's in Forest Park to try and hear a friend read poetry. Open the door to the special events room and view a sea of people looking up at you as if you've inadvertently opened the bathroom door in their Winnebago. Retreat.

Wake up Saturday morning and begin to sing (really loud)with dog's tail as back up percussion instrument.

Repeat and fade.

Cliff Dwellers Part Two

2009-02-25T19:47:00.000-08:00

One thing that's been bothering me all day is that Paczki isn't actually pronounced:Punch-Key. But I can't come up with an appropriate rhyme for it. It's more like poo+n-ch-key. I don't like to give out inaccurate information if I can help it.

Hmmm, where was I? Oh yeah, seeing John. Riiight.

Now I shall transport you on the Eisenhower flying east toward Chicago tra la la la lah and all of a sudden what had been rrrrrrrrrrrrr has now turned into RRRRRRRRRRRRR. Muffler issues. I'm not sure if it fell off or disconnected or, I dunno, what do mufflers like to do after they've been banged about all winter long? Retire to Florida?

Old me? Absolutely freaking out. New me? Laughed. (Altho I didn't LOL because I find that embarrassing. Mine was way more like a: Ha!)

Believe you me, I have driven every flavor of pieces of crap-mobiles and this is not the first time this muffler business has happened to me, so I didn't even flinch. I did feel just a bit, hmm, what would you say? Strange about stopping on Michigan Avenue in front of a fully loaded bus so I could hop out and grab instructions to a parking spot. I kinda felt bad for the bus driver and then I kinda felt severely cool and self-important just for a second too. They call that 'conflicted' but whatever.

I swooped into the rest of my amazing evening with the appropriate abandon befitting someone of what passes for my current social position and that included accidentally kicking my escort's ginger ale as I was sneaking off to the restroom spilling a dazzling array of ice cubes onto the polished wood floor, mistaking a different guy for the featured speaker and trying to engage him in conversation which was okay, come on, pretty hilarious in an oaf-like sorta way. Ooh and the one social gaffe I can never overcome, and that is this:

When you're an artist? There's this crazy notion that what you do has no monetary value. Their hours are billable, yours are cotton candy. Seriously. Everyone thinks it's cute and nice to have stuff on their walls, but nobody gives a fiddlers that there has been exactly no crossage of silver across one's palm for your contribution to humanity and I swear to God, I tried not to assert my fury. I seriously did. (I got to go for no other reason than because my sister has a kind and generous (and thirsty because I kicked his ginger ale) friend and I am just bold/rude enough to invite myself.)

(Nutshell version of the current episode in which a local man invites artists to submit unframed paintings of Abraham Lincoln FOR FREE with no arrangements for said artists to even be invited to the presentation. Ask me just how irked I am about that. It would be as if I said: hey Gomer Pyle, bring your car over by Monday-you don't have to wash it or anything and when Goober and I are done driving it to Mount Pilate? You can come on over and pick it up. That's crap and it's not acceptable especially when the event is for an arts organization. Oak Park is The. Worst. in terms of getting any respect.) Grrr. Don't get me started. I might blow a gasket on top of my muffler issues.

Uh-oh. Too late.

Well, that little fury business leaked out just a tiny bit here and there, but luckily I smothered it with the most gorgeous pie I've ever seen. Pie of the Gods I tell you. I had a chunk of apple and a spoonful of blueberry of which I shall never forget.

And then? I gathered my local fair housing activist Bobbie Raymond who lives up the street from me, said thank you to my sister's friend Graham, and me and Bobbie and my muffler RRRRRRRRRRRRR'ed all the way home.

Cliff Dwellers Part One

2009-02-24T20:08:00.000-08:00

Wow what a day.

First of all, I had the very first Paczki (pronounced:Punch-Key)of my entire existence WHICH was fan-f'ing-tab-u-lous. Imagine a brand new fluffy ball of doughnutage, sprinkled with powdered sugar and filled with slices of fresh strawberries.

I know.

A lady in the locker room of the gym said the idea was to use up the oil/sugar/flour before Lent and I'm thinkin', hey cool idea as long as you promise to throw in the fresh strawberries. The only downside was that the senior citizens insisted that paczki were best served sliced into two pieces. Where they got the idea for that outrageous notion I know not but I played along so they wouldn't cut me out of the deal entirely.

In another event of the day, I was talking to two of our members-giving them details as to what was going on at the center. My reasoning is letting people participate in the details of the place allows ownership and so then it's not me doing things to them but them being part of the grander scheme. Plus when I get older, I don't want people whispering right in front of my face because it's insulting.

Anyway there we were yakking away and the man who drives their bus came in and told them he was ready to go and that there was a cancellation and whenever they were ready? He was ready. And in The Most Serious Tones of Voices they both exchanged looks and one said, I have to see John first. And the other said, yes I have to see John too.

And I thought, oh no. They're going to go complain to the head of transportation. And I can't say why I thought that? Except I guess it seems like we live in a world where a lot of complaining goes on or something.

I said, so who's this John guy? Expecting the worst.

They laughed and laughed. Not John. The John. Get it?

I was like, wait what? Oh my god. You got me.

More tomorrow.

Sunday Paper

2009-02-23T18:26:00.000-08:00

Me and my Dad agreed a long time ago that we're both really going to miss when you open a can of coffee with a can opener and that little puff of coffee flavored air comes out and how that ritual is nearly historical now. Replaced by a seal approved by our friends at the Arthritis Foundation.

Same thing clippings. My Mah is a master of clipping sending. In college, she sent me The Funnies. Since I stopped getting the Tribune during the week, she's back to filling envelopes with items of interest.

I was going thru the Sunday Trib myself yesterday and guess what? I started ripping things out for other people. An article for Shish. An item about curing chapped hands for Rosemary at the Economy Shop. The Michael's coupon for Florence.

I guess it's genetic. This newsprinted 'thinking of you'.

The Episode In Which One Sniffs and One Tries to Samba on the Very Same Leash

2009-02-22T20:26:00.001-08:00

The interesting thing, I guess, is where you end up finding yourself when you begin to really start looking around.

Ed's been sending us notes of where he's going to be playing and it's usually way too last minute but this one seemed extremely necessary to attend because:

A) It was 15 bucks. That's within our entertainment budget for the week. Roller Derby has gone to $20 a ticket and $12 to park and that doesn't include your nacho budget(I don't think I'll ever really be cured of seeing my own sister not only eating those droopy jalapenos that slide over the neon cheesefood of those cardboard nachos she selected at the roller derby buffet but enjoying them. My sister? Nachos?! Really?) and that kind of way-more-than-a-$20 financial entertainment expenditure is getting a little too out of control in our opinion.

B) They advertised they were going to have the national drink of Brazil as a special for five bucks and after I googled it, I knew that within my lifetime, I had to at least sample a Caipirinha.

C) We love Ed.

Oh Ed. We met Ed as a gift from having taking a similar off the beaten path-type risk which was an Oak Park 5k. Don't remember which race t-shirt the capture of Ed corresponds to, but we were selected to be awarded with a half hour on the table with Ed and we haven't stopped winning ever since.

Ed's the coolest. He's a massage therapist slash (both kinds of)bass player slash human being supreme and so we got to watch our friend up on the stage sitting in with a band called Chicago Samba kickin' it. Oh it made us all think universal possibilities might be endless if our boy Ed could jam with a samba band. Loud.

(Live loud Ed. You do it really well.)

And so, we went and watched the spectacle from the balcony and 12 hours later we found ourselves outside in the chilly moonlight on the other end of Grantley's string out practicing the perceived washing machine hip action movement of Samba that we're nearly convinced we'll never actually be able to really do properly but we have to at least try.

Right?

House of the Parentals

2009-02-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

So. I am laughing to myself because my Mutha packed for me four oranges to take home after yesterday's visit and the reason she packed four oranges is that she exchanged the eighty seven bananas she was going to give me with the four oranges because I told her I already had ten bananas. (And we can discuss exactly why I have ten bananas at another time=two words=The Shish.)

That's fourteen hunks of fruit for one person. What am I? A monkey?

Anyway, sometime in the night and I'm going to say it was in the 1:30 AM zone, out of the blue, I woke up with the sorest of sore throats. I mean like ewwwyuck + where did that come from? kind of a sore throat that I have not had in ages.

So, now it is this many hours later and there's two oranges left. Two down two to go.

Is my Mah psychic or is my psychic my Mah?

(And yes Mother/not to worry/ I'm fine.)

Dogs are Better

2009-02-18T17:43:00.000-08:00

Kittens lose theirs but in a pinch-on a cold night, dogs can become one.

Guest Artist

2009-02-17T19:29:00.001-08:00

I bet you thought I took last night off because of President's Day, didn't ya? Nuh-uh.

It was Seymour's fault.

The Shish gave me a magazine...it was cooking and normally my mags go to the house of the parentals but they are vegetarians, you see, so cooking mags are pretty much wasted on them and oh yeah, Seymour Loves Food.

And the funny thing was the other night when we hung the magazine in a bag on their fence? Grantley and I both lifted our heads because guess who was playing sax right above us? Uh-huh.

So, we had to drop something off and umm pick two things up. Check this out.Yeah, that's right. Freshly knitted socks for me by Marilyn. How cool is THAT?

Anyway, yeah so we pop over there and now I have a glass of red wine and Grantley is snoozing on the floor in front of the fire in the fireplace and then Seymour is coming out of the kitchen with a plate of cheese and crackers because his Yiddish mother always told him "Never ask people if they'd like something to eat, just bring it out." and then my wine glass gets filled umm yeah two more times and I'm thinkin' uhhh I don't think I can blog tonight.

"And," as Shish would tell you, "Ann would say, there you go."

Closed

2009-02-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

Please call again.

WLL

2009-02-15T19:37:00.000-08:00

So.

Here is this cutest little boy who is gazing up with pure admiration at his Dad as the Dad loaded laundry into the upper dryer today at the World's Largest Laundromat. I couldn't get the Dad on paper. You have maybe 10 seconds to get the whole scene and I was enjoying the wheels.

