school break update

Well, it has been a week since the semester ended and I wanted to write a quick update (I really should be getting ready for work).

So far, the grades are: Advanced Fiction [A-], Critical Reading and Writing [B], Photography in Chicago Now! [B], no word yet on my music class.

That is certainly better than I could have hoped for. One of my biggest trials this semester was doing homework in a house where three other people live, one of them being my boyfriend. It wasn't easy. As you might imagine, it was extremely distracting, especially since the best computer officey desk is in hearing distance from the television. The other thing to deal with was my schedule being completely upended due to my change in jobs. I was actually better off, sleeping less, working at 6 am, caffeinated and ready to take on the world at noon. Now I can barely open my eyes before 10, and I'll ream you a new one if you call me before that hour.

I've been reading Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It's amazing. It's so fluid and pretty and floating and eerie. I am finding myself hypnotized by her writing, by her prose. A lot of things she writes of feel familar, feelings, gestures, people, and yet it was written a very long time ago.

I've been babysitting and working more hours. This week I'm finally going to work one of the scariest shifts at my place of employ. The dreaded morning shift. Apparently, it's the shift that breaks down employees into tears, shouts of curse words, and leaves a bad taste in your mouth. The doctors and nurses in the place line the walls at least fifty people long, and it never seems to end, until about 10:30 am, when there is a brief reprieve, and then it starts again after lunch and a new shift at the hospital begins. I'm looking forward to it.

I spent one whole day just making phone calls and tying up loose ends. It was nice. A big pile of things I had been putting off got done and now the pile taunts me no longer.

Otherwise, I've been enjoying the time off. Sleeping. Eating. Spending time with Eric. Hopefully in the coming weeks, I'll see more of my friends and be able to get hopelessly drunk. At least for one day of my vacation...

prospects of bonding

At sbux:

I've been invited to attend an informal (which translates to swearing and gossiping aplenty) get together with a select group of co-workers (which means everyone but the new assistant manager and those of us who have better things to do on a Wednesday night at 6pm). Even though recently I've had thoughts about transferring to a location closer to home (for many varied practical reasons), I am seriously considering the proposition, which was whispered to me in the back room so that the assistant manager would not hear, which I then repeated audibly and enthusiastically (not knowing, of course, that no one likes the new assistant manager).

I like the new assistant manager. Part of the reason that I like him is the reason why everyone else does not. He is called Mr. Starbucks behind his back because he knows the rule and reason and manual phrasing for everything and he not only spouts it, lives it, breathes it, he also enforces said rules and regulations. For nearly everything.

Somehow, in the lulling drone of the satellite radio, the lack of customers and during the nightly cleaning, we got into the conversation of comics, comic books, and my favorites (Black Hole and Metabarons). I was enthused, he surprised. "Oh," he said. "Well, I guess we have more in common than I first thought."

Yes, my dears, I had been written off as someone that other people do not have much in common with as happens frequently in public venues without the exchange of words. I was offended. But I pressed on about the comics.

He also happens to be taller than me.

Last night, as he drove me home (to appease me for keeping me late at work) my boyfriend called in his drunken stupor to report that he was lost. It was nearing one in the morning. We were heading west on Fullerton and before I could even think of it, my coworker, this assistant manager guy wanted to drive and go get him. I was all for letting Eric learn his lesson and find his own way home. As we tried to figure where exactly he was, we asked, "What direction are you heading?"

The answer, for sure, must be recorded, not just for its value as a humorous anecdote, but as a charming instance of just what I go through as a girlfriend.

"Forward?"

We managed to find him, we were driven home, and all was well.

As I waited on a customer, a familiar face entered my peripheral view. One of my old customers from Siena was waiting in line to be waited on by me. I was overjoyed to see him. No one I worked with was impressed. Neither were any of the other impatient customers. He and I for that one moment were the only two people in the entire world, sharing not just space, but stealing, violating, impeding on the time and patience of other people. There was a pause to take in the person I'd become, complete with logos. For the two minutes he was there, I was myself, my self as I have not been for many months, the girl whose voice is too loud and clumsy, who says too many words at once, who finds life sentimental and meaningful, especially when there is nothing there to clench and fondle,

Imagine the crush I felt when he turned away and I had to stand rigid again in my apron and hat, wearing all black, like a cardboard cut-out, a picture perfect, up to code, uniformed employee. It brought on a deafening moroseness that has been building inside of me.

