Last week a woman told me she had the "good" kind of stroke. She explained that earlier that year her sister had the "bad" kind that resulted in death. I listened to this woman whose entire left side of her body was paralyzed. She told me about how God had given her a huge gift though after her stroke and she wanted to show me. She wiggled the fingers on her right hand while stomping her right foot and smiled. "I've got this entire right side of my body still working. See how lucky I am?"
I'm not sure how I didn't leave the room with tears streaming down my face because now, when I reflect on that conversation, I start crying.
posted by JennyTuesday, January 05, 2010
Dearest readers & construction supporters:
Good news: We have a kitchen! (Half of it at least!)
Cornbread is baking in the oven as I sit here at our new dining room table with a cup of tea (and a hat, scarf, & three layers of long sleeved stuff as the heat is still not completely installed).
New Years Eve evening. Ben & I are driving on a highway somewhere between Madison and Tomah on our way north for the weekend. Darkness in this part of the hemisphere settled over us more than an hour ago. Since then the temperature drops from 10 to 0 to -4 degrees. I can barely make out if Ben's eyes are open or closed when I look over at him lounging in the passenger seat. I decide he is sleeping. I rule the radio. I am listening to the ever disappearing radio waves of Milwaukee's NPR when a shooting star jets across the entire length of my windshield. I am delighted and pause to make a wish only. . . I can't think of anything.
Oh Nine (despite all those little annoying details regarding mixed up taxes & construction) provided a million little blessings that I hardly even deserved. I cannot express how meaningful every single person & event was to me this year: delicious cooking classes @ The Chopping Block with lovely ladies, a more than fabulous birthday, Thursday night theology study & Wednesday night martinis with very dear friends in my church, weekly trivia at Bowmans and then Nevins with Pat & Kelly, visits with friends who have chubby, darling babies & toddlers, driving Cape Cod in the pouring rain with my mama & Ben, Valentines skiing, etc. I am so thankful that I couldn't think of a wish for my shooting star. I hope that 2010 will provide just as 09 did.
Ben and I spent the weekend with Megan in Minnesota where the comfort of being in the presence of an "old" friend is warm & cozy. On the way home, however, I have Ben drive and as we are entering the highway after a mini donut gem stop, I am mesmerized by a giant moon the color of burning coal- that dangerous pulsating orange you see at the bottom of a fire pit. The moon's deep glow is beyond stunning as it ducks in and out of the forest of trees. We stare at it: a headlight just over the horizon playfully flickering on and off as the highway dips into wooded low spots. There is a college radio station playing New Orleans jazz & we know there is only this limited time to experience just this moment with the pumpkin moon, the swinging horns, and a hand resting on my knee. We would have fought to keep that radio wave the entire way home.
posted by JennySunday, January 03, 2010
An attempt to reshape my frame of mind:
Finding the Beauty in Construction
Ben & I spent the last week looking up at the ceiling. We are feeling discouraged as we sit on a dusty kitchen floor this morning looking up at a row of beams that just aren't working. In short, there are two colors on each beam- one is the natural color of the beam (beautiful!) and one is a long-standing stain of a stain of a stain. They butt up side by side where the beams were once painted versus where they were once stained. We spent all last weekend and a few hours after work each day this past week sanding and scraping and then sanding again to annihilate the stain of a stain. We've also resorted to bleaching, stain removal, and conditioning. It refuses to budge. Argh... the unforunate part of this is that we can't install our kitchen until the beams are resolved. Off to Sparky's, a greasy spoon joint that serves eggs and ham, to think things over.
posted by JennySaturday, November 28, 2009
I'm still unclear how my little memory confused Liz with Colleen & Colleen with Liz. (Even if it was just for a nanosecond) Both childhood friends were daughters of doctors who lived in a cul-de-sac three blocks south of my own. Although they were different ages, they were equal in birthing order and hair color. But it was Liz's basement (not Colleen's) where I laid on my stomach eating gobs of Puppy Chow while watching the movie Clue. The coolness of that basement is the last thing I remember before we set out on the town to allow our soon-to-be summer unravel.
