fair's fair

last week i was talking to someone (i honestly can't remember who) about fairness and the way life doles out breaks and benefits and outcomes. the way that karma doesn't always seem to directly hit its mark, or benefit a do-gooder and that sometimes life's justice is meted out in uneven chucks. i can think of people on both ends of the spectrum. those who deserve more breaks than they get and those who haven't really had to suffer at all.

when i think about these scenarios, the name paris hilton comes to mind. i'm not really sure why. but i think, there is a girl who has had every privilege this world can offer. she was born into a family with money and power, she is thin and blonde and is not completely unattractive and has a trust fund, and despite her obvious need to receive attention from the media and the public to achieve some sort of perverted celebrity, her life is pretty charmed. she couldn't even handle sitting in a jail cell for what 30 days by herself, because she had probably never been asked to be alone with her thoughts for that long. or suffered the indignity of being grounded by her obviously indulgent parents. sure, sure i know what you are saying, who am i to judge anyone's circumstances or life experiences or know what they go through on a daily basis? fair enough. but i am guessing that hilton never worried about where her next meal was coming from, or her next soon-to-be-neglected pet for that matter. the harsh words the media throws her way are generally fair, deserved and she is the one that put herself in that position in the first place. she never worried about a roof over her head or a retirement fund. she never even had to think about an actual career. she can walk through this world with her head in the clouds and still end up, at the end of an 80 year run, on top. one could even say that her lower iq is a benefit, because she doesn't even have to recognize how useless and disposable she really is. ouch.

and so you don't think i am just hating on paris, i too have lived a fairly charmed life. besides a bout with lyme's disease that left me perpetually sick for several of my formative years and the curse of being a chubby adolescent in a society that worships the thin, i have had a pretty good run. i can pay my rent, put food in my mouth, clothe myself and once in a while go out to a nice restaurant or the movies. i have also had the benefit of both my parents as both an emotional and monetary safety net, underutilized yes, but ever present. my childhood experiences have made me resilient and sensitive, yes, aware of the physical and emotional pain inflicted on others by circumstance or trickery. either way is wicked and fate is a fickle mistress. but knowing that my parents are there when i make a misstep and fall off the tightrope we all walk, permits me to live the highwire lifestyle i have taken to in the past. i paid for graduate school myself, took on the loans, the crushing debt that i will be paying for until i am 65 and probably far beyond that (no exaggeration), but when my plane landed in the states, they were the ones who picked me up at the airport and it was their house that i lived in until i could get back into the workforce. others aren't afforded these benefits. i know that the fates have smiled on me thus far and i am thankful, i just wish others could get the same treatment.

my mother's life is a good example of the random assignment of pleasure and pain by the universe. when she was 5 my mother lost her mother to ovarian cancer. but that wasn't where the loss ended. my grandfather, who i suspect was always a selfish man tempered by a caring, giving and traditional woman, spent no time disrupting the lives of his children. my mother's siblings, much older, were out of the house by then, but my mother too young to even understand what had happened, was shuttled to her aunt's house, so that her father could return to italy. her aunt only spoke italian and i am sure that the transition was scary and frustrating and through it my mother learned to be accommodating and pliable and, in some ways, invisible. and although both of her parents were italian, my grandmother had only allowed english to be spoken in the house so their transformation to typical american family could be complete. when my grandfather returned to the states almost a year later, he had a new wife and she was with child. my mother returned to their home, but all traces of my grandmother were removed from the house. the rest of my mother's childhood and adolescence was marred by incidences of unfairness and bitter remarks and soul crushing cruelty at the hands of loved ones.

just thinking about it makes me want to scream and cry and throw things around and i turn beet red and want to write letters and make phones calls and change history. my mother, however, remains calm and accepting in the face of her own memories. she tries to recall the brighter moments of her formative years. don't get me wrong, she recognizes the emotional inequity between say her childhood and my father's. she knows that things didn't happen like that for other kids her age. perhaps it was the skills she acquired in that year that she lost her mother, where she learned to take things as they come and not ask why of someone or something  that can't answer back. i don't think it is a coincidence that she doesn't believe in god.

i think of my mother often in times of other's hardships. i compare their reactions to hers. she has never complained, she is not just a glass half-full person, she is a glass overflowing person. i used to wake up each morning to a knock on my bedroom door and the words "rise and shine!" she is the personification of positivity to the point of annoyance. but however she chooses to approach the world she has earned it, and even in my crabbiest of moments i have to remember that.

