Slice

On Saturday morning I woke up around 9, winter sunlight streaming through the blinds. I lay in bed for a few minutes, thinking about the day to come, then got up to make coffee, eat cinnamon toast, and read the slim Saturday paper, with Car Talk warbling in the background. I changed the sheets and did a load of wash.

At 10:40 I left the house to meet Erin up the street. We walked to ballet class together and danced for an hour under the watchful eye of a small, elegant, and slightly scary ballet mistress. We changed out of our sweaty leotards into yoga pants and long-sleeve T’s, sunglasses and scarves, and we walked to the café for a snack. We gossiped over coffee and eggs and granola and fruit.

My neighborhood’s sidewalks were alive with people enjoying the cold blue sky and brilliant sun. I walked home feeling light and satiated. I took Stella for a short walk, then settled in to do some freelance editing. There were short breaks to take a few photos for my February photo-a-day project (one way to combat that winter heaviness I’m prone to), to reply to emails, to pin things on Pinterest, to toss a stuffed animal for Stella. I listened to cello music on iTunes. I opened the window a bit so I could hear the birds.

I checked the Korean adoption Facebook group that I’m part of and saw that one woman had created a “prayer poster,” so her whole family could pray for those of us waiting to travel by name. She’d put up the poster in her home and taken a photo of it to show us all. I saw our names and Will’s name on the poster, and I cried. I don’t know where that came from. There were simply tears.

Late in the afternoon, before the sun set, I walked over to the resale shop with two bags of clothing donations. I found the pale-gray purse I didn’t know I needed, $7. I ambled over to the liquor shop for a six-pack of New Belgium Dig beer and a bottle of cava for Sunday brunch.

Soon after that, John arrived home from tax-season work. Because he’s been battling a cold, we decided on a low-key evening out: pizza and beer in Lincoln Park. I showered and straightened my hair while he played the guitar. We drove down Lake Shore Drive, singing along to Mumford and Sons and Mason Jennings. The pizza place was packed, and we waited in the cozy bar area with tall beers in hand, discussing the week and work and friends, taking breaks to play Words with Friends on our phones. We were finally seated in a small wooden booth and ate salad and flatbread and half of our pizza.

We walked five blocks south to our car, the high-rises glittering beside us, spinning dreams of a someday-cottage on the coast in Michigan, lazy vacations at the beach with Will and our family, Scrabble on a front porch, a fire pit.

We were home by 9:30 and decided to watch the Netflix movie we’ve had for weeks, The Hurt Locker. John fell asleep around 11, poor guy, and I stayed up until midnight, watching. I could sleep in again the next morning; I wasn’t meeting the girls for brunch until 11.

And that’s the end of this entry. Nothing profound to say; I only wanted to capture and preserve a small slice of my life as it is now, in the February of my 36th year.

New in the neighborhood

I mentioned our new place several times in my last entry, but I didn’t really say anything substantial about it. Hence, this.

So we decided to put our place on the market this summer. I know, who would do such a thing in 2009 unless they were forced to? We had no compelling reason to move, other than a feeling of having outgrown our little condo and a desire to buy a bigger place for less than it would’ve cost a few years ago. After much deliberation, we’d decided to stay in the city rather than move to a nearby suburb. We felt ready for our next chapter.

We’ve pretty much been living below our means the last six years, so we could take a loss on the sale (and take a loss we did). So we hired a realtor, looked at surrounding two-bedrooms that had sold recently, priced our place competitively (another identical unit was for sale in the building), took down all our fridge magnets and framed photos, cleaned up the piles of books, moved an armchair down to the basement, and onto the market we went.

Within three weeks, after three open houses, several showings, and many half-hour increments spent at the dog beach, in the basement rec room, and walking very slowly around the neighborhood, we had three offers. Three! Yes, one was a total lowball, but still. Our place seemed to appeal to first-time buyers, what with the low price and the government tax credit. We hosted a little bidding war between two parties, and we settled at a price that was pretty close to our asking one. Done.