It was Liz's best friend who started our Feminist Poetry Slams which sizzled out around the third official meeting at Cafe Tria. That was the summer I fell in love with coffee shops & their endless pots of trailing begonias & ivy. Cafe Tria was a little coffee and juice bar where aspiring teenage poets wrote angstily in their notebooks and boys in blue hooded sweatshirts banged on a bongo drums providing that Cuban post modern allure that resulted in 16 year old girl swooning. Apparently, it was also the birth and death spot of group of 4-6 girls trying to discuss Fear of Flying. At night the Cafe was filled with rings of smoke and amateur guitarist picking out Lay Down Sally. A herd of us, interchanging places as we came and went, sat by the windows looking out onto a river that provided a smidge of relief from any potential landlocked blues. Cozy in the winter and so refreshing that summer when it transitioned into Java & Juice.
As I enter winter, I desire that coziness. I want a space to hunker down and finish the first draft of this book that has been dwelling in my imagination for two years now. I also desire puppy chow.
posted by JennyFriday, November 27, 2009
I think I am ready to settle into winter. In fact, I'm a little excited for Prairie Home Companion playing on a cozy Saturday evening whilst playing games with friends. (Reality: I cannot stand straight up Prairie Home Companion listening but if heard here and there in the background of my kitchen, it is absolutely lovely). I am excited for skiing- for skiing on New Years in Minnesota. I am excited for snow pictures & potential walnut rooms and sewing projects. I am excited for carving out space for second edits on my little book. I think I am ready. I just need to adjust to these dark dark evenings that start at 5:00.
posted by JennyTuesday, November 17, 2009
I have so much to post: lovely pictures taken by my dear friends Agnes, Stefanie, & my mother, a few observations, maybe a quote or two, etc. All in time. I have been so tired and resistant to being online for more than five minutes at a time this past month. I think Ben & I have had a run of either severe bronchitis or swine flu. Either way, whatever we have had has left us very sick, immobile, lung-congested, hoarse, & tired. Yuck. Hopefully November will be much healthier. :o)
And to quote "Life of Pi" on dying (because Ben and I have both felt death-ly this month):
"I can well imagine an atheist's last words: "White, white! L-L-Love! My God!"—and the deathbed leap of faith. Whereas the agnostic, if he stays true to his reasonable self, if he stays beholden to dry, yeastless factuality, might try to explain the warm light bathing him by saying, "Possibly a f-f-failing oxygenation of the b-b-brain," and, to the very end, lack imagination and miss the better story."
posted by JennySunday, November 01, 2009
Hiding in the east until Tuesday. Will post pictures soon :o) I need some ocean & out of season hydrangeas. And a Boston Cream pie.
posted by JennyFriday, October 16, 2009
Three hours north of the Chicago-land area is a place where you can tilt your head back and admire the stars. Each year I anticipate the first-second-third sighting of a shooting star as Ben and I tipsy-ly hike to the nearest washroom circa midnight. Allowing my neck to extend backward into a position that used to send me spinning, I can lazily note the little and big dipper- also constellations that apparently are dotted along the curve of Emily's neck.
I have fallen off the track of finding small things as inspiration in the busy-ness that autumn provides. I share the slight anxiety of squirrels as they wheel around crazily tearing up bulbs, acorns, and any other preparation for winter's long, cold months. I wander around my small house- a literal translation of the game Chutes & Ladders- in a frenzy but unsure what about. The month of October I hope to unwind- start journaling, photographing, & returning to my small story. My mother, my college roommate (Stefanie), her mother (Agnes), and I are beginning our second October challenge of photographing our favorite season so you will be seeing those posted twice a week.
If I admit that I never operated a lawn mower before this year, there will be at least one person out there who will make fun of me. One person plus Ben. Go ahead. Make fun. I have a handful of experiences treading up and down our little lawn with a large, ear splitting machine whose engine stirs & sputters so stubbornly that I manage to holler about ten different curse words before it actually begins. Not many other things get me so immediately hot and angry than starting our stupid lawn mower.