Kids run around and scream and play tag and make drawings and eat various items of non-nutritious deliciousness and throw howling tornado fits and sometimes, if they have a supremely cool Dad, they even get to ride around in the carts used for dragging the wet stuff to the dryer and the dry stuff to the table and thus and such and so forth and so on.

I love it-the entire scene and not just because they're not my children except in the 'It takes a village' sort of sense-which means when I get back into my truck it is silent and there are no Cheerios stuck in the crack in the seat. It is because these moments go by so fast and I am permitted a front seat to the extravaganza.

My Funny Valentine

2009-02-14T17:05:00.001-08:00

This is the curse of having parents who have lived through The Depression. Or as I like to call it: The Deeeee-pression.

I kept having this crazy idea that I wanted to buy a box of Valentines and kinda like walk about the world with a pen passing them out, yes? Because, ya know, you don't know which person you encounter that is finalizing plans to jump off a bridge and some dumb red piece of paper could prevent this. Plus it's foolish and I am all about that.

I've held exactly three different boxes of Valentines. The last one was at the Jewel. The two before were CVS and WalMart. This last one was Hello Kitty. $1.00. I even turned the box over and examined what I'd be getting. I like Hello Kitty. It can't help it that it's a cat.

But, I just couldn't do it. My people are of the mindset in which one is trained to immediately think: why I could make ten thousand Valentines for free and put that dollar in the bank! And that isn't easily removed from one's psyche, ya know. That's permanently embedded. For all of eternity.

So, here it is after 7:00 on Valentines evening and I just finished hand crafting my seven Valentines which because of my dawdling, I can only physically sprinkle about my immediate area and I'm going to have to move fast so people don't think I'm a burglar or something worse.

Oh Happy (valentines)Day.

Story Problem

2009-02-13T22:13:00.000-08:00

If Ann and Le Shish become ecstatically endorphonated as well as euphoric after the 12:00 Group Power class(aka: The 60 minute super cool and fun barbell class)and their nice new friend the 58 years old school teacher invites them to try out the the 55 minute 1:00 Fit For Life class and so they do, who will help them get out of bed tomorrow?

Or is that rhetorical?

Elmwood

2009-02-12T20:24:00.000-08:00

So, we're walking by this giant apartment building and we see this tiny poodle which is attached to a retractable leash which is attached to a person's arm and that's all we can see. The person never came out of the building.

Go figya.

Girls Night Out

2009-02-11T20:30:00.000-08:00

Tonight was one of those Girls Night Out things. I wonder if Mary Lincoln and her friends had those too where she'd go out and tell everyone how she met Abe and how he didn't have all the qualities she had on her list but she married him anyway type stuff.

More tomorrow.

Below The Yellow Line

2009-02-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

Grantley and I needed a seat belt night which is some sorta miracle in itself because her first week here she wouldn't come anywhere near me and now we are able to become 'as one'-as they say. Anyway. There's been far too much running around lately and we needed a night to sit still so we did and we watched The Biggest Loser.

Both hours.

Wow, those people do one whole lotta weeping, don't they? Maybe that's like to squeeze additional water weight out via their eyeballs or something. Anyway, yeah I turned the TV off before the Octuplet lady interview because I have a personal sort of not motto but....what's the word...resolution(?) about giving attention to criminals.

For instance, OJ Simpson's book. I saw it on the new non-fiction shelf at the library and I stared at it for a bit because the National Enquirer part of my psyche(and yes I do have one)of course wanted to read it but, uh-uh. I'm not rewarding criminals with attention from me.

Same thing for this lady. She did what she did, but I think what she did was cruel-"Here, brand new babies-how can I make for thee a more difficult start to your lives?" and so while I'm not going to picket her house, I'm also not going to spend time reinforcing the fascination factor of her coocoo for cocoa puff-ism which sounds so cranky and judgmental and that's why I had to take the night off to watch TV.

Even superheroes need a night off.

Same Scene-24 hours later

2009-02-09T18:54:00.001-08:00

Here is the couch and here is the crocodile but where is Grantley?

I had this crazy hankering for meatloaf today and so the reason Grantley wasn't in her appointed place of honor, is that I made one and it was baking in the oven so she was forced to nap five feet in front of the oven door. She's part chef, you know.

The Couch

2009-02-08T20:08:00.000-08:00

I got this bolster pillow at the Economy Shop. It's in the shape of a crocodile. I think I mentioned it before. Tonight, I was reading, sitting in the flowery chair and I looked up and saw this crunched into the corner of the couch:As soon as I went in for more details, she moved. Thus the smaller drawing.

Kinda cool, eh? In a Happy Valentine Week sorta way.

The Street

2009-02-06T21:05:00.000-08:00

I did it once and she wagged.

I did it again and she wagged.

I did it a third time-everytime I did it I had to wait for her to stop wagging and then I gave it a little time in between bursts of song because this was scientific ya know-she turned around and gave me a look like, excuse me have you actually lost your mind?

I'd draw it but I have got to get some sleep. Tomorrow maybe.

Odds and Ends

2009-02-05T20:15:00.000-08:00

I can't decide whether to write about this morning's experiment or last night's adventure. I vote for both.

This morning, Grantley and I were three blocks deep into our dawns early light waltz and I noticed that every time I started singing? Her tail would wag. She walks with her tail up. I remember a lady commenting that her tail looked 'so proud'. I don't know if I especially noticed it before. Anyway, yeah, remember that record player called The Close and Play? "Close it. It plays. Open it. It stops." Her tail was just like that. I'm going to try it again tomorrow to see if this morning was a fluke.

I was grateful to have that letter from last night because I was SO tired-there was no way I was gonna be able to type. My boss asked if I would join her Zonta group working at the food depository and I had never been there and I guess Zonta is all about empowering women and then the food depository-self explanatory so, I asked MK and she is all about spending time assisting the universe to spin a little better so off we went.

It was south south south. We got there and after an introduction they put us to work and I am not kidding that it was work. I'll be smiling even more broadly at the stock people at the Jewel because that is tough stuff. We were wrapped around this conveyor belt-ala I Love Lucy with Ethel and the chocolates episode. Me and MK didn't get a primo spotto putting things in the boxes. That was the essential gig. Everyone along the line was responsible for placing one item in a predetermined spot within the cardboard box. We backed them up. Yoikes.

MK got behind the chili guy and the sardine guy. I was behind the tomato soup lady and the tuna lady. Cases of tomato soup are HEAVY.

Yet! Cans of beef stew are worse and I didn't have that so, what am I whining about? They were constructing these (one thousand one hundred ninety one)emergency boxes of food suitable for a single person to keep them going for about three days. I'm not going to remember everything that was in the box but ya know what? It didn't look too bad. It was tomato soup, tuna, corn flakes, rice, orange drink, peanut butter and jelly, crackers, canned mixed vegetables, powdered milk, plastic spoons, oatmeal, beef stew, and that's all I can remember but I'm sure there was more.

I'm writing about this for two reasons. One-maybe someone else would like to go and spend a night trying this out. Me and MK thought it was a good activity. A good upper body aerobic work out. Something you could just show up to do without a long term commitment and I guess you're actually doing something necessary for human survival. They said they'd shut down without volunteers. The other thing worth mentioning was just something I noticed-just that emergency or poverty brings with the absence of choices. Like yeah you get tomato soup but it's not the kind you'd normally buy. And the cereal is not Fruit Loops by any stretch of the imagination.

I always thought I could motivate students to read more if they had any idea of all the stuff you can look up at the library. I mean, you can read about anything. I don't think non-readers really appreciate that.

Same thing here. Additional income seems to increase choices.

Maybe an entire blog so so 'duh-inducing' it's not even worth mentioning. Maybe I should just go to bed.

Greater Chicago Food Depository

2009-02-04T19:53:00.000-08:00

Click on image to zoom in.

Economy Shop

2009-02-03T19:36:00.000-08:00

Today I worked at the Economy Shop because the usual volunteers had other obligations. It started off kinda fun and exciting unpacking these boxes full of linens. Just all weird used stuff. Christmas towels, maybe a chef's apron or two, and one whole lotta sheets which is interesting because I consider myself an expert folder of all things laundry and so here I was unpacking this stuff and folding it up and tra la lah, it was not exactly easy work-well let's say it was work and I guess the interesting thing was that we were making four different piles.

One was the keeping stuff and one was stuff not good enough to resell but good enough to still use and that was going to be sent to some sort of homeless operation. Then there was the dog pile and that was stuff suitable for the animal shelter. I guess they go though a lot of towels and things at the shelter-it makes sense when you think about it. The final pile which wasn't really a pile at all. It was the garbage can.

I've always maintained that there's a special place in hell for people who cast garbage off to the poor. You see it at the Goodwill. Things with giant stains or busted zippers. It's a rotten thing to do. To pass off your trash as a tax deduction and hand off your problem to someone else, with less resources. Grrr I say to you-whomever you are. And not a good Grrr either.

So the other half of the room was housewares and like the linens, people dump their actual garbage off at the Economy Shop which means a whole string of people have to handle someone elses disgusting cooties, ya know? Anyway, today Rosemary unwrapped a tiny red wok and you know I love red so I came closer to take a look at it and here, someone had dumped off a wok without cleaning it.

I mean like, they must have made the last batch of stir fry and had more cardboard boxes than dish detergent. Yoikes. Rosemary said we had to throw it away, it wasn't fit for resale and I asked if I could try and take it home and give it a proper bath and that was fine with her. So, it's soaking right now in my sink. It's kinda nifty. It has little racks and stuff. Or at least it was.

Anyway, the moral to the story is one man's ceiling is another man's floor, but come on people, show a little respect, won't you?

Thanks and have a nice day.

Outside

2009-02-02T20:00:00.000-08:00

We are walking and I am wearing my big hood because I lost my red hat and it’s cold and we’re moving along the El tracks and we just barely hear someone say 'excuse me' and we step to the side and wait because our hood has given us no sense of anyone behind us and nobody comes right away and so we stay to the side and wait and it’s a hooded figure-a woman and she passes us and gets about 3 feet ahead and mumbles something and we think, oh, she must have one of those phone-in-her-ear sorta things because she’s tossing a complete sentence into the air but not in our direction and we keep trudging ahead watching for ice and suddenly she says,"You can go to hell for all I care" and we say what? Are you talking to me? Because we are sure she is not.

