A confession

Some months ago, my new boss--apparently in an effort to professionalize the office-- informed me that I would soon be receiving a palm pilot. This, for those of you who aren't nearly so informed as I now am, is a largish technological device that you see lawyer types busily tapping away at on the train and in the Starbucks. You may have even received email messages from one of these well-connected souls, usually with the catchy phrase "sent without the benefit of spell-check from my blackberry wireless" or something like that. These gizmos are the new wonder assistant--you merely plug them into your computer, and whiz bang boom shazam, your calendar items that you have remembered to enter into your computer are now transported magically through an amazingly small cable into this device.

I greeted the news that I'd be getting one of these with some alarm. I am terrible at this kind of thing. Even when I can locate my cell phone, the battery is nearly always dead. A dead cellphone is even more useless than a missing cellphone, since it's just weighting down your messy purse. My iPod has the same 250 songs on it that my husband installed when he gave it to me 2 years ago. And thank heavens we no longer use a VCR.

So here I am, with my new calendar gizmo. Remember when Mulder and Scully would pull out those early-90's cell phones the size of loaf of rye? That's sort of my palm pilot. We're not a law firm, nor generally hot on the trail of aliens, so no fancy wireless access and emailing from the Starbucks for us--it's all about getting to those appointments on time. But even the lowest of the low end palm pilots, I've discovered, have a place to store your baby pictures. And now I'm just a little bit psyched. So after 6 months of people politely asking me if I have a picture of my baby, I can finally say yes. So I'm waiting. Someone ask me. Ask me now. Please!!

Wherein I describe why my new neighbors are lame

Disclaimer: even though I have never met them, and have no basis whatsoever upon which to judge them except a few brief exchanges and dire first impressions, I nevertheless render harsh judgment.

The Setting: new 3-unit condo building built on an empty lot next to our building. The building was thrown up by the 3 Stooges of construction: Danny, a weasely short guy with curly hair and a thick Chicago accent; Rick, a Chicago cop who apparently is making a little on the side; and the third guy, who didn't say much. We got to know Danny when he was first starting out on this ambitious project, and we had just poured a gigantic concrete slab for our garage---he came over and pounded on our door.

Hello?

Hey, uh, I think that they went over the property line with the concrete.

Well, we had a survey done when we bought the place, and according to that, it's right on the line. You had a survey, right? What does it say?

Moment of uncomfortable silence.

Uh, yeah, I guess we should look into that. Okay, see ya later...

So these three gents got their luxury spreads finished recently--we were a little unsure of the resale value after hearing Danny, who was hauling up some bags of grout, shout up to the third floor, "Yo, you need another bag of purple?" But they did indeed at last sell, and neighbor #3 moved in this week.

So now they've sold this magnificent structure to three hapless tenants, none of whom have the vantage point on their roofing job that we do, so are unconcerned that they will one day soon spring a leak.

Anyway, three new neighbors, three big disappointments. Here are their stories:

Neighbor #1, Top Floor:
A 20-something with shaggy hair and a bunch of friends who drop by a lot, and seem to have a key. Occasionally have the girls over to drink lite beer out of 40's on the back porch. As our window looks into this dude's kitchen, we see ample use of the microwave, a frige with significant beer storage, and a George Forman grill. This appears to be the extent of his culinary explorations.

Neighbor #2, Second Floor
Single lady with two kids who avoids eye contact whenever possible.

Neighbor #3, Bottom Floor
This guy just moved in last week, so I've only got two tidbits on him. Blond highlights. And a buddy who shows up in front, both night and day, and bellows "yo, Alllexxx". Yo dude, doorbell.

So we'll see, perhaps we'll be all Melrose Place by this time next year, and will be laughing about all these silly first impressions. We'll see.

Ouch

I realized yesterday that I’ve had a clumsy stretch the last few days. This dawned on me as I sat down on the beanbag next to the dog to give him a good scratch behind the ears, and he slinked away to take cover underneath my husband’s legs under his desk. After having been poked in the eye, knocked on the nose, stepped on, and tripped over in the last 48 hours, even the dog, bless him, has realized that it’s best to give me a wide berth.

