the house

It's been almost 2 years since my Dad retired, and about a year for my Mom. In this time, they have, like most retired couples do, thrown around the idea of selling their too-big, too-hard-to-care-for house, and moving into something smaller. Perhaps a little 2-bedroom house in town with a little yard, or maybe a townhouse in one of those retirement villages, or possibly even a house far away in a much warmer climate, where my Dad's hips and knees won't bother him so much, and he will never have to snow blow another driveway ever again.

In my mind, this possibility has always been a "someday" kind of thing. On some distant day that I don't have to think about, my parents will move out of the house they've lived in for the past 20+ years. There will be a teary goodbye, all the neighbors will come over with their best wishes, and maybe we'll even bury a time capsule. Right next to the circle of cement at the top of the driveway that used to hold up the basketball hoop, but my Dad was never able to dig up because it went too deep, and maybe he didn't want to anyway since it has the hand prints of me and my brother and the paw print of our old dog Emily.

But it seems that "someday" is coming much sooner than I had hoped. They plan to put the house on the market either this Spring or next. They've already had two people come out to give them a recommendation on how much to list it for, and they've begun the staging process.

A few weeks ago, I was devastated to learn that my Dad had gone through half of the enormous bookcase (that he built) in the living room and given a ton of books to Goodwill. I got mad at him for not asking me if I wanted any of them, which I know was completely selfish and bratty. But I think that what I was really feeling was the sentimental attachment to the house and all the objects in it. Even though the books belonged to my parents, I felt like they had just given away a part of my life. The process was starting - the process that would end with them not living there anymore, and me having no reason to drive out to my old neighborhood anymore. The next day, my Dad called me up and told me he was sorry for upsetting me, and that he wanted me to be there when they went through the other half of the bookcase. As guilty and ridiculous as I felt for blowing up at them, I felt happier that they decided to include me in this process of change. And after the second book purge, I came home with a box and a half of great old books that either I'd loved as a kid (the Tolkien Bestiary), sounded like an interesting read (a biography of Jack Kerouac), or were just really cool (a leather-bound Atlas from the WWII era). The other night when I went over to their house for dinner, I found a couple more boxes of old stuff they wanted me to go through before they threw it out, sent it to Goodwill, or put it in the "garage sale" pile. This time it was kids books that had been in a bookcase down in the basement for who knows how long. Even though I have no idea what I'm going to do with them, I decided to keep quite a few of these old books, for various sentimental reasons (one of them was a personalized story about Mother Goose given to me by my Grandma, who passed away last year).

I am going to accumulate more "stuff" during this move than is physically possible to fit into my apartment. I know that my parents will only be taking one living room set with them when they move, so they've offered the second one to me. My Mom has also mentioned giving me the dining room set. And to my shock, they lately offered me the antique record player that we've had for as long as I can remember. Even in the house before this one.

The thing is, I'm not sure if hanging on to things from the house is going to make it easier or harder for me to accept that they're selling it. That house embodies my family. It was my uncle's construction company that built it. When it was just a hole in the ground, my Dad, brother, and I brought a maple sapling that we'd dug out from behind the garage of our old house, and planted it in the far corner of the backyard of the new house. It's a big, healthy, beautiful tree now, but for a long time, you could still see the crooks in the trunk caused by it's rough beginning. During construction, I used to make things out of the scraps of colored wires left on the floor after the electrical work. I remember the first thing I ever put in my bedroom closet - a My Little Pony corral - and I don't think the room even had walls yet. My little brother only remembers living in this house.

Saying goodbye to this place is going to be difficult, to say the least. We built that house in 1987 and it's always been home base for me and my brother. The place we knew we could always come back to. I visit my parents at least once a week, sometimes more, rarely less. I know that that won't change if they move, and my brother and I will be just as welcome in the new place, but will it feel right? Will it be home? And if they do decide to move out of state ... well I just don't know what I'll do on Wednesday nights anymore.

Have you ever been walking down a long hallway, like at work or something, and you're passing by people, some of them you know, some of them you don't know, and you pass by someone you know, or you sort of know, and you think "smile" but your mouth doesn't actually smile, and then you wonder why you don't have any friends at work?

No?

Ok, nevermind.

yowza!

I haven't written anything in a while, have I? Hmm. I'm trying to think of why that might be ... I was really busy with work for a couple weeks there, but that doesn't usually stop me from documenting my thoughts ... dunno. I guess I've been feeling like I'm in some kind of state of suspended animation or something lately. I haven't been having any deep thoughts, no emotional turmoil, no quirky observations, no rhetorical questions. Just ... existing. Don't get me wrong, I've been perfectly happy with the status quo. It's just not very conducive to blogging.