So I finally had the mower going and I was walking with it, probably intent on fantasizing about the lawn patterns found on Wrigley field, when suddenly baby bunnies sprayed out from under the mower and into the lawn. It was awful- baby bunnies no larger than chipmunks- scrambling pathetically away from the mower and disappearing into our embarrassingly tall grass. It happened so fast I hardly had a chance to double check that they all still had four limbs. That they were indeed bunnies! I spent the rest of the morning with my neighbor plucking little bunnies out of their hiding spots and shoving them back into their nest.
Except for the bunny with the crooked neck. Hauntingly disfigured perhaps by the mowing incident, he waited for me by my car, on my porch step, in my garden. His head had a severe tilt to the left- continuously in a tilt of wonderment or neck injury- and I worried about his thin little body. He followed me around and I kept shoving him back in his nest. Once, he crawled through the medium sized hole in my door and I found him waiting in my living room by the ladder. I checked that he wasn't holding some kind of weapon, ready to avenge me for his neck injury.
The neighbors worried. Bob, 74, leaned over to whisper into my ear a somewhat threatening: "Don't let the neighbors know you are a bunny lover." Meanwhile, his wife followed my little friend around the yard chanting "hasenpfeffer". The other night ago I heard some rumbling and fighting out in the yard. There were little screams of animals wrestling in the front yard. I woke Ben up asking: "Do you think my sick little bunny is being murdered?" I'm still unclear on the whereabouts of my litlle hasenpfeffer. I will continue to look for him and his permanent inquizitive tilt of the head. Til then, let it be known: I am a bunny lover.
posted by JennyTuesday, September 08, 2009
Instead of blogging I have been shepherding three baby bunnies around my yard (and occasionally in my house. Don't ask), planting alliums, royal purple tulips, white hyacinths, and pale daffodils for next spring , reaching page ninety in my fictional book, and spending lovely time with Ben & friends in the great outdoors. I will start writing again this week here at the monstercave. Just you wait and see. Hope you are having a magnificent start to September!
posted by JennyMonday, September 07, 2009
Five year old girl to seven year old brother: "That's an old old man driving a brand new car. I mean, that just doesn't make any sense!"
Amen, sister. When I think about it like a five year old, it really doesn't make any sense at all. Shouldn't he be driving a T Ford or a 1955 Desoto?
"I will miss you when you cross over to the other side!" I confided to him. He smirked over his fine motor coordination task and looked at me. We have been practicing forced use of his right hemiplegic hand for almost nine months. I've watched new breath filter through once paralyzed fingers and wrists through this amused gentleman. It was him and I sitting on a bright blue mat sitting next to Glenn (tears streaming down Glenn's face) when Obama was inaugurated. It is he who sings at the drop of the hat & whose musings I find so so funny. The man who I refer to as "The Stoic Swede" is leaving at the end of the month. He dropped another block (blocks being the perfect thick, light object perfect for hemiplegic manipulation practice) and then chuckled.
"That's okay. I will send you messages through baby blocks," he said.
And thus, through our imaginations (zooming for a full 5 minutes) a magical realism character was born. [See: Royal Tennenbaums, Middlesex, Everything is Illuminated, or 100 Years of Solitude] The character who, with no voice (perhaps expressive aphasic? perhaps just unwilling to use his voice?) and only gross motor grasp patterns of shoulder and hand, communicated all his needs, desires, and wishes via baby blocks.
Thus far: Fiction I've read in 2009
* = recommended.
Middle Sex by Jeffrey Eugenides ***
The Lost Virtues of Happiness by JP Morgan *
The Handmaid's Tale by Margarat Atwood *
Killing Yourself to Live: 85% true story by Chuck Klosterman *
The Shack by William P Young
Pride & Predjudice by Jane Austen *
Hedda Gabler by Ibsen
The Beautiful Things Heaven Bears by Dinaw Mengestu *
Twelve Sharp by Janet Evanovich
The Glass Castle: a memoir by Jeannette Walls*
I See You Everywhere by Julia Glass
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse *
Let's not forget about gardening references!