In the meantime, we had found The Dream Place (TDP). Before we even listed ours, we’d spent a sunny Sunday afternoon biking around the neighborhood we really wanted to live in. John noticed an open house, we stopped in with only 10 minutes to spare, and we fell in love, hard. The unit was absolutely beautiful, a new gut-rehab of a 100-year-old building… tall ceilings, huge windows, a dining room, three bedrooms, two baths, a fireplace, a covered garage, a huge deck… all on a quiet, gracious, green street just a few steps away from shops, bars, and restaurants. Within walking distance of the lake. Within walking distance of the el. It seemed too good to be true.

John snapped several photos with his iPhone, and he pored over them in the coming days while I stoically refused to look and cautioned him against falling for a place before ours was sold. We visited 10 or 11 other homes—condos, townhouses, even two small houses—but nothing could quite compare to TDP.

Many more things happened between the time we made an offer on TDP and Monday, Sept. 28, the day we moved in. Anyone who’s bought and sold real estate knows that it’s an extremely bumpy, stressful, and nausea-inducing ride, and our experience was no different… so much haggling, waiting, strategizing, finding out that TDP’s association rules forbid dogs over 30 pounds… you name it. But in the end, we sat around a table in a Loop high-rise, signed our names 146 times, and were given a set of keys. Unbelievably, magically, The Dream Place was ours.

Moving was weird, sad, exciting. The day we cleaned out our old condo and shut the door on it forever was a bit melancholic. It was the first home we owned, and we lived there for six years, along with Moose and then Stella. We painted the walls with colors we loved. We listened (unwillingly) to our neighbors doing Vietnamese karaoke. We sat on the tiny deck and grilled out and drank beer, fighting small battles with the pigeons determined to roost above our back door (we won in the end). We walked countless loads of laundry down three flights, through the courtyard, onto the sidewalk, through another door, and down to the basement. We stayed up late laughing with neighbors during summer courtyard parties. We made exceptionally dear friends. We watched some of those friends become parents, and then we grew to love their kids.

The old neighborhood is rough around the edges; there’s litter, and people on the corners yelling, and if you’d like to buy drugs, well, they’re not hard to find. It’s crowded because of nearby high rises, making it tough to find parking. It’s near a busy street that’s scary to cross. People are somewhat lax about shoveling snow off the sidewalks.

But it’s full of interesting people. It’s incredibly diverse—very young people and very old, Ukrainian, Russian, Middle Eastern, Vietnamese, white, black, Latino. There are lots of people with dogs, and in six years we became acquainted with many of them, enough to give a friendly greeting, stop to ask how life is going, let the dogs say hello to each other.

I miss my old neighbors, and there are things about my old neighborhood that I miss, too, even though I adore the new one and still can’t quite believe I get to call it home. There are no crumpled beer cans on the grass. Construction dumpsters don’t overflow with household trash. People don’t scream at each other in the street. The block club is an active one, and although the area is less diverse, it’s also less transient… people stay for a long time, raise kids, become middle-aged. It’s what we plan to do. This is going to be our home for a long time. And because of that, I know that eventually, I’ll get to know my fellow dog-walkers. When the weather’s warm again, we’ll be out on the deck, chatting with our neighbors on their deck across the way. I can’t expect our home of three months to feel as familiar as our home of six years. But it will.

Sight and touch

On Wednesday night around 9 p.m., I stood on the el platform after class (my very last class in grad school—come June I’ll have an M.A., and it only took four years!), waiting for the train. It had been a summer day in April, temperatures near 80 degrees, the undergrads schlepping around in wrinkled capri pants and rubber flip-flops (and me in my cotton grown-up workclothes, feeling old and overheated).

But now the air was incredibly, deliciously soft and warm and dark, brushing my cheeks, sliding through my hair. The city skyline was twinkling in the distance, Sears, Hancock, Aon, and the moon overhead was almost full. A beautiful night, its beauty sensed by both sight and touch…one of those small slices of loveliness that come when you least expect them.