but the universe didn't throw all shit experiences at my mother. i feel that in some ways, there was an evening out of the karma imbalance for her in the form of my father. she met him at 16. they have been together for more than 40 years. they love each other like couples at the end of hollywood romances love each other. they spend all of their time together. sometimes my mother complains that my dad needs to get his own life, he is all up in her shit (my words not hers) and that his retirement is really cramping her social life. but this is their banter. this is the way it has been since she was a lovestruck teenager or should i say she still is a lovestruck teenager. and for my father's part, he gets it. he gets her and understands the quirks of her personality that were borne out of those childhood years. he admires her for her resilience and fortitude and all of these other attributes that helped her survive in tact and with a smile.

i have friends that have lived charmed lives, some recognize it and others not so much. i also have friends that just can't seem to catch a break, life keeps lobbing them grenades and as much as they try to avoid them, some shrapnel this way comes. i don't know how it works out there in the universe, i don't know how to turn the tables or alter the course of events, i don't even know if karma and fate or anything exists, although i feel like there is some sort of energy out there. and since i don't believe in god, or allah, or whatnot what do i have but my weirdo new age mumbo jumbo? i do have control of my own actions and through my words or advice, hope that i sometimes inspire the positive actions of others. but sometimes there is nothing you can do and bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people and the only thing that gets you through is that one day you'll see the roles reverse. and the people who have wronged the ones you love get there's and the people you love find people to love them as much as you do. 

this is what popped up when i googled karma

yes i said yes i will yes

i haven't blogged since thursday and it was starting to feel weird. i was hoping that i would have some time on friday to lay down some words for the momentous occasion of my best friend stephanie being blown out of the windy city in order to take a bite out of the big apple (had to be done!). alas, i have been so busy giving her a proper send off on friday and most of saturday that i didn't even get to write her a card to go with the present i made her. and i know how much stephanie loves a well written and thoughtful card, mainly because i have received many from her throughout the 7 (!!!!) years that i have known and loved her...and sometimes yelled at her ;), but always with love. i was sorting through my cards and notes and photos the other day, for a new apartment project that i have thought up (stay tuned for that one!) and came across so many of steph's postcards, birthday cards, notes and life’s marginalia collected during the four years we lived apart, me in new york and she in chicago (ironic i know) that i wondered how we had anything at all left to say to each other.

i met steph seven years ago when she literally landed on my doorstep. we were part of a group of foreign students living in a four-story dorm style apartment complex called trinity hall. it housed a virtual united nations of 20-somethings from south africa, the states, canada, sweden, england, spain, wales, and even the odd student from the west of ireland. we lived a lot like a big family. my flatmates and i often hosted champagne and pancakes breakfasts, hosted spontaneous afternoon tea and more than once even a knitting circle, cramming 20 or 30 into our small kitchen/living area to eat, drink and bask in the relative ease of student life. and all the while we were able to learn about other cultures and areas of academic study without really trying. my flatmate sarah and i would spend weekend nights knitting hats and scarves while discussing boys, food and her dissertation on the historical impact of knitting on cultures. seamus taught me what fry-tex was and i learned from my friend shane that not all military men are cut from the same tunnel-vision cloth as their commander in chief. i don't have the right words to explain how my year in ireland, in dublin and at trinity (where steph and i earned our matching degrees) shaped me. it all sounds trite and overwritten and flakey when i try to express the way the people and experiences, even how living in that flat changed me.

steph rang the door bell and was all gussied, done up for a night in dublin, i opened the door to my future and it was a fair-skinned freckled redhead. she and one of her roommates came to ask if a few of us wanted to go out that night. i said when are you leaving? she said on the next bus, which is in 3 minutes. i was in my pjs and thought well what a bitch she obviously doesn't want me to go out at all because i get ready quick, but not that quick. we laugh about that night. she told me she did want me to come out but that she didn't realize that it had gotten so late. a trait that i would understand as i got to know her. i passed on going out that night and i think the next time she invited me out too, because sometimes i like to play hard to get. but steph was relentless. she wanted me to be her friend, she told me later. i was flattered, but didn't see what the big deal was. i was no great shakes. sure i was fun, but i can be moody and morose, bitter and my honesty can, at times, be less than flattering. these are all things that steph would come to find out later. as for why she wanted to be friends with me then, you would have to ask her what she saw in me exactly.

but i can tell you a million reasons why i became friends with her.

i'll use the past tense, even though she remains today all of these things and more.

she was whip smart and interesting. we had fun. she was open and emotional and loved chocolate. she liked my room. she liked my movies and was always finding cool shit for us to do. she was feisty, sometimes even when the situation didn't warrant it. she could drink with me and try to keep up. she would drink beer with me, but preferred milkshakes. she never once judged me for being scared to do things, especially when it came to boys. she always encouraged often with warm hot chocolate and a story or two from her past. we both liked to watch sad movies while under warm covers in dark rooms when it was cold outside. she became a matchmaker for one time only and it was for me. she liked to talk about books and poetry. she never apologized for being smart, bookish and academically inclined. she never let me apologize for it either. she tried for an entire year to get me to read and love james joyce, never relenting. she never teased me for wanting to shop. she opened herself up without pretense to a relationship that scared her. she went with it and made it beautiful. she never wavered in the face of criticism, although she always bit back. she was fearless, weightless, beautiful because of it. a fighter that goes down punching, if ever at all.