How does a person work their way from ‘excuse me’ to ‘go to hell’ without the appropriate provocation? I mean, we did step aside, did we not? And she says,"You heard me." And I say, What? Because we have this giant hood thing on our heads so I can't hear but for some reason we don’t want to miss out on the roots of the attack. Ya know. Like for the police report or the mini-series or what have you.

I pause, think momentarily of what The Shish would say and ask, "Are you having some sort of really bad day or something?" (which breaks one of my own personal laws-Number Seven, Don't negotiate with idiots) She stops, turns and spits out, Don’t. You. Mock. Me.

And now I'm trying to get another woman who has approached from the opposite direction, wearing a fur coat, I'm trying to get her on our side even tho 29 seconds ago we didn’t even have a side except in terms of what we were having for dinner as opposed to what we thought we should be having, so I make a face like, am I crazy or is this woman insane? Can I get a witness or what? And fur lady slides a nervous look over the whole scene, looks down and races away and we think.

We think.

And all of a sudden we pause and think we’d better stop-even tho a large portion of us wouldn’t mind shoving her sorry ass really hard which borders on a totally inappropriate response considering we’re not sure exactly when the trouble started but we have enjoyed the interaction the same way our grandparents in Florida used to try and keep the dialer's of wrong numbers on the telephone long enough to give them a stern talking to about dialing more carefully and then they’d take that discussion as far into the 4:00 in the afternoon cocktail hour as they could manage because the days pass slowly in a lawn chair.
---
Ha ha. Can you tell it's my writing night?

Facebook

2009-01-31T21:51:00.000-08:00

Facebook has this thing going around where people are asking other people to write 25 Random Things about themselves. I was at a coffee meeting this morning where two people I'd like to believe I have nothing in common with said they'd NEVER do something like that so naturally I had to do it.

Here goes. (And you can send yours to me if ya wanna.)

1. I’m the one who likes “French Burnt Peanuts”.
2. While my dog is clearly extremely well taken care of, I have a hard time successfully refrigerating celery even WITH the appropriate Tupperware celery holder.
3. I buy scented candles because I like the smell but I rarely burn them.
4. I have not yet died from refilling water bottles.
5. I meditate at the Laundromat watching my clothes go around.
6. I have a preferred type of dental floss. The fluffy kind.
7. I still can’t wear black socks ever since I was required to wear them as part of a former career.
8. I was never able to nap until I started teaching and then I had to and now I’m a junky although I can’t sleep in a chair.
9. I buy those really good stuffed animals at the thrift store because I feel sorry for them. It’s more like adoption. And they’re not for my dog.
10. I’m no good at slot machines because it makes me think of laundry quarters. (See #5)
11. I never know what to say when people compliment my all natural fingernails.
12. I have been a professional proofreader but if I over think it? I regularly screw up my own quotation marks.
13. I want a tattoo but the real problem is I think I’ll probably want 100 tattoos so I’m not getting one.
14. I had my nose pierced until one day I didn’t and that seemed as cool as having had it pierced.
15. My favorite color is red but I can’t live in it, I need blue.
16. My dog is trained to jump up and kiss me when I get home.
17. I make everyone at the post office wait in line behind me while I pick out the best stamps.
18. I wish there were sprinkles for broccoli.
19. While I appreciate oatmeal from a distance, I can’t swallow it.
20. The section of the library where I have read all the books on the shelf is called ‘beauty-personal’ but I hate putting makeup on a clean face.
21. I make sure to thank the person that bags my groceries and it’s weird how they don’t expect it.
22. I hate mums because they are the killers of summer.
23. I tried to take a photo of a naked lady drawing that had been done with someone’s finger in the salt on a minivans back window while I was driving on the expressway. Twice.
24. In the summer, if I want to feel rich, I drive around with the AC on and the windows open which is of course environmentally schtoopid so I try not to want to feel rich very often.
25. I appreciate the powers of bleach.

Presidents Day

2009-01-30T17:48:00.000-08:00

We are closed this evening as I have to spend some time with a former President. Thanks for stoppin'!

The Afternoon

2009-01-29T21:26:00.000-08:00

Nap Dog

In common

2009-01-28T20:03:00.000-08:00

Noses-Cold

Oak Park Arms

2009-01-27T19:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a strange thing.

When I was a mere twerp, my Mah used to send me next door with a pile of old magazines to visit our neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Bales. (That's how we referrred to our elders in the olden days. None of this 'Len and Fran' business. Perish the thought. Mrs. Gutman still lives there. I'd like to see someone from my peer group calling her 'Wynn'.)At the Bales house was the first time I tasted lamb stew. I'm not sure who's idea the visits were. Was my Mah getting rid of me for a half hour? Was it me that hankered for a banana? Was it them that needed to know what happened last week in Time Magazine? Time was huge then.

I know it's where I found my true (kitchen table furniture) love. They had one like I have now. It's retro-as seen in the movie Pleasantville. That's what the salesman told me anyway. My Mah loathes it. Seriously. Keeps offering to sew it a slip cover. Heh. I think she hates it because it would have been what her choice of furniture was created to replace but I love it because it's red and shiny like the grille on a new car.

I digress.

The strange thing is that when I would go to visit the Bales, one of the things I would always do, was rearrange their knick-knacks. They had about three shelves next to the fireplace and one knack they had, was a gold pair of ladies shoes maybe with violets on them and for some reason they allowed me to move that stuff around. Probably to distract me during my interrogation. I think they asked a lotta questions.

So, here I am now at my day gig and you know one of my current responsibilities? I have to rearrange items in four display cases. I do it about once a week or once every two weeks because I have a serious appreciation for change of scenery and I think if I lived in an assisted living facility, that would become even more important. I've noticed that lots of the women just like to look and so I feel it's my responsiblity to make it interesting.

It's not dramatic but it's irony, no?

Economic Stimulus Jar

2009-01-26T16:17:00.000-08:00

The last words I read in a book last night came in the form of a quote from Einstein. "You either look at nothing as a miracle or everything as a miracle." (Read happy stuff before you go to sleep. Changes your morning. I'm tellin' ya.)

I woke up differently today (It was like: miracle miracle miracle and that was before I even got to the bathroom where my cyclamen is pumping out blooms) and it got me thinking. What if, every time you hear someone making reference to 'the bad economy' (or words to that effect), you join me in putting a nickle in a jar on your counter.

If you find yourself uttering these sort of words, I think you should put in a quarter.

For myself, I'm already in for thirty-five cents. Two conversations used the ugly words just this afternoon and I didn't even watch TV and I think I slipped up once myself. I'm not saying this is going to alter our reality, just possibly change our perceptions.

Let's see how this goes. We'll check back in a month.

The Weather

2009-01-25T20:02:00.000-08:00

"Joey would like the temp to go above 15 today...please?"*

Joey is a friend we know from the dog park. Stella's person. One of Stella's people actually, but I don't like to go to the "dog mother" place because that's just weird. Joey is from Texas which is far, far away. We're not sure why she picked Illinois as a destination(we suspect employment but we have no official clue) but we're fairly certain she didn't come here for the glorious weather. In fact, we haven't seen her (outside of Facebook*) in a long time because it's just too damn cold.

We wonder if, upon crossing the border into Illinois, did anyone tell Joey about things like 'Winter projects'. These are things we do around here when you can't do anything else. People actually reserve projects during the summer to save them for times like these. Like, ooh I dunno, resume reconstruction or Scrabble marathons or reorganizing your filing cabinets or anything that sticks you firmly indoors.

She also needs a good chili recipe. I made some yesterday and ooh it was good. I'd share it but it was just your basic cliche chili. Oops. I just noted that the official dish of Texas is chili. Maybe Joey can hook us up.

I nearly heard myself drawing that mental line in the snow one day last week. You know. The "Okay I'm done with this whole snow thing now." line you've been hearing people say since the day after Christmas. It was cold, my legs were burning, I was hiking over what would be called a 'snow stile' which is where the street intersects with the sidewalk that is remarkably NEVER shoveled. Grantley was glimping. (Grimacing and limping because of the salt.) All was unswell. But, I caught myself before I got to the end of that sentence because it ran through my head, this is how we pay for the red tulips in Spring.

Spring is coming Joey. It will be here before you know it.

(And here I would insert a drawing of a tulip poking thru the snow, if my scanner was functioning. Clears throat and hopes genius nephew is paying attention.)

Keyboard

2009-01-23T18:40:00.001-08:00

I'm supposed to be writing which, okay on an old fashioned typewriter had to be hard enough, but writing on something superior to a television in terms of distraction is just about torturing me and so I wandered over to Facebook where I started looking at photos from the Obama rally election night downtown. They were taken with my(not so great)camera but I never really looked at them carefully and as I was noticing the lack of my face within the collection of pictures(to be fair-there was one of the back of my head)my Uncle Paul from Colorado pops up in an instant chatting bubble thing and I thought: Captured! Slacking off!

There's something frightening about writing. There's something that makes it easier not to expose your thoughts or (gulp) yourself. My writing teacher says you have to be the opposite of what makes you successful in life and that is, you have to be without appropriate boundaries and for someone who has had such a hard time constructing them, I'm finding it difficult.

Not quitable. Just struggley. I am not complaining tho. I realize quite well that I whine from a position of whatchamacallit. Privilege.

Back to work.

Obligations

2009-01-23T08:01:00.000-08:00

I have to take a shower and I have to go to the house of the parentals because I have to work on a portrait with my Dad because we have to enter this show and I have to read the schedule of Gottleib gym because I have to do something about my level of fitness and I have to decide if I was right when I thought it really felt like an awesome place to go because I have to have a firm grasp on reality before I have to fork over my initiation fee eventho there's no contract so if I have to start slacking it's not like I have to keep paying frajillions of dollars not to go to the gym but I have to try that warm water aerobics because it looks so seriously awesome and then I have to spend this afternoon whitttleing away at my novel because I have to keep constructing that because I have to have some sort of creative umm ya know like construction project type thing because I have to have something to fiddle with in my head.