I think it’s become a household phenomenon, actually. My husband smashed one of his more useful fingers in the shower door yesterday, and cursed a silent blue streak through gritted teeth for a good ten minutes. In retrospect, as he’s showered once a day for most of his adult life, he was bound to run into trouble sooner or later. And then there’s the 6-month-old, who is learning to do all kinds of new tricks, like crawling, and sitting up, but hasn’t really mastered any of them, so about twice a day loses control of these various limbs that she’s only just discovered. Because babies, it seems, can’t really multi-task. So when called upon to shake a rattle while sitting up, well, it doesn’t always work out so well, and like a tree falling in the forest, ka-thunk, little baby coconut drops like a stone to the floor. Crying ensues.

So three out of four members of our household are wearing Band-Aids (or, in the case of the dog, think that they damn well deserve one.) What this means, of course, is that I’m next, and it’s anyone’s guess what it will be. But there’s little doubt about one thing: undoubtedly self-inflicted.

Dumb airplanes

Surely I am not the only one who hates the dumb Air & Water Show, or whatever they call it? Obviously the 12 year old that I rode past on my bike this afternoon who was gasping "Sweeeeet" as he ogled an F-15 through his binocs was digging it. But despite the 12 year olds, I can't really stand the sound of bombers echoing overhead all day long. I mean, isn't it a little crass to flex our military might over beers on the lakefront while there are places being bombed for real elsewhere on this green earth? Not to mention that the whole War on Terror doesn't seem to be going that swimmingly, now does it. So in the end, these bombers that keep buzzing my office building start to seem like those biceps I've been seeing in the gym lately when I poke my nose into the free weights room to heft a 10 lb weight over my head and pretend to know what I'm doing. You know, the ones that belong to the guys who look like they could curl a small child, but which are accompanied by sizeable beer guts that have never been within shouting distance of a treadmill. These are the dudes who, after an impressive demonstration of how many pounds they can lift (with a couple of cronies standing by for moral support), are afterwards obviously so worn out so as to be unable to do anything but drop the dumbells to the ground with a resounding thud that echoes around the weightroom, rather than set them down gently as the printed sign on the wall asks them politely to do. At any rate, the biceps are impressive, and the flexing in the mirror truly an eyeful, but when it comes to running a marathon, or even finishing a 5K for that matter, I'm not entirely convinced that they could go the distance.

Help wanted

I'm a worrywort. I can fret with the best of them. In fact, I'm so good at it, I've been thinking of going professional. But my latest issue of Vogue magazine (keep your snarky comments to yourself, it's a guilty pleasure. So what if its pages will never see the likes of Christopher Hitchens. Unless he's in Gaultier. And then, well, so much the better.) Anyway, next to a smug photo of Kate Hudson (She's rich! She's famous! She's married! How does she do it all???) was the bold headline, "Are we worrying ourselves sick?" And I thought to myself, well maybe this Vogue magazine will turn out to be just what I needed. And of course what I need as a general rule is a new pair of shoes, a circumstance in which it's reliably helpful. But in this case, perhaps it will also help by giving the old psyche a tune-up, and ease the worry lines from my forehead and I'll be all zen.

As it turns out, the article wasn't about your average worrier, such as myself, but the truly clincal. I mean the ones who should spend a few days somewhere calming, with attendants in white and maybe some muscle relaxants. So it wasn't very helpful, after all, unless I decide, somewhere between here and the time my subscription runs out, that what I really need to do is meticulously wipe down the handle of my grocery carts or only eat green food on Wednesdays. Should that time come, I doubt I'll really be in the market for a new pair of shoes anyway.

So what I've decided is that I need an assistant. In the spirit of sharing the burden, you see. A part-time worrier, really, to take on some of the more mundane things on my list of things to worry about, like did I say the wrong thing, or why isn't the baby sleeping well, or how come our windows still leak, or did I choose the wrong color, wrong size, wrong shape. Introductory stuff, really. And then I can focus on worrying about the things that are really worth my time. So if you know anyone out there who might be looking for a position, send them my way. I'm accepting applications through the end of the month. References requested.

