Those who can't work shave the cat's back.

This afternoon, I spilled half a mixing bowl of liquefied casserole on my jeans and Chucks. Thursday, I was walked Spanish, as is common these days. Both occurrences were and are inconvenient and supremely uncomfortable. Every other event within the last 72 hours has been relatively positive.

Tomorrow I will cope with being a casualty of this downtrodden economy by ridding the family cat of the matted fur on his back. And as life continues its assault on the latter half of 2008, I'm still trying to laugh. I've been successful thus far. This morning my mom and I went to breakfast for her birthday, but given the circumstances, we ended up at IHOP. In the rock/paper/scissors of day-to-day existence, lay-off trumps birthday by smothering it with pity.

This blog never really had a theme before, at least not an overtly detectable one. I'm seeking purpose in the interim. Hmmmm...

Be back shortly with cereal and perspective.

26.Washcloth

Yesterday, at my friend Lauren's* behest, I jumped in at the corner by my apartment and ran a decent portion of the marathon with her. I'd like to think I kept her going for that stretch, but in reality I probably just served as an annoyance. After all, she had nearly eight miles on me by the time she reached Roscoe and Broadway and was beginning to realize just how much lay ahead. I was caffeinated, conversational and held no obligation to reach the finish line. I was a ghost runner put in place to drink free Gatorade and hound my running mate with constant, asinine observations like "look, free vaseline." Anyway, in the relatively short time I spent on the marathon route, I saw Chicago transformed into something similar to Sesame Street with more grownups and slightly fewer muppets. Each neighborhood greeted the participants with overwhelming enthusiasm, bullhorns, worn recordings of "Pump Up the Jam" and assorted gifts. In Lincoln Park, it was beer. In Old Town, green sponges. In the South Loop, it was little Snickers bars. In the West Loop, it was Fig Newtons. And in Greek Town, it was a ziplock back filled with damp, used washcloths. Probably the most questionable offering of the lot, but at that point most runners had reached a state of heat-induced confusion, and any gift was accepted with unnatural appreciation. It was a huge sweaty love fest, littered with paper cups and the occasional fallen runner. I of course ditched out as soon as I saw the gleam of a Brown Line stop in the distance, but for a few hours, I had the opportunity to see the city at its most utopian. And it was sort of awesome.

My mom's birthday is this Saturday, and I'm going home to help her celebrate. I imagine we'll mark the occasion by splitting a can of room temp Bud Light, poured into styrofoam cups and served over ice cubes.** If we decide to take it up a notch, maybe we'll eat soup. But in any event, I've been trying to figure out what to get her. A few weeks after my dad died, Lynn Johnston ran her second-to-last For Better or For Worse strip in our local paper, and it moved my mom so much that she proceeded to clip it and carry it around with her, showing it to the occasional relative and family friend. Maybe I'll frame it, maybe I'll spend the $65 to have Lynn autograph it. Or maybe I will completely forget between now and then and proceed to give her a homemade card and a gift certificate for a manicure that will never be redeemed. Regardless, here it is, for your "this would warm my heart if I were turning 60, too" enjoyment.


* Congratulations, Lauren!
** Fact: I imagine this will happen because it has happened before.

But ships are fallible, I say

They began construction on the lobby of our office building the week I moved to Chicago, and they finished it about two weeks ago, celebrating its completion (and the addition of a half-dozen pieces of questionable modern art) with a reception last night. We milled around for a good hour and a half, refusing congealed appetizers, sipping little plastic cups of wine and gawking at all of the people who actually work in our building, on floors above and below us, every day. I ride the elevator with a few each morning. I've never seen them all amassed in one location. I guess it was eye-opening, possibly comforting. With a good Merlot buzz going (I always talk about wine! I love wine so much I guess), I ventured out into the pouring rain and met some Second City folks for a show at the IO... where I drank a bit more (I also love reneging on promises made to quit drinking on weeknights). When I got home, I made toast (and finally, I love toast) and passed out watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I woke up a few hours later to a news story about blood spatter conferences. Again: Blood Spatter Conferences. Which apparently exist. I was more likely to wake up to Suzanne Somers selling me a sequined jean jacket, but of course I was roused by blood spatter conferences. It took me an hour to get back to sleep. I guess the last two sentences were the whole point of that entire drawn-out story.

