Dark

I was in a great mood yesterday - which can be newsworthy for all of the obvious reasons - I've got pretty major money issues, organizational issues, I haven't been on a date in ages, I haven't had - um, romantic contact - in even longer, I don't have a lot of friends, I'm tired from a very busy season at work, and all the other stuff. But: I'd just started my triathlon group on Tuesday night, which began with just a meeting (all the people are really nice!) and a 45-minute yoga class at this sports clothing store for rich people downtown, then I rode my bike home, and had the next morning all to myself and Lois - we went running, etc. All was well.

I worked late, got home and took Lois out for a walk - it was after midnight, so my neighborhood was silent. We walked along and for some reason I turned back after passing a shoulder-height bush at the edge of the sidewalk, and noticed this tiny bird sitting there, totally silent, still (and, I finally realized, dead). But it was sitting up as if it was daytime, just hanging in the bush - letting me walk right by. It was eerie. I took a pic (above) with my camera phone.

After that, things went all dark in my head, and I found myself crying, and walking, mostly wishing someone was walking with me, or wishing there was someone I could call about the bird, or that someone would be home for me to come tell about it. I was completely overtaken by this sadness - a loss of something I've never had - sad for the bird, for myself, for all the people who are alone everywhere, who wonder, like I do, what did I do so wrong?

It was an unbelievably painful few blocks.

I got home, brushed, flossed, did 20 pushups and gave Lois a biscuit for hangin' in there with me, and played with her and a toy for a while and went to sleep pretty soon after.

And you know what? I woke up just fine today. Crying your heart out at 1am for a tiny bird inexplicably perched, lifeless, in a bush might be OK once in a while.

Recap/pictures

Last Thursday, my friend E and I went to Redmoon Theatre's Boneyard Prayer, and though the play itself (I felt) had some imperfections, the art, the music (composed by a friend of mine and played by another), the puppets, and most of all, the stage and production stuff was fabulous. After the performance they let the audience wander around the set, and I took a couple of pictures.


Then on Friday, I worked (though it was sposed to be a day off) and at night, I babysat for my young friends Jimmy and Tommy. We had a fun night, but when Tommy, who's 6 1/2, had a difficult time at bedtime, the only solution was to bring his, and his brother's, mattresses into the master bedroom for a surprise when the parents got home. A family slumber party, if you will...


On Saturday, I overslept and didn't run, but I picked up my bike from the shop, where I paid $140 to fix it up and find out, after the 14-mile ride to and from my brother's place in the South Loop, that the bike just doesn't fit me well, and I'll probably need a different bike for the triathlon.


The barbecue at my brother's place was great, and there were lots of kids and lots of food there. I mostly hung with my awesome cousin who lives in Chicago but I don't see enough of and some of my brother's friends.
Here are the kids and one parent jamming out on drums in front of one of my paintings, which my brother has purchased and hung all over his house, which I think is super cool.

...and the kids piled up with my brother and sister-in-law:

Sunday morning came, and I taught my classes, and then I walked with Lois to pick up my other bike from the bike shop (where it was parked outside), and I saw this crazy graffiti on a building along Lincoln Avenue:
(What IS it?!)

On Memorial Day, I did all the garden and porch stuff I'd been putting off. The flower boxes are all done (and my gnome is guarding them),


and I planted the rest of the baby sunflowers in the rocky, sandy soil over by the garbage cans,


Lois hung out on the porch,


and the crazy neighbor lady N was out reading and making comments.


The nice next-door neighbor couple even put together a new picnic table they bought for the yard!


Then I went to R's Memorial Day barbecue, and it was lovely and the food was amazing (R can rub pork, lemme tell you!), and the company was even better.



BUT: Lois bit Tommy on the thumb (when he bugged her as he likes to do) and drew blood! I felt terrible. He was understandably very upset. Luckily, his parents are great about it and he's a tough cookie. Here he is with his Dad and his bandaid after the incident:


Lois, the biter, is now banned from all kid-attending events, which makes me sad. (Although she's probably relieved.)

Overall a great weekend! And I can barely bring myself to get back into working, if you can't tell already.

Hot, hot, hot

Sebastian Koch and a Jack Russel Terrier

It's really warm out and I'm unusually energetic, so I will make the next few posts quickies while I get stuff done outside. I'm headed to my 2nd BBQ of the weekend later today (pics to come, don't worry - I know I'm far behind) and must spend quality time with the sun and my pooch.

Since I don't have any real-life crushes right now, I thought I'd tell you about my movie star crushes. I recently saw Black Book, so the actor who plays the Nazi you hate to love is at the tip-top of my list. I think I fell for him first in The Lives of Others.

How can you not love a guy who does a fashion spread for a men's mag with a dog in one pic and an old-school cruiser bike in another? Hot stuff!

Happy Memorial Day!