When one of your extremities is pained, the blood pulses with difficulty through it, as if it were an added appendage that needs taking care of, a new piece to supply, and it quivers and trembles with pain. Sometimes, during this pain, when I close my eyes the afterimages of the day twitch at my eyelids and the act of being personable, human, real is so damned unappealing.

Probably the thing that I am most fretful about is the dry hands. I do not like to shake people's hands when mine are dry. I carry lotion with me everywhere, I suffer without it at work, where it seals microbacteria along the pores of my skin and emits a perfume that interferes with the aroma of coffee. There is a lot of washing of things. Everything must be washed at least once daily and it usually occurs in the evening shift, my shift of choice. My hands are in water constantly, or being washed incessantly, for the idea of working in a hospital and not frequently washing my hands seems wrong somehow.

At Siena, nothing was wasted. Nothing. Nothing was prematurely thrown away and things were not tossed even when they were moldy and greening. Waste not, want not. However, at sbux, in the pursuit of freshness, there is an abundance of throwing away, pouring out, and dumping in obscene amounts. Shelf life dictates and is followed. I try to do my best to rescue the unsold sandwiches, the pastries deemed damaged or small in number (there must be at least three of each pastry in the pastry case at all times, otherwise, it is not acceptable) and take them home where I eventually end up throwing them away, for no one at my apartment has a taste for sbux pastries or expired sandwiches, and I can only eat so many of these things myself.

Often I ask, "What should I do with this?" And generally, I can count on hearing, "Toss it."

The tip rate at my location fluctuates between $1.11 and $1.27 an hour. I generally work an eight hour shift. That is fucking paltry and sad. Previously, I could count on making at least twenty dollars during a six hour shift at Siena. I could collect the contents of the tip jar and do with them what I willed. Not so anymore. They go into a pool where they are doled out equally for each worker. Seeing red? I was.

All in all, many wonder, how's it going for her at the new job? It's aint bad, but it aint great, as my roommate Greg would say.

Oww, I think the tuna veggie mixer that expired two days ago is doing a number on my stomach.

as an urban dweller, I'd thought I'd seen it all.

I've lived in Chicago for all of my life. I do not drive a car, so I generally walk or take public transportation everywhere I need to go.

Imagine my surprise after all these long years of random acts of grossness on public transportation; feet on the seat, sunflower seed husks on the floor, garbage, drunkenness, getting felt up, cell phone abuse, and other general glimpses of the sad conditions of humanity.

None of them prepared me for a man walking up to each and every person on the Belmont train platform and asking if they had cable installed in their homes. At ten o'clock at night. I didn't actually talk to him, so I have no idea what company's service he was trying to sell.

Or, a man on the Clark bus sitting in a seat begging for change. It surprised not only myself, but everyone else after me, and some people actually gave the guy money.

Or the realization that I had sat in something wet on the train. I got up at my stop and instantly noticed a wetness that I hadn't while I was sitting.

Now, perhaps these things have lottery like odds of occuring to the same person once, but how about twice?

How about all in the last three months? I've been riding the train more because it's easier to get to work that way.

I guess I should just accept that this is the city I have lived in all my life and it is a festering boil on the skin of humanity.

when there are dreams

Lately, my capacity for dreaming has been so vivid and compelling that I have often not wanted to wake up and not wanted to fall asleep. I have had the sort of dreams that lack coherence and sense, as well as the kind that recycle the factoids and random bits from the previous day, as well as the old Stine classic...the searchie dream.

For a while, my dreaming was very sporadic. If I dreamt about something, it was usually vague and I could not remember it and I quickly forgot about the whole thing. In fact, my dreaming had become so notoriously depleted that I decided against enrolling in a class at school (one of the few classes in the Fiction Writing Department that was still open on the first day of class) called Dreams and Fiction. The syllabus said something about recording dreams in a dream journal and building stories out of them.

Then, I took some vitamins. (There is probably more story there, but for this one, we'll leave it at that.)