And there you go.

Internet

2009-01-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

Driving Home

2009-01-20T19:30:00.000-08:00

This exact time last week, I was driving home(we got out earlier tonight-Thank God. The glamorous life can absolutely kick your ass, no?)and as I explained to The Shish, I felt as if I had swallowed glitter.

I had just had my first official novel writing class-and it wasn't the baby class where you talk about elements-it was the big people class where you actually get to play with the Play-Dough (woohoo!) and I was driving home and, as I told Le Shish, it was at that point before I had officially noveled, that every possibility was wide open and the only thing I could possibly do in my mind was soar down Ashland in a blaze of green lights.

I was also looking forward to a date. Not just any date-not one of those ones that you park your car like a Catholic so you can make a quick getaway after mass(Mk.). Not one of those ones where you're about to find out some sort of alarming major life detail ("I didn't say I have 12 children? Really? I didn't?!?")that had to have been left out because the pre-conversation had been so brief. Nope this wasn't gonna be that at all. This was gonna be life altering.

I could just feel it.

Now it is almost one week later. I have written and been read aloud. I have dated and returned home. What I'm trying to hang on to or what I was twirling around in my head as I flew down Ashland toward the expressway tonight, is not the result of either activity (One thing was worth continuing, the other, apparently not, I guess.)what's really important is where I would go or what I would see in the days between last week and now.

For instance, yesterday I volunteered for pregnant women who are addicted. They didn't say addicted to what and I wasn't asking because I have lovely manners of course and naturally and really, does it make any difference at all? We made soothing bags of lavender-scented rice to be warmed in the microwave out of brand new powdery white tube socks. One woman draped hers around her neck and put her thumb in her mouth and began to stroke her nose with her other fingers like a napping child. 'It's nice, isn't it?' I said, thinking she was expressing just how soothing the cool sock felt on the back of her neck. She smiled and nodded. All was swell.

A few minutes later I watched as she sat in a group with her pregnant+addict peers and her hand lifted until she placed her thumb into her mouth and stroked her nose with her other fingers like a napping child. She was without the sock. She had to have been at least 35 years old and she had never found a better way to soothe herself.

Imagine that.

So where I was going tonight, when I thought about last weeks exciting internal glitter shower, aside from straight down Ashland like a rocket, was that the important thing in either case-the date or the writing-wasn't any little bit about the happily ever after, it was actually having failed to stay home where it's safe and to have attempted to live.

Nous devons vivre et pas seulement exister. Oui?

A Note Explaining the Absence of Fresh Blog

2009-01-19T18:39:00.000-08:00

Dear Ann,

Today, Americans in all 50 states answered President-elect Obama's call to service.

Thousands of people stood up to renew America together, doing everything from working in homeless shelters and mentoring young people, to assembling more than 80,000 care packages for our troops at a service event here in Washington, D.C.

Thank you for a great day of service...

...I hope you will stay involved in the effort to renew America together.

Thank you,

Emmett

Emmett S. Beliveau
Executive Director
Presidential Inaugural Committee

Some Irish Restaurant in Evanston

2009-01-18T22:08:00.000-08:00

Tonight we went to hear a storyteller. Or did we go to see her? I can't decide. The thing I liked the best was that the people in our group weren't happy with her photo of her cd cover which was for sale in the back of the room. On the cover, she was more made up and her hair was curled. I liked that they didn't like it. That photo didn't look like what we just saw. It may have been fancier but they preferred real. There's something very good about that.

She told about eight stories-some short, some long, some funny, some poignant. Did I enjoy it? I can't decide.

I'm glad that she exists and I am glad she has an audience but listening to someone read (say) something aloud makes me sort of itchy and impatient.

My internal wiggliness reflects poorly on my attention span, I guess, but I enjoyed the night more than not, I'm always happy to watch an audience connect with a performer and of course and naturally, my world got larger and except for the fact that it's way after midnight? There's never anything wrong about that.

History

2009-01-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

Today, I got to be a teeny part of history and guess what (ha ha), you can too.

I tried to ignore the first e-mail from Michelle Obama. I mean, I looked at it and all, but I was like, yeah that's nice/delete. And then my friend Fran, massage therapist to the stars(me) sent an excited e about service opportunities and I was like, yeah that's nice Fran/delete. And then MK actually poked around the USA Service site and found something to do and sent THAT to me and I was like, yeah that's nice/and, I signed up.

Not because I am suffering from advanced good will toward men or anything. It's because my bullshitometer so quickly runs low for myself and I get tired of thinkin' the thoughts that come even before talkin' the talk, ya know? And even more, because of a line in the sand that somebody once literally drew for me.

Here's that story in a nutshell: I was living in Elmhurst, thinking of coming to Oak Park and a woman was trying to explain to me that it was okay for me to come here as long as I stayed between certain perimeters. North Avenue to the North. Eisenhower to the South. Harlem to the West and Ridgeland to the East.

She even drew it up in pencil on the map my Dad got me for my truck. (I betcha it's still down there. I'll have to check.) Don't go beyond this area:It's Not Safe.

So, here in my inbox was an invitation to officially bust through those boundaries and yeah, I move through the West Side all the time but I don't spend a whole lotta time at the North Austin Branch Library. And so, MK and I joined a small group of other humans in an event that was planned by a woman named Juanita who had heard the call from the President-elect and answered by running a session about Active Listening that she'd learned as a foster parent.

I entered, hoping I could be of some assistance to somebody. I left, having handed myself some hope.

Not a bad afternoon at all.
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You can go to the sign-up site, plug in your zip code and instantly sign-up for something fun and cool and oh yeah, change the world.

On your mark get set go.

Right here

2009-01-16T20:59:00.000-08:00

Living Room

2009-01-15T20:40:00.000-08:00

Night off

2009-01-15T04:35:00.001-08:00

Thanks for stoppin'.

Online

2009-01-13T20:24:00.000-08:00

"Dear Dr. Phil, How do you know when you're spending too much time on the compu..."

The Shelves of Walgreens

2009-01-12T20:02:00.000-08:00

I was in Walgreens when I heard over the instore announcements about this new product called Pedi-Paws. Luckily, The Shish had already picked one up and she permitted us to try it at home. It's sort of like a low-powered Dremel. The cool thing is there's a sort of a safety guard in play so you simply stick the dogs nail into this little hole and Wah-lah. The uncool thing is she hates it and if I kept at it, I'd probably have her nails done by next year. Un-Wah-lah.

$19.99 saved is $19.99 earned. Or something.

Oak Park Public Library

2009-01-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

Today we walked down to see Abraham Lincoln.

He was appearing at the Oak Park Public Library with his wife, Mary Todd Lincoln. On the way, we bumped into Mary Next Door and I said, I'm going to see Lincoln. Do you have any messages for him? She looked at me like she always looks at me, slightly strangely with a large portion of bemusement, and said, Umm no.

But this was just after she'd noticed that she was standing next to a pole that had one of my rescued Christmas decorations on it, which she fingered with her elegant brown glove and asked,"Is this you?" and I said, "Of course, it's me. I have to entertain the neighborhood, don't I?" and she just laughed and then we both realized it was snowing and we were on our separate ways.

We passed the bent over woman with the sparkly sequined turban who was struggling down the snowy edge of Oak Park Avenue with her walker. The Shish always makes the 'Awwwww' noise of sympathy when we see her out and then she says, 'That's gonna be me' because of the bling on the turban and I always say, Hey, at least she's out, ya know? That takes determination. But today I stopped and offered to carry her two bags down to the Oak Park Arms but she was having none of that. I asked once and then 'are you sure?' and I was on my way. (It's one thing I love about working at a Senior Citizen Center. You feel like you are continually in a state of grace for doing less than nothing-like popping someones walker up the three stairs so they don't have to struggle which is, in terms of human effort, less than nothing to the walker-less.)

Abraham Lincoln sounded sort of like Paul Harvey-the radio personality. He-how do I say this politely? He seemed like one of those people that thinks you have all the time in the world, so his stories run long(kinda like mine. ha.). Then again, it was his whole life that we were covering in an hour. He had some excellent one liners. My favorite was something like, "If you get married or if you don't get married, you'll regret it."

Good one.

Mrs. Lincoln, I found more likable than I thought I would. You always hear how she was nuts but they didn't have group therapy in those days and it makes you wonder, how Prozac might have affected history if it had been available because she seemed to me to be a prime candidate. Also, they told, she was a shopper and that doesn't qualify you as a crazy person because otherwise The Shish better get her sparkly hat ready, ya know what I'm sayin'? Mrs. Lincoln was responsible for inserting style into the White House. Maybe she should have been on the five dollar bill.

The whole thing was set right before the Lincolns were leaving for the Ford Theater. Mrs. Lincoln interrupted him and told him it was time to go-that they were running late and not long after that the audience heard a shot which scared the crap out of everyone (gun shots as entertainment in 2009? Hmmnot so much.) and then the Lincolns came out and answered questions kinda like Stump Abe or something. Then it was over and everybody clapped hard.

I got back and I was out with Grantley who started waggin' like a madwoman when she recognized Mary Next Door coming out of the building. I said, Hey Mary, Lincoln freed the slaves. And she said, I know what you wanted me to say before. (Mary speaks softly like a cross between Cleopatra and a Miss America pageant winner.)

What? said I, ever so innocently.

You wanted me to tell him 'thank you'. said Mary Next Door with a smile on her face. I just about bent over laughing thank goodness it was all so extremely silly on a very snowy day.

Outside

2009-01-10T20:09:00.000-08:00

Grantley is staying close tonight. She's even found a more inconvenient place to sit which is right behind my chair. Yesterday, she was on the floor between me and the keyboard. The cold weather brings her closer or is it that I just made a hamburger at 10:11 at night. Coudda been that too.