If you are like me, when you are on a plane, you automatically tune out the oxygen mask demonstration in order to do something more interesting, like deciding which Sky Mall page to leave your gum on or playing The Next Song Will Determine the Course of the Rest of My Life with your iPod. Sometimes I worry that I've tuned something out so many times on the simple assumption that I already know how, and that I really don't know how, and that someday I will be forced to actually do it... and not be able to.

These are two versions of one song. In my book, both parties can do no wrong. The only thing Joanna Newsom is guilty of is being incomprehensibly different from anyone else in existence. And the Decemberists could poop in a paper bag and I'd still listen to it.

The cover


The original

I'm taking you to Del Taco...

...and you can get anything you want from the menu. Even one of the more expensive items, like the Macho Burrito.

Happy birthday, Paul! You've made it 18 years without getting arrested or disowned. When Joe dropped that Tonka truck on you the day mom and dad brought you home from the hospital, I knew you'd be a survivor, and you haven't let me down yet. I'll never forget the time you let me give you a haircut when you were two or the time you went to see 27 Dresses with me when you were 17. Have a great day (register to vote). I'll see you tonight.

Dear Sarah Palin,
When you stand on the banks of the Mississippi, you can see Illinois from St. Louis. I just thought you should know that.

Enjoy your time in my fair city.

Best,
Catherine

P.S. I'll be there tomorrow in case you're still around and want to compare bikinis.

Molasses Candy

So for some reason, work completely exploded over the past few days, and I'm back in the mental state I was in Sophomore year of college, when all of my obligations amassed into a semester of Program Board meetings and on-campus concerts and print design projects that resulted in 5 a.m. trips to the Kinko’s on Dodge. Annie and I would eat Chuckles from the vending machine and print poorly designed record store labels while Keith copied his face and butt. But that's neither here nor there. It all amounts to a lot of writing, a lot of sleep deprivation... I brought home some work tonight and rewarded myself with Barefoot Shiraz (viewing that as a reward is a pretty clear indicator of my income bracket).

Recent discussion among roommates of a possible Halloween party (which has since fallen through) led me to do some reflection on last year's Halloween, which in hindsight was pretty supremely amazing. It made up for the year I was Baby Jessica and Jared Nelson set my well on fire. It even made up for the year or two I opted to watch Dateline instead of going out. I ended up in Portland for the weekend prior and, after a trip to a thrift store in Annie's neighborhood, decided to drape myself in $.25 keyboards and extension cords and go as technology (which paled in comparison to her Amy Winehouse). The weekend after, I returned to Omaha to move my final minivan load of belongings home, and went out as Tom Cruise from Risky Business (you say unoriginal, I say a good excuse to wear Wayfarers inside Barry O's). And then I finally came to rest in St. Louis on the actual holiday, drinking White Zinfandel with my mom on the front porch while we handed out candy to the kids I used to baby sit for. In hindsight, I couldn't have spent it better... I was the only kid at home, and as we oohed over babies dressed as pumpkins and a dozen or so Hannah Montanas, my dad sat just inside the front door on the living room couch, writing down every joke he heard in a spiral notebook... commenting on some, laughing quietly to himself about others. He made me repeat the ones he couldn't hear, and half of them had something to do with six being afraid of seven and seven eating nine. By the grace of whomever, last year's Halloween allowed me to be in three pretty meaningful locations within the span of a week. This year I will probably dress as Laura Ingalls Wilder (fingers/bonnet crossed) and end up sleeping in a pile of Charleston Chews somewhere on Clark, but you win some, you lose some, you dress as a pioneer... for some.

Congratulations on passing the IL Bar, Cort! I expect you on my doorstep, looking lawyerly, bright and early tomorrow.

I've eaten my words and 236 clusters.

Update: I found them today. My apologies to Kellogg's.

What a good time to blog! In the morning!

I'm a total morning person. I forgot that... but give me some expensive, burnty tasting coffee and an hour of free time at my disposal, and it all comes flooding back. Quite obviously, I will proceed to use that extra hour productively.