Square Foot Gardening by Mel BartholPomew *
P Allen Smiths Bringing the Garden Indoors by P Allen Smith *
Creating a Garden for Everyday Living by P Allen Smith *
Just like the height of any well crafted story, we ascended into the sky with a great climax: little sparks tremulous, furious, darting little souls growing into big bangs, pops, and fizzling tablets that you consume in attempt to stifle a heartache whose enormity grows in relation to useless desire. The others, standing at the water's crest, drunkenly ooohed and ahhhhed at our incredible lightshow. Excitedly, they barbecued below us and unaware of their sacrificial tendencies for interesting conversation, they anticipated a spectacular finale. So we crashed that airplane into a wooded lot of Elm, Birch, and Linden trees- (if it were a dream it would have been Danny's field with the tree house and the deer who dawdled by the breadcrumbs). But, hey, that's just me.
Instead, the jarring impact of gravity as she clutched us to her breast rattled us to an alarming reality. Among the overgrown foliage pouring into our cockpit and shards of metal that suggested a painful exit, I pulled myself out of the burning debris while those-too-late firecrackers spit and whirred. And in order for me to walk away from the wreckage, I needed to believe that that airplane would never fly again.
posted by JennySunday, August 09, 2009
On moving around. . . (Not an exciting post- but that was the point)
A week ago, when people asked me what I was going to do during my week off from work, all I could answer was "move around". I had no exciting plans involving fleeing to the ocean/middle of nowhere of Maine with Josh and Lisa (thank you, Cook County, for sucking up thousands of dollars over the last eight months that we did not actually owe you but you demanded anyway. Would have been nice if you actually picked up your phone once in a while.). Our trip to the coast will have to wait until next year. It was probably for the best that we had to sadly bail on Lisa and Josh given Ben's endless Hercules-defeating wrestle with mono, the chaotic/ tetanus threatening state of our house, and the state of my very grumpy, exhausted, and unjustifi-ed-ly angsty state of mind.
It's not that I don't adore my job, husband, or the fact that our house is being reborn solely through Ben's hands & architectural imagination. It's just that sometimes I think we need a day or weekend or week to just move around. I wanted no emoting, no arguing, minimal responsibility to anyone but myself, no excitement, no wild stories with accompanying hand gestures, no sweating, no stray animals finding their way into my heart, etc. I spent most of my week living in my head in front of this computer: writing. The weather made this easy because it rained and was overcast much of the week. I only occasionally surfaced for a brunch, Elizabeth's homecoming, and providing the deep watering our burning bush has been craving for the last month. The rest of the week was building on that story I mention here and there on this little blog. A nasty, messy first draft is almost complete.
In case I had any doubt, I am not cut out for being a full time writer. I sat for eight hours writing yesterday and although many pages were typed, I also engaged in too many trips to the refrigerator (still located in our living room at the bottom of the ladder) and bathroom. Note to Jenny: you picked the right day job for yourself. I am going to spend the next twenty four hours adjusting myself to life again. I think I am going to start with laundry and then a dinner date in the city with a girl I for no good reason call Queenie.
posted by JennySaturday, August 08, 2009
Elizabeth turned to look at me and smiled coyly. "Do you love how I use my blog to slam all your ex-boyfriends?" she asked me.
I do, Elizabeth, I do! Someone's gotta do it.
posted by JennyThursday, August 06, 2009
A little surprise- no idea where this came from
or what it is but so happy it decided to stay
A friend of mine quoted the above Socrates quote last weekend and I found it to be perfectly hilarious that she should randomly quote Socrates so casually and also incredibly relevant to my little life of nonstop. I have literally toiled lazily over the last three days and although it feels so unnatural to not be twirling around madly trying to get a list of things done, it is also quite pleasant. I got a chance to write for a few hours yesterday morning, another hour in the evening, and just now I am settling down for some more before picking a very jet lagged Elizabeth up from the airport. In between my far and few actual events, Ben and I are napping and joining friends at pubs for trivia nights where we mostly answer questions wrong and sing along to music. I hope to visit the new modern art wing at the Art Institute of Chicago sometime within the next two days and look forward to a long bicycle ride with Stefanie to the Botanic Gardens. Oh yes, and delight in grilled peaches topped over vanilla ice cream on my back porch tonight as a homecoming for Elizabeth. Yummy.