Jane called and said, "You really are sick." after I answered. She thought I'd crossed over into fiction, but that's not until next week. It's been a magnificent cold. I've enjoyed every bit of it except the cloggy ear parts-that sort of throws you off brain-wise and the split lip was sort of temporarily bad but when you look at the kitchen window sill and see the three inches of snow piled up? You realize what a gift a cold can be. Permission to take care of yourself. Full-time.

Plus I was all organized with the lentil soup. I made it just as I went down and so, while I slept the first day, it did the thing that all good soups must do, it sat in the fridge and decided to taste even better. That accompanied with the dulling of my taste buds might have made this pot eligible for best soup ever. Possibly.

We went on a grand march with Bob and MK and Greg their upstairs neighbor who bailed 3/4th of the way out because he was finding it way too slippery. Wrong shoes, I'm guessing. The moon was gigantic, people were out shoveling, the weather was perfect and we all shuffled along.

Self Portrait

2009-01-09T21:44:00.000-08:00

Achoo!

Living Room

2009-01-08T20:17:00.001-08:00

If you have a cold, it's nice to curl up with an afghan.
If you don't have an afghan, a corgi will do nicely.

In my head

2009-01-07T18:25:00.000-08:00

Okay so. What if, when someone went to adopt a dog, the shelter measured the persons nose against what's called the 'stop' on the dog (that's the little slope from the forehead to the muzzle) and then if it's a good fit they can live happily ever after?

It was just an idea.

Winter

2009-01-06T19:11:00.000-08:00

It's a little bit slippy out there.

Thyber Thspace

2009-01-05T18:50:00.000-08:00

So, my computer makes all these noises now because my genius nephew came and fixed it-which is contrary to most fixing because usually things making a funny noise need to be silenced, right? Or that's how it was in the olden days, right? Now, from my bed in the other room, I can hear the plink of the arrival of an e-mail or the fffffffff of someone signing off of something and even as I'm sitting here it's no longer me taking a peek into my inboxes. Every 60 seconds there's a little whirring thing and a number pops up. Mostly it's the same number but sometimes it pops up by one.

You can just barely feel the subtle adjustment of your old behavior being replaced and then one day will come when you'll forget that pressing send didn't used to make an airplane taking off noise that made your dog hide the first time she heard it.
The downside to all this technology is, ya still can't make the incoming e-mail say what you want it to. You can't make it arrive when it hasn't been written. You can't adjust the mood of the recipient who receives one of yours. And you'll never really be able to remove that teeny bit of smirk from the face of your genius nephew who can fix your computer in ways that you can't even imagine ahh but why would you want to?

In and out

2009-01-04T19:32:00.000-08:00

So, we were out walking tonight and I was thinking about this Jack Russell Terrier that we had saved-naah I don't think that way-I was thinking that maybe it would be helpful to share our patented dog catching method in case it comes up for anyone else.

When we see a loose dog, I start talking to it-just your regular blah blah blah stuff. Keeping everyone calm and when I say ''everyone" I mean, of course, me. Then Grantley takes the dog for a twirl around the yard-as I start steering them toward the nearest front porch. It's my one of my dog walking innovations that a porch is at least an enclosed space perfect for corralling any size pup.

We just captured this JRT on Saturday.(Did you know on the Jack Russell info website they actually discourage people from getting one? A dog is not a toy, ya know.) We've changed our walking route since the great dog screaming incident of 2008-we're gone all residential where people don't have meat on their sidewalks-and a very nice Jack Russell with a pink collar marched right through an intersection to meet us. We got her up on somebodies porch just as her pink leash-toting person came around the corner. All was swell.

So, tonight I was thinking about being a dog catcher as I walked Grantley up Scoville and I started noticing that she was doing something strange.Licking frozen puddles.

Hmm, I thought. That's kinda funny. And she did it again and again as we went up the block. After we got home, I went to the fridge and got some water and as I drank, I noticed there was someone watching me intently.

Yup. Doris Day Violation. I let her water bowl get empty.

There's some sort of moral to this story. I wish it'd be more of a 'It takes a village to raise a dog' than, 'let she who is without sin cast the first stone' but yeah, as they say, my bad.

In other matters, Grantley shares her couch with an alligator...or maybe it's a crocodile. It was one of those things I saw in the basement of the Economy Shop. This giant stuffed gator had no takers. I think I saw it in the toy section for three weeks in a row and I finally said, okay if it's still there next week, I'll take it home(it had been marked down to $1.50)and it turns out that it's not actually a toy. It's officially a bolster-that's what it said on the tag which proved it was brand spanking new and looking for a home.

I thought this was a kind of a cool pose because it's usually Grantley that goes upside down on the couch as the alligator rests. If there was a moral to this story, it's that when you think you've got a good handle on how things are? You just never know what can happen.

Coolness.

Off

2009-01-03T21:31:00.000-08:00

Night off.

Thanks for stoppin. More tomorrow

Inbox

2009-01-02T20:22:00.000-08:00

Nothing unusually strange today unless you count some grand theft library items. I know. Can you believe that? I've been slacking on my librarying because I've been trying to read the books I've picked up along the way but something got me to the library this past week and I was checking my record and it said I had six items out and umm I'd like to say that I did, but I didn't.

I didn't worry about it, I figured it'd straighten itself out as these things usually do but today I got one of those reminder e-mails about the six DVDs that were soon to be overdue. It's almost kind of hilarious. I have such a hard time picking out a movie. I could stand at the video store itching my head for 20 minutes and not know which box to pick up. Our Jewel just got one of those red box machines where you can score a DVD overnight for a dollar? I was so excited, until I went closer and looked at the selections. Dumb and dumber and dumber and dumber. I can't commit two and a half hours to dumbness. Not unless I'm gettin' paid.

I want a movie that's good and smart and funny and feel-good and unpredictable would be nearly too much to ask for, right? (Always accepting recommendations-by the way.)And I don't want to be able to figure out the ending by looking at the box. One of my lesser known skills-oh you will think I am kidding-but when I was a security guard, our supervisor would walk around with The Jumble hidden behind a folder and he'd have us try and work on it standing still-now that I think about it, that man should have been nominated for sainthood-and my particular skill was that I could guess the answer from the little Jumbley cartoon. I ruined it for everyone. But I think it's the same thing for book covers-especially mysteries. Don't be all showin' the noose on the cover because I'll be watching for it from the get-go, anyway, speaking of mysteries, I called the Circulation Department of the library to Clear My Name.

Just kidding. Nobody would believe for one second that I took six DVDs at one time. (I could get the girl from the video store on the corner to testify on my behalf. I'm such a bad customer, we don't even wave at each other anymore.) And so, the guy on the phone had to read through all the titles and I had to deny each one individually-which was kinda funny that he didn't just go with my 'I can never even find a movie' statement. Perhaps there are legal ramifications or something.

Anyway, yeah, he said my card had been compromised. And I said, are you kidding? Is this some sort of a trend? And it seemed as if he wasn't able to commit to that officially but assured me he was making a report of the entire deal for his supervisor and that a fresh library card would be prepared for me at no charge.

A lotta times lately I worry about people becoming too dumb to think. I'm not banging into brilliance as much as I'd like to as I make my way throughout the world. You know, those people who make your eyes open wider? Yeah. What movies do they watch? I'm guessing they aren't watching Daddy Daycare but I guess now they can't because it's found it's way into some weasel's private collection.

If it had been grand theft encyclopedia? I think I might have been a little bit happy.

Americans usher in '09 with cheer, optimism, funny hats, streetloaf

2009-01-01T10:29:00.000-08:00

We were making our way through the Shish's former red car parking spot(sniff snif)to MK and Bob's neighbors Melanie and Terry's rockin' New Years Eve celebration last night when Bob said something hopeful about this being a better year than last and MK and I went all coocoo for cocoapuffs on him(poor brave Bob-taking us on two at a time. ha.)because, as for she and my house? We had an excellent 2008.

Bob was referring to all the rotten stuff that's gone on worldwide and we kept countering with all these cool adventures we've had in the past 12 months(Ann + 10k=whoa / Mk + 60 mile walk=super whoa) and okay yeah, depending on your perspective-it may not have been the year that produced your most brag·ga·do·cio-lo of a holiday newsletter but taken over a whaddayoucallit? Like a...you know like an arc? Shoot. We're still here, aren't we?

Then, on the first day of the new year, Grantley decided to scare the crap out of all of us.

One of two things I cannot manage to get her to do is A)Home nail trimming because I cannot take that particular crunching noise-and those things bleed too, ya know? And if it gets too close to the quick, the dog is stepping all over the house bleeding and silently saying ouch. I can't do it. I am weak.

And the worst one is the sidewalk soufflé. Even Shish, who thinks the world of Grantley, is disgusted by her eating streetloaf, as I stand back posturing and shaking my head and scrunching my nose and doing this: Oh COME on, don't EAT that. Yuck. YUCK. Gaaah. Put that DOWN routine of which nobody pays attention because I am afraid to stick my hand in her mouth because I did it once and one of those giant cube shaped canines came right down on my thumbnail-Captain Crunch with Crunchberries style and I cannot stick my hand in there again.

This evening, she was on top of this meat(we think)thing before the rest of us even spied it and it was huge and she was wolfing it down and I did my usual having a partial fit thing and I don't even know what happened next except one minute I'm just standing there and the next minute, I'm standing there watching my own dog scream.

I say to Mk,"What do I do? I don't know what to do!" And I move toward her belly and sorta Heimleich it as Mk performs the patented Isabel vitamin swallow maneuver.

We wait. We watch. She breathes.

And then I got really mad at her from scaring the crap out of me so I did this whole ultra-dramatic finger shaking/you are a very rotten girl/you can no longer be trusted/billy goats gruff voice bit o drama but we were all catching our own breath from that 25 seconds when we were helpless and time stood still.

There was a man who commited suicide in his storefront right before Christmas and our local paper sent out one of those newsflash-type 'This just in from the newsroom" e-mails with all his personal details. His family became very upset with the invasion of privacy and exposure of personal information about his compounding debt and recent divorce and I thought, huh. They don't really know us that well if they think that we'd judge someone else for his imagined solution to a very scrambled life, because that is not who we are at all-head shakers and passers of judgement.

