Working, Writing and Waiting

In the time since my last post, I've mostly been in California on an extended work trip, but I've also been thinking a little more about what's to come in 2012. Before the end of January I'm shocked by how much I already have on my calendar for the next 12 months. Birthdays and birthday trips, vacations, weddings, races. Wowza. I've been a really successful procrastinator lately (including permitting myself to act as if the new year starts february one rather than Jan 1!) And, even if we pretend that's true in my tiny universe, I better get my act together - I only have a couple days.

Although I'm not so big on resolutions (or, rather, I'm not so big on making resolutions at the New Year - I am fond of constantly resolving to be better) Ive accidentally made a lot of promises to myself and I have to see what I can get done.

To begin, my body is falling apart. Since I began my new, excellent job in November, I have been practically out of commission in yoga and running. February I'm planning to partake in a 30 day yoga challenge (30 classes in 30 days) to get back in action and also to start conditioning myself for half marathon training (the half is in early September). Im a little scared because I'm been having some back pain for the last two weeks, but I'm planning to push through it.

As I'm working on getting my body back where it should be, I'm going to return to the art of exercising my brain as well. My dino blog got a strong start in September and then I abandonded it like yesterday's latte cup. Sooo, in February, im climbing back on the dinosaur and hope to do an official launch before March. I'm guessing no one will read it, but it will be lots of fun for me to write.

I'm also going to pair a little personal and professional development with a focus on picking up some of my old Spanish textbooks. I think its silly that I dont have a second language - even conversationally. So I'm picking that fun back up, too.

I'm not sure when im going to have time to do all this, in between all the other events on my calendar this year, but its worth a shot. I'll keep you all updated on my progress.

On New Year's Eve

Forgive the poor typing. I'm still getting used to the iPad, and although I've borrowed a wireless keyboard, I'm not tech savvy enough to know how to set it up at this time. Like everyone else in the blogosphere and in the real world, I'm thinking about the new year tonight. It honestly thrills me beyond words that I have this newfound capacity to blog when I feel like it, without descending the stairs to my apartment building, bearing whatever the weather might be, entering my neighborhood Starbucks and ordering something I don't want just so I can utilize their free wifi. I blog from home, tonight. Although it probably doesn't intrigue my readers much, I'll still give a quick shout out to the successes of 2011. Among others, I visited 6 different states, read all off the Harry potter books (and before midnight I will have seen all the movies), got promoted at work - into a career that I think is truly a good fit for me, spent lots of time with my niece and nephew (whose mere existence fills my heart with so much joy),practiced lots of yoga,ran my first 15 k in 4 years and PRd a 10k. I was a guest writer in the classroom of a truly awesome professor. I helped raise a beautiful black puppy into a handsome black dog. I kept loving and being loved by my serious sweetheart. I spent lots of time watching NOVA, drinking beers, or having text chats with my besties. I also found my footing in Chicago, began to start planning ahead again (after a brief period of trying and failing at being a day to day type gal). I started working on my Dino blog, which will officially launch in February. I became a field museum member. I also met, shook hands with, and received the signature of, one of my greatest literary heroes, Roger Ebert. Overall, I stayed largely the same - which for some reason is comforting. Maybe because I think the years of seeking drastic change, of remaking myself whenever I have the chance, or seeking to be a different me, are behind me. These are the years of becoming a better me. A happier me. A settled and full me. I expect 2012 to be full of change. Of growth. Of faster times, longer distances, focussed intentions, and stronger relationships. Here's to continuing to improve the parts we like, cast off the parts we can do without, and seek the parts we desire. Here's to 2012. Namaste, my friends. Ps: I forgot to factor in "cats perpetually desire to walk on iPad" when I started typing. Love from Shake and Eli. (I also cleaned up a lot of cat puke and broken glass in 2011!)

