Things to do with free time

Tonight's workout accompaniment: Republican National Convention

• Work out
• Email long-lost friend (who now has a 2-year-old)
• Plan camping trip
• Think about work
• Try not to think about work
• Email interesting man
• Read fan fiction
• Read "Wicked" (a real book for once)
• Write fan fiction
• See friends
• See family
• Help friends pack for move
• Remind friends that I'm pissed they are moving
• Expand dinner repertoire
• Nap

I'm FREE!

Tonight's workout accompaniment: Republican National Convention

I finally finished my paper for the seminary course I took in conjunction with my trip to the Parliament of World's Religions!

Tomboy miracle #1

(First in an occasional series)

I'm no girly girl.

Those of you who know me already know this. I have no patience for make-up or hoochy-mama black pants (except bad-ass ones with zippers up the sides) or, well, anything trixie. My favorite nail polish color is silver. Ditto for eyeliner.

I can get away with a lot of nonconformity because I work as a graphic designer.

Lipstick, however, continues to elude me. Sure, I may apply some on my way out the door to work, but after the first cup of coffee I'm back to pale. I don't have the patience to re-apply.

Besides, my perpetually chapped lips (not from anything fun, mind you) cry out for Vitamin E, not some wine-colored wax.

Today, I found the answer. A morning application of this took me through church, teaching ESL, eating lunch, and a two-hour nap.

It also stands up to constant applications of healing lip balm.

Tomboys of the world, celebrate!

Reasons I don't play the field

I know, I know. I'm a dating anomaly.

I've found some refuge in my Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator, which indicates that the ability to date multiple people at once eludes most people of my type (INFJ).

I've been emailing someone for a few weeks, now. A common friend put us in touch with each other. I really like him over email. He's intelligent, he's careful with spelling and grammar, he knows how to turn a phrase and set a scene. He's also incredibly open about himself, prompt with replies, and just tonight he referenced something I mentioned in my first email to him.

I feel very optimistic about the possibility of this man. Especially since we've been kicking around the idea of meeting in person.

I drive a pretty hot car, as 11-year-old cars go. I also have a Harry Potter™ action figure on my dashboard. The gentle reader may decide whether that makes my car cooler or more geeky.

Last Wednesday I was driving my hot car to ESL. And the guy in the Jeep™ next to me looks over and smiles.

I'm a considerate driver. I smile back, rather vaguely, in that it's-nice-you-noticed sort of way.

I turn onto Roosevelt, thinking nothing of it. Until I realize that the Jeep™ is keeping pace with me. The whole way. And the driver is still smiling at me. He's on his cell phone, which I find kind of creepy. Is he describing me to his buddy or something?

He finally passes me (he's in the left lane, after all). Eventually, I get stuck behind some slow-moving traffic and move into the left lane to get ahead.

And see a Jeep™ to my right. The driver smiles, again. He's off the phone, now.

He puts a piece of office paper against the driver's side window with his phone number written on it in marker.

He's still smiling at me.

It's an easy number to remember.

I'm not going to call him.

I know I've yet to meet the letter-writer. I know it's completely rational and ethical and empowered-woman-who-can-play-the-field-if-she-wants to arrange to meet both him and the Jeep™ driver, since I owe nothing to either.

But the letter-writer has knocked politely at the door to my heart.

There is something of him I would betray if I considered another, now.

I would betray myself.

"Scandalous," he said

I'll grant you fiction has its miracles,
but if you're looking for a resurrection
you'll find it in letters.
Take your book and lose yourself,
fall in love in the arms of the antihero.
I'll give you a 95% chance
of a happy ending. (The other kind doesn't sell.)
The odds are worse on the postal service.
But if you're placing bets,
you might as well take a worthwhile risk.
I have paper and I have a feeling
that I might need your address, love.

Completely self-indulgent poetry inspired by Kella (who reads this blog) and Mitchell (who doesn't).

Casual Friday

or: Why one should keep a pair of black pants in one's car

The office of the magazine for which I work allows casual dress most days, and most folks wear jeans on casual Friday.

I was planning to spend Friday night grilling ribs with friends, so I dressed in stylish jeans with red stripes down the side, a red square-neck tee-shirt and a black jacket.

My friend Lisa works next door, for our publisher.

When I got to work, Lisa (who was also supposed to go to the cook-out), said she'd cancelled with our other friends and would I like to go to the horse races instead? She had a client who'd given her free tickets. It was a bit of a networking event.

Me, being the consummate introvert, needed some arm-twisting to agree to go. And at about noon, I realized what I was wearing and told her: "I don't really think I'm dressed for the horse races."

She said it wouldn't matter and I should go with her regardless.

So I did. The printing magnate's son met us downstairs with a ticket for me, and escorted us upstairs to the Governor's Club. We had some wonderful food, free drinks, Lisa won a prize from the company and we placed a few small bets and won $7 each in the second race.

I was having a grand time, and was telling Lisa: "I can't wait to blog about this, it's such a trip out of the ordinary, for me."

True, no one else was dressed quite as casually as me, but our host had been gracious about turning a blind eye, and no one else even looked derisively in my direction.

Until I placed a bet on the ninth race.

An employee of the racecourse approached me after I had placed my bet.

Joe: "Miss?"

Me: "Yes."

Joe: "Have you been wearing those jeans all day?"

Me: "Yes."

Joe: "When did you arrive here?"

Me: "Before the sixth race."

Joe: "Do you see anyone else here dressed like you?"

Me: "No. And you know what? I've been self-conscious of it since I got here. Because I was invited to this event from work, where I was dressed like this all day."

