Keeping occupied.

Holy crap, this week has been insane. Every single night I've had something going on:

Monday - Tuesday: stayed at my sister's because Tuesday I attended a seminar in the 'burbs.

Wednesday: my sister had one of these parties, which I normally would not enjoy, but I love the Body Shop, and they use all natural ingredients and don't test on animals nor buy anything from vendors who do, and blahblahblah....basically I spent alot of money to begin a "face care regime." And I'm having a party of my own where we'll test out the latest in foot care. Fabulous!

Tonight: the B.F. and I are going to go see Daniel Johnston. We're totally exhausted from the week, but it's like a once-in-a-very-long-time chance to see him, so we're heading to Lincoln Park. We're going to the 7 p.m. show, though, not the late show, which is the show we would have gone to in our youth (you know, like 2 years ago).

Have you seen his movie? If not, oh my, you should. I really enjoyed it. Then again, I seem to always greatly enjoy documentaries about people that can't completely handle life, such as Henry Darger and Big and Little Edie Beale, so maybe that opinion is a little biased.

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Speaking of biographical-type stuff, I started this book this weekend. Please look past the fact that Kirsten Dunst is on the cover, because WHOA-HO-HO. The pomp! The circumstance! The intrigue! I haven't gotten very far - Marie's only 14 and about to be married to the Dauphin - but....wow. If I ever get depressed about how fickle and mean the human race can get, I just need to remember this book to realize that they've been that way for a very long time.

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So anyways, I'v spent way too much time having fun and not staying home last weekend and this week that:

a) I actually have grown tired of shouting small talk over loud music to my friends at bars; and,

b) I have let my apartment fall into ruins.

I'll be recovered from "A" by this coming weekend, but I should probably get off this machine and try to make some sense of "B."

But not before I show you a picture of the Elvis impersonator that was at the taqueria across the street from my house at 12:45 a.m. last Saturday:



Yeah. I don't know why, either.

Thursday sadness.

Today, I saw the aftermath of a dog that had gotten hit by a car. Alot of people standing around, and a dog with a big, bloody gash on his back left side. He was just laying there. I went around the block because I was stuck behind a parking car, and while I was driving back I called my dog's vet and then Animal Control to see where to bring the dog.

When I got back, the dog and everyone that had been standing around it were gone.

I feel like I should have done more, and I didn't.

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Later on, I took a bike ride that was so long - and I am so out of shape - that twice I thought, Dear Lord. I am going to die. Right here. On Damen Avenue.

I didn't, though. Die, that is. And that made me feel a little better.

Hurrah.

Wednesday musing.

People don't give Wednesday much love. Neither do I, usually, but today I kept on thinking it was Tuesday, and then I realized it wasn't, and it was pretty sweet. So keep on rockin' it, Wednesday.

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I don't have much to tell you. I'm also a little drunk from the fine Canadian beer that I was drinking at Lula just now, a beer whose name I can't remember because it's so great, but let me assure you, it was fantastic.

It's been a bit of a roller coaster of a week.....health scare with a family member, a family member of a friend dying, and various friends being sad for various reasons. So I spent alot of my time this past weekend with my dog at the Wicker Park Dog Park, which is really less of a park and more of a little sliver at the end of a baseball field, but it's a very therapeutic place, I think. I mean, how can you not be happy with guys like this running around?







That French Bulldog in the last picture there is named Rambo. Rambo has seasonal allergies, so was sneezing snot everywhere. But in an endearing way. He also might have a little of this, too, because he was not pleased when any other dog got attention. Which, you know, was happening all over the place at the dog park. Rambo is a dog with an attitude that sticks out about 5 feet in front of him.

Man, I loved Rambo.

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Some great things:

1) Sharyn comes to town in about two weeks.

2) SARK has just recently come out with a new book. Watch her explain the premise of Fabulous Friendship Festival here. SARK is amazing. Her books have been like my friends over the past years, especially during those "dark place" times.

3) Last, but certainly not least, the interviewer - and hardcore Spiderman enthusiast - in this commercial looks exactly like an ex-boyfriend of mine. I can't even begin to tell you how much this commercial makes me laugh.

Avoidance.