Yesterday morning, I was reading on the bus (because when you go to work early, you get to sit down and relax instead of standing in stop-and-go Lakeshore traffic for twenty minutes with your armpit in a stranger's face and your canvas tote suffocating a small child or sitting elderly person). Anyway, I'm reading The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and right before my bus came to a stop, I read this line - an excerpt from a letter written by one character to another (a friend he's been separated from due to circumstances beyond their control):

I am not meant to be alone and without you who understand.

I won't bore you with the context, but upon reading I ran three blocks to my office, coffee sloshing and scalding and spilling, sat down at my computer and wrote this long, emotionally driven email to some of the people I can't imagine living life without (if you didn't get it, I'm sure it will eventually become a Precious Moments clipart-filled forward you receive on some lazy casual Friday). I think I was in some sort of trance. It was pretty sappy, but completely from the heart (I do not bullshit before 9:00 a.m.). I moved to Chicago with a purpose, and I'm still so completely glad I'm here, but sometimes the idea that I physically extricated myself from the very people I can't live without is baffling to me...

So anyway, there you have it. A beautiful line to reflect on. Give me a few more days, and I'll be off this contemplative kick and onto something more palatable, like turkey burgers.

And now for something completely different...
Do you watch these Target Women videos? You should.

Thanks but no thanks on those yogurt coated clusters.

Dear All-Bran Yogurt Bites Cereal,
When I purchased you at Jewel on Monday evening, I forwent my usual box of raisin bran because a) you were on sale and b) your box conspicuously claimed that you contain "Crunchy bran flakes with yogurt coated clusters." However, upon opening said box this morning, I now think a revision is in order. Something to the tune of "Crunchy bran flakes with three yogurt coated clusters," because that is more accurate. I just spent the last ten minutes physically sifting through your flakes with my hands (which is gross, but you drove me to it) in search of additional clusters (none!). Next time I want to buy a box of bran flakes, I'll do just that, which will leave me with enough leftover cash to justify the purchase of [some crappy magazine].

Catherine

P.S. The sample packet of fiber drink mix you threw in isn't solace enough. It just makes me think of drinking a class of pencil shavings. Nice try though.

The only thing that's capital-T True is that you get to decide how you're going to try to see it.

A few summers ago... five summers ago to be exact, I stayed in Omaha in between semesters to intern at an ad agency. Because I'm innately shy and pretty severely introverted (I've only recently learned the value of talking to coworkers), I would spend every lunch break in my car, listening to the City Club forum and eating a PBJ, as women from the various banks and other ambiguously corporate entities in the area power walked around me. A few months prior, I'd purchased David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest, only to leave it sitting on the shelf where I would visit it from time to time, imagining the day when I would have enough strength to lift it (it weighs as much as a baby or cat) and enthusiasm to read it. So, after chewing to NPR for a few weeks, I decided to tackle the impossible. And every day after that I would read about three pages over the course of an hour, the majority of the time spent trying to find my place again after getting distracted by a bird or a power walker or the booming sounds of Dodge St. construction. To put it lightly, the book is a behemoth. It is long. The print is small. The pages are bible-thin, and it is written in a stream-of-consciousness style that make the thoughts of a five-year-old seem organized and concise. Long story short, I gave it my all... I tried for a month or so. I made a dent, but I never, ever finished it. Since then, I've carted it around to every duplex and city I've moved to, hoping to eventually dive in again. If I'm going to be honest with myself, it probably won't happen, but it's kind of comforting having it nearby. Like knowing there's goodness inside is satisfaction enough...

When I learned that David Foster Wallace had died (a week ago today), I read a little more about him, I stared at the lurking book... and today I found the commencement speech he gave the class of '05 at Kenyon College. I didn't go to Kenyon, but that's my year, my generation, and his speech struck more of a chord than I expected. The power of perspective is immense, and while no one should be OK with mediocrity, everyone should try a little harder to accept what cannot be changed (at least immediately) and turn it into an opportunity for growth. I say everyone... at least I mean me. I don't think life is short (short compared to what?) but it's still not worth wasting the time we do have on bitterness or regret. Enough. Read.

I've never fainted before, but I imagine if one we're going to faint, this is what they would feel like beforehand. I'm trying to keep myself occupied. If for some reason a string of coherent sentences is interrupted by something like this: fdlsafjdklsa fjf;ew9qiru3-qw[ femak, it's because I'm lying face-down on my keyboard.

