A Meme! Why the hell not? February 28, 2007

It’s not like I’m writing anything else. I saw this on Synaptic Blue.

20 years ago (1987)

Age? I turned 18 that year!

Were you in school? If so, where and for what? Graduated from high school, spent the summer in Seattle with my friend Susan (her mother was ill, and died from brain cancer that summer).

Where did you work? I had a bunch of wacky jobs. I was probably working at The French Baker in Oak Brook Mall during the school year. In Seattle, Susan and I got a bunch of random jobs. We did telemarketing for about an hour. We took a smoke break and forgot to return. We also applied at Wendy’s, but then we found out that the uniforms are polyester and that we would be required to wear them. Then we got jobs in the food court at a mall; Susan worked in the bbq stand and I worked in the frozen yogurt shop. They were both owned by the same people, a Chinese couple who we couldn’t understand, although I did figure out how to roll waffle cones. I ate waaaay too many gummy bears. We were just talking about this the other day, in fact. We quit by sending Susan’s niece into the food court with a letter for our bosses, claiming somebody had died and we’d had to leave town. We had avoidance of responsibility issues.

Where did you live? I lived in my parent’s house until early summer, and then moved out to live with Susan and her family in Seattle for a couple of months. That was fun.

What were your regular haunts? Pretty much wherever Susan was, I was. I don’t know that we had “regular haunts.” The place we spent the most time was the inside of her car, driving around.

Did you wear glasses? Contacts.

Who was your best friend? Um, Susan? And Jill too, although I haven’t seen her or heard from her in years.

How many tattoos did you have? None. Yet.

How many piercings did you have? None. I didn’t get my ears pierced until I was in my twenties.

What did you drive? An Isuzu I-Mark. Susan had a VW Scirroco, and she taught me how to drive stick in that thing. We drove it all the way from Seattle to LA.

Had you been to a real party yet? I guess that depends on the definition of a “real party.” If you’re talking about a bunch of guys walking around with twelve packs of beer, and girls with six-packs of wine coolers, and then everybody running in different directions when the cops showed up, then yes. I’d been to quite a few.

Heart broken yet? Oh, hell yes. Bastards.

Status on the market? Hmmm. It kinda varied during that year. Mostly single, though, I guess.

Ten years ago (1997)

Age? I turned 28 that year.

Were you in school? I was in grad school at Columbia College in Chicago, in Creative Writing, but I was only taking one class per semester. I was pregnant with my son that year (born in March–he’s got the big 1-0 coming up next week), and it’s not easy sitting in an uncomfortable chair for four hours with a huge baby in one’s belly.

Where did you work? I was a housewife and mother, and did various little jobs here and there creating newsletters for organizations.

Where did you live? Right where I live now, suburbs of Chicago.

What were your regular haunts? After my son was born, I started meeting some old high school friends at Belloumoni’s, a seedy little bar.

Did you wear glasses? I was in a glasses-wearing stage then, but switched between my glasses and my contacts.

Who was your best friend? Susan and I are still friends, and were at that point, but she lived in Seattle, so we obviously didn’t hang out much.

How many tattoos did you have? Two. One is a purple rose on my shoulder with a weird tribal design around it, and the other is a sun on my left thigh, above my knee, sorta towards the inside of my thigh. A girl I knew in college at University of Kansas drew it for me. Her name was Heather.

What did you drive? I believe I traded in my cute little two-door Honda Civic for that piece of shit Saturn wagon that year, right before my son was born.

Had you been to a real party yet? Oh, hell yes.

Heart broken yet? You bet!

Status on the market? Married with Children.

Five years ago (2002)

Age? I turned 33 that year. I loved my early thirties.

Were you in school? If so, where and for what? I hadn’t gone back to finish my Master’s yet, so no, I wasn’t in school. But I was itching to.

Where did you work? Housewife/mother. Various odd jobs.

Where did you live? Exactly where I am right now, suburb of Chicago!

What were your regular haunts? Hmmm. Five years ago? Probably Belloumoni’s still, another bar called Kenney’s, other people’s houses. Mostly I just hung out on my back porch.

Did you wear glasses? Glasses and contacts.

Who was your best friend? I kinda grew out of that whole “best friend” concept by the time I hit thirty, but still very close with Susan, and I’ve got a lot of great girlfriends.

How many tattoos did you have? Still just the two.