It is Saturday morning and I am sitting with a group of women I hardly knew one year ago. We are in Lincoln Square's Over Easy delighting in delicious granola crunch blueberry pancakes & Mexicana omlettes. We are squeezed against each other in this little retro diner of a place and we are giggling and indulging with each other what summer has been to each of us so far. A year ago I only recognized the faces as cuties in a movie theater but today, as I sit here, I am so thankful for this little knit group of women from my church who know how to make marriage lovely, funny, ironic, heartbreaking, and hopeful. For their honesty and encouragement, I owe so much.
Jackie, dancer & pontificator extrodinaire, is a small gift of inspiration on the Saturday before my week off. She is explaining to me how she has taken the month to dance in nature: among the prairie gardens in Andersonville's church gardens, next to the little fishes and creatures that strive to come ashore but are ultimately washed back and forth by the tide of the lake waters, and imitating the leaves as they shake and clutch to branches when the wind picks up. "I may look a little nutty and someone is bound to pass by and wonder what I am doing but it is my own research in the properties of movement within dance."
So I have my writing nitches carved out for each morning and after that, I am going where inspiration draws me. I too want to sit/ dance/ speak/ sing/ drive/ write nature's inspiration all week long.
posted by JennyTuesday, August 04, 2009
The parrot, who sits on what once was a child's swing set two yards to the north, is whistling and calling out to us. The effect (as I sit reading on this porch): the feeling that I am in a South American country set in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel. Happy Sunday.
posted by JennySunday, August 02, 2009
So. The long and short of it is the Ben has had mono for the last three weeks and work has been kinda nutty. If this was a geometry proof I am sure the equation of the whole deal would equate to Jenny being a little more than nutty. I think the ant infestation we experienced for the last three weeks is thwarted for the most part- only a handful of ants are found dead on the bedroom floor each morning. The house is still at same status but I went through a little furious organization binge and made it a little more user friendly. We have a square foot of counter space that I can pretend is the equivalent of an entire kitchen. Our property taxes are almost corrected... hopefully September's escrow payment will be normal again and that equates to a few more dollars we can spend toward the house. I have yet to be tested to see if I have mono so I have not shared appetizers with a single soul since Ben was diagnosed. I'm really really hoping I didn't catch it. Oh kissing disease... I kind of figure 2009 is just a year we had to get through. The means to the end, so to speak. I'm kind of exhausted from it. Luckily, I have next week off.
In the meantime, I am so so so thankful for:
A more than lovely and relaxing three day trip to Minneapolis to visit Megan, Mamie, Lisa, & Josh.
A John Legend at Ravinia experience with Cathy's homemade red velvet cupcakes to taste
Crafty afternoon with my neighbor, Robin and crafty evening with Cathy & Angela. (Yay Anthropologie skirt-making!) Crafty Planet- the coolest fabric store in all of the world.
Brunch dates for the next several days
I am sitting at Mari's dining room table nibbling on something chocolate when Eli, age 3, bellies up next to me with an individual container of pomegranate yogurt. He is charming with little brown curls at the nape of his neck and large amber colored eyes. He and I are not well acquainted- we hang out at the same dining room table once a month for a book club- but other than that I am kind of a stranger.
Eli: Sitting down next to me and catching my eye before speaking. What kind of tools do you have?
Me: Taken rather aback by this question but then confident in my ability to answer. My house, afterall, is 65% tools right now. Well, I have a hammer.
Eli: Blinks. Unimpressed, takes a bite of yogurt and stares at me. Me: And a wrench. Eli: Blinks again. Still unimpressed. Another bite of yogurt. Me: Getting a smidge desperate. A wrench? Eli: What about a midar saw? Me: Blinking. What's that? Eli: Sighing. He is clearly disappointed in this interaction. It cuts angles.Like, baseboards. Me: We probably have one of those.