Yesterday's weather was almost as nice, although a little cooler. I walked Moose in the park after work, my eyes unaccustomed to all the green—velvet green grass, pale green daffodil stalks, hedges covered in a light green mist. Blue sky. And for those of us who are white, pale legs and arms bared for the first time since September. The park was full of kids rollerblading and jump-roping and riding scooters. Two little Hispanic boys seemed very interested in Moose—I heard the Spanish word for dog, perro, whispered in a high-pitched voice—and so I stopped and asked if they wanted to pet him. They came over shyly, and somewhere in my mind I remembered the words: “Se nombre Moose,” his name is Moose. “Hi, Moose,” they said, stroking his head.

We kept walking, passing a young Eastern European mom and her toddler, a few homeless men, some Arab kids kicking a soccer ball, two young white joggers, the headphoned teenage boy who walks his neighbor’s ancient Bassett hound every afternoon. And then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a tall, moving, black object, and I turned to see a woman in a burka walking on another path about 20 yards away. She was pushing a stroller with a toddler in it and leading a four- or five-year-old girl by the hand. The little girls wore pastel-colored coats with their hoods up. But the woman was dressed in a voluminous swath of black.

I didn’t want to openly stare at her, but I did steal a few more glances. I see women in headscarves around my neighborhood, but never women with their faces covered. I realized that this woman wasn’t wearing an actual burka, but a long, wide black dress, a long black headscarf, and another black scarf-like cloth that covered her face from the nose down. Her eyes were visible. (Perhaps what she was wearing was a chador; I’m not sure.)

Seeing her made me remember the night before, standing on the el platform with the warm breeze in my hair and on my cheeks. And although I don’t assume that the woman wanted my pity, I did pity her, for not being able to have that experience. I wondered, if she has a balcony, can she at least step outside at night, uncovered, to feel the air on her skin? Can she open a window and lean out, close her eyes and breathe the night air? I wondered if it’s difficult for young girls to begin wearing such a garment, when the days of not wearing one are still so fresh in their memories. I thought about how I had smiled at the two Hispanic boys and how they’d smiled back. What for me is an ordinary shared moment between strangers, a daily punctuation that some of my neighbors never experience.

Dog-walking tales; or, why it’s not so bad that we don’t have a yard

There’s a group of four or five little Mexican girls, maybe nine or ten years old, who live down the street from us in a small apartment complex. Sometimes they’re playing outside when I’m walking Moose, and they always run over to him and gather around excitedly: “Hi Moose! Hi Moose! Oh, I love you, Moose! Can I pet him?? Can I walk him??”

So I let them each take a small section of the leash, and then we all shuffle down the street, a slowly moving mass of girls with one skinny black greyhound in the middle. As we walk, they pet him, scratch his ears, giggle over how skinny he is: “I can feel his bones!” Every once in awhile, I tell Moose encouragingly that he’s being such a good and patient boy, and it’s funny to see him look up toward the sound of my voice, as if he’s relieved that in the midst of the hubbub, I’m still there. He really is remarkably patient. Although I’ll continue to say no when one of the girls invariably asks if she can “ride him like a pony.”

*****

One evening we passed a lanky mailman wheeling his cart down the sidewalk. He was young and African American, maybe in his mid-twenties. He skirted us widely but grinned as he did so. “I wouldn’t even try to outrun that dog,” he declared.

*****

We’re cutting through a darkened playlot around 6:45 p.m. when we come across a middle-aged white man and his black Lab/retriever mix. The dog is running loose, weaving this way and that and sniffing bushes. She bounds up to Moose to say hello. The man follows and introduces his dog as “Treevey.” Treevey is wearing a sort of square, Velcro-fastened covering on her back that labels her a “Therapy Dog.” I ask the man about it.

“We work at the home there on the corner for mentally ill people,” he says, gesturing at the square, shabby building just north of us. “And the people there just love her. We go every week. One time we couldn’t go for two weeks in a row, and one of the residents asked for a photo of Treevey so he could look at her while she was gone.”