Nothing to it but to do it

This is what I wake up to lately; Lois starts the night like a dog, curled under the covers at the foot of the bed, and by morning is sleeping - and snoring - like a human, sometimes with her head on a pillow! Plus, she takes a good half-hour to get out of bed in the morning.

I just paid the $240 fee for the women-only triathlon training program I've been wavering about for over a month while checking out all the other options. It starts on Tuesday. Now I have to fix up the hybrid bike and get crackin, I guess. I hope it's filled with nice people. I hope it's not a pain in the ass to get to their training things.

I hope it's worth $20 a week.

I went to a demo of the Chicago Triathlon Club's online training program last night, and realized that although I would really like to be a part of their club (maybe for the next triathlon I do? Unfortunately, their more informal training days conflict with my program) and the people seem wonderful, I need more than a computer list of what to do each day - I need the motivation of being in a live group of people actually doing that stuff a few times a week. So I spent the extra $90, and now I'll have to make the most of the program I joined!

I ran a mile with Lois yesterday but have yet to swim at the new pool. Pushups are fine (20-30 a day!) but I need ab motivation. And I posted an ad on Craigslist so I am emailing with a couple of guys right now. My expectations are not high, but it's interesting.

Pretty

I watched a film last night called Broken English. Though I loved it for many reasons, mainly style and topic - everyone should see it so we can talk about it - I did have some issues. One is the entire Parker Posey thing. I do not find her particularly attractive, though I really respect her choices as an actress and think she's smart (but in this movie, I noticed that - well, she walks sorta funny. I know, I suck). Is anyone out there with me on this?? The whole movie seems to me to be predicated on this assumption that she's so pretty, I think, but a) I don't buy the gorgeous with her and b) her character is pretty shallow, self-loathing, and frankly, seems to be a alcoholic/drug-using basket case. I don't really know why the interesting, smart, hot, self-confident leading guy falls for her (and sticks with her), unless, and we get back to problem A, it's purely on looks and guys are as shallow as we think they are. But I still like her, because I want to like her character, I feel for her, etc. The mood and feel of the film, and most of the writing, and especially the subject matter, is right up my alley. But I guess her struggle at why she's single would make more sense if she was not always swilling drinks/getting wasted and acting like an idiot in conversations and actions with men. I think I wanted to sympathize/empathize with her more than I could.

But that said, I'm really looking forward to the next film by Zoe Cassavetes. She's like a breath of fresh air, mood-wise, and I am so glad she joined in the family business!

I swam my ass off yesterday for a full hour, and now am bereft of my beloved pool for a while. I'm gong to try another, farther-away pool this week. Other stuff is going well; still at 10 pushups per set - but I can do the sets of 10 pretty close to one another. Running early morning (I hope my dog wakes up - she's like a teenager lately), biking to the farther-away office, and triathlon club info session tomorrow night.

Weekend...

Lois and friends in Lake Michigan; first dip of 2008.

So I didn't do tons of the organizing I promised myself on my day off, but I did do laundry, work on the yard, and take Lois to the dog beach. That is a lot. I also bought my porch flowers, and they are sort of "in process" now. Til tonight, it's been so lovely, weatherwise, here!

Today I went running with the 8am group (plus M and Lois), and then had my 2nd-to-last swim in the pool before they shut it down. It was unpleasantly hot—about 85°—but I got a half-mile in. Then my friend T and I walked, with Lois, to Shelley's Freeze, one of Chicago's excellent hot dog stands, and I got a dog with everything and a small soft-serve chocolate cone; it was perfect!

THEN, my extremely talented friend E had a play (wrote/directed) in a group/multimedia/short play show at the Steppenwolf garage, and he invited me, so I rode down for that, enjoyed it immensely, and rode home in the rain. They were shooting a film near the old Biograph theatre and it was fun to ride my bike through there with all the film crew and big cranes and stuff. I still wish I could do that for a job someday. Maybe work for Fatih Akin...ah, to dream!

Now I'm home early, missing a big concert to benefit the anti-death penalty crusade in Illinois, and starring many people I'm friends with and fans of, but it's still raining (and the venue's not super close), and I have season 5 disc 2 of MI-5, and a cuddly dog, and a bunch of kids to teach art to tomorrow. So I'm staying home and dry.

Injera

Ethiopian food eaten with "food club" friends last night. Yum!

My new habits have not had a very good week. I'm hoping that this weekend will mark a new start. I have been swimming/exercising as much as usual, but with some sadness because my pool will be closing for "maintenance" starting Monday for 3 weeks. Yes, that's right, exactly when I need to really buckle down and start hard-core training for the triathlon...

I have done some good stuff this week, though (see the demolished food platter, above). I also went to a bike workshop at this wonderful do-it-yourself community bike shop and it was kick ass. I even have a total crush on the instructor, but I didn't really know how to find out more info about him, like if he's actually available. (I did go out of my comfort zone and ask him questions about his life; you would have been proud of me.) I also have no plan on how to see him again, as he lives far away in another part of the city.