Joe: "Well, if you'd asked one of us we could have found black pants for you, but I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

Me: "Excuse me?" Thinking: Truly they don't have black pants in my size just waiting for first-time race spectators to make such a grand faux pas as to wear jeans to a race.

Joe: "I could have got you some black pants, earlier, but you'll have to leave now."

Me: "I intend to."

Now, my reflections on the event are as such.

1. Trust my intuition. If I think I'm underdressed, I probably am.

2. Keeping a pair of black pants in my car might not be a bad idea.

3. I should have said (insert snide comment) to Joe. Repeat 10 times.

4. It matters who you are. If you commit a gross fashion atrocity in the presence of the printing magnate's son, no one bats an eyelid. But if you're by yourself, expect to get bounced.

Now, Lisa called the printing magnate's son as we left, and explained why she wouldn't be able to say goodbye. He claimed he was too drunk to be trusted to raise the issue with the racecourse staff without causing a scene.

So. We watched the last race from the public area, where it was fine to wear jeans and tank tops, and then went out for buffalo wings. In a sports bar. Where no one cared what I was wearing.

Chicago Wilderness

There's this magazine here, called Chicago Wilderness. At first, I thought it was an oxymoron. But having spent five years here I've come to learn that there are pockets of forest preserve in the city (for example, I can watch deer grazing from my office building which is less than a mile from O'Hare airport) and true wilderness not too far beyond it.

But it's still not the same as Wisconsin or Missouri.

Tonight I was driving home, and it had rained pretty heavily during my second dinner of deep-fried asparagus. (It was for charity that I ate dinner twice, tonight, okay?)

As I drove home, the streetlights reflected in the street some reds and greens evocative of the Northern Lights.

And there came a pang of homesickness for places where one can see the stars at night, where one can breathe unlabored and one can walk for miles without encountering another human being.

Her name is Maud …

Tonight's workout accompaniment: Dream Theater Once in a Livetime

It's a funny name, especially when you consider that she began life as a man. There was a passage that I can't remember from a story in which the main character was a blind woman named Maud. All I can remember is that there was something to the way she made him feel that reminded me that sometimes the slightest flutter of eyelids and touch of fingers on shoulder can make a year of longing tolerable.

Sightless eyes closed in longing. I haven't felt that way in a long time.

Her name is Maud. She's got a jaunty tilt of head, a nose that's entirely wrong, hair that's black and lips too black to believe. She's been watching me with her sightless eyes for two months. She knows I'm here, and I know she's there. And sometimes, when the angle of light hits her just so, I know she's finally perfect. More or less.

True, her hair falls unnaturally in front of her shoulder. And her lips are too black, the little divot beneath her nose is too small.

But when I see her on the street, when I see that imperfect nose and those black lips. I know she's perfect.

Her name is Maud. She's a duotone in yellow-and-black acrylic on canvas. I guess that's my thing.

It's dog. Eat dog.

I live on a quaint little street in suburban Chicago with a convenience store, camera store, bakery, pub, ice-cream parlor, hair salon, veterinarian, bicycle store and Italian restaurant. (And far more dentists than the national average.)

In the window of one of the dental offices across the street, there used to be a big, neon blue tooth with a white brace. A friend (that's for you, Meckhead) once said the brace resembled a tellefin. Which, I seem to remember, is the leather pouch containing verses from the Torah that some very observant followers of Judaism wore on their foreheads. (I seem to have misplaced my Oxford Encyclopedia of World Religions, so please correct me if I'm wrong. The thing is as big as Order of the Phoneix. It's not easily misplaced.)

I had dinner guests last Friday. "What do you think of the divine tooth?" I asked.

"The what?" they asked.

It was gone.

Despite the loss of the divine tooth, some things have remained constant. Like the hot-dog vendor that parks a half-block away from my apartment every Saturday. There's something so Chicagoan about being able to grab a dog in the midst of one's Saturday errands.

Right with the world

GA/MJ (see the "A confession" entry below if you don't get it), two of my dearest friends are back in town after year-long absences. Tonight, I got to see them. We went to my favorite restaurant, Cedars Mediterranean and had a family-style feast of hummous, cauliflower, pita, salad, tons of grilled meat, rice, onions and baklava and rice pudding.

It is good to have them back. These are friends who are willing to read my drivel, accept me as I am and have an uncanny ability to intuit my problems. They make lists of camping supplies hilarious and provide a one-two confidence boost when I least expect it.

They're priceless. Welcome home.

And, ignore haiku two below. No longer applicable.

Haikus for the week of 8/9

Cranky headache girl
endures workplace stress daily.
"One more coffee, please."

Woman takes a chance:
Bares her soul on a set-up.
Unreturned email.

There's something soothing
about tea with milk, sugar.
Those Brits got it right.

A confession …

I'm an addict.

I come home from work, and I turn on the computer.

Sometimes I'm looking for something sweet. Often I'm looking for something slashy. Involving a werewolf and a big, black dog. Or something het involving a mysterious, sarcastic professor with an evil tattoo.

It's free. Some of it is good. And I've shirked so many responsiblities in its pursuit that it's beginning to be unhealthy.

I'm beginning to refer to my friends by their fanfic-summary initials: BF/LF, GA/MJ, etc.

And now, I've started to manufacture it.

Twenty pages. Or so. Of something I'll never own or be able to publish. Because the characters belong to someone else.

Involving a werewolf; a big, black dog; a mysterious, sarcastic professor with an evil tattoo and a pink-haired punk.

And I'm learning something.

I'm learning how this elusive thing called plot works, and about narrative consistency and that it's hard work to write, but more fun than I've had in a long time.

And there are the ghosts of characters coming together (from bits of friends, lovers and enemies) for — someday — something of my own.