How many piercings did you have? I had my ears pierced by this time, and actually that may have been the year my daughter got her ears pierced, so I went with doubles just to show her it didn’t hurt that bad. Plus, I was hoping to get some more diamonds. Totally worked. (Thanks, honey!)

What did you drive? That piece of shit Saturn.

Had you been to a real party yet? I was a walking party.

Heart broken yet? Stop asking me this! Jesus! Let’s just say I hadn’t had one in many, many years.

Status on the market? Still married. Still with children.

As of today (2007)

Damn, this is a long one.

Age? Can you not add? For god’s sake! I’ll turn 38 in June.

Were you in school? If so, where and for what? Yep, still in grad school, persuing a combo Masters of Creative Writing/Master’s of Teaching Writing. I’m just about done with classes.

Where did you work? I tutor college students, and teach writing workshops to kids through adults.

Where did you live? Still here in the ‘burbs!

What are your regular haunts? Whatever bar hasn’t turned me out. lol. I like George’s on Wabash, the South Loop Club, Kasey’s, Sheffield’s (all in the city). Around here, I don’t mind Kenney’s. I spend more time than necessary at Starbuck’s. I love our public library and go there a lot to work on homework. Once in a while you’ll find me in a booth in the bar section at the Beef & Brandy, eating a patty melt with fries and drinking vodka tonics and writing. They think I’m weird.

Do you wear glasses? Will you shut the fuck up with this? My god. Is there something wrong with your attention span?

Who are your best friends? A whole bunch of people.

Do you talk to your old friends? Some of them, Susan especially. I still talk to my old friends Paul and Joe occasionally.

Do you have a crush? I’m totally not telling you THAT. But that Justin Timberlake, he’s sexy.

How many tattoos do you have? Still the two, but I want more. I just haven’t settled on a design yet.

How many piercings do you have? four, all in the ears.

What do you drive? 2006 Honda CR-V. Funny. I love Hondas.

Have you been to a real party yet? Yes, and I found a lot of people who are likewise walking parties, so we just walk around partying all the time. Actually, that’s not totally true, but I’ve found that a party can be formed just about anywhere.

Status on the market? Still married, still have those kids.

Besides ones of the pet variety, any dependents? Two beautiful, smart, well-behaved children. Except for when they’re ill-behaved.

Good God. That was a pain in the ass. Who the hell wants to know that much about some random person from the internet? If you read it all the way to the end, you must really want to know something about me, or be monumentally bored, or the rest of the internet is broken.

Feel free to torture your own damn self by answering these questions on your own blog, and leave me a comment here or a trackback from your blog so I can come read what you’ve written. I mean, it’s only fair.

Waking up in a puddle of piss February 25, 2007

This morning, I woke up slowly, and was still deciding which way to go from the groggy, dreamy state I was in; should I push towards waking up and go down to the basement with a gigantic cup of coffee and my laptop and get some writing done, or should I squeeze my eyes shut tightly and get another hour or two?

I rolled around a bit, trying to get into a more comfortable position from which to ponder my choices, and in doing so, allowed a little air under the covers. I smelled the piss and felt my damp pajama bottoms clinging to my legs all at the same time.

My first thought was, “Did I drink way more than I remember last night?” My second thought was, “That’s not human piss. That’s animal piss.”

When we remodeled our basement, we added a door into the laundry room, where the catbox is kept, and when the cat can’t get to her catbox in the middle of the night, apparently she pisses on us. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t dog piss. There’s a difference in the smell. Of course, as I pulled all the sheets off the bed (while cursing the cat), I discovered that one of the dogs had pissed on the corner of the bed. Basically, I spent the night sleeping in a bed filled with both dog and cat piss.

The most annoying thing about this is that we put the door on the laundry room so that the dogs can’t get in there and eat cat poo out of the litter box. We also installed a gate at the top of the stairs so the dogs can’t get in the basement unsupervised and piss on things, because they like to do that. So, in order to prevent my dogs from pissing on things in the basement, or from eating cat shit, I have to prevent my cat from reaching her litterbox, and because of that, she pisses on me in my sleep. And, not to be outdone, one of my dogs then pisses on the bed.

There is something very wrong with this situation. Actually, there are four things wrong with this situation, and they are all covered in fur (which sheds, requiring a lot of otherwise unnecessary sweeping and vacuuming).