they were halcyon days. heady with the promise of discovery...see it never works to try to write about it like that. together, in combination with two other close friends laurel and erin, we broke barriers, mended fences, started fires and extinguished them. we walked miles literally and figuratively. we drove through green lands looking for hidden treasures in the irish landscape, found love and lost it and found it again. explored castles and ring forts and scary mountaintop hostels. we discussed poetry and fashion, listened to music and had madcap barefoot drunken adventures through the streets of dublin. together we sat in an irish pub at 3 a.m. and watched janet jackson's nipple slip. together we were taught the words of swift, beckett, joyce and edgeworth. visited martello tower. spoke the words of steph's literary hero, molly bloom. we wrote and read and listened to eccentric old professors who knew everything and sometimes nothing. we ate curry chips at 4 a.m. and cried about missing family and friends. we learned how to love more openly and love at all. together we learned how to speak up for what we want, fight for it. later we would learn that maybe it wasn't worth fighting for but never let the other apologize for the effort. we were young and free, unbound by the history we had built for years in a home thousands of miles away. friends would visit, people would write and see pictures but they didn't know. they weren't there. they couldn't possibly understand.

we didn't know then what would become of us. sure some of us painted pictures. i started to sketch mine early on, it featured dublin and books, babies, gardens and my now ex-boyfriend. steph wanted to go back to the states, to the career path she had started. she drew in broader strokes, but at the heart of it was her wish to live in new york. she chose love first. and love brought her to chicago, when i reminded her of her new york lifescape she said i know, but for now this is where i’ll be. but she always knew she would get there eventually. and so did i.

steph was my first real editor. she would go through my academic papers with the zealousness reserved for those who love the written word. that is how i know she is good at what she does, because she loves it wholeheartedly. and when i gave up on my aspirations to write and edit because it was too tough to find a good job here, she never judged. she has held on to the dream. and i admire her for that. i also know that she will be successful in new york. and although she worries sometimes that the city will swallow her whole i know she'll have it wrapped around her finger within a year.

in nyc

when she first realized that this move was real and she was getting the job and we were once again going to live apart as we had done for four years after leaving dublin, i noted the irony that we had, in effect switched places. and i know that she feels at home here, and in the last two years has brought chicago to its collective knees with her mix of persuasion and panache, but it was never a permanent stop. just as dublin was just a waystation, so too was chicago. but she brought me here and for that i will be forever grateful. just as she had done with our friendship, so too had she made it impossible for me to say no to this great city. with guided tours and delicious meals, fine friends and well-stocked museums she wooed me here. it took four years, but i made the leap and survived. she told me the other night during our last sushi dinner as co-chicago residents that she thought i had been so graceful about my move and she didn't think she could do the same. she obviously forgot the weeks on end of sweats and unkempt hair. but nevertheless, she could never be anything but graceful, after all it is built into her name.

i often feel like i forget to tell my friends how much they mean to me. especially those closest to me. steph and i have gone through a lot of highs and lows, love and loss some at the hands of others and some at the hands of each other. but these are the things that shape us, that create the forms that move forward to carve out new future selves. and whether those selves are in the same city or not we are always with one another, connected by a shared experience… and the phone, and text, and bb messaging and facebook and this blog.

so steph this is just to say that i love you and good luck and slainte. and whenever you call, i promise to pick up. just remember the words of ms. bloom when you walk down the streets of that sometimes daunting city. yes i said yes i will yes. and it will be so.

the hate locker

this post was inspired by a ridiculous response one reader had to my friend samantha's most recent blog post at http://www.bitchesgottaeat.com/. her post was honest and open and took her some time to write because of it. it is hard to do what she did. she chose to write about her body image and associated items. it is not a comfortable topic for her and she admitted so in her response to said commentator. but she did it because she is trying to be as honest as possible on her blog baby. this person's words were cutting and mean and meant to shame sam into submission for not subscribing to societal pressures. samantha is a good friend, an amazing writer and one of the nicest, sweetest people i have met here in chicago. i often feel that we are so similar it is like having found a counterpoint in the universe. that said, i felt it necessary to respond in some way. the words of that awful commenter reverberated in my head all day yesterday and i choose to respond with some heartfelt honesty of my own, although i think the response of some of sam's other friends were shorter and more on point.

 monday night melody

it is easier to be mean. being nice takes effort and control and reasoned thinking and, ultimately, having feelings yourself.