Eli: And a soldering iron? Me: Relieved I can now answer only yes/ no. Ben would be so disappointed. Yep. Yep, we have one of those too. Eli: And a circular saw? Me: Definitely a circular saw. Eli looks content and continues to stare at observe me suspiciously while finishing his yogurt. Mari returns to the dining room table and I am sure she notices beads of sweat pouring down my face. "I told Eli you are doing construction on your house and you would have a ton of tools," Mari explains. At that point I know I have let this three year old down: he had high expectations of me and all I could rattle off was hammer, wrench, and screw driver. That's what I get for underestimating the intelligence of a three year old.
posted by JennyMonday, July 20, 2009
It is Saturday evening and I am at Pitchfork Music Festival with Bethany, Rachel, and Chris. We are facing a stage which, when illuminated with purple, red, and pink lights, distracts our vision from the Sears tower (a backdrop to this festival) to a stage of metal rods & boards. The sun is setting behind us and stratus clouds - no longer the cumulus clouds that threatened rain during performance of Yeasayer- highlight a pale violet sky. It is a calm evening and the bodies that swarm around my curly haired sister-in-laws are comforting in 60 degree weather.
Behind me settles what I think might be a bit of a rowdy crowd. They are a group of five boys- probably my age- holding their brim filled cups of beer high in the air like waitresses do when they are afraid of being bumped. The boy directly behind me looks more like he belongs in Wrigley field than this concert- which on one hand I highly appreciate. He does not fit here- bright blue oversized cubs shirt, baseball cap, and generous sized body among tiny, thin boys in skinny jeans and hipster glasses smoking joints. His voice is raspy like he's been yelling all day. I wonder if he will be that guy who talks throughout the entire performance.
The National enters the stage and immediately there is a roar of the crowd. Much unlike the several Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, and Patty Griffin concerts of my past, this roar is full of testosterone and men's fists pump into the air. It includes the roar of the Cub's fan behind me- his voice trying to defy it's hoarseness. The National begins and it is a surreal moment that in time will crescendo with the aid of a trumpet and a madman playing violin. In the first three bars of the song, I am clutching my chest. I forgot how this band can make me sob if my heart is ungaurded. How it was the only cd on repeat that carried me in my little car all through last summer. Rachel laughs at me and squeezes my arm. We begin to sway and eventually bounce at the knees. I realize the Cub's fan behind me is also clutching his chest. The singer begins to sing and the Cub's fan sings along. Wait, no, he is harmonizing. He knows every word. He is on pitch. He is having a moment too. He is beyond me in this moment. This is his moment. Usually I am annoyed with people who sing along at concerts. I didn't pay $35 to hear some unknown sing. The Cub's fan, however, only heightens the energy and beauty of this performance.
I am not a music writer so I will not do much justice to the amazing performance I experienced by writing about stanzas, pitches, and some other technical terms. What I will comment on is the energy that spilled from the stage onto the crowd and the way it bubbled over everyone so that they called out in unison during those climatic moments of each song (because each song of The National is a private little set of fireworks unto their own). The way that there was always someone in the crowd jumping up in down, waving their hands furiously into the air like they were at a Baptist revival. Rachel excitedly pointed each one out to me as though the were little shooting stars among us. Most of all, in that very moment, I realize that I was at a place where I wanted nothing else but for the band to bring on another song and then another. I want nothing else but for them to keep singing, keep energizing us, keep us in awe. And they do. Until 10 pm and then they are gone.
Didn't anybody tell you how to gracefully disappear in a room?
posted by JennySunday, July 19, 2009
I hate to use this website to air my dirty laundry but this is where I am at:
1. I have a head cold. Sore throat, ear ache, etc. I wont die or anything.
2. Ben has Swine Flu. He's had a fever for four nights now & has been pretty sick.
3. Caring for Ben involves climbing up and down the ladder with orange juice and setting up the toaster in the bathroom to make toast because
4. We are still without kitchen. And staircases. And I have to step over our wine glasses/ dinnerware to do our laundry.
5. Our house is a disaster. I am not over exaggerating. I wish I was. It is disgusting. I am so embarrassed.
6. We were going to put down the kitchen and dining room floor Saturday- had a little crew and everything- when there was an accident and a nail pierced through our under floor heating unit... we are on hold for another week or two or three which means no kitchen for another week or two or three.
7. We have an infestation of flying ants. They appear in our bedroom by the hundreds at approximately sunrise. This means, at 5:00 am I wake up with flying ants in our sheets, in my hair, and swarming above. I have to use the shop vacuum to catch them all. Then I try to fall back asleep with the sound of trapped flying creatures bumping into the walls of the vacuum.