We are enduring some kind of crazy-ass weather right now. We’d had several days in a row of near 40-degree temperatures, but that all went away, and beginning sometime last night, we’ve received a bizarre mixture of snow and sleet and frozen spit. Now it’s raining.

I have to go downtown today to see August Wilson’s Radio Golf at the Goodman Theater. I’m not much of a theater-goer. I don’t know why. I’m just not. I’m going with my Dialects in Fiction Writing class. And after that is the graduate student reading at Sheffield’s. It’s going to be a loooooong day. I don’t know what I’m going to read yet, although I have an idea, and if I read that, it’s going to require me to rewrite it in order to squeeze it onto two pages, always a worthy exercise as it forces me to get rid of all the extraneous crap.

Have a lovely day, everybody!

nanny nanny boo boo. I got a new puter… February 16, 2007

What the hell is that?  Somebody shoot me for writing a title like that, and then shoot my dog for doing an almost-puke thing that smells like he’s been eating his own shit for the last three hours, which he probably has.

It’s snowing again.  And before you roll your eyes and think some stupid thing like, “She’s from Chicago and she’s complaining about the snow in February.  Ho hum.  Click,” let me just say, I’m not actually complaining about getting more snow right now, even though we have a foot on the ground right now.  In fact, I love it.  What I DO NOT love is the fact that it’s about -5 right now and we were supposed to get some kind of “warming trend” today.  If this is a warming trend, then I am a 20 year old, 6 foot, 130 pound, 32-DD goddess.  THIS IS NOT WARM.  -5 is a warming trend when you are one of those stupid people who like to spend months in the Anarctic or the Arctic or wherever it’s really cold doing scientific research on stuff nobody cares about, unless it’s about warming trends.

I got my new computer today.  The UPS man arrived at about 7:35 p.m.  I opened the door and said, “I was about to send out a search party,” and what I meant was, “I was about to get in my car and come searching for your ass, where the hell have you been, give me my goddamn box and go home.”  There’s a few differences between my old computer and my new computer, and one of them is that my new computer is much, much smaller and much, much more powerful.  Which means I might actually use all of it’s capabilities sometime around 2017, by which I’ll have already gone through several more.

I may or may not be making any sense, but that’s not really my problem, now is it? 

It’s close to midnight and I have to teach in the morning, so I’m about to go to bed except I don’t wanto to stop trying to figure out Vista.  I want to make it do that Aero thing, but I don’t know how.  Do I have to watch some kind of tutorial or something?  That’s so sad.

Have a lovely night, everybody, and please pray that when I wake up, it’s not below zero.  I know that, even with all of your fingers crossed, it’s unlikely.  But there’s still a chance.  Right?

I’m still alive! February 14, 2007

I’ve been asked if I’m still among the living and yes, it’s true.  I am still alive.  In fact, when I read this comment inquiring as to my state of aliveness, I really thought it hadn’t been that long since I’d posted.  I see that it has been two weeks.  Yikes!

We got a helluva lot of snow in the last couple of days.  Last night, around 11:30, my husband and I were standing outside on the back porch smoking a cigarette and admiring the bright silence, and a coyote came trotting down the middle of the street.  That was a little weird.

I guess I’ve just been crazy busy.  My semester started a couple of weeks ago, and that always throws me for a loop.  But I’ll get back into the swing of blogging, eventually.  I’m getting a new, smaller and more powerful laptop in the next couple of days, and I’ll probably blog a whole lot just to have an excuse to play with it!

I had my last class with the special ed kids I was teaching.  I had planned on writing funny and amusing little stories about my experiences with them, but truthfully, there wasn’t much amusing about working with these kids.  Whenever I’d leave their classroom, I’d be filled with an odd mixture of total sadness and also hope.  Their lives are hard.  I don’t think I’d be learning much either if I were subjected to some of the things these kids are being subjected to in their home lives.  It’s not fair, and there’s nothing I can do about it, or even say to them to make them feel better or desire to learn.  It sucks.

My bilingual kids were a delight, because 1. they aren’t 14, they’re 11, which is a much more fun age to teach.  I know it doesn’t seem like a big difference, but there’s a lot more to those particular three years than you might think.  Maybe you know that already, and 2. they really really really wanted to learn how to read, write and speak English.  They were polite and sweet and I’m going to miss them.

Anyway, I am alive, and I’ll be back in usual form soon.

Happy Valentine’s Day!