Shedding 10 layers of clothing

This morning I met Melissa at Lee Street beach in Evanston and we took a (shocking) four mile trot along the lake path. The wind and murky grayness only achieved by mixing too many water colors together in a jar full of water was almost enough to make me want to veto running and rather hunker down with a warm cup of hot chocolate. But with enough layers and conversation...

Later, when I shed all my clothing to jump in the shower, I realized just how many layers of clothing I was wearing and it was a load's worth of heaping, damp (and probably smelly) pieces. But it also made me happy. I want to sweat out winter even as the weather fiercely holds on to wind chills of a taunting 23 degrees. We are so close to above freezing- so close! As March Madness approaches, (and all my men patients give me tips to successful brackets) I am feeling the slight hopefulness. Somewhere, sometime soon, the best moment of Chicago will arrive: the first few days of spring. It's coming. We feel it! We want it!

Stefanie is Married

I found them giggling upstairs above the hustle and bustle of the ceremony minutes before walking down the aisle: four bridesmaids and a bride sitting in child sized chairs in a children's art classroom. Among colorful pairs of scissors sized for small hands, lovingly used and messy handled paintbrushes, and finger painted windows, I found my dear friend, college roommate, and "womb sista", Stefanie, radiant in her wedding dress. A bad picture could Stefanie not taketh given the gigantic smile she carried throughout the entire day. I joked that my head would be in every picture since I wanted to sit and smell her bouquet of peonies all day. It was a truly glorious wedding with little trinkets of Star Wars, Indiana Jones, and a lot of french toast stuffed with strawberry cream cheese and, on the side and plentiful, BACON! Congratulations to Stef and Zach on a most awesome wedding and many many amazing years to come.

revised: links!

New Years Eve: 2011

Welcome strange, odd numbered year 20 11!

Ben and I have sleepily drifted into the new year insulated in the comfort of good friends, a few yummy beers, and the fact that 2010 was really quite special for both of us. Most of you fellow reader-friends know I am certainly not a New Year's Eve-going-out kind of girl so I was relieved when our dear friends Pat and Kelly decided to throw a little shin dig at their home two miles away from us. It was a usual crowd pleaser: yummy appetizers featuring bacon and goat cheese, good friends, a delectable selection of beer & sangria, Rap Hero, and ongoing flailing of arms with laughter. Of course, I do not really "do" evenings well so I teetered out at the strike of midnight and then continued my sleepy-head-ness this morning when I joined Wendy, Jin, and Joan for a new years proclamation to good health! run on the lake (in 24 degree temperatures).

As Ben and I were falling asleep, we wondered if we could top this past year or are we destined to go "downhill" from here. Have we piqued or is our life going to gently roll over into another dimension of amazing possibilities, certain difficulties, and wild triumphs that we cannot even fathom. Hello 20 11.

Little Town of Bethleham

I look forward to crafting little paper ornaments every year. I love starting the paper cutting and assembling on Thanksgiving and then I am so happy to complete the final assemblage of the last ornament about a week later. There is usually a rumble and brief fall out with my cat Max who likes to jump into the mess of slightly organized chaos and make things difficult. I think Ben secretly listens in on me in those moments to see if I just might get angry enough to kick him out of the house. I never do.

There is some mild winter drama in Chicago with whirling snow and the sound of wind in bare trees. I am jealous of Minnesota and their multiple inches of snow. I embrace winter and can enjoy it for up to four months before I am ready for a change. I've been trying to capture the Christmas spirit with mild success. Ben and I will be forging new traditions this year as we will have Christmas Eve open to ourselves. I am giddy with the possibilities of how to spend Christmas Eve: Reba church Christmas pagaent where my niece Mayerelli is often a sheep? A quiet Christmas service in a good friend's home with Christmas carols? A "midnight" (aka 10 pm for Jenny) Christmas movie while cuddling and drinking hot chocolate with Ben? How do you spend your Christmas Eve and what gets you in the ultimate Christmas spirit?

Strangers

Some days I love the fact that I can concur on something simple with a perfect stranger. Like my patient's mother in regards to whether a little storm of flurries constitutes as actual snow. (It does not, by the way). I adore the simplicity and the tiny bond that forms in these moments.

Santa Claus hat or Mexican flag bandanna?

Kind of excited for December & snowfall. Angela and I are trying to problem solve what just might catapult our spirit for Christmas. Kristkindlmarket in Daley Plaza? A live production of A Christmas Carol? Singing Christmas Carols at Millenial Park? (that's us, right Kelly?) I have pulled out the colorful cardstock to make my annual Christmas ornaments. Stay tuned. Ready to burrow into a couch and coziness. Anticipating the return of Ben after he has trekked through Vietnam for the last two weeks. Will we celebrate with burgers or pizza?