Moose tires of Treevey’s excitement—he usually prefers humans to dogs—and approaches the man instead, tilting his long, pointy head up for a pet. His tail is flapping. The man caresses Moose’s ears. “I love greyhounds,” he says. “They have such a kind, gentle soul.”

We leave the park together. Treevey remains unleashed. When we reach the busy intersection, the man tells Treevey to stay, and she stops at the curb. He walks out into the middle of the street, looks both ways, and then turns back to her: “Cross.” She trots neatly across the street to join him. Moose looks up at me. The only English he reliably understands includes his name, “Are you hungry?” “Wanna go for a walk?” and “Do you want dinner?” I have a feeling he isn't interested in learning any new commands.

Last week in church

Originally posted to Diary-X

Last Sunday we didn’t go to church in the building with the red door and the steeple. Instead, we slept in an extra half-hour, and then I suggested bagels. Ah, bagels. I am a simple woman who considers a freshly baked pumpernickel bagel with a smear of plain cream cheese and a strong black coffee to be an immense treat. Luckily I married a man who agrees, so we decided to walk the 15 minutes to our local bagel shop. “Let’s bring the dog,” John suggested. The mild autumn weather was still warm enough to allow breakfasting outside, so we explained to Moose that we were all “going for a walk! Going outside! You wanna go outside? Huh? Do you?” He considered our proposal and agreed that it was a good one.

The three of us rarely go for walks together. I know that sounds kind of strange and sad, considering the amount of walks a city dog gets every day, but dog-walking often feels like a chore (especially those early-morning strolls, which John and I take turns doing). So when Moose realizes that both of us are accompanying him on one of his constitutionals, his liquid-brown eyes light up, his bony butt waggles furiously, and he races down the stairs ahead of us, spinning in excited circles on each landing. (This is particularly funny given that 90% of the time he behaves much more like this.) A threesome walk usually means a trip to the dog beach or a ride in the car, which are both Extremely Big Events in our dog’s life.

But on this sunny Sunday morning, the destination involved breakfast. We set off around 10 a.m., stopping to admire our neighbor’s baby and to let Moose exchange sniffs with the beagle that just moved in next door. The leaves were beginning to turn color in full force, and as we walked down the sidewalk we passed beneath a row of brilliant yellow trees. The ground beneath our feet was crunchy and bright, and I stopped to pick up a particularly fine yellow leaf. I planned to carry it along for awhile and admire it. John turned around to see where I was, and he smiled. “I knew you’d be doing that,” he said, glancing at the leaf in my hand, and I smiled back. This is what it means to be married, I thought, to have a person who knows you that well. For a second I felt such overwhelming blessedness and good fortune that I could hardly bear it.

We walked under the el tracks, past the dry cleaners and the record shop and the flower store owned by one of our neighbors. We gaped at the stately old mansions and petted passing dogs. We turned on our neighborhood’s main shopping street, pausing to look in the windows of the expensive shoe store, choosing which ones we’d buy—black leather ankle-height boots for John, maroon and pink suede Pumas for me. And finally, we reached the bagel shop. John waited outside with Moose while I went in to order, remembering to pick up a “doggie bagel” from the jar by the register. Then, with our bagels and coffee and dog, we sat down on a nearby bench and proceeded to eat. Moose stood by patiently, waiting for bits of food after scarfing down his own snack. The sun was warm, and John was wearing his sunglasses, and I had on a red hooded zip-up sweater. People stopped to smile at Moose and ask questions about him. My coffee was rich and hot, and the leaves on the trees were russet and gold, and I couldn’t think of anywhere else I’d rather be than right there, on that bench, with my family. There are a lot of hard things in life, things that make me worry, things that hurt. But there are also moments when it’s ridiculously easy to forget they exist.

Musings on unrelated topics that conclude on a rather sad note

Originally posted to Diary-X

Comments made by passersby during recent walks with Moose:

Dodgy guy loitering at street corner: Looks like you abuse your dog.
Me: ...uh...

Teenage couple walking toward us.
Girl to boy: Eww, look at that nasty dog! It looks like a big black horse! Nasty.
Me, silently: Bitch.