It’s ‘round about this time in the week wherein I absolutely cannot take my job anymore.

Here are some common work avoidance strategies I take:

1) I drag my feet on the way into work. This was a bit more thrilling today, as I forgot my breakfast at home, so called a woman I work with and told her I would be “a little late.” Too bad “a little late” was only 8:36, instead of the usual 8:30. Stupid apartment and it’s nearness to my job.

2) I spend about an hour in the morning “catching up on the news.” Chicago Tribune is first. God forbid some poor downtrodden individual on the South Side got stabbed or caught in a drive-by overnight, and I missed it.

Then I read CNN, then the BBC. I like to start local and end global, you see. After I've gotten a good inkling of how screwed up the world is, I usually end by looking at People's daily celebrity photos, just to really bring my brain back to the rotting cesspool that I am comfortable with it being most of the time.

3) I check my daily blog reads. Bev will usually have her daily musing already up for me to check out. Except for that one time last week when she was late - because she was visiting with her mom and cousins - and I had to sit on my hands so as not to be one of many of her loyal readers who emailed her, to make sure she wasn’t trapped under something heavy. See, that’s what happens when you blog every single day for seven years: you take a break, and the online community thinks you’re dead.

4) Lately, I’ve also been writing in my journal. Not this journal, but the actual journal, filled with waywayway more phobias and laments than I could let the Internet in on, including but not limited to:
- wanting to be more creative in my everday life
- as part of that, wanting to take classes to learn how to sew
- thinking that I’m a bad mother to my dog and cat some days
and,
- getting all “woe is me” about that Cadbury Crème Egg I ate last night.

Believe me, you would probably just need to lay your head down on the ground wondering how I make it through the day if I let you read any of THOSE entries.

Usually I throw a little watercolor or two (or hundreds) on to the pages of my journal, for visual stimulation. And, also, because I can’t seem to write on a page unless it’s decorated in some way, even if that just means being crinkly from the watercoloring that’s on the page behind it. The thought of a blank piece of paper fills me with terror, and I could probably (and probably have) read into that as being another reason I should pay for weekly therapy, but whatever, for now I'll just decorate the pages.



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After I have done one (or all) of these things at work, THEN I can begin to do something work-related. About five minutles later, I am bored enough to rinse and repeat the above list.

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Because it’s SO fitting that I follow that rant on my attitude towards what I do to pay the bills, I feel I must mention that yesterday was Secretary’s Day, or "Administrative Professionals Day," or any of these names that you would like to call it.

So, for the fourth year in a row, I spent the day being praised for doing a job that I don’t particularly care for and feel that I am too smart for, thus making me only marginally good at it, because I really hate it so much.

However, it pays the bills. Boy howdy, does it pay the bills.

Anyways, it was nice of my higher-ups to do something for me, but what really what I'm getting at is that it's just so embarrassing to get cards, gifts, accolades and a breakfast celebration to honor a profession I don't want to be in. I want to say something, you know, like: Please. Rub it in more that I had a foolhardy major in college that got me nowhere, and went down this professional road because I needed health insurance.

Sheesh.

The tulips were lovely, though. Even the two-headed mutant one.



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Finally, because I feel the need to spew it’s cuteness all over the Internet, delight if you will in this little polar bear’s butt.



Sorry I couldn't get him facing the right way - he was too busy playing with a piece of hay to pay any attention to the 600 people watching him.

This was taken last Sunday, probably the most beautiful day in all of 2007 (and Earth Day, to boot), when my family and I went to the Brookfield Zoo. There was also this baby, too:



Although, her cuteness was cut in half by the zoo feeling the need to show a video of her live birth, back in January. A live birth involving a very leggy little thing, splooging out of her mom’s rear, covered in afterbirth. And then Mom licks her clean. Just like that. I’m pretty glad that good old soap and water has replaced that last part of birth for us humans.

Maaaan....

I just got back from a performance by the the Joffrey Ballet - I am a season ticket holder - and I was all pumped to take some no-flash photos of Light Rain, because it rules, but photography of any kind was prohibited, because it's a "serious danger to the dancers."

I say: you owe me at least one photograph for my $275 a year, little "ballerinos".