So I get about 72% of my news from Gawker, 6% from CNN.com, 8% from the NYT, 5% of my editorialized content from Slate, 9% from assorted blogs and 2% from cereal boxes, containers of Yogurt, the Red Eye and the old man who stands on the corner of Michigan and Chicago yelling about communism. I guess I'd liken my love of Gawker to a gun-toting Republican's love of conservative talk radio. It's preaching to the choir, but it's really good preaching. Anyway, any iota of admiration I had left for Joel Stein (read: jealousy) was wiped away by his LA Times article on Palin, which Gawker speared first. I just echo their sentiments. I'm too tired to set up a link, but it's there...

Update: Last weekend, while out and about with MC, I found a copy of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell nestled among more notable works at a little used bookstore in my neighborhood. I decided to sit on the floor and read some excerpts, and right then and there, I was finished with it forever. It wasn't worth the $6, or the humiliation of the transaction with the cashier... It's just downright horrible, and my standards are ungodly low.

That's all I have for now. Hopefully the weekend will result in a story worth telling. TGIF!

(If you realized that the above percentages add up to 102% like I just did, five minutes later, you win mathematical superiority over me.)

While I'm alive, I'll make changes changes to earth.

Fall will always be hands-down my favorite season. I guess it had a 25% chance of winning out, plus it has my birthday, two pretty decent holidays, etc. But still. But STILL. It’s the only season that simultaneously renews my enthusiasm from where I am and makes me miss the places I’ve been. It’s three months of sensory overload, and I am in it for the long haul. I had no urgent tasks to accomplish over lunch today, but I made myself leave… even in the elevator I got nervous about the uncertainty of a pointless lunch break. Determined not to end up perusing Walgreens for an hour, I proceeded to wander, my biggest purchase/accomplishment being a small soda from Flat Sammies. I managed to come back feeling refreshed.

I kind of fell off the 826 wagon after moving to Lakeview, mostly because I lazily let time pass, and the distance to Wicker Park seemed too far, and then I just started to feel guilty. Blowing small situations out of proportion comes pretty easy for me, and I began to assume that after a prolonged absence, they wouldn’t want me back. After all, volunteers are a dime a dozen, and I imagine they may be upset that I borrowed a few books and then conveniently dropped off the face of the earth. Regardless, I’m going back… I have a TA meeting tonight and a workshop to man on Saturday. We are rewriting the endings to fairy tales. I am excited.

Ummmm…
So.
The theme in my head seems to be travel, for two reasons. Jo returned from India last weekend and came over last night to show me pictures of her travels. What a beautiful place. Having never been to India, only about half of the pictures looked like the India I envision – all Darjeeling Limited and monkey thieves. The other half exhibited a surprisingly varied terrain. If you’d thrown in a guy wearing rope sandals and smoking weed out of an empty bottle of Fat Tire, I would’ve sworn it was Colorado. Anyway, by the time she left, my desire to travel (which has never really been satisfied or even taunted) sort of overwhelmed me, and I made myself go to bed. And then I dreamt that I was robbed by monkeys.

Second, and more importantly perhaps, my sister leaves tomorrow for 14 months in Honduras, where she will live at an orphanage, teach children, do some social work, etc. And I only ask two things of her: That she change the world (not save it, mind you, just change it) and bring me an orphan of her choosing. But in all seriousness, and not to make this blog completely family-centric, I’m so ridiculously proud of her. If anyone’s truly carrying on my dad’s legacy at this point in time, it’s MC. I’d like to think that I will follow suit in some way… I really have to if I don’t want to eventually be eaten alive but thoughts of what I’d rather be doing. But in the meantime, I wish her well. Assuming that she doesn’t even read this, an open message to Mary Clare or anyone else leaving tomorrow for 14 months in Honduras:

I’m going to miss you so much it makes me want to crawl into a closet and eat a box of Reduced Fat Wheat Thins. Can’t wait to visit you (it will be just like DR ’07, only with more guaguas and public urination).

Here is a Frightened Rabbit song that makes me think of you, not because you’ve ever heard it before, but because it more or less summarizes a pretty vital life philosophy:



And here is some Daddy Yankee:



Safe travels. Te quiero.