Little boy chasing a soccer ball into our path: Hey, what kind of dog is that?
Me: He’s a greyhound. He used to be a racing dog.
Boy: How old is he?
Me: He’s seven.
Boy, with look of pure wonder on his face: Wow! I’m seven, too! Wow.

*****

Tomorrow John and I are going to a Cubs game, which I’m pretty excited about. I’m no die-hard sportsfan, but there’s something about Wrigley Field that captivates even an unathletic bookworm such as myself… the organ music, the ivy, the lack of glowing billboards and stupid mascot antics and electronic advertisements. It just feels simple and American and authentic. Also, there’s cold Old Style and warm soft pretzels.

During our first summer in Chicago, John and I went to four or five Cubs games. (Tickets were easier to get then, before the Cubbies almost made it to the World Series.) I’ll never forget what I wore to my first game: shorts, flip-flops, and a short-sleeved shirt. I was utterly shocked at how many of the twenty-something women of Chicago’s North Side dress to attend a baseball game: skimpy sundresses, heeled shoes, outfits I’d wear out on a Saturday night. Amusing, actually. Maybe it’s my marital status talking here, but tomorrow I’ll be decked out in jeans, a long-sleeved shirt, a pair of Roos, and a hooded sweatshirt in case it’s chilly. Ladies. It’s a baseball game. Must we strive to look sexy all of the damn time?

*****

A few nights ago, while hamstering along on the treadmill, I watched a disturbing documentary on the liberation of concentration camps after WWII, called “Memory of the Camps.” (And no, the irony did not escape me—running in place in a quest for fitness and slimness while watching horrifyingly emaciated people try to digest a bowl of soup.) I ended up working out an extra 20 minutes in order to watch the end of the documentary, which is basically just footage shot by the liberators along with a sparse script written in 1945. I highly recommend watching this program. I’ve seen a lot of films and read a lot about the Holocaust, but I’ve never seen footage like this. It is, simply, unbelievable.

When I was studying in Vienna at the end of college, our group took a field trip (if you can call it that; the term seems too cheerful, somehow) to Mauthausen, one of the smaller concentration camps located in Austria. The prisoners were worked to death hauling stone out of a quarry, or they were starved, shot, gassed, or frozen to death. Jews, Russians, Gypsies, Catholic priests, and gay men were exterminated there, among others.

It was a life-jolting experience to visit this place. I remember being utterly silent during the entire three hours we spent there, and not taking photos of the gas chambers because it somehow felt disrespectful. The weather was mild and sunny, and the Austrian countryside spread out green and placid around us. There were actually some houses and farms overlooking the camp complex. I can’t imagine living so close to such a tangible reminder of human depravity.

En route to the camp, our busload of college students stopped to eat at a little Austrian restaurant, and some people bitched and complained that they couldn’t understand the menu, that none of the food appealed to them, etc. A few hours later, standing at the bottom of that rock quarry where so many men met their death in the freezing Austrian winters, I was struck hard with shame. (Soon after I returned from Vienna, I wrote about this experience for an essay contest. I won $50.)

Words cannot

Originally posted to Diary-X

You may have heard about it, the execution-style murders of Judge Joan Lefkow’s husband and mother, which took place here in Chicago on Monday, February 28. How the judge arrived home from work around 6 p.m. and found a pool of blood seeping from the basement door. How she ran screaming into the street for help.

Someone broke into their home on Lakewood, smashed a back window and shot Michael Lefkow and his mother-in-law multiple times. He was 64. She was 89. Both were frail—he recovering from surgery on his Achilles tendon, she needing two canes in order to walk. Her canes and his crutch were found upstairs. They were killed in the basement.

The Lefkows live five blocks away from us. I often walk Moose by their house after work. John and I pass their block whenever we walk to neighborhood bars and restaurants and shops. It’s a block that we know.

The Lefkows are strong, committed Episcopalians who are active in the Chicago diocese and have many ties to my church. I found out about the murders from an email that our pastor sent to all parishioners. My assistant pastor visited Mr. Lefkow at home last week as he recovered from his surgery.