Bitten by the Apple

I can still very clearly remember the fist time I saw an iPod. It was the original, classic white machine - owned by a techy Apple-file classmate of mine. I think I knew two people who had them sophomore year of college, but for me it wasn't until much later. Even though I like technology, and was raised with a surprising amount aof access to it, I'm a bit of a grandma at heart. I did eventually get on iPod, and then a MacBook, and then a tiny pink shuffle for running. All in all, however, I still spent a great deal of time thinking and talking about how downloading music cuts out an important part of the user experience, about how the first draft of a story is always better in pen and ink, and how I don't want to read a book that I can't feel and smell and dog-ear and write penciled notes in. All those things are stills true. This grandma is still holding on, but I also share these words with a couple of grains of salt (this is a phrase I need to look up. I dont reall understand the meaning), because the blog post you are reading is my very first from my iPad. Regardless of my nostalgia for the past, I'm living my greatest blogger dream. I'm riding the train to work, tiny computer on my lap - the whole interwebz at my finger tips. It's almost hard to believe. I remind myself, in moments like these, where I leave behind a part of myself that would hae scoffed at this image, that the reason humans have gotten this far on this earth is because we put down the familar and moved into the unknown. Because we never decided who we are, and instead focussed on who we could become. If this little computer enables me to write more, there's not too much I can complain about. Post script: thanks mom. It's a wonderful gift.

The Unfinished Life

Strawberry Heart has no relation to this post. 

 

In the dark medicine cabinet of my charmingly outdated blue tiled bathroom, a ¼ tube of Colgate toothpaste lies in wait. Beside the Colgate, practically bragging about its superior performance and obviously preferred status, a new nearly full tube of a different formula boasts. The ¼ tube has been waiting to be cradled in my hand since the new tube arrived, but like the iPhone 2, its worth declined substantially when the replacement arrived. This sad relationship is replicated other places in my apartment - the miniscule remnants of a container of Smart Balance resting a shelf below a recently christened tub of Country Crock; the un-pumpable inch of Vaseline Intensive care lotion, deemed useless at the arrival of St. Ives creamy relief. 

My preemptive purchases of replacement household items almost always results in the abandonment of the last 15% of its predecessor.  I don’t want to finish the first item, and find myself without. I buy in advance.
Worst of all, this habit spills over into my relationship with books. As a public transportation commuter, with a busy extracurricular schedule, I'm often carrying yoga clothes and mat, breakfast, coffee, lunch, a book for writing, and a book for reading.

I try to eliminate unnecessary items from my luggage. Sometimes, when the bag is too full I forgo lunch and opt to buy.  Or I leave my two-inch hard cover writing book at home and carry a smaller moleskin. Sometimes, if I’m in the last 20-40 pages of a book, and I know I’m going to be on the train for and hour or more, I have to make a decision. I either bring a second book to replace the first when I finish it (and increase my load), or I leave the denouement on the coffee table and start fresh with a new book. I promise to return. I promise to finish those remaining pages and return the book to its subject matter- arranged crate having fulfilled its journey.

In full disclosure, I usually leave the book behind. And I usually don’t return. In at least half of the books I have read in the past year I left the last 20-40 pages unread. Those books eventually get returned to their spaces, like the butter that eventually goes in the trash when I determine it’s probably not safe to consume.
Those 20-40 pages will still be there if I ever decide to return, but the toothpaste and lotion won’t.

Which behavior is more wasteful?

127 Hours Part 2: The Closet

Every time I open my front room closet door, to retrieve cat food, a winter coat, a reusable shopping bag, a sombrero, or my Bacon and Egg themed Halloween costume, Shakespeare The Cat bounds from his meal, nap or hiding spot to try to sneak in the closet before he misses his chance.

 

There's nothing especially intriguing in there for him. I don't hoard a secret a pile of fish or yarn or frosted mini wheats (things I'm told cats like) in said closet, but regardless of what he would gain by accessing the space he races to the door like it was a shrinking portal to the future providing his last opportunity for survival in an early 90s sci-fi film.

 

Usually, I just scoop him up mid-cat-jog and toss him gently away. Some days, when hes too quick for me and gets in, I have to leave the closet door open and go about my day.

 

Sometimes, amid all the smoke and mirrors, with a sleight of hand or whisker, he darts into the closet without my knowledge. He is sadly unaware that this trickery can only be harmful to himself.

 

Such an illusion on Shakespeare's part resulted this week in his spending the night locked in the closet. I was dog sitting, and did not sleep at home - or I surely would have heard his scratchy voiced cries. When I returned to my apartment and called for the two felines to greet me at the door, I was slightly alarmed that there was no sign of Shake.

 

I cased the apartment, checked the bedroom closet, confirmed that there were no ropes made of bed sheets hanging from any of the windows and then, finally, heard his tiny cat cry coming from the closet.