But here's something. I have been trying to straighten myself out with regards to my diet. Some recent bouts of tummy turmoil ('Turmoil' is a great word, isn't it? I've already used it twice in this entry!!) have clued me in to the fact that I don't exactly eat what I should be eating. Several months ago I decided to cut out all artificial sweeteners (bye-bye Diet Coke), limit my caffeine intake, and drink more water. Now that my bladder has gotten used to the idea, it's been pretty smooth sailing on those seas (I should maybe consider rephrasing that sentence.). But now is the time for a more drastic overhaul of my old eating habits. I need to buy more fresh veggies, more whole foods (bye-bye blue box mac and cheese), and perhaps most importantly, learn to ...*gasp* ... COOK!!! Sadly, this is where the problem lies. It's not that I crave the processed, bad-for-you foods, it's that I am interminably lazy. I don't want to take the time to cook something myself when it's so much easier to throw something in the microwave for a few minutes and be done with it. Even making a salad is exhausting work for me, cutting up all those veggies. I tried once to make one huge salad that I could divide up and eat over a couple days, but then I forgot about it and after the third or fourth day, the whole thing had already gone bad. Utter failure.

However, I was very proud of myself after I went to the grocery store yesterday. I intended to buy some yogurt for my lunches, and perhaps a couple of other things if they struck my fancy. I ended up completely filling my basket, and 90% of it was fresh produce! Go me! I plan to make a trip back to the store in a couple days to get ingredients for some soup I'm going to attempt to make this weekend (a 4-day weekend for me! Whoo!).

... and I have no idea how to end this entry. Perhaps "Here's to healthy eating!" works?

The End.

a new perspective

I did some reflecting on New Year's Eve after returning home from the party circuit, and I came to a new conclusion about myself. Something I've never really considered before, but makes a lot of sense.

I think I want to be single.

I was watching some crappy movie a few weeks ago, in which a father imparts the wisdom to his daughter that people have the love life that they want to have. Meaning, you create the situation in which you are most comfortable. Now there are some serious holes in this reasoning, I know, but it does have a grain of truth in it. And when applied to my life, it fits. I remain single because that is how I am comfortable, it's what I know how to do, and it gives me room to find what makes me happy without pinning all my hopes and dreams on someone else. If I was seriously unhappy, and needed that relationship to feel complete or fulfilled, then I would have it. I would be trying a lot harder to find someone. And even if I was failing, I would still be going on a lot more dates, flirting with a lot more people, and just generally putting myself out there a lot more. And the truth is, I'm not doing any of those things. I've never signed up with an Internet dating site, I don't particularly like set-ups, and after numerous failures (and the conclusion that I repeatedly pick the wrong people), I resolved quite some time ago that I would no longer ask anyone out. I wanted to let them come to me. I reverted back to the old-fashioned idea of the male as the pursuer. I figured that since I always picked the wrong people, maybe a person who pick me would be right. But ... well ... that didn't really work either. Not to mention was totally lazy.

So I guess what I'm saying is, my passive approach to dating and relationships speaks volumes about what it is I really want. I'm not willing to work for it, so it must not be that important to me, right? Anyway, assuming I don't completely abandon this new way of thinking in, like, a week or something, you will see a whole lot less whining on this website in the year to come.

Reflections on 2008

My favorite new things about 2008:

- New Prez Obama!
- New apartment!
- New car!
- New job!
- New babies (NOT MINE!! Shoutouts to Dex and Olivia. Love you kiddos.)

Some fave experiences of 2008:

- Seeing a friend's shocked face at her surprise baby shower
- Cuatro de Mayo at El Mariachi with margaritas the size of your head
- Going to the Sex and the City movie with the girls
- Visiting a friend in the hospital while she was IN LABOR!!
- Being almost able to see Stevie Wonder on the jumbo screen if I stood on my tippy-toes at the Taste of Chicago
- 4th of July barbecue with a good friend's family
- Baton Club - transvestites are awesome
- Getting drenched to the bone while attempting to watch Blues Brothers in the park
- Lollapalooza - and seeing Gogol Bordello twice in one day - insanity, I tell you
- Celebrating a good friend being 5 years cancer-free
- Celebrating my Mom being 5 years cancer-free
- Mars Cheese Castle!!! And Jelly Belly side trip!! And the pyramid house!
- Roller Derby and lots of Jack Daniels
- Having a good old fashioned pajama party for my birthday
- Our fantastically awesome Gogol Bordello Halloween costumes
- Kristkindlmarket on the day after Thanksgiving
- A whole weekend of baking Christmas cookies with my Mom
- My little bro unexpectedly (to me) coming home for the holidays