The Lefkows have four daughters that they raised in that house. One is engaged to be married this summer. Michael Lefkow was a lawyer, and his office downtown had a view of the federal building where his wife worked. They commuted every day together and often shared lunch. They’d been married a long, long time.

The front page of the Chicago Tribune this morning was dedicated to the murders. John took one look at the photo of Michael Lefkow and said, “I recognize him. I’ve seen him in church.” I talked to John around 7:30 p.m. tonight—I often call him at work in the evenings during tax season, just to say hi—and he said that he can’t stop thinking about it, the fact that he recognizes the man from church.

Tonight I walked Moose past Lakewood. I was surprised to see a cluster of news vans still pulled up around the street—at least seven of them. Bright lights, police cars, cameras, police tape. The block cordoned off. It was cold, and some of the news cameramen gathered around Moose, commenting on his coat and asking about his racing history, petting his head and rubbing his ears and smiling. Their job can’t be enjoyable at times like these.

The neighborhood was dark and quiet, not many people out, and as I peered into the lit houses and glanced down the red-brick alleyways, I felt an indescribable sadness, and my whole being was consumed by a prayer for that family, the judge and her four daughters. And then I came across a friend walking home from yoga class, and we talked about work and summer and her sorrow over recently losing her cat to cancer. And then Moose and I arrived home, and I put in a Sam Phillips CD and made a dinner of grilled chicken and green beans with almonds and red wine, and I sat down with a travel magazine. I am not a judge who has sentenced white supremacists and mobsters. My husband is not a lawyer who’s made enemies in his work. I do not have to fear retribution for anything. But nevertheless, I can’t stop thinking about what happened on Monday five blocks from my home. Words cannot describe.

Tax Day, and catching up

Originally posted on Diary-X

From now until January 2005, my husband will get home from work before six o’clock, not after nine o’clock. He will sleep in with me on Saturdays, and we’ll make scrambled eggs and coffee and read the paper together. O happy, blessed Tax Day! This time of year, the end of tax season, always feels like the start of my summer. Later sunsets, warmer weather, and someone to grill me a chicken breast. Life is good.

So last week was Holy Week, and…

…John, who suffers from pretty bad heartburn, had an endoscopy, which went fine (or as well as things can go when you’re sedated and have multiple tubes snaking down your throat). John has no ulcers to speak of, so the doctor’s just going to up his heartburn medicine. He also commended us for placing cement blocks under the head of our bed—apparently this is a great way to combat heartburn. I’m getting used to slowly sliding down the bed as I sleep, waking up with my feet dangling off the bottom. Oh, the sacrifices one must make in a marriage…

…I started my spring class, a poetry writing workshop. And I don’t think I’m the worst poet in the room. (This is the kind of thing I worry about, tiresome perfectionist that I am.) I’ve taken many a fiction writing workshop, but never poetry, so I jumped at the chance to learn the craft. For my first poem, I wrote about Moose. I know, I know: isn’t that something a crazy dog lady would do? But I didn’t want to share deep dark family secrets or embarrassing emotional stuff right off the bat—I hardly know these people. I was actually proud of my work (it’s not a sappy, I’m-a-freak-about-my-dog kind of thing). I’m debating whether or not to post it here. Not sure yet…

…I went to my first neighborhood block club meeting. It was held in an old Jewish synagogue. There were about twenty people in attendance—a few white yuppies, an Indian guy, a Vietnamese guy, a black guy, an older white woman, an older gay man, a grizzled guy with a long ponytail who took copious notes, and a blue-haired dogwalker wearing biker half-gloves on his hands. It was a good feeling to be there; it gave me a sense of community. And I also enjoyed being inside the synagogue, looking at the Hebrew carvings, reading the announcements for Passover events. I just finished the book Girl Meets God, so I felt like I had some understanding of what takes place in a Jewish house of worship. (I recommend that book, by the way. It’s so refreshing to read intelligent spiritual writing that’s not all touchy-feely, syrupy evangelistic stuff—and that doesn’t have an axe to grind. The author is very real, very human, and not sanctimonious at all.)…