We're still here, aren't we?

2009. Bring it.

2009

2008-12-31T17:16:00.000-08:00

Hey, Happy New Year.

Projections

2008-12-30T18:04:00.000-08:00

One theory I heard recently, was that my friend didn't care if her bamboo plants croaked. She figured that they were doing their job of drawing out all the negativity from the air and when the plant died, it's work was finished and it was prepared to be replaced.

The next plantropomorphisim was a giant leaf that formed a tear drop on its end and another friend figured the tear appeared because she herself was internally despondent and when the moisture went away, she realized that her mood had lightened as well.

I bought two droopy cyclamen last February right after Valentines Day. They were on the clearance table in the Jewel's floral department and I was thinking of that movie 28 Days-where newly graduated former junkies were advised to see if they could keep a plant alive for a certain period of time and then try and take on a pet before they attempted a relationship with another person.

A few days ago I caught a peek at this.

Hope springs eternal.

This Old Coat

2008-12-29T20:56:00.000-08:00

Have you ever heard yourself blah blah blahing along and then you say something and then you go all out of body on yourself and ya think: Okay, who made that ridiculous statement? And the only one talkin' was you?

So we're all yakking and I make some kind of statement about my winter coat. Something about how many years I've had it, and as I'm saying that, I'm thinkin', huh. that's like bragging about how much money you've saved by not getting your teeth cleaned, ya know? It isn't vintage, it's old.

My Mah would interject (and I bet she's doing it as we speak-Hi Mah!): That was a very fine coat(and when she says 'fine' she actually means 'expensive') and she is oh so totally correct. They bought it for me upon my reentry into the Midwestern region which I think makes it nine years old. (I'm not good at dates. Maybe it was eight. What year is it anyway?) It's an Anne Klein from Fields and that coat has been everywhere. Betcha the cost per wear is like negative $8000.

Just as I realized that there's no more fabric to repair within the lining of the pockets because it's been sewn together so many times, The Shish and I found ourselves at The Carousel thrift store in LaGrange where I think I spied Judy Barr Topinka. I heard her voice and I saw the color orange out of the corner of my eye but I didn't turn my head quick enough to introduce myself or even get a really good look, which annoys me to no end because I think she's kinda cool and I would have liked to have introduced myself but just as some woman was chatting her up about some sort of tax on her great uncle or words to that effect-I was less than half listening-my eyes had fallen upon my new coat.

Oh Joy. Rapture. It was $20 bucks and it was hanging on the 'This Just In' rack nearly waving at me. It's Columbia, black and grey with zippers and pockets and best of all, it's got a drawstring waist. I haven't had a waist in the winter in forever. So exciting. Ooh and it qualifies for our family's age old winter coat family crest/quest in that yes, it covers my butt.

So now my old coat. It's got to go to someone else. Move it along the textile food chain. When I get new gym shoes, I usually dump my old ones at the store because I have a crazy bad habit of wanting to wear the comfortable old ones and putting off breaking in the nice new ones.

My old coat-I'm torn. Some chilly person could be wearing it as we speak, but I need to experience one cycle of occasions with the new coat to make sure it's going to completely work for me. I suspect it will do fine.

Con te partirò old coat.

Ice Baking

2008-12-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

I think this idea came from Phil Vettel who writes for the pamphlet formerly known as the Chicago Tribune but now, since I have an ice wreath setting up in my freezer, it's time to share it with the rest of humanity. What cha do is, you go to the Goodwill and if I haven't been there before you*, try and find yourself a metal jello mold. Then, you bring it home and freeze up some water and wah-lah. You've experienced ice baking.

Where it gets interesting is when you start sticking things into the water. Like pieces of ribbon or submerged yarn or tiny pine cones or frozen broccoli or pieces of your wreath or frozen blueberries (I'm trying that right now) or old sequins or food coloring or sliced orange peel cut into shapes or I was even thinking bird seed would be cool, but I don't know if that would work.

If you make a batch of ice cupcakes, you can stick ornament hangers into each tin but if you make a ring, you can tie on some twine at the end. And then if you're like me? Sneak into your neighbors yards and hang them in their trees. Yeah they melt but they're spectacular on the way out and that's the closest thing to free winter entertainment I can imagine.

*I have cornered the market on fish shaped jello molds. I have seven. Someday I'm going to hang them all up in a school on my kitchen wall but until then, they sleep in the pantry, dreaming of their day in the sun.

The Wind

2008-12-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

There's a big wind tonight. (I was going to say a bad wind, but who's to say it's bad, right? Maybe it's releasing some sorta cosmic global toxins or something) Anyway, the power went out for a few minutes while I was watching Mama Mia! the movie and the fun-usual dog thing about wind is how you think you might be getting a dog for some sorta personal protection? But when there's a big wind? All bets are off and they're looking to you as a sort of like, "Hey Auntie Em, do you think it's time we went down to the storm cellar now?" sort of a way.
There was a famous artist who was trying to capture his dogs likeness on paper and he had to leave pads of paper and pencils all around his house to try and get them when they weren't paying attention. At the dog wedding, The Shish(aka Grantley's Mother in Law) noticed that Grantley is a complete and total poser. She stands for the camera, tilts her head and smiles. Oh yes. She does. But when there's a big wind, she has a hard time settling. Thus the do-overs which I'd normally crop out but I think they're kinda interesting.

It's either that or she was agreeing with me that the movie wasn't very good.

HMO

2008-12-26T19:59:00.000-08:00

What kind of doctor do you go to to get Good King Wenceslas removed from inside of your head?

Expressway

2008-12-25T20:35:00.001-08:00

I am at the age where I have certain panting women approach me with moistened brows and eyes pitched toward the ceiling while they yank off layers of clothing and loudly confide about having 'personal summers' in this knowing sort of way and for myself, I'm not evolved enough to feel the need to openly discuss matters of internal human plumbing-look-I'm not that far away from being able to say 'testicle' without dissolving into a puddle of laughter. (I also clearly recall thinking 'girdle' was the funniest word ever.) And my most horrendous thought about the matter is maybe just maybe that 'the change' brings about a compulsion to actually share it verbally with every stranger that passes your way.

Perish the thought.

Someone asked me what it's like to drive a pick-up in the winter and to tell you the truth, winter's the worst. There's not a whole lot of traction in the back because there's not a whole lot of weight and so, I have to slow down before I slow down so I can slow down, but there is a bright spot and that's when I get on the Expressway.

The Eisenhower Expressway is not the best place for a 4-cylinder vehicle. We just don't have the power that everyone else does, except when the truck bed is full of fluffy snow and then I and my little truck get to experience a personal blizzard.

Fwoosh!

Eve

2008-12-24T19:39:00.000-08:00

People started giving me gifts which started freaking me out just a little because generally speaking, I've opted out of the gift-giving part of tomorrow. I feel entirely disconnected from it and not in a bad way. I get stuff all the time and some day I intend to thank the strangers who have awarded me the coolest finds via Thrift stores like my trusty boots that I wear for almost all state occasions. Whomever cast them aside with 10,ooo miles left to go on them? I think of you often.

Anyway, I started feeling like at least a couple of reciprocal gift purchases were in order and so I called my Mah because she is the goddess of amaryllis bulbs and I think those are some kick-ass gifts because not only is it a box to open, it's a science project and then it gives you a green plant and then it even awards you with flowers, yes? My Mah said Dominick's was having a sale and that I should call them and see if there were any left.

I did and I got this lovely woman who set the last two aside for me and when I motored over there in the blizzard to pick them up she said she could get more tomorrow(today) and so I was extremely happy about that and MK and I went over there willing to take the last 12 between us and long story short, despite her best efforts, we waited one hour and a half and left with nothing.

It was just that kind of day.

We watched 4 different cars get stuck in the slots where I park my truck. I mean like call the tow truck stuck. We discovered that our Christmas card required 17 cents additional postage. When I called my Mah to sing Happy Birthday? My phone flashed: CALL REJECTED. You seeing a theme here?

Finally made it through to the ice cold freezing evening dog waltz and guess what? We timed it exactly perfectly to be the only ones strolling through the blazing luminaries that lined Scoville. Peace on Earth.

My pocket

2008-12-23T18:44:00.000-08:00

Don't let this happen to you.

Okay. I'm standing in the kitchen and the phone starts ringing and I say to Grantley,"Okay where's the phone?" because I can hear it ringing and I start slowly twirling around to my left and now I've made a complete circle and it's still ringing and I can't see it anywhere. I start going around a second time when I realize it's been in my left rear pocket the entire time.

I figure one of these days, Grantley's gonna write one of those exposé-type books and it's better you hear these things from me.

The Weather

2008-12-22T19:37:00.000-08:00

The temperature has now surpassed the Governor in terms of newsworthiness which is, I suppose, good for him (for the moment anyway)and not so good for the chilly among us. We've had minor changes here. I'm wearing two pairs of pants. Our evening walk was about 20 minutes shorter than usual-but that was for us-not the dogs. They seemed happy to be out.

I put the green comforter on the bed and suddenly Grantley has taken an interest in sleeping right next to me. I think, generally speaking, she wanders at night. Sometimes I get up for water and she acts all guilty about sleeping on the couch instead of by my side but it's a free country, in my opinion and who's to say if I'm a nocturnal tap dancer and not safe to be around.

Today, I went out with coocoo for cocoa puffs hair which was 100% intentional. I knew I looked like I did my hair with an egg beater, but I figured on this day of all days, who was gonna confuse bed-head with hat-head? It's just not possible.

Scoville

2008-12-21T19:26:00.000-08:00

Here is Marilyn. We met her on Scoville early this morning, right after we listened to a news bulletin about how we should Stay Inside because it was Too Cold.

Marilyn was returning from the dog park and in this picture, she's saying,"Hmhmhm hmhmhmhm hmhmhmhmhhmhmhmh." which, filtered through several layers of hand-knitted wool translates into:"I love this weather."

Last week, we met a doorman downtown who had a theory that Chicago is such a great city that the tough weather is an asset that keeps it properly populated yet not overcrowded. Hmm, we thought, doormen as philosophers. Makes perfect sense to us.