8. And it's been kind of a crazy week at work. A few nine hour days without lunch. You know...
With that said, I know this is all temporary and that life is still fantastic. Really, it must be! Please pardon me, however, for my serious grumpiness. It will soon pass. Soon. I hope!
posted by JennyThursday, July 16, 2009
Dear "Liza",
It was so good to hear from you the other day ago. I have been tracking you through a little colorful portal that frames the expeditions you have longed for since I've known you. I feel I am a little voyeur who is trying to grasp onto your teal-gray coat tails as you spin, bound, and leap from one Moscow train station to another. I must admit you are the only one who will ever see architecture as compared to an ice cream cone (& think to photograph observations) and thus, I know my love for you will always sustain in strength. I miss you terribly.
I wish we were sitting on the rocks of Lake Michigan right now- it is a warm evening which would cast the city of Chicago aglow so few miles away- eating raspberries and indulging in each other's mindworkings. I was reminded of you on the fourth of July- you and I in 2002 barefoot on the lakefront in anticipation of fireworks, Mazzy Star singing with the Jesus and Mary Chain, the termination of a shitty internship, and Anna-me-you reading eastern European authors on a park bench pre- Thai Sookdie. How would I have survived that internship without you presenting me with virgin margaritas at five o'clock like a perfect 1950's husband-wife relationship?
I must admit, I wasn't intending to break your heart with the musical cd I gave you last month. But in a way, aren't I always trying to break a heart? ;o) I just didn't mean for it to be yours. Here's the funny thing: it is a cd I made in love a few months ago and it is the cd that backfired and broke my own heart. I made a few modifications for you (Kanye, Boy Meets Girl, Moby, and Lupe Fiasco) and there it is: breaking your heart halfway around the world like it did in my car on interstate 94. Could it be that we are that connected?
Things here are fine. Ben and I have bonfires in the back yard at least once a week, reckless mosquito's rule the yard, mounding perennials in the garden take my breath away, and I indulge in home cooked Pakistani food every Thursday. (I have the best place on Devon for us to visit when you return). I am so glad you are well and cannot wait for your return.
This little space in my front yard is just about the only serenity in a hundred foot radius of our house. I love this space. It's shady, quiet, and because the branches of the tree sweep so low, no one even realizes I'm sitting there. There was a Saturday a few weeks ago where I did not leave this spot for eight hours and polished off two books. I cannot wait until I am able to start making the interior of our house just as cozy (and clean!). I am going up to Minnesota to visit Megan in a few weeks and am excited to visit salvage and architectural antique shops in Minneapolis to begin decorating.
The house almost consumed me this weekend but I think I staved off it's menacing bite & frightful cement jaws just in time. In short, I have been feeling very burnt out by work, our house (and non-existing order), and then work again. In response, I became very lethargic with a spoonful of anxiety. If lethargy and anxiety were a mixed drink, it would taste horrendous and probably keep you up the rest of the night sitting next to the toilet in anticipation of being sick but never actually providing the satisfaction of getting sick and then getting better. That was a really long analogy. In other words, it sucks.
Ben and I finally made a decision regarding the kitchen/ dining room floor this weekend and (gasp!) purchased 400 square feet of red oak from Home Depot. This is after we had special heart pine shipped from a warehouse in Virginia to a location in Arlington Heights only to reject it upon our second voyage to see the pine. I feel like every decision has required at least 24 hours of thinking and this particular decision took two and half months- hence no kitchen. I digress. . .
Today I was able to muster up some go-getter power and clean up the front yard. We no longer look like we belong in the backwoods. I don't think there will be any more jokes starting with "So when you end up putting your car on cement blocks. . ." From the outside, our house finally looks like it actually belongs in Evanston. Yay. I think I am starting to get some energy back thanks to really really dear friends (& a mom) who have been so kind as I grumble about silly little things. Thank you for keeping me grounded.
posted by JennyMonday, July 06, 2009
Hey you!
My name is Jenny & this is my chance indulge in life twice-- once to experience and once to reflect. I love old trucks, succulents, and crazy-weird details that make life interesting. This is my chance to document the little things. I hope you enjoy.