…I went to our church’s Good Friday service alone and knelt in the darkened sanctuary, listening to the story of the Passion and, as I do every year, trying to understand the magnitude of what I profess to believe. Then, less than 48 hours later, we celebrated Easter, incense and fancy hats and smiles and alleluias and an embarrassing moment in which I actually teared up during the hymn “Jesus Christ is Risen Today,” and had to stop singing and bite the inside of my cheek in an effort to compose myself. I have no idea why that happened…

…the pigeons had babies. The three of them are mashed together in the nest, ungainly and matted with scrawny necks and big black eyes. Their mother keeps a careful eye on them from the rooftop next door. I’m tempted to walk up to the nest for a close look, but then I picture Momma Pigeon swooping in and clawing at my eyes, so I keep my distance. (She's somewhat evil looking—charcoal gray, with those glittery red pigeon eyes.) A few weeks ago I wished the pigeons were perched over our door instead of our neighbor’s, but now that I see the tributaries of bird poop running down her screen door, I’ve changed my mind…

…while I was walking Moose one afternoon, we passed a scruffy-looking man on the sidewalk who paused to ask this question: “Have you ever eaten dog meat?” When I replied that I hadn’t, half-amused and half-horrified, he kept on walking. These are the times when I’m grateful Moose doesn’t understand much English beyond "dinner" and his own name.

Dispatch from Antarctica

Originally posted on Diary-X

Cold. Very, very cold. Finger-aching, sweater-and-coat–penetrating, nose-hair–freezing fucking cold. Today’s high will be 16 degrees. Very smart idea, breaking up with the college boyfriend who eventually moved to Alaska. It hurt at the time, but did it hurt as much as my face did this morning, after 15 minutes spent waiting for the damn train on that unprotected wind-magnet of a station platform? I think not.

*****

Of course, once I boarded the train, I was rewarded for my suffering with the sight of a shabby older man, sitting with his briefcase in his lap, carefully applying a nice shade of coral-red lipstick to his cracked lips. He followed that up with a few coats of mascara, then attached a gaudy, dangling clip-on earring to his right earlobe. It all matched perfectly with his rumpled men’s clothing and week-old beard.

*****

I witnessed an attempted mugging a few days ago. Nothing says “2004 is gonna be a great year!” more than seeing a crime committed at 6 p.m. on the sidewalk two blocks from your home. I was walking home from the el station after work, and I wasn’t the only one around—the neighborhood was fairly busy with pedestrians and cars. Suddenly, less than a block ahead of me, I saw three people bundled in winter coats jostling each other. One person fell into the street, and the others—they looked like teenagers—took off sprinting toward a nearby alley, into which they disappeared. The person lying in the street was crying “My God! Why, God? Why?” I jogged over to find a middle-aged woman—maybe 60 years old—clutching her large purse to her chest and struggling to get to her feet. She was unhurt, and they didn’t get her purse, but she was very shaken and upset. I put my arm around her and helped her up. I told her to call the police and report it. What else could I do? She spoke in a foreign accent—something Eastern European—and kept saying “My papers! They could have gotten my papers!” The whole incident left me pretty disturbed; I never thought this sort of thing would happen during rush hour so close to my quiet neighborhood el station. I’m gripping my bag a little tighter these days.

*****

John and I made two Big Purchases last weekend (thanks, freelance work!): a digital camera and a loveseat. Post-Christmas is when the monster sales take place, so we timed our shopping accordingly. Our shiny new digicam (I keep seeing the words “digital camera” abbreviated in this manner, but I can’t say I like it) is a Canon Powershot A70, 3.2 megapixels. It’s a little bit point-and-shoot, a little bit SLR, and we love it. It provides me with a deep, abiding sense of glee, being able to take pictures of anything, at any time, then immediately view (and delete) them. I’m looking at everything differently now—as soon as we read the instructions and install the big memory chip that we bought, I’m bringing the camera to work, to capture all the sights that have illustrated my commute for the last two years.