Some of the not-so-good parts of 2008 that should be reflected upon:

- My Grandma passed away this year - she was 90 and had a long, full life, but she will be missed
- My never-ending health issues
- Car debacle - the century-old water mains of Chicago had it in for me this year
- Recession - even the cost of the washers/dryers in my building went up
- Blagojevich - and we were just getting used to being proud to be from Illinois ...
- Several of my good friends moved away
- Packing up and moving AGAIN - not to mention apartment hunting in sub-zero temperatures

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but if I did I would resolve to:

- Meet a lot of new people
- Think of ways to save money and plan on taking a trip abroad, maybe England or Ireland
- Learn to cook and try new healthy recipes (already started this one and made a positively yummy salmon dish the other day)
- Get my apartment in shape because I plan to stay there for some time

Happy New Year, everyone! Hope 2009 is fantastic, especially to all 2 of you who read this blog! ;)

gotta love winter in Chicago

It seems to me that the past tense of the word "snow" should be "snew." Blow -> blew, grow -> grew, so why not snow -> snew?

Anyway, yesterday it snew quite a bit. After work, I left the parking lot at 4:30, and arrived home ... at 9:00. A few minutes after, actually, since I had to park a couple blocks away. It took me 2 1/2 hours just to go the ten miles to the Des Plaines Oasis, where I stopped to grab a slice of pizza and take a little breather. So glad I did, too, because the rest of the way after that was much easier. So if you subtract the half-hour or so that I spent at the Oasis, it took me 4 hours to make a trip that should have taken about an hour. FOUR HOURS!! It's those storms that begin mid-afternoon that really kill ya. The trucks don't have time to get out there and make any headway with the plowing before it's suddenly rush hour and there's nothing they can do anyway. On my way home I saw a grand total of 1 truck on the road ... and it was plowing the shoulder.

a gripey morning

This morning I was totally frustrated with the world. Well, with my very small world, anyway. It all started when I couldn't get up the hill ...

(This is the part where everything gets all fuzzy and we flash back to earlier today, with my voice narrating in the background. After a short musical interlude of course.)

The Ravenswood tracks go right through my neighborhood, so all of the E/W streets have to pass under them, including the side street that I take just about every day while going to work. Since Ravenswood Ave. follows the tracks, in some parts it is divided into a lane on each side. Where this happens, the cross-streets usually have a stop sign on either side of the underpass. This is the case on my normally trusty route to work. Well. The genius politicians in my dear city decided that this year they weren't going to salt the side streets in order to save money. (Can you see where this is going?) Having had a bit of weather over the last few days, the ice is beginning to build up. When you're driving on a flat surface, this is tolerable. However, the road slopes downward to go under the Ravenswood tracks, and back up to go back out. And I believe I mentioned the stop signs? The first one, not a problem. It's the one on the way back up that's the killer. If there's no traffic, I can safely roll through it to keep up my momentum and get up the relatively-tiny-but-covered-in-ice hill. But today, of course, there was a car waiting to go through, so I had to come to a COMPLETE stop at the sign. And when I tried to get going again? Well, let's just say that the wheels were on my side but the rest of the car had other ideas. Namely, not moving. Luckily, there was nobody behind me, so I backed down under the tracks again and tried to make it up with a "running start." It took three attempts at this before I finally made it through. Not a great start to the day. So. I think I'm going to be changing my route tomorrow.

Anyway, this got me thinking about why there's not enough money to salt properly, and where the money is going instead, and why they keep raising prices on things (Parking! Public transportation!) and yet we see little to no increase of service. Is it because of the recession? Is it because of the Olympic bid? Is it because of political corruption? Which, of course, opened up another can of thought-worms. I wasn't able to listen to any radio station this morning without hearing about how Illinois is by far the most corrupt state, according to the FBI, and how our dear governor is a sociopathic asshat. It all just made me want to move, but not enough to make me, you know, actually MOVE. I just wanted to. And I was grumpy. And now I'm grumbling to you about it because you're a good listener.

I know all of this is a pretty lengthy way of saying winter sucks, and politicians suck, and recession sucks. But hey, you asked. Oh wait ...

in case you were going to ask

On the road this morning, I was driving behind a Jeep that's top was covered only by sheets of plastic. On the back, the spare tire cover said in large brown all-caps letters, "HELL YES IT'S COLD."