The main thing I realized at the workshop, though, is that I think I need to buy a new bike for the triathlon and the training for it. I am hoping to find some super bargain used road bike that fits me perfectly. I started scanning CL and ebay today.

I stayed home from work today to clean, sort and look for my car title. I haven't done any of that yet, but I have slept a lot, eaten chocolate, gone to an estate sale, and started tilling a garden bed in the back yard with a new hoe I got for $1.50 at said estate sale. I'm planting sunflowers. It's a gorgeous day.

Message in a...

My building is an odd-shaped, ancient two-story storefront building with three upstairs apartments and one porch connecting us all. I've lived here for 5 years, and the next-door neighbors have been there for almost 2 now, and the woman on the end, N, has been there, well, since the dawn of time. Until recently, her two grown sons lived with her. N's a schoolteacher in the Chicago public schools, and she does acupuncture and massage on the side. She's - well, sorta crazy. Somehow, although three different sets of occupants in the apartment between mine and N's have had terrible relations with her, she and I seem to get along OK.

N is nosy, and odd, and a little know-it-all, especially when it comes to my care of Lois. When she sees me letting Lois out in the back yard to pee (early morning), she will say things like "When I had my Shanti (a beagle, natch), I would take her for walks," and shit like that. I shrug it off.

When I moved in I noticed that N would put old food out in the back yard, attracting raccoons, possums, mice, and - when I got her - Lois. We're talking half-eaten pizzas, whole bags of stale cheese popcorn dumped from the porch, cereal, bread loaves with mold, etc. It drove me nuts, and I complained to the landlords, to her, and even phoned her once about it when Lois ate something bigger than her head that I never identified. A few years ago, at the height of my mouse problem, I'd had it - and I bought her a bird feeder and bird food, hoping this would quench her helping-the-animals thirst. That didn't really help.

Recently, she's started throwing the food onto the roof next door to our porch instead of into the yard. And the middle neighbors, who've also fought the hard mouse infestation fight, have really gotten pissed about N's food-strewing habits. They started retaliating; leaving notes, and picking up the food and putting it back, in bags, at her door. Today, though, when I was outside, I saw their best move yet:


Happy spring!

Cold Comfort

You know, I am usually the one who says "I like the rain," or "Winter is fun!" BUT: It's fucking cold here. It's May 12. This is ridiculous.

I mean, my nose is cold and I've been inside for over an hour. It's so cold out that I bought those shitty grocery store cookies pictured above (because I wanted one, to eat with my tea, and I've had 2 already.) and a frozen spinach thin-crust pizza. And I ate the hell outta that thing - all but a couple pieces.

Now, I'm getting ready to settle in with No Country for Old Men, which I never saw in the theatres, which the video guy (who is my stand-in for habit #1 today because I flirted with him halfheartedly) sorta convinced me to get.

I have been doing great on habits 2 & 3. The pushups are going really well - a set of 10 2x a day now. I haven't settled into any exact flossing time or place (shower, lying in bed, bathroom, sitting on couch), but it's usually before bed, so my gums have that interesting, just-exercised (?) feeling as I fall asleep. You know what I'm talking about.

My original idea for that habit, to remind me to do floss, was to get a tattoo of a tooth, like this image, (but without the brush,) on some very visible spot on my hand or wrist, so I'd always see it, and remember to floss. Plus I think a tooth tattoo would just be cool. I still do. I'd get the outline and then fill the tooth part in with white ink - white ink looks very nice. Recently, though, I've thought about just getting a very, very thin-line tattoo of white floss, just wrapping around one hand, wrist, or thumb area. It would be barely visible to others but I would know what it was. That might be even better than the molar. But I have no immediate plans for it - I have no tattoos yet at 38 and probably will never get any, but I do want to reserve those two ideas for when I go crazy and decide to do it. Let this be my copyright protection.

Aiiight, I'm off to lazy-ass-couch-potato land to watch the movie and pet Lois. Luckily I swam a lot, and fast, today, or I'd be a total loser.

(Phew, right?)

Core

Ugh. I have very little abdomen strength. I realized last night, as I struggled with even 5 situps, that it's been wayyyyyyyy too long since I worked on my abs and it's high time I did. Whenever I've been doing pilates in the past 8 years or so, even just once a week, it helped everything. I need to get back to that. Until I do, I'm gonna do a crunch or three and some situp-ish things every night before I go to bed.
I talked to one new male at the run this morning, but since M met him first and introduced us, he says it only counts as half. Whatever. I ran 40 minutes and swam 40 minutes today. Flossed, did my pushups.