The loveseat will finally solve the seating problem we have in our living room. As in, when we have two or more people over, there isn’t enough of it. The loveseat is made of dark-brown leather, and it was on sale, and it is luscious. It’s very modern, with clean, spare lines, and it’s a dream come true for John, who’s been pining away for a leather armchair since God knows when. (He would always point out the chairs in the Restoration Hardware catalog, which were priced around, oh, $1,300, and I would laugh and laugh. $1,300! For a chair! One person can fit in a chair. I’m sorry, I would say, but the comfort of your snobby ass is not worth $1,300.)

*****

Simon, Garfunkel, and I took down the Christmas tree on Sunday. I placed their greatest hits in the CD player (how I love the song “America,” and of course “Bookends”—Time it was and what a time it was it was/A time of innocence, a time of confidences. Long ago it must be, I have a photograph/Preserve your memories, they're all that's left you) and slowly took down all the tree ornaments, boxing them up for next year. Snow was falling outside, big blowsy white flakes. Once the tree was devoid of all decorations, John picked it up and took it outside to the alley, the tree shedding its path of needly tears through our apartment. I took down our stockings, the red and green candles, the wooden nativity set. I always feel a bit hollow when the Christmas season ends—I remember feeling that way even as a girl. The living room seems so empty without that lit-up little spruce. Now begins the long, slow march of winter, and of tax season, and of no holidays until Memorial Day. It’d be easy for a girl to get depressed if she didn’t have a girls' reunion and her birthday (the big 28!) to anticipate in the coming weeks.

Chips ahoy!

Originally posted to Diary-X

Yesterday morning, as I made my way to the el station, I passed a scruffy man crouching on the sidewalk against a storefront. “White milk! Chips ahoy!” he cried, staring at me. “White milk! Chips AHOY!!” How does one respond to such statements? I gave him a half-smile and kept on going.

Bedspread Lady [ed. note: I've lost the post that introduced B.L., a homeless woman who apparently lived outside the gas station across the street from our first apartment in Chicago] may have moved on—a clothing donation bin now resides on the patch of concrete where she used to sit—but our neighborhood still has its share of fringy characters. Besides the cookie monster, there is the one-legged man, who has parked his wheelchair in front of our building for the past three or four weeks. I have no idea where he came from, or why he chose our strip of sidewalk as his new home. But he’s there every day: when I leave for work, when I come home, when I head out for my jog/walk thing. He has a flimsy plaid bag stuffed with belongings propped up next to his wheelchair. Sometimes he talks to the air and gestures. Other times he’s quiet and won’t acknowledge my hello. I don’t know if he sleeps there, in his chair.

Believe me, I’m sure our new neighborhood will have its share of street characters, but I’m going to miss the ones we know now. Like the tiny old woman who sells Streetwise at the Walgreen’s a few blocks away. Whether it’s 92 degrees (like today—oh, don’t get me started) or 22 degrees, she’s out there, singing her raspy little song: “Streeeeetwiiiiise…. Helpingthehomeless! Every day every day every day. Streeeeetwiiiiise…” She used to stop and pet Murphy when we’d walk by.

We live near a small theater company, and a few nights ago, as I was putting our Colorado pictures in a scrapbook, I heard some guys talking loudly, laughing and cursing. The sound was coming from our open back window. Curious, I peered outside, only to find a few actors rehearsing their lines on a nearby rooftop. I crouched by the window and watched them for awhile, an audience of one enjoying a private performance. (I’m not sure what the play was about—I think there was some type of bar fight involved.)

After almost two years, our little wedge of Chicago feels like home. But part of me is really excited to resettle in a new neighborhood… to take advantage of this opportunity to explore a new place, get to know even more of the city. Last night, we made an offer on a terrific condo about a mile north of where we live now. (John later told me that he almost blacked out as we signed all the paperwork. This is scary stuff.) The seller is in Europe, so it may take a day or two to hear from her. So now, we wait. And pay extra attention to all the little details of our neighborhood, because it won’t be ours much longer.