ever since the mainstream awareness of mean girls and the like, movies and books have been touching on a subject women have known about for decades, most likely centuries. girls can be mean, so mean as to be cruel. last month a young girl killed herself because a group of girls hen pecked her into such a state that she didn't want to live. she didn't want to live. breathe. smile. cry. laugh. swallow. blow her nose. sleep. kiss. make breakfast. walk. get married. read. have sex. hop on one foot. play games. have babies. breathe. anymore. all gone. because people couldn't keep their mouths shut. because jealousy prevailed and words can be vicious.

i know because i too used to feel their wrath. obviously not the words of those particular girls, but a group just like them. you all know them. wrapped up in the facade of their perfect picture lives, their skin-tight jeans and well-manicured hair. the girls who made middle school a place of dread and angst, rather than of education and exploration. i was like a nail that couldn't be hammered down in middle school. my parents were both teachers at the school i attended, i had an older brother who was a little off-beat and known for his academic excellence. i too was considered smart, although i don't think i was ever nerdy. i was however chubby, which in many ways is worse. i straddled a line between acceptance and repulsion by a group i didn't even want to be in. by girls who only knew one way of looking at the world. i wouldn't keep my mouth shut and i often, as i was taught by my parents, defended those around me who could not or would not stand up for themselves, often at the expense of my own popularity.

i never wanted to be boxed in. sure i wanted friends, i wanted to belong and be invited to make-out parties and have boys like me. i just wasn't willing to do it at the expense of myself. even from a young age i knew who i was, what i wanted from the world and more particularly those around me. i was never going to let some twit change the way i thought. consequently middle school often felt like one long screaming voice going into a dark well. no one to hear me on the inside. i was always going to be the chubby girl, even if i had lost a ton of weight one summer and come back a new svelte version of me, i knew the score. instead of poking fun of the way my shirt hugged my pre-adolescent curves, they would talk about how i used to have those curves. you could shed all the pounds, but in their eyes i would always be that girl. and i know because i am still that girl now. reflected back at me. same curves, same feelings. no difference.

i feel i might be painting the wrong picture here. i did have friends. and one very good friend in particular who i have been best friends with since kindergarten. together we were able to tough it out. our own tiny band of outsiders. there were others too, that i was close with. women that i am now happy to have on my facebook collective. but there were others that came in to my world and tried to torch it, burn it down and make me feel less than. little did those bitches know i was fire retardant.

i was able to make it through those years because of the few close trusted friends i had, that and the words of adults around me who saw my pain and my frustration. adults who told me it would get better, that when i was older, these things wouldn't matter. sticks and stones and dumb hoes and all that (well not exactly their words). and i believed them. i really did. i thought, well we all grow up and realize that words hurt. a lot. and don't do it anymore. i think this has been the worst disappointment of my adult life. santa, the easter bunny, even the fairy tale of perfect love were all easier to accept than the idea that we still love to tear each other down and often over petty bullshit.

i am what people like to call a straight shooter. some people like to call it bitchy. i like to call it honest.

i am never going to be cruel to you. the reason: not that you haven't deserved it or my anger pushes me to it or my rational frustration tells me it is allowable under the circumstances. no. i am never going to be cruel because i am always going to be honest. you may not like it. the words may not be sugar coated or wrapped with a bow, but they will come from a place that is hard for some to fathom. i feel no need to lie. lying is a pretense i don't stand behind. i only lie to save someone unnecessary anguish. i am a discriminate liar. i have one thousand rational reasons lined up before i do it. otherwise i just want to tell you how i feel. and i try not to make it about something it's not. if it is about how you treated me i am going to tell you that. i didn't appreciate it when you said this about me, etc. and i'll say it so calmly you might freak out. because people don't like to be confronted, especially with someone with the calm of a buddhist monk. a fact i learned in middle school, when mean girls, confronted with the boldfaced truth scattered to the four winds or stood stock still wishing they could melt into the floor. because i am also good with words said in anger. if you pick on my friend you are picking on me and nobody picks on me anymore.

we are 30. we are supposed to be adults. we are supposed to understand that the struggles of this world are difficult enough without the added pain of your poorly chosen words and the motivations behind them. we are supposed to understand that everyone carries baggage. i'm sure even those mean girls with their faux louis vuitton luggage know that. broken families, broken faces, broken self-image. i always try to understand the motivation behind someones cruelty, if only because i bore the brunt of it for so many formative years. i also don't think that it is an excuse. because i know plenty of people that didn't get enough breaks in this world and they never say a negative thing about anyone.