WLL

2008-12-20T17:42:00.000-08:00

Oh, you better use Shout!®

You better tumble dry

You better not doubt

I'm tellin' you why...

Everybody goes to the...

Ho ho ho!

Ascension Church

2008-12-19T20:55:00.000-08:00

Tonight we went to a special church service called An Evening of Prayer and Song for Peace which was, I guess you could say dedicated toward this mission of non-violence in neighborhoods that have gangs and the church was empty. I mean, maybe there were, I'm gonna say 18 people tops. And this is a giant cross-shaped church so the composer of most of the music asked everyone to move together and our little group of Ed and Fran and MK and me ended up next to the piano, behind the soloist and oh mah gawd if I had ever wanted to have a pencil with me to draw this woman-it was tonight and of course I didn't and I'm not going to even try to replicate her after the fact because I won't get it right.

She was a big woman with a bigger voice. One of those people who tips back their head and this red velvet carpet of sound rolls out and you just stand back and be glad you got to hear it. After the service was over, I approached her as I have become brave enough to do and I told her I was willing to sing backup for her any day of the week if she would have me and she smiled.

Running Around

2008-12-18T19:54:00.000-08:00

Today I spent running around getting all the things done that I haven't had time to do in the past three weeks.

I need a day off from my day off.

The Street

2008-12-17T19:47:00.000-08:00

Bryan was out scraping his car. That's something you lose when you have a garage. The chance to yak with your neighbors in the winter as you scrape the snow off your windshields. Otherwise you might not see them again until March. He said, "Girl. When you puttin' up your Christmas tree?"

"Heh." I replied but I'm sure he didn't hear me because of my red hat which while I do appreciate and everything because some people don't even have hats, but it still makes me miss my bunny rabbit/ear flap hat which was warmer with 100% more visibility and 0% political correctness. Bryan's perfect, systematically placed, color coordinated, Christmas array of decorations have been up for weeks now. One year it was all pink.

"I don't do a tree." I said.

"Well, when are you putting up your lights?" he asked.

"I got a wreath." I volunteered. "I just don't feel like putting it up." As I was saying that, I was channeling Ebeneezer Scrooge. Something about keeping Christmas in your own way. Blah humbug.

"Whaaaaa?" said Bryan. "You only have a week!"

I love Christmas lights. Especially those really awesome primary color strands? Or those houses with the electric candles in each window? You should see my neighborhood if you want to see some awesome displays but I just don't feel like doing it. That's not what I'm good at. Thumb tacking lights around my windows like little blinky soldiers. Uggh. I can't even think about it.

I went to a party last week and not only did the (lives with herself and her dog/single/full-time job/2 major hobbies)woman have her own fully decorated tree? It was stuffed underneath with wrapped gifts. Like enough for the Brady Bunch including Sam and Alice. Damn.

I know a family with a highly landscaped, beautiful yard which is right across the street from something that loosely resembles Sanford and Son. The Sanford's get to look out and see great beauty and the gardeners? Well, they're okay if the trees fill out the way they're supposed to.

I was thinking I could line my windows in that mirror stuff that people put on their car windows. Or maybe I'll go to the mall and have my attitude adjusted by Santa. More likely I'll follow up on something I tore out of the newspaper about a coat drive from some non-profit called One Warm Coat.

Then maybe I'll get to light up someones eyes. In my own way.

Lifelong Learning Center

2008-12-16T19:24:00.000-08:00

Speaking of potlucks, today was the first luncheon I ever hosted and it was a (surprise!) pot luck. After weekending near the bathroom, I wasn't really (gulp) looking forward to it but I changed my strategy. I noticed that the most important thing as a host of a potluck is to A) Taste everything(as opposed to eat everything) and B) Be ready to immediately comment favorably because A) Everyone was watching and B) Everyone was watching.

Luckily, members of a senior center don't mess around when it comes to potlucks. We only had 13 people but our table runneth over with really good stuff. There was a fruit tart, baked beans, brownies, yellow cake with chocolate frosting, almond crescents, zucchini bread, fried chicken, cole slaw, fried rice, meatballs, pretzel surprise and yes, I made that corn stuff again. It was all very good but my very favorite dish was brought in by Phyllis and it was rice pudding and I don't even like rice pudding. I appreciate it (from afar)but.

Phyllis won for presentation points. Here's an overhead view of the rice pudding.

Have you not always wanted to take a little bite of something you cooked before you delivered it? Yeah, me too.

Guts

2008-12-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Dear Stomach,

The past few hours I've done a lot of hard thinking about what happened this weekend. I want you to know that everything that I'm about to say is coming from the bottom of my heart and you probably already know that because you're not so very far away, are you? I know that it will be very difficult for you to accept my apology, but I want you to think about our friendship as well.

The main reason I decided to write you this letter is because our friendship and that the proper functioning of my digestive system, is far too valuable to lose over a silly neighborhood potluck. I feel that I could have handled the choices at the buffet in a much better way, but my brain never gave me a chance to think about the consequences of my choices. I hope this letter will give us both a chance to understand one another better.

I admit that I was wrong for filling you with such mysterious gastronomic creations, but the reason for that is I did not agree with what you were saying when you were telling me to stop tasting unrecognizable foodstuffs. I want you to know that I am very sorry and this is a special letter from me to you, saying that I Love You! I think that I have made the right decision. Please write me back.

Love,

Ann

The Island of Misfit Ornaments

2008-12-14T09:56:00.000-08:00

This is how "the plan" started.

In the basement of The Economy Shop, there are baskets filled with ornaments priced at either ten cents or two for a quarter. Some of them are priced at one dollar but all the Christmas stuff is half-off, so fifty cents would be extravagant. Just for fun, I poked through one of the baskets and I started pulling out all these handmade, abandoned creations. A grey felt elephant with white felt tusks. Little teeny, red, hand-knitted mittens. A snowman made out of a white tube sock. A white, fluffy, teddy bear wearing angel wings holding a rose. Several hand-sewn candy canes. A wooden skier with a teeny, white, pipe cleaner beard. What was I up to here? Seventy five cents?

A tin horse. A plastic bag filled with 18 plastic red, purple, green or blue icicles. (That was $1.50 but half-off and there were 18 of them. Do the math. No really, do it. I'm not going to.) A hand- crocheted angel. An armed wooden soldier.

The initial moral to the story, is that if you ever found yourself lacking in a Christmas(because it happens. Fires, floods, divorces, amnesia, whatnot.) it would be your own fault because entire yule-like legacies are at your disposal, if you'd simply take a few moments and poke through the basket, agreed?

But!

I didn't buy these for myself, as much as I bought them-the same way that, for instance, if I ever win the lottery which I won't-because I don't play-but if I ever do play-because you never know-and I do win because I've won lots of things, I'm gonna go to one of those puppy stores and set them all free. Oh yes I am. Who's gonna stop a winner?; I spent this particular five-ish dollars to release these ornaments into the world because, as the cliche goes, if you love somebody set them free (Free, free, set them free.)and somebody made these things, ya know?

So "the plan", and once again why I adore my friends de jour because when I shared "the plan" I said something like, okay, here's what we're gonna do and two seconds later "the plan" was in motion, is, to allow the ornaments one last public hurrah and so, we shall be decorating our paths (trees, bushes, fences, what have you.)as we walk our dogs throughout the 'hood and then we'll see what happens.

If someone sees them? Good. And if someone takes them? Good. And if a bird uses the angel's wing yarn to build a nest? Good. And, we're just going to see how it goes.

I've got four icicles out there already, because, besides my issues of not being able to abandon handmade Christmas ornaments, I also have issues about not being able to wait.

Happy Holidays. Who knew it was a choice?

Economy Shop

2008-12-13T20:25:00.000-08:00

I worked at the Economy Shop today. It gives you a whole different flavor of exhaustion.

The Forest

2008-12-12T20:15:00.001-08:00

We were out walking one Saturday afternoon and we found a tiny dog crossing an empty street alone and after knocking on someone's door and having them call police (non-emergency) and then waiting around holding the dog while it shivered(and no, we weren't trying to be heroic, we just wanted to see what was going to happen. You know, we don't have the cable teevee like everyone else does so we have to entertain ourselves, generally speaking.) the owner strolled up and admitted he'd adopted the dog the day before and he guessed it was probably too soon to let it off leash.

Grantley and I met on the internet in December of 2001 and this is December 2008 (wow. how did THAT happen?) and so, we'll take seven years times 365 days and that comes out to exactly two thousand, five hundred, fifty-five days and I only let her off-leash this very morning when we were in the exact middle of the forest and only for about 11 minutes.

Next she's gonna want her own phone.

Long day

2008-12-11T20:09:00.000-08:00

I have been out doing work stuff all the livelong day and I get back and whisk Grantley out for a quick walk (We met Tim from downstairs and he was trying to get Rerun the beagle to woo woo woo like a siren that passed by on a police car)and we get back up here, after all that, and still she sits and waits for me to pet her on the head right before I hang up the leash. That's the weirdest thing because I remember the one particular day I just happened to turn and pat her one extra time and now, all this time later, it's turned into a thing.

A ritual.

And it's not like she's even anticipating a paycheck or a steak bone or a crumb. Just a touch on her head.

Humans will never really be worthy of dogs, will they?

Speaking of Cake...

2008-12-10T19:51:00.000-08:00

Is it ever appropriate to serve blue cake to the Governor of one's own state or municipality?

Only when he appears unwise enough to blue-cake himself.

Blue Cake

2008-12-09T19:54:00.001-08:00

I'm not even sure I'm remembering this properly, but when I got to work at this one particular long-term temp gig in which there were days we laughed so hard we actually Got In Trouble as in, our immediate supervisor coming into our giant 5 person cube plantation and saying something like: if you people can't control yourselves...because we were literally wiping tears out of our eyes howling. At what I could not tell you except that everyone trapped in that giant cube was of exceptional intelligence(except for one and she was just flat out ka(f-ing)ray+zee) and so, it was the flavor of humor that actually got you in trouble. How cool is that? I had a mentor once who told me to seek out activities that made my heart sing. It's rare but it happens.