Oh, and I got into another car accident - I was moving my car (like, a few spaces, just so no one could claim it's abandoned) and this woman came barrelling down my street and right into the side of my car, the front and rear passenger-side doors. I might as well set the damn thing on fire, it's so ugly, beaten up, and such a pain in my ass. I swear, the car has a curse on it.

(Hey, did anyone else notice that both bad guys in Ironman were bald? What's up with that??)

In other news, M being single at the same time as me is fun. We went to Ironman tonight, and it was pretty good! Stay til the very very end, esp. if you are a comics fan type.

Lois - 3 years!

Here is a weird laptop pic of my special pooch, with whom I am celebrating our 3-year anniversary today! Yea! You can also see her fancy new $30 bra (that's a "harness" to most people) and please note how wide it is - I had to special order a size L because she gained 8 pounds in the past year, tipping the scales at 50 pounds! That's comparable to me gaining 40 pounds in a year - yikes! So, now we both need to lose a few.

I got up the guts to talk a bit more to the cute new guy at work, and also to a couple of other ones there - we had a special workshop/meeting today. That was good. I like to, um, rediscover every once in a while that there are actually guys all around, it's just that I don't have crushes on them very easily or often. Maybe if I get more desperate, horny, or bored as the spring progresses, I will become less resigned to singledom, and actually do something about it.

So: yep - I'm home blogging on a Friday night. The plan for dinner with the family was cancelled due to a crazy bike accident in which my stepfather broke his collarbone, so here I am with a free night. Instead of taking the opportunity to go to a really good show at my place of work, for free, I came home, walked Lois, talked on the phone with my mom, ate a weird cheap dinner, then texted back and forth with my friend M, who just broke up with his gf/fb over the phone after like 7 months of dating. Ugh. Such a guy. (At least he feels kinda bad about it.) I'd go drink with him, but I am just so comfortable here at home...plus, he's playing a show at a bar I don't wanna go to, and it's far away for biking, and it's cold out.

I watched a so-so German film about these rich kids in the 1920s who shoot each other because one (played by an actor I like) is secretly gay and depressed. Hm.

So that's my exciting Friday night. I'm gettin' up early tomorrow to go running, even though I'm totally bad at it.

And, even though I am not perfect about pushups, flossing, or talking to new guys either, I think it's time for me to add habit #4: SITUPS! I will start tonight with however many I can do, and report back to you tomorrow.

xo

Habitwatch

Here's an unrelated photo of N at Next, part of Chicago's ginormous Artropolis art fair a couple of weekends ago in the Merchandise Mart, in front of his Sonnenzimmer booth (well, that's the Thrill Jockey booth behind him, actually), eating a fat hot dog with cheese on it. I went on Thursday's opening with S and then again Saturday with my father. Lots, lots walking, lots of art and really good peoplewatching!

OK: I really have no excuse, but I have been terrible at much of this new habit stuff in the last week or so. I'm back on the plan now. Here's today's update:

#1 (men) - two yesterday! (one at Trader Joe's, the other walking home. Dog owners are easy targets)
#2 (pushups) - 8
#3 (floss) - yes

TRI Training:
I attended a nutrition/hydration seminar Sunday, ran Monday, nothing Tuesday, swam today. I'm still a bit sore from the weekend, either the heavy lifting or the camp bed. I've started adding 10 minutes of treading to the end of my lap time to practice for the event — apparently you have to tread water in the cold lake, waiting for your group start to be called on race morning. Nice.

So much, so little

Yea, things are better! Thanks for your good thoughts. I'm posting from my laptop in bed, which means the wireless router decided to work, and my car is safely parked outside on the street, which means I won my hearing downtown last Wednesday and got it out of hock for free at the pound, but had to drive its undriveable ass (literally; the rear suspension is broken) like 6 miles thru the city yesterday—very funny. I had my hazards on.

Here is my car in the pound. Can you see the miles and miles of cars? It's crazy there, like a Mad Max movie.

This is a view driving back to the gate through my windshield. apparently photographs aren't allowed in the pound, so I was sneaky.

On Friday I rented a car (instead of paying rent - seriously!) and drove up to my camp in Michigan, where I spent parts of every summer of my youth from age 7 on, for a "work weekend" in which a bunch of folks who love the place volunteer for schlepping, hauling, cleaning, painting - whatever is needed to set up the camp for the summer. The weekend also happens in the fall, to prep the camp for the closed season. It was wonderful, and good to do manual labor outdoors, as usual.

Here's the scene at meals in the dining hall. R, the camp caretaker (standing up) gives assignments - and makes jokes.


I worked with a great crew and we did a lot of hauling heavy stuff, but our most fun task was moving the waterski area's gas tank - about 50 feet. We had to use a tractor and big chains and do a lot of hoping that it wouldn't fall on anyone.

Lois had a great time, too. Here she is on the wrong bed in our cabin...


And here she is rolling in something totally stinky. I gave her a bath as soon as we got home.