now i am not saying i am perfect. i have spoken out of turn, been guilty of aggression towards friends and enemies alike. there are some things i would like to want to take back, but i just don't want to. i do things with purpose. but most of all i do things with kindness. if i let you in, i'll fucking kill you with it. i am tough as nails, wrapped in an impenetrable nutshell, but once you are in i am one of the best friends you'll ever have. and i stick. this lady is for life, unless you screw me over then i'll cut you out like a fast-growing tumor and never speak to you again. it's true. ask those i've left behind. just don't ask me where they are because i don't keep tabs on the dead.

people confuse being a hard-ass or not a push over as being mean or a bully. i am not a bully. i know because i could never be after having been on the receiving end of their words and actions for so long. i think we are divided into categories when we are young, shaped by the way we respond to the actions of our peers in middle school. there are the bullies, the brave ones, the jesters and the watchers. i think it is possible, but not likely that we can grow up and move past these labels. it would be a rarity, but i have witnessed it once or twice. i know where i stand in this crude pre-adolescent adult heirarchy. do you?

burning down the house

this weekend was a good exercise in remaining calm in the face of conflict or natural disaster or the happenstance of the walls collapsing around you with no way out. it is kind of funny given that i was already planning on writing about my apartment in this post, i feel that after yesterday, however, this blog will have taken a decidedly different turn than i first intended.

i am house proud and not ashamed of it.

i remember someone once telling me my parents were house proud as if they were low down dirty thieves or something, people who dared to steal others possessions in the dead of night for their own gain or as if they were poseurs, squatting in some life that they didn't deserve or worse, hadn't earned. i hadn't even heard the term before. it sounded strange to me, like an obvious thing to be. why was it being said with a sneer? a house, and moreover a home, is something to be proud of, especially if you own it. you've earned it, brought it up like a child. in the case of my parents most of their homes were raised from the depths of their imagination, each door position chosen carefully, each window placed to the maximum effect. i have several vivid memories of my parents at the dining room table poring over blueprints for their next house. there was always a next house. i didn't know it then but they were the earliest version of house flippers. before that nutty ocd guy on bravo who yells at everyone and those two married nuts with 7 children on bravo who don't seem to yell enough. my parents were seen as nutty, but they had a mission and we as a family were on the wild ride, freely purchased ticket or not.

i have personally lived in three homes with my parents. those being homes we owned. that does not count the various apartments, bungalows and cottages, a term i apply loosely here, that we moved into every summer for the rental season. each may i would pack up my things, all of them, save the framed pictures on the walls, into boxes and store them in the attic. i have said goodbye and hello and goodbye and hello again to many things, tchotchkes, blankets, clothing, stuffed animals, beds, pillows, door frames, favorite backyard hangouts. i have done this dance with my things for as long as i can remember. but i am not sad about it or angry. when i was younger i didn't understand the trade we were making. now i see what saying goodbye and hello again was able to get us. my family was given, or i should say my parents gave us, new cultures, tastes, experiences, languages, dreams for things we didn't yet know existed, a future. my undergraduate degree was paid for with goodbyes and hellos. my relationship with the italian side of my family, all of whom live half a world away, was built with goodbyes and hellos. but i still can't help but love my things.

perhaps it is because i had to pack and unpack for so many years, or because, as jessica once told me, i am "a lover of beautiful things placed in a beautiful way," that i now cherish each and every object in my apartment. they are my oject d'arte. my beautiful things. my personality transferred into iron and wood, fabric and ink.

i took offense to the house proud comment and the spirit in which it was said. the person was saying that my parents cared too much about their things, the home they built from the ground up, the baby they had imagined in blueprinted paper labeled with that great architectural allcaps handwriting that says this bathroom will be both functional and beautiful. my father especially used to yell at me a lot for not taking care of my things. for leaving my bed unmade and my clothes on one side of the bed in a pile (full disclosure: this is a bad habit that i have to this day, although i try to keep said clothes confined to a chair in my bedroom). he said it showed that i didn't appreciate the things i was given. that i didn't understand the labor and struggle those clothes represented. he once got so mad (and he is a particularly calm man) that he took all of the items and threw them out the front door onto the brick and lawn. i thought to myself that before they were on my clean bedspread, now they are dirty, laying out in the elements, in the dirt. but his point stuck with me. i knew i would never take my home for granted. that i would take care of the things that i surrounded myself with.

my father, as fathers are wont to do, used to tell me stories about his own childhood during moments in my own to demonstrate his point. when i used to complain about the yearly ant invasion or a rogue spider, he regaled me with stories about how when he was a child he wouldn't go to the bathroom at night for fear that he would step on thousands of cockroaches. that his daily shower ritual turned into a fight to the death with gargantuan water bugs the likes of which i could never imagine. he told me these stories in an effort to make me appreciate that said small spider was nothing comparatively. however, he would still call my mother in to kill it.