"I love that he is wearing a Santa Claus hat. Or is it a Mexican flag bandanna? I can't tell from here." - Ang

Giggles

You know your life is pretty good when you spend the morning exercising with a 92 year old man who has the giggles.

Baptism

The sky above our Lake Michigan Baptism. Photo by Kelly

I had minimal expectations for Ben and my baptism three Sundays ago. I really was clueless as to how this event would go down. I carefully scripted my testimony and tried to reflect on what it meant to "know Jesus" by reading the book of John over that weekend. I couldn't put a finger on just why I had butterflies and nerves but I certainly did.

My mom drove up Sunday morning and joined Ben and I for church (where Ben played drums rock style- which I love to watch from the audience). Apparently, word spread that Ben and I were getting baptized. I can describe the morning's events and the support that poured out of both loved ones and strangers only to my wedding. Hugs and congratulations were everywhere we turned. After the sermon, Ben, my mom, and I trekked out to Roger's Park beach where the sun was spearheading an 85 degree day. We met Ben's parents there, Pat, Kelly, and Emily, and my bible study. Our pastors were there of course and one other girl getting baptized too. And thirty other people who I didn't expect. And then ten more just as I was about to give my testimony.

We gathered under a small grove of trees. The baptizees and pastor (in bathing suits) shared our testimonies with the bass of a nearby jeep blaring rap music steadily. The beat matched my heart rate and I was thankful it was there so I could attribute the pounding in my chest to that and not my heart. Once we shared our faith, the massive heard of people walked down to the beach. It was a funny site- many clothes people stepping into the sand amongst regular civilians splashing and swimming in the water. The pastor, Ben, and I waded out into the water until it came just above our waists. One at a time we were dunked and from the shore came an applause. When it the baptism was complete, several members of the audience dove into the water around us. Suddenly there were dogs swimming after sticks and people splashing and laughter and more hugs and more handshakes. There were people that hugged me who I did not even know by name. There was happiness all around and I could not shake the "glow of the event" from me until late that night. It was a surprisingly special day. And I have a picture of the sky to which under it all took place.

She don't know she is beautiful

A few months ago I picked up a very young patient who was minimally responsive in therapy. An amazing family rallied around him and in the two hour period I spent with them twice a week, we pulled out all the stops to bring some kind of initiation or inspiration to treatment. He loved country music so on the crappiest radio you can ever imagine and by some divine intervention, we were able to tune into 99.5 (Chicago's one of two country stations). I was flabbergasted that I knew half the songs on the radio- all of which were produced the year of 1999 or before. I found myself sitting on an enormous scooter with this lovely boy sitting on my lap singing (with his sister) to an old Jo Dee Messina song. And although I had never heard the band Sugarland before these past few months, I found myself dialing my car radio into 99.5 on the ride home late this July.

The crappiest radio crapped out a few weeks ago during a therapy session. Treatment was too quiet. There was little singing and I swear, the lights were dimmer in the clinic without Brooks and Dunn playing over the crappiest speakers. Thus I ran to Target to buy some speakers for my ipod. I pulled out my 1999 (high school graduation year) album collection and began downloading all those songs that make Ben cringe: Dixie Chicks, Patty Lovelace, Terri Clark, Alan Jackson, Dwight Yokam. It's true: this girl has 2.5 hours of country tucked away in her bookshelves.

I spent a Sunday afternoon downloading all this music and completely plunged into country music. When I think of country I think of driving with Josh and Lisa in southern Minnesota. I also think of Megan G. I talk about nostalgia a lot. Scent and music is a time machine for me. The moment I heard Sammy Kershaw's "She Don't Know She's Beautiful" ( a song Megan used to dedicate to me every time it came on the radio) on my itunes I was suddenly transported back in time into Megan's un-airconditioned minivan summer of 1998. We were singing at the top of our lungs to Diamond Rio's "Unbeliveable" (I believe that was Megan's favorite song of the summer) as we drove to Seven Bridges workout gym. We were barreling down what seemed like one of Naperville's only country roads left and when I pointed at a horse at the side of the road (I was of course still singing), Megan performed a U-turn that might rival the driving witnessed in the movie Gone in Sixty Seconds. Country music blasting from the car door speaker, Megan's high pony tail bopping up and down as she sings, car door wide open, me climbing a fence so I can lean and reach over it: July 1998 I am petting the velvety nose of one of Naperville's last countryside horses. I am probably wearing Spandex shorts and a second hand t-shirt. I am having an amazing summer. Little do I know even eleven years later I am having an amazing summer listening to this same song.