:)

It could be worse.

Remember how in the last entry I was saying how I didn't want to bog the Internets down with my "woe is me" bullshit? Well, now I'm really trying to be happy and grateful for everything that I have, after watching the events unfold yesterday at Virginia Tech.

Seriously, what the fuck. What could have pissed that kid off so much? I think what bothers me, too, is that the survivor that spoke about how she played dead had been in a German class. I sat in that same German class for three of my four years of college. Tons of people would walk past our classroom, much like that shooter. Hell, watching people walk by the door was the only sweet respite I had once the professors started teaching us the dreaded genitive case, and I ceased to understand a thing.

Even for it's huge size, the U of I has a pretty open campus. Damn, I remember cutting through some of the school buildings on the Quad to get home from the bars on the weekends. That was sort of the beauty of college. You were in this bubble - you thought at least - where you could stretch your wings away from your family, yet still have an eye kept on you. I don't agree with anything else the man says, ever, but W. wasn't too far off when he said that colleges are sacred places of growing and learning, and that sacredness was violated yesterday.

It just shatters me to think that my nephew and his peers' college experience, should they choose to have it, might not be as freeing and eye-opening as mine was. I guess we can't ever really expect things to be the way they were. Still. It just scares me to think that maybe, sometime - and I hope to God not - it might not just be faceless, nameless strangers that get caught in the crosshairs.

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Enough of this, though. I can't dwell on such things. Live the now, don't worry about the future and things you can't change, if you catch my drift. Life's great right now. Everyone I know and love is happy and healthy. And, as you'll see below, my nephew's already facing life head-on. With no pants on. And he doesn't give a shit what you think.



He's going to be fine.

April Blahs bring May Hurrahs.

Hello Internet. It’s been awhile. This freak re-occurrence of winter in Chicago has made me irritable, so I haven’t really felt like doing much of anything, and I don’t want to bog the old Internets with my winter doldrums and tales of woe.

This is what it looked like outside my apartment the day that my Man turned 26, this past Wednesday:

Gross. Poor Steve. What crappy birthday weather. And on a Wednesday, too? Insult to injury.

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Also, I seem to be overemotional lately, another thing I don’t want to subject anyone to. Example: just last night, the Wizard of Oz episode of Scrubs had me in tears. The tears continued on, through a commercial about how anyone can help when they become organ donors. At one point, someone says, “A Cubs fan can even help a White Sox fan.” I don’t know why that hit me, but holy floodgates, Batman.

Although, if I HAD the choice, I don’t think I’d want some stupid Cubs fan’s stupid kidney. Yeah. I said it.

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Anyways, here are a few things:

1. I want to subscribe to this. Seriously. A t-shirt in the mail every six weeks? Awesome. They’re made with American Apparel shirts, too. Even though I think Dov Charney's sort of a soft-porn fetish weirdo, the Woman's M shirt fits me like a frickin' glove. Anyways, the descriptions inside the T-Post shirts are pretty great, too...I think something might have been lost in the translation from Swedish to English with some of them. Even more charming.

2. Have you seen Grindhouse yet? If not, gosh, what are you waiting for? Go see it, and then go get the soundtrack, especially to “Death Proof.” “Hold Tight” by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich has been in my head for days, and that’s a good thing. Especially when I think of the awesomely violent part in "Death Proof" where the song is playing....

3. My addiction to Flickr continues to worsen. I swear, I check my Contacts' photos before I even check my email. My favorite Flickr contacts lately have been this mother/daughter trio from Rhode Island: melisdramatic, iggy sodashell, and eyeballjellomold. I can't explain it, but the love and family together-ness sort of oozes out of their photographs. They're great.

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That's about all I've got, Internet. I'm watching two retrievers and two German Sheperds at a home in the suburbs this weekend. See, I have this side gig where people pay me way too much to house/dog sit for them. Really, what I do is eat their food, watch their cable, and sleep on mattresses that aren't pieces of shit like mine. Oh, and I get to do my laundry. Free laundry? Pretty sweet. I must say, though, that this time I'm afraid I miss my little family and my ugly little apartment a little too much to really enjoy myself.



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Over and out, y'all.