i was haunted by these stories growing up. but not for the reasons that you think. the cockroaches and water bugs disgusted me yes, but they were a far away nightmare in a far away city from a far away time. they haunted me because they were from a past i would never fully comprehend. experiences that were so far from my day to day that as a child i could only mumble an apology for the struggles of my father and his two bedroom apartment, one bathroom, 7 people, 4 brothers and 3-to-a-bed childhood. but this (and the equally humbling story of my mother's childhood) is for another post.

knowing the stories of my parents. what they grew up without and how far they have come, shaped me even if i myself didn't have those same struggles. i never had to put myself through high school, or buy my own clothes, suffer the close quarter living of a brooklyn apartment or the lax personal boundaries of a large family. but i knew the effects of all of these things. and i knew how to combat them, if that is indeed what one wanted to do. i was raised with a work ethic and common sense. i was raised to appreciate everything i was given and everything that i earned, because it wasn't a right. it is never a right, but a product of earned effort.

i joke that i grew up in a museum.

in part because the house was always "being shown" and in part because my father is a neat-nic (a product of his childhood presumably amongst dust and junk and the items of 7 people in a two bedroom apartment), there was a museum quality to the look of my house. add in my parents penchant for antique furniture, rugs and decor and the place looked like a showroom. but it was always comfortable. i was never told not to touch anything or was yelled at for spilling something, unless i was expressly told i wasn't allowed to eat the red sauce on the white couch and then did so anyway. i was allowed to have food and drinks in my room and we were never a 'no shoes' house, a concept which both my parents catalogue under ridiculous. my father, for all of his annoying cleanliness faults lives by the philosophy of 'never let your stuff run your life'.

of all the weirdo axioms he has passed on to me in my 30 years, i am learning this may be one of the top five. much to the amusement of my parents, i am house proud. when i moved into my own place in october i decided i wasn't moving again until it was into a house or apartment i owned. this would be my place, my home, my space to make my own. it would be comfortable and welcoming and homey. all the things i loved about my parent's home, but with my own style and most likely more dust bunnies.

i have succeeded in this effort. i knew that i had succeeded last weekend when jessica's friend lauren who had never seen my place, sat on my chair, curled her legs under her, took a sip from her glass of wine and declared that my apartment looked like an anthropologie catalogue. and i took it as a compliment because everything in my entire apartment probably costs what one dresser does at that store. my parents also seem to like it, bemused by my yelling at them to make the bed when they visit. although my father thinks that it is weird i like to decorate in the style of furniture he grew up with, that the objects he remembers as cheap alternatives to the fancy, unattainable ideal, are now considered "cool." i don't know about cool, i told him, i just know what i like.

i also like the way lauren said what she did--comfortably lounged on my furniture--as much as what she said, because we can't let our things dictate our lifestyle. at no other time was this phrase made true than last night during the first paragraph referenced events. as devin and nichole and i sat back to enjoy some sunday afternoon wine and chit-chat, the day disintegrated into a series of accidental assaults on my furniture and decor. first red wine was spilled on my beloved cream shag carpet, a carpet that took me two years to find. a half hour of seltzer, oxyclean and 22 wine soaked dishtowels later, the stain seemed to disappear. we pulled up the rug, but the assault continued. there was bbq sauce on pillows, blankets and my upholstered chair. i remained calm but incredulous as to how the klutziness could have continued for so long. i think the wine helped. by the time michael, who joined the party at some point, spilled his entire juice based cocktail on himself and my couch i just laughed it off. they kept asking if i was okay. all of them apologized profusely and seemed to be waiting for me to explode and make them leave. but i think i was impervious to the destruction. sure the lack of attention to not spilling things on my beloved items was frustrating, but we are just humans. i was and am one of the most spastically klutzy people i know. things happen. it is just stuff. and even though i love it, it is all replaceable. what is not are the memories of devin, nichole and i in the seconds after the wine was spilled. all three of us splayed on the floor, trying to triage the wound and bring my beloved shag back to its former glory. devin, as always, was assuredly hopeful; nichole, as always, was sensitively sweet; and as for myself, i just shook my head, lightly laughing as i surveyed the apartment i had decorated with such beautiful things, my apartment of the anthropologie catalogue beauty, and it was in that moment, surrounded by my friends, spilled wine and laughter, that it was most definitely a home.

there is no one left to run from anymore...