Cow on a stick

A few years ago, the gurus in the downtown offices of the City of Chicago's tourism development offices came up with a brilliant plan. Let's manufacture hundreds of life-size cows, they said. We'll have the local artistic set paint them. And then we'll sprinkle them all over downtown, and sit back and watch the tourism dollars roll in. Though it may seem nutso, the project got the green light and tourists from Tokyo to St. Petersburg flocked to our Miracle Mile to take pictures of themselves standing beside weirdly decorated bovines. And like the Swatch watch of the 1980s, the cow concept caught fire, and the whole Cows on Parade thing went global. It's even earned a Wikipedia entry. And there's more: it started a trend. There were Pigs on Parade in Seattle, Whale Mania in Maui, Moose on the Loose in Montana, Gators on the Geaux in Louisiana, A Ewe Review in Michigan, Go Fish in Virginia, and even Corn-on-the-Curb in Bloomington, IL. The list goes on and on.

That was a few years ago. It worked for us then, but we've all moved on, and like our fondness for the band Toto, we thought the cows had faded gracefully away to the archives. So imagine my surprise to discover that the cows have reemerged on the eastern European circuit this summer, a gimmick with new life breathed into it by the Budapest Tourism office. But like all things that die a natural death and then somehow emerge from the tombs, they're kind of icky. Sort of a Cows on Parade: Undead Remix. Take the one painted like a cow-shaped green watermelon, with an unfortuante giant gaping red slice cut out of its neck. Or the cow pieces swirling around in a blender. And my favorite, at the top of the busy pedestrian walking street where I tried to buy some slick gold Nike's at the Budapest Footlocker (they didn't have my size):



Yes, a cow painted with a blue fleck job, melting into the pavement, giant bovine butt in the air with a giant popsicle stick coming out of it. Apparently the cow had been in another location in front of a Catholic church at first, but was moved after protests that the angle of particular parts pointing toward the church was derogatory. I guess the folks at the Footlocker don't mind so much. But I have to say, the next couple of times I tried to order a gelato, I had a hard time shaking the image of that blue cow with a popsicle stick where the sun don't shine.

Pass the smelling salts, please

I nearly fainted this morning. And this doesn't have to do with my conviction, nurtured over the last 2 weeks, that I have a mild case of strep throat. Turns out that you can't really have mild strep throat. The doctor, helpful chap that he was, diagnosed my condition as a likely mouth-breather. This does not exactly correspond to my own privately-held self image, and unfortunately there isn't a lot that antibiotics can do for this condition.

I've only seen two people faint in my life. One of them, on a swelterig day at the Acropolis (not the greek restaurant on Halsted street, but the real thing over there in Greece). I was with some friends, and all of us had recently completed an EMT course over the course of the last semester at college. The poor woman didn't know what hit her--three recently graduated EMTs anxious to diagnosis a bad case of heat exhaustion suddenly descended upon her to ply her with cold compresses and elevate her feet. You'll be glad to know she survived, despite our attentions. And then last year, when an old couple drove their beat up Chevy sedan into the front of our house, I naturally called the cops. At the sound of the sirens, the woman emerged from the car demanding to know who had called the cops. I bravely step forward: well, I did. She turns to me, shaking her fist, yelling "I don't want the cops, I told you I don't need an ambul...." and she faints. The conclusion drawn by the majority of the hundred or so people who had gathered at the scene was that yes, she did in fact need an ambulance.

This morning, however, my knees grew weak--I seriously had to stop and clutch the handrail as the room started to swirl just a teeny bit-- as I mounted the stairs to ask my supervisor to consider making my position part-time. I'm burnt out. I don't love my job. But I might be able to love it part-time. My sales pitch was better than this, and I think I managed to keep the quiver mostly out of my voice. He's going to get back to me. So we'll just have to see. In the meantime, however, I'm feeling much better, thank you.

Supersize Fries

In an effort to make an even bigger ass of himself, Donald Rumsfeld has now apparently drawn another line in the sand. This one goes something like this: if we pull out of Iraq now, the end of the world as we know it is nigh. I exaggerate, but only slightly:

"If we left Iraq prematurely as the terrorists demand, the enemy would tell us to leave Afghanistan and then withdraw from the Middle East. And if we left the Middle East, they'd order us and all those who don't share their militant ideology to leave what they call the occupied Muslim lands from Spain to the Philippines," sez Rumsfeld. And he goes on: "And then we would face not only the evil ideology of these extremists, but an enemy that will have grown accustomed to succeeding in telling free people everywhere what to do."

Meanwhile, back at the Capitol cafeteria, Freedom Fries are now no longer on the menu. The folks in charge --a change in leadership after the Jack Abramoff scandals-- have quietly changed the name of our nation's favorite food back to "french fries."

I leave you to draw your own conclusions.