It rained all day yesterday. The entire day. Bus stop to bus stop, sleep to sleep, etc. And it's funny how soon people forget that just a few short months ago, we were trudging over ice and through snow without batting an eyelash. We were nursing bruises, frostbite and crippling cases of SAD, but we carried on with our sanity generally intact. Now, after a summer of decent weather and consistently clear skies, 24 hours of rain results in a state similar to marshall law. Every conversation came back to it... Walgreens made a mint off of it (I stopped in to make my daily purchase of hair elastics and cheap mascara and found a long line of disaffected tourists waiting to buy overpriced umbrellas)... Plans were canceled and shoes were ruined. I stepped outside at the end of the day with an fairly important decision to make:

Take a train and a bus to Bucktown to go to the gym
Pro: Healthy, etc.
Con: Rain

Take the express bus home, drink a beer and watch The Bucket List
Pro: See above
Con: N/A

Will leave it up to you to decide which option I chose.

I hope they serve beer on Mega Bus.

I do not trust Sarah Palin's eyebrows. But I guess that's sort of a non-issue.

I'm seriously considering reading I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell out of pure curiosity. I'm positive I will hate it. I'm sure I will ultimately be worse off as a person for having read it, but the time I've spent mulling over the mere possibility of reading is infinitely greater than the time it would take to find the corner of Borders least littered with empty Frappucino cups and subscription cards and just. read. it. Maybe not even cover to cover. My younger brother, who fits squarely into Tucker Max's intended demographic, couldn't even give it two complete thumbs up. That either says a lot for the caliber of my family's general intellect or not much for the book. I'd like to think it's a combination of the two.

(Note: I just took a ten-minute hiatus from writing to peruse Tucker's Flickr account. But I was making fun the entire time! In my head!)

I decided to dip my toes into the lukewarm pond of discount domestic travel last night and take Mega Bus home for the first time ever. My bus was supposed to leave Chicago's Union Station at 11:55 and reach St. Louis's Union Station at 5:25 this morning. However, it was an hour late, so I ended up spending the end of my Friday night and the beginning of my Saturday morning talking to an...

(Gross. I can't stop, and these pictures aren't even interesting.)

...older woman about her grandchildren and watching a drunk couple stop kissing and stumbling long enough for the guy to board his bus to Toledo. Due to recent events (aherm), I was a little nervous about taking a bus. At night. Next to strangers who may or may not feel it necessary to harm me or at least just stare a lot. However, once the bus started moving, and I began to doze, I realized it was the people around me who were in danger... at least in danger of being made to feel uncomfortable. I've been having nightmares lately, and it's not unusual for me to wake up saying something nonsensical (confusing) or crying (awkward). I would sleep in five-minute increments and then spend the next half hour trying to discern whether or not I'd done anything crazy in my sleep.

The guy sitting next to me looks fairly restful and unfazed. Check.
The woman in front of me is still scraping the cheese off of her Egg McMuffin wrapper. Check.
I'm not drenched in sweat or covered in cryptic messages written in Dr. Pepper Lipsmackers. Check.
We're good to go.

By the time we rolled into St. Louis this morning, just half an hour over our original ETA, I hadn't made any lasting friendships on the Mega Bus, but I hadn't burned any bridges either. And for a $16 ticket and a chance to get home, that's the most one can hope for.

What I listen to when I am alone.

What I will deny if you approach me about it in person.

Man Singers
Depressingly uncreative, overly sentimental... They fall in love with their best friends and sing about staying in bed all day with a girl I imagine to be Rachel Bilsen. They sound like I should be paying them $250 of Creighton's money to play in our campus coffee shop. Their lifeblood is Zach Braff. I buy their songs in $1 increments from iTunes in the hopes that the next one will break my addiction. I listen to them on repeat. Current unfavorite: Josh Radin

Country Music Videos
I discovered the music video channel on On-Demand the other night and chose to watch two hours of country music videos instead of taking a shower. In the process I learned that Keith Urban is pandering to some non-existent mainstream country music-loving hipster audience. His videos are full of kids in skinny jeans fighting in laundromats. I'm going to be honest with myself and you as well; I will probably do the same thing tonight, this time with wine. Current unfavorite: Anything Rascal Flatts

Flavor of the week: Dave Matthews Band
Sometimes you have to go with whatever feels right at the time. And since I'm working late and deserve a number of things, including sleep and the discontinuation of the janitor's whistling, I owe it to myself to satisfy my ears. Current unfavorite: Anything that reminds me of boy-girl parties and sounds good reverberating through the hollow halls of an empty office building.