Anyway, there was a double-cube dwelling man who, for a while, seemed to be our bosses boss and he was nice enough and someone you smiled at and quietly said 'Good Morning' to and then, one day, there was a flurry of mysterious closed door meetings and the next thing you knew, there was a giant blue frosted cake in the cafeteria in his honor and then? We never saw him again.

(Thus the phrase 'blue-caked' as in, I got blue-caked today or so and so got blue-caked or whatever happened to the crazy woman in the cube across the aisle? Was she blue-caked or did she quit?)

And so, last week brought word of two different friends being served their slices of hey guess what, you know that single serve soup you bought last week for lunch? You don't work here anymore and it's probably more economical to make it from scratch with a lotta nutritious celery from now on destiny. Different people, different places, different jobs-absolutely unrelated except in terms of timing.

It doesn't make it better to tell them that long term, it'll be okay or that they deserved a little bit more respect than to have found themselves ejected out into the snow like Fräulein Rottenmeier or to make random suggestions about alternative career paths or offer to sew Human Resources what goes around comes around voodoo dolls or to do anything else than remind them to keep breathing and if ya put 'James Taylor' into pandora.com, there's a lot of nice (and free)songs to sing along with and you have to admit, you can't do your very best heart-singing trapped in a cube that no longer fits.

(Baby it's cold) Outside

2008-12-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

Has it not been, an unwritten rule of places that are significantly chilly, that people refrain from commenting on the outerwear of others? (Unless it's something like, hey cute boots! Which will never be socially incorrect.) I always felt that when it fell below oh let's say 21 degrees, all bets were officially off in terms of style points.

Sure, you have Le Shish with her extraordinary outfits. She's always gonna have it goin' on because that's who she is, but for mere mortals and everyone else, at a certain point, nobody cares if you have eleven hats and twelve scarves and nine pairs of mittens because conceivably, if they have their eleven hats and twelve scarves and eighteen mittens, they're probably unable to even see what you have on, right?

Eyes on your own paper, people.

That's the way I see it or actually don't see it because this year I've replaced my signature bunny rabbit hat with a red tube of a fleece type thing. It reminds me of that part of a submarine that pokes out of the water and spies on the Nazis in old movies, only with a whole lot less visibility but that doesn't matter because I'm sporting it during the six o'clock/crack of dawn hour of the day where nobody is supposed to care.

Ha!

Remember Fred? Of Fred and Ginger the man plus dog combo? Our up-the-street neighbor who eschews a leash? (Yeah there's a few of them around these parts and someone tell me why the leashless are always men.) I bet you were unaware that Fred also does winter fashion commentary.

I know. You wish you lived here, don't you?

The two I can recall right at the moment were, "What are you supposed to be? Nanook of the North?"

And the next time it was,"What are you, dressing for the iditarod?"

It's like having your very own Mr. Blackwell. Who could ask for anything more?

Not sure where

2008-12-07T17:31:00.000-08:00

One of the extremely coolest things about my existence right at the moment is, not only do I have several amigos in my cell phone address book(because there was a time. not too long ago when I didn't even have a cell phone and I don't point that out to invite some sorta manufactured sympathy but just to point out that my cup has not always overfloweth in the friends department. (I love when people tell the truth about the way their lives go, don't you? Truth sets everybody free in my opinion.)) but, they're the sort of friends where, when you call them and say, 'Hey you know Marilyn's friend Janet from the dog park's son?' (And no they don't know him and neither do I but I know Janet and that's good enough for them.) 'He's in that Dudes Making a Difference* group from the high school? Yeah and they're having a poinsettia sale and I'm gettin' a wreath, ya want one?'

And instantly they say yes.

I just love that.

Now. Where'm I gonna hang it?

*Dudes Makin' A Difference is a group of Oak Park River Forest high school boys who are supporting the education of a buncha kids in Nepal. Win win win win win.

Naptime

2008-12-06T22:00:00.000-08:00

I had two potential opportunities to go see live reindeer this afternoon but instead, I gave myself a stern talking to about staying home and behaving oneself and that's why I'm struggling to get something written at 12:08 AM because when your brain insists on looking at live reindeer? Make no substitutions. Especially not a nap.

Fooey.

Guest Artist

2008-12-05T19:38:00.000-08:00

So, I'm sitting here.

I am tired. I've taken part in all my forms of meditation except the sweeping of the floor and I'm thinking that I can't even think really and up strolls Grantley and hands me this knot of rawhide. She saves them. My Mah used to do that with Charleston Chews. Everyone else would gobble up their candy bar properly and hers would be sitting in the cupboard by the glasses taunting me-eventho, okay, Charleston Chews were never in my Top 85.

I gave the rawhide back to Grantley. She took it. Walked away and returned a few minutes later and handed it to me again.

I say it's the gift of an early bedtime and for that I am eternally grateful.

Still outside

2008-12-04T19:18:00.000-08:00

One of my very most not favorite things about winter.

Too much salt.

Outside

2008-12-03T20:32:00.000-08:00

One of my very favorite things about winter.
Grantley's nose.

Where do dogs live?

2008-12-02T20:04:00.001-08:00

Okay. You know the guy with the house that used to be pink until he re-did it and they found that they couldn't get the hideous, yet distinctive, pink paint off the brick and so they actually turned the individual bricks around one by one? You know, way up the street.

That guy.

So, we were walking this morning. Ever so darned proud of myself to be walking in the morning hour beginning with the numeral '6', especially on ice, thank you very much. I stay to the left edge-in case I fall, I plan to heave myself towards the snow and oh yeah, I almost did fall four different times and I'm designating those slips as 'Astaires' as in Fred, because for some reason, I don't go all the way down. As my hands fly into the air, my toe saves the day(as well as my ass, thank you very much).

So it was a 'four Astaire' walk. VSB. Very serious business.

And we get near the pink house guy and I notice that he's outside with only one dog and that's not right. He has two dogs. A scruffy black one and a boxer. And I think, uh-oh.

Do I say something? Because as we've established, I am a designated street yakker but, if his dog has recently 'met it's maker'- so to speak, I don't want his tears to freeze out here in this weather, right?

It's too late as I find myself blurting out: Hey. Aren't you missing a dog?

His eyes actually widen-just like they say in romance novels, and I think, oh crrrrrrap. I shouldn't have mentioned it.

He looks at me and looks toward the formerly pink house and he says, Why? What do you know? As. If. I. Am. A. Dog. Hostage. Taker. And his hand reaches for his chest in the patented Oh. My. Stars. position.

Myself-my own hand has gone toward my chest and I say, No. I mean, is your boxer an angel? (So much kinder than using the phrase 'croaked', no? Especially when performed on ice?)

This entire conversation without benefit of caffeine-the wonder drug. And it goes on like: Wait, what? What? What? what? What?

Followed by, Oh no no no no no no no no no.

She's still in bed, he explained.

What? asks I.

Boxers are not very motivated. She won't get up.

heh.

Made me think later about the hand movement associated with the loss of a dog. It flutters right up to your chest, because, in my opinion, that must be where they actually dwell, in the longer term.

Amen.

*Laugh, but there really are people that steal dogs and then try and collect rewards which is seriously the height of jerkiness when you think about it. Dogs have teeth, ya morons.

Phone a Friend

2008-12-01T19:38:00.001-08:00

I can't get mad at this phone for it's advanced misbehavior, because it's the exact same phone that invites me on all kinds of glorious dog walks but for some reason, today it jumped out of its resting place in its handbag and burrowed into an overstuffed chair and hid for some part of the afternoon resulting in three fully-functional humans having to double back to come to its aid, but this is not the first time this phone has gotten me in trouble.

Once, I was attending a very deep and spiritual event in which the phone's owner was a participant in the rituals. I being that all-around nice person slash president of my local chapter of the chump of the month club offered to hang on to her purse and at a particularly deep and meaningful moment in the proceedings, yeah, you guessed it.

Rrrrrring. Rrrring. Rrrrrrring.

And the room turned to sneer at the offender, which appeared to be me, which even then I thought was kinda a little bit funny and luckily I still do.

Long Weekend

2008-11-30T20:18:00.000-08:00

Whatever it is that I do to make this interesting? I must not have done it today.

Go figya.

Leftovers

2008-11-29T21:05:00.000-08:00

Did anyone else look down at their overloaded Thanksgiving platter of luv and think (just for a second):All this commotion over this?

Yeah. Me neither. Because that would be wrong.

---------------

Correct me if I'm wrong, but can't you go into any Greek diner on the planet and order the 'Hot Turkey' plate which is turkey on bread with gravy and mashed potatoes WITH some sorta overcooked vegetable on the side and pie for dessert for less than 10 bucks?

Speaking of wrong. I could be.

---------

I have an idea for next year. I'm calling it 'Thanksgiving Red Rover". Here it is. What if, someone from every gathering Red-Rovered over into someone elses Thanksgiving? I mean like, everyone swap one participant over to the gathering on the left.

It follows my theory that other people's food always tastes better and strangers are treated pleasantly-like novelties and bring a breath of fresh air into the room by putting everyone on their best behavior and eventually? We can have a whole global village thing happening which would make for a whole different day. A cornucopia of humanity.

Yeah I didn't think that would go over. I had to try.

---------
Is there a certain age where a person becomes actually glad to see their relations in a big clump? Collections of relatives make some people kind of a little bit nervous for some reason.

Not me, of course. I was scraping the plates so quickly because I couldn't wait to get to the ©After Eight mints course.

------------

The reason there's no picture tonight is: SLOTH.

Black Friday

2008-11-28T07:33:00.001-08:00

We looked at an on-line list of the best deals for Black Friday before we got into a discussion with Florence.

I said,"I think Wal-Mart or Best Buy has a little video camera for $69.00. That's pretty good."

Florence replied," A video camera?!? Whaddaya need THAT for?!?"

We slept in.

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scanner still misbehaving. please stand by.

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(This version CORRECTS price to $69.99 instead of $129.00 which shows you how much we were paying attention.)