as i am writing this blog i am listening to the pat benatar sung theme song to the legend of billie jean, one of my favorite movies. also a movie, much like teen witch, that i just took for granted everyone my age had seen. and everyone my age should see it. its about empowering women and standing up to authority and damning the man and being invincible. all things that i feel now i was glad to have learned when i was 8 and sitting in my living room. i mean who else was going to tell me it was okay to defy the law if they weren't seeking justice or that older people aren't always right. i remember watching helen slater as she turned from the typical timid long-haired blond beauty to a kick-ass bleach blond weird asymmetrical haired seeker of justice embodying strength and power and femininity. i don't think it was a conscious realization, but i'm sure watching her on that screen made little ol me think i could do it to, if anyone ever tried to wrong my brother and then attempt to assault me when i went to defend him and then...well, i don't want to give away the plot.

last night i went to see florence and the machine (swoon) with my ladies amanda and samantha and was joined by laura and jen, both friends and co-workers of sam. it was a flirting good time as the nearby security staffer proved to be unbelievably delicious and i had to seriously avert my eyes and try to focus on the live act in front of me and which i had paid good money to see. sam, of course, noticed my noticing and practically told him he had to date me or at least make out with me. i was glad it was dark as i turned 12 shades of pink before my composure degraded into a steady giggle that made me seem younger and less poised than these 30 years. bless her though, she wasn't wrong about being a great wingwoman. just make sure the next one doesn't have a girlfriend and is at least in the realm of possibility. i mean he was oozing yummy and i don't normally think that about someone or talk like that about anyone. so you know he was fine.

i'm sure sam will dedicate a few paragraphs to him and his long balls in her blog.

anyway it struck me that while i may not have a vicious enemy to fight and i may not ever become an urban folk hero with a cause everyone wants to fight against with me, there will probably be no grassroots movement to follow ms. rachel c and the news won't be trying to track my every movement, but in some ways i have lived up to the promise the legend of billie jean gave me. i am strong and powerful and feminine. i even sort of have the hair. i have surrounded myself with people who love me and make me laugh and one who'll tell some hot hot dude, and i'm paraphrasing here, that he should break it off with that bitch cuz my friend is awesome and another who'll get me a ticket to conan(!!!!!) without even needing to call first. and friends who'll move shit for me or drill in curtain rods without hesitation and who'll drive up from downstate to make it to my birthday.

maybe what billie jean was telling us was not necessarily to fight for justice or break and burn shit, but to stand up for ourselves and love ourselves and trust that we deserve to be loved. or maybe some hollywood movie producer just wanted to make a ridiculously awesome movie about a hot chick who runs around half dressed and needed to make it "deeper" so feminists wouldn't get all in his shit. or maybe its somewhere in between. whatever. stand up and face the enemy...we will be invincible!

florence of the machinists

monday, monday

brief recap of weekend in short, concise words or phrases in a 20 point numbered list:

1. cousin kate visited

2. rachel happy cousin visited

3. drinks and dinner at local bar with friends

4. saturday trip downtown in 80 degree weather

5. crowded, cranky, tired

6. saturday afternoon drinks outside

7. saturday night drinks inside

8. find hanging ceramic duck

9. take pictures with ceramic duck

10. get happy, dancy and hungry around 2 a.m.

11. sunday brunch at feed (yum!)

12. late to drop kate at airport, side benefit: she gets 1st class seat

13. get sad on the drive home

14. realize steph is leaving in three weeks and have minor to middling break with reality

15. sad

16. sad

17. go to jessicas to be not sad/drive lauren to airport

18. spend time thinking about coming week

19. realize florence and the machine is today

20. go to bed dreaming of large reverberating speakers

this picture has nothing to do with this weekend
february trip to wisconsin dells

let's call it a bra-mance

so i've been pondering lately our new (sorta) communication levels. the kind of facebook/bogger/twitter/smartphone/email/phone/snail mail (it still exists!) communication that keeps us in the know about every little thing about each other that we didn't even want to know. and people talk a lot about the drawbacks. and they are there to be sure. i mean there have been at least 6 stories that i have heard of this year about teenagers committing suicide because of what people have written about them on the internet, or what people have lied to them about on the internet, or people claiming to be someone and then ended up being someone else (like a parent!) on the internet. remember that med student who killed a girl he solicited on craigslist? i mean this social networking thing/speedy connection to everyone and everything seems to be a real downer and then i think, well, without it i wouldn't have half of the friends in chicago that i do. and i am not talking about fakey, i met you once facebook friends. i don't do that.

my constant internet use--which bounces between facebook, reading tabloids, the news and gawker, perusing misc. sites and now blogging--has kept me not just on the cutting edge of ammo for my brangelina hate (seriously totally team aniston over here), but also actual news (which as anyone who knows my nosey parker self is important to me...i did write/edit for a newspaper, remember them!), literature, music, films and other people. let me draw a six degree situation for you.