Miracles

I forget how many miracles I experience in my job as neuro-rehabilitation therapist. I never want to harden or lose sight of what I see on a day to day basis. But today I saw the biggest miracle I think I could ever see: an awakening of a child and a family rallying around their brother/son with smiles and giggles. And a football, orange and blue, sailing between us. There is such a thing as miracles.

Walking to Ice Cream

It is a summery Sunday evening as the four of us walk down Oakton Avenue to get ice cream. It is dark and most of the small individual businesses- primarily thrift shops & motor part stores- are dimmed and void of people. "It's so high school to walk to places like an ice cream store," Kelly says. I say we might look like some kind of wild, badass Skokie posse but most of us are walking in sandals, however, so I digress that fantasy quickly. We stop and peek into the windows of salvage shops and eye old cameras and a frightening PeeWee Herman "Chairy" toy. There is sudden movement in the background and the sudden emergence of a face of a man (a shopkeeper staying late) makes Kelly yelp and jump away from the window. We settle into the ice cream shop that is thankfully open until ten. There is an older woman- seventy-eight or so- diving her spoon into a fat Sunday as we scope out ice cream flavors such as "green tea" "Queso" "Mango" "avocado" "green apple" "yam" and "tiramasu". I settle for something less adventurous but incredibly rewarding- a delicious turtle fudge with butter pecan ice cream, caramel, & fudge. Here's to summery Sunday nights!

Organizing June

My week of summer has arrived and thus far, it has been beautiful! The past three years I have taken either the last week of July or first week of August off and claimed it "summer!" It is a very meager summer as compared to that of students and teachers but it is still my summer and I revel in it. Reading at the lake, kayaking, biking to the botanic gardens, and such will all come later in the week when I finally unwind. It usually takes a day or two before I can just enjoy. While I am my body is still unwinding from the regular grind kinetic energy, I am organizing. It feels good to organize in a way that nothing else can touch. Accomplishment? Accessibility to things? The purging that comes along with de-cluttering and organizing? I'm not exactly sure what feels so good but it feels fabulous. The roots of this desire to organize can is observable in my favorite Bearingstain Bear's book, Messy Room, where I would pour over the pages of the bear's messy room versus the clean room. My attention to details in those days was fantastic and I loved the peg board that the brother and sister bear hung their toys & the boxes neatly labeled. Apparently I am not the only one who was inspired by this book in my early childhood. Anyhoo, off to prepare for my madre who is coming up to join me for some shopping at The Container Store. Huzzah!

Drining Horchada

Some potting of plants to happen this weekend!

Good things May 2010: the beginning of Evanston Farmers Market, chatting with my sister-in-law post steak and delicious brownies, Mayerelli's soccer games, Ben's horchada, being home from work by 3:30 on a Thursday, friendly patients who like to talk about color & wainscoting, weekly Tuesday night couch time with the R's, trips to the country for grilling & rhubarb pie. I hope to start "seeing" stories again so I can write them here. I guess sometimes you have to start with lists and work from there.

A Summary of Fall

I feel a little negligent by not pointing out some lovely events that happened last fall. I had a temporary "I hate turning on and using computer" moment for most of November hence my massive decline in posting. Instead, I was curled up reading or working on the never ending home or playing with friends in the fading fall weather.

Last September, I was given the gift of mentoring an awesome occupational therapy student named Liz. She worked with me for three months and it truly was a gift. She is an an amazing person who my patient's adored. I had one patient tell me that if I didn't "give that girl a passing grade", I would be crazy. Liz & I learned a million things together and were a super duo by the time she left. For Halloween we both dressed up as characters from "Where the Wild Things Are" with me as Max and she as the monster. We also baked, crafted, & completed many a shoulder lessons in her short time with us. The super bonus to meeting Liz is that she is now a friend who lives with her husband in my neighborhood. We go running or walking in the neighborhood with her black lab who I also adore.

My mom, Ben, and I traveled to Boston where I got to spend some time with Elizabeth at Harvard. A cute moment was sitting on the student bus- filled with students - but also my mom who was donning a back back. She was so cute looking all student like!

We have also been sharpening our brains with Pat & Kelly on a little trivia circuit where we lose miserably weekly. Somehow, the mini corn dogs & one Stella beer always seem to be enough to keep my ego from being crushed. But there was this one magical moment when all four of us equally contributed to the half time question regarding lyrics to songs and we won (that question).

So fall was certainly not a bust. I just was out enjoying it :o)

And a special congrats to Stef & Zach on their engagement!! HURRAH!

New Years Eve: an ode to the blessings of OH NINE

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.

Finding Beauty in Construction

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.

Little feminists & Puppy Chow

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.

Luv Queen

"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 *

Kind of a die-hard P Allen Smith fan, I suppose.

The Cockpit

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.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

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.