I get the picture.

In the small corner of the apartment that I inhabit, which happens to be smaller than the other parts because I would rather save a few bucks on rent and sleep in a twin bed, with all amenities (desk, bookshelf, alarm clock, entire wardrobe) squarely within my cramped reach, there is one window. The window looks directly across the driveway into the corresponding window of the building next door. I have noticed, out of the corner of my unassuming eye, that their extra small room is used as a computer room (probably more suitable). There's a chair, a phone, etc. I haven't let my gaze linger long enough to glean any further details.

Anyway...
anyway.

I've made a concerted effort to keep my shade all or mostly closed when I'm in my room, especially when I'm... oh, I don't know, getting ready for work, checking my email in a sports bra or hosting The Saddest Dance Party Ever, featuring me, my ailing laptop and my roommate's cat, if he stops eating long enough to show up. Long story short, I do my best to keep my bedroom behavior, however sordid (more often pathetic), to myself.

I returned from St. Louis on Sunday to find a potted plant in my room - a gift from one of my roommates. I think it'd been sitting there in the dark, unwatered, for a week or so because it looked dead and smelled like hummus. I immediately rushed to the window in an attempt to resurrect it with sunlight when something caught my eye across the way. A 10 x 14 framed picture of two little boys, propped up in the window, facing me. And while I could've seen much worse (looking out the window into the lives of others is always a gamble), the portrait's presence was pretty jarring, as it unleashed the assumptive floodgates of my imagination. Why did they put that there for me to see?

Well clearly...
They have seen me wearing a towel tucked into a pair of Umbros, drying my hair and singing misquoted Mason Jennings lyrics into my flatiron.
They have seen me lying on a pile of shoes, reading Parade magazine and picking my nose with a tweezers.
They have seen me staring at nail holes in the wall, taking dusty, apprehensive sips from a month-old glass of red wine.
They have seen me completely unedited, and it's scaring their children.

So they put their picture up to remind me that just nine suspended feet away, young minds are developing. I have been passive aggressively warned to keep my blinds shut, and I will oblige... minus the ten minutes a day when I give my plant sunlight.

In my time here.

Last night, after watching 3/4 of The Hottest State* with Mary Clare, I woke up alone on the couch, in front of the blue TV screen. It was that in between place in sleep where waking thoughts are mixed with sleeping ones, and I was momentarily convinced someone was breaking into the house. The quick feeling of severe panic was magnified by the fact that we're now short the stereotypical protector, and even though my dad's presence has probably never been the best defense against possible intruders, it took a split-second nightmare to finally realize he's gone. A week and a half later...

But in the midst of all of this, a few key learnings:
When you are sad, people like to feed you. If I never see another coffee cake again, I will be lucky.

I now know a multitude of ways to respond to "I'm sorry," "How are you holding up?" and "Take care of your mother."

Even if I thought it was just a cheesy plot device before, the urge to look for signs is irrepressible. The cardinal that lingered in the tree as I ran by panting, showering it in a cloud of sweat. The butterfly that landed on my knee while I sat in the backyard, feet propped up on the trampoline, reading an old issue of Glamour and smoking borrowed Parliaments.** What were before just overly friendly (possibly rabid?) creatures are now sources of comfort.

Even though I've spent the past week doing nothing particularly exerting, I am tired. So ridiculously tired. Sleep until 11:00 and then take a nap at noon tired. The bags under my eyes are beginning to obstruct my vision.

I could not have designed better friends if such a program or robot existed.

My brother Paul is my hero. Number one on the list. To surpass Bill Pullman and Richard Carlisle*** at just 17 years of age is a feat to be admired and a well-deserved achievement.

I am not ready to be normal again.

We**** are rockstars.



*Do not waste your time.
**Grief smoking doesn't count.
***Inventor of the coin-operated vending machine.
****You know who you are.

I will miss you.

Happy Birthday, Mary Clare!

You are lucky to have such an amazing mustache...


... and such an amazing role model.


Love ya.