 

He emerged from the closet a little startled. As I snugged his face and led him to his water dish, images of James Franco and a pocket knife filled my head. Maybe he thought about ways to escape, or contemplated what items in the closet were edible and what could be poisonous. Maybe he thought about me and his brother and hoped to chocolate that we would still eat salmon flavored treats without him. Maybe he closed his eyes and imagined his favorite toy - the rainbow fleece - floating dreamily against the rising sun in a field of cat nip.

 

I was thankful that he emerged from the closet with all four paws, but I hoped that the experience wouldn't scar him forever.

 

I'm starting to think that Shake lacks the brain capacity to hold on to this fearful experience for too long because this morning, as I opened the closet to retrieve a plastic bag, he sprung to his feet and darted for the door - determined to revisit the place where he so recently almost met his maker.

 

Brave little man.

Edward Hammerhands?

I love my apartment, but my building is almost 150 years old and my appliances might actually be even older. Especially be fridge/freezer combo.  When I moved in, Moses' baby picture (basket and all), was stuck to the refrigerator door with fossilized tree sap. I found an abacus in the freezer. This thing is old.

Its also not grown-up sized. I don't know if Americans were between 13 and 18 inches shorter 100 years ago, but a race of mini-Chicagoans occupying the Lakeview neighborhood when my building was raised would really be the only legitimate reason for the minute size of my fridge/freezer combo.

Surprisingly, this is the "after" shot.

I'm not ageist or sizeist, even regarding appliances, but I am functionist. I mean, a fridge is meant to keep food and drinks cool and a freezer is meant to keep food frozen (and liquor crisp). So on this level I discriminate against this "machine" on the basis of not-workingness.

In my fridge things spoil or freeze, in my freezer the ice wall creeps around and engulfs all of my food items and, yet, some how ice cream still melts and meat spoils. Usually I just get around this by buying very little food and eating it quickly before the ancient fridge beast has time to claim it as a victim. Or I buy no food and eat Subway twice a day.

Sometimes the massive encroaching iceberg in my freezer makes me flip my grid and get a little crazy. On that special day, once a year, I calmly walk over to my tool box, carefully remove the hammer from its hammer-shaped slot, and return to the kitchen. I open the freezer door, and like a coked up Edward Scissorhands I swing the back of my hammer at the ice wall over and over again with all my might. As ice chips and chunks fly at my face, body and kitchen walls, I break a sweat and begin to see the edges of what might be a bag of frozen corn or a bottle of Jagermeister. 

Eventually, my bare feet are covered in an inch of ice on my kitchen floor, and the freezer looks more like a storage space for food and less like the ice-cave of a Yeti.

It most likely still won't freeze food, but at least I feel better about it.

Its Politics Time!

I can't believe how long its been since I've been able to use this blog as unfettered liberal propaganda during an election cycle!! But its that time, again, folks, and there are some great characters out there in the republican party* for me to quote and comment on. I'm pretty darn excited!

Today, I'll join the ranks of everyone else on the internet to talk a little bit about Michele Bachmann the Minnesota congresswoman who is running for president and who won the Ames Straw poll in Iowa over the weekend. Here's a short round up of good commentary on Bachmann from the past couple months:


Jezebel had a great short piece this week on how Bachmann's win at the Straw poll pretty much guarantees she won't be president, including this great little nugget, "before you find yourself having nightmares about her delivering the State of the Union, take heart in the fact that the Ames Straw Poll often means approximately shit."


In June, Think Progress gathered a great selection of examples in "10 of the Craziest Things Michele Bachmann Has Ever Said" such as a warning the "The Lion King" was gay propaganda, or when she likened the war in Iraq to visiting the Mall of America. Some real gems in there. Think Progress also posted a list that same month of Bachmanns Top 10 Attacks on the LGBT Community that includes simply devasting quotes about how telling a child about homosexuality is child abuse. Seriously. Is this really a person who should lead our nation?

I'll post more about Bachmann and the rest of the presidential candidates over the next year and a half. This is just an appetizer!


*I'd like to make it clear that its not necessarily Republicans that I have such a problem with, its any one who specifically campaigns on the promise to take away the rights and freedoms other other Americans, any one who encourages and supports descrimination, people who don't believe that protecting the environment is worth their energy, and those who think the rich deserve more breaks and special favors then the poor. So, no offense to Republicans who do not fall into those categories!