After a week, I noticed that my dreams had returned full force, the sort of exhausting interactive dreaming that makes one feel as if they hadn't even slept. I could also recount nearly every person, place and twist in the dreams I had.

Another week later and I had the sort of dream that catapults you from sleep. I felt so intensely disturbed by this dream that I stayed up the next night until four a.m. and whimpered whenever anyone asked me what it was about.

Then, I talked to the woman who gave me the vitamins. She said it probably had something to do with the fact that my body was getting the nutrients it needed and this was a healthy side effect of the vitamins.

I stopped taking them.

Now that I hardly ever wake up early anymore (thanks to the job change!), one healthy side effect is that I sleep a lot more. Sometimes, I even sleep way too much. Even though it sounds funny, too much can be a bad thing. I know I've slept too much when my body aches from lying in bed.

I've noticed that my dreaming has not stopped simply because I stopped taking the vitamins. It's like whatever switch got turned on in my head is on and staying on. Maybe it's the longer bouts of sleep.

This morning, in between Eric's alarm going off and him waking up for real, I had a strange dream about money. I had been carefully collecting twenties in sets of five and sticking them into empty soda cans. I gathered all the cans together to take them to the bank. I put them into a black garbage bag and carried them slung over my shoulder like Santa Claus with the bag of gifts. On my way to the bank, I went to the grocery store (a repeated routine from the days of Siena coffeeshop, in that a trip to the bank often included a trip to the grocery store) and saw my friend John (who recently moved from Chicago to Cleveland, Ohio) talking to a girl who works there. He ignored me, and rather than clamor over with my clanking cans and wide girth, I felt bad and slipped outside. When I got outside, I started counting the cans in the bag, trying to gauge how much money I might be carrying. I counted them by feeling the cans through the side of the plastic garbage bag (a very unscientific way of counting to be sure) and thought to myself, well, Eric and I have the money to go to Ireland now! Oh, and I can pay rent!

Then I woke up. I never actually made it to the bank. Oh well. I have no clue what this dream means, other than I came home last night and realized I hadn't paid my rent yet (all these holidays and working through them and vacation and all).

I guess part of me feels glad about these dreams. I have actually thought a lot about my writing before bed and I'll remember having these dreams where I'm trying to compose the best first line to an essay I'm supposed to write, or I'll wake up knowing that my goth girl has a floor length house robe that is velour and soft and sheeny that she is trying to figure out how to wear it out to a party one night.

The only thing I don't like is the rare dream that I can't remember, but feels like the word on the tip of your tongue, it's right there and then it's gone. That feeling is very frustrating and you always think that something good must have gotten away. I try not to spend too much time excavating and trying to remember, but usually this is what keeps me in bed longer than I ought to be, in my hazy slumber, grasping at the wisps of smoky lingering dreams.

I haven't had anymore startling dreams like the one that made me not want to sleep, but upon further reflection, I decided that dream was more symbolic than the dreams I usually have. I don't know if that had anything to do with the vitamins. I just know I didn't like it. That is one of the few dreams I have had where I didn't know I was dreaming until I woke up. Maybe that's the aspect of it I didn't like. When I'm dreaming and I know it, I'm all, hey, look at me dream!

Today in class, a guy did his oral presentation on Graham Greene who religiously wrote Dream Journals and 500 words a day of fiction writing. Sometimes he used his dreams in his writing. I thought that was interesting. I once wrote down something in the middle of the night and could not read it the next day...maybe if I wrote it down first thing in the morning?

ode to new (happy new year)

All the things I want to do this year:

Try dyeing my hair blond (or have blond highlights).

Visit the Zen Buddhist Temple.

Finish a rough draft of my writings about the Clark St. Union.

Hang out with friends.

Sure, I could lose ten pounds.

Decorate my room with the curtain panels I got from Urban and continue the blue orange pink theme they started.

Travel with Eric to Ireland and England.

Figure out how the Park District handles the public swimming pool, so I can swim a lot.

Fix my bike.

Get to know my family.

Throw out all my old makeup and get new stuff.

Make as much coffee and toast as I can for Eric.

Find my way to the beach once a week.

Yoga.

Dollar beer nights at the Moon Bar.

I'll add more later (feel free to add some of your own!)