when i moved to chicago i knew personally two people, stephanie and amanda. i have a network of meet and greet based friends that i know through steph. these are people that i have known before or immediately after moving to this amazing city. hi guys! anyway then there are the people i know through amanda (who, for those of you who don't know, was one of my college roommates at nyu). i reconnected with my redheaded friend when i moved here, the city of her birth mind you, and together we attended this jezebel (website) meet up where i met robyn. from there robyn invited the two of us to this fledgling thing she and her friend allen were putting on. amanda and i accepted the invite and started attending and then performing at the sunday night sex show (performing entails reading short stories people, minds out of the gutter please).

shameless plug side note: the sunday night sex show is held the last sunday of every month at 7:30 at the burlington in logan square. more info on its facebook page...see...

through the show i have met a host of friends, fellow readers, bloggers and generally fab and strange people. and save for the monthly exposure to them at the snss i would probably never see them during my day to day life. but then comes social networking and texting and all of a sudden my weekly dance card fills up faster than my wine glass on a monday night.

because of facebook i can talk to anyone of these people anytime i want. and it doesn't have to really mean anything either. and i like that. and i also like that i get to be a passive observer of their lives. for example, i know that blow joy (a fellow blogger, snss reader and fb friend!) hates the company she works for and just got this awesome new tattoo on her "bat wing." Two things that most likely would not have come up in conversation each month when i see her. perhaps the tattoo would have as the spring and summer weather had her wearing less sweaters and more t-shirts, but you get my point.

in addition, facebook has allowed for me to remember to invite (and also harass) friends to join me for a cocktail/birthday/wedding reception(j/k i'm still single, hint, hint)/sex reading. i am not a wholly social animal. i like my personal time and my empty apartment filled with knick-knacks, magazines, books and dust, but facebook (and by this i really mean my friends) get me out of my cocoon. it tells me what i should be doing and when i have to get there and who else i can expect to come with me. it is like having a bossy friend/boyfriend/sister who is also your schedulator. and let me tell you there is nothing i hate more than having to plan anything. no joke. when my friends asked me what i wanted to do for my 30th birthdays (yes days there were many) the first thing i said was not have to worry about what i was going to do for my 30th birthdays. your present to me would be to do the thinking, the planning and inviting and i could just show up. thank you jess and steph for making my wish come true.

and just as the internet has given me an additional layer of friends that hover between acquaintance and well-worn, it also gives me the opportunity to shift one or a few of these friends into a different category, and at a faster pace than i might have done myself by phone call or email or text. for example, ms. irby, as of late, has become one of my fast friends. she and amanda and i have been having a very public love affair based on mutal admiration, a bra-mance if you will, happening on facebook and also a continuous message thread to complement it (i hope you ladies are cool with me exposing this). on the public boards we comment on songs, movies, blogs, updates and events we want to do together. in our private thread we discuss things, that are, well, private so sorry no deets here. but again you get my drift. and through these communications we have built actual face time into our respective schedules, lest you think that we are just computer nerds that only know each other's ip addresses and not real ones. i also get to read about their lives on their blogs at bitchesgottaeat.com and rocknrollunicorns.blogspot.com. (p.s. i am having issues with building links into my posts if anyone wants to help!). too meta you say? perhaps, but i have loved amanda for years before, but now we both got to know and love samantha too and i feel as if i've known her just as long as amanda because of these here internets.

there is also the oft noted, yet rarely admitted to outside of close circles, stalker side of facebook. perhaps this is because the first rule of facebook stalking is you don't talk about facebook stalking. or perhaps people are embarrassed to say they spend hours combing through their friends friends to find one they like. i for one am admitting here on this blog and in front of its 9(!) followers that i have done this. and the friend (ehem, thanks sugar lips) promptly tried to hook it up. although it was a wash for several reasons, just the possibility was an adrenaline rush. for someone who doesn't really like putting herself out there, i could tell my friend he was cute and then she could ostensibly tell him to check out my profile and if he liked what he saw we could meet up (actually, this scenario did happen a few weeks later with a different guy she picked...). it is like eharmony.com or chemistry.com without having to answer 5,003 questions about what makes your heart race at 200 bpm vs. 350 bpm and spend like $1000 a year to have some asshole not write you back. i could have gotten that shit for free and with the benefit of my friend being like 'nah, he is not good enough' or 'no sense of humor' or 'he could work' or 'dude called me and told me he didn't have the $5 to get in (true story) so i thought i'd pass for you.' now that is a service i would pay for. i'm serious facebook get on it.

i know there are facebook haters out there and i am certainly not suggesting that you join something that makes you uncomfortable or to over share with constant fb updates or blogger blog posts (guilty as charged), but i am suggesting that you can get yourself out there in the cyber world and in doing so it might change how often you put yourself out there in the real world. i for one have benefited from the facebook. i've been friended, unfriended, flirted, dated, blogged about and hit on via this site. and all of that virtual action has led to the most actual social action i've seen in years.