On “Turning Over a New Leaf” and Other Decade’s-end Clichés

For roughly the last nine years I have been clinging to the comforting promises my favorite English professor offered me whilst shopping for alcohol at a local grocery store. The summer between my junior and senior year of college, in 2001, found me interning at a publishing company in Des Moines and spending my spare time with a friend whose romantic life was far more interesting than mine. As fate would have it, she found herself unceremoniously broken-up with one weekend, and since I was newly 21, I was in charge of picking up some beer with which she could drown her sorrows.

I wasn’t in the booze aisle for long when I looked up and noticed the professor who had taught my short-fiction writing class walking towards me. Although I’m usually paralyzed with fear at the thought of having to write fiction, I adored my short-fiction class almost as much as I adored this professor. After she asked for my beer-buying advice (and I am far from an expert), I explained I was there picking out something for my lovelorn friend. She groaned sympathetically and wished me and my friend good luck in handling romantic disasters to come. I can’t remember for sure how our conversation went from mundane to memorable, but it eventually resulted in her telling me that life would get easier in general by the time I got to my 30s. “I promise you, it gets better. Your 20s are so much harder.”

It’s a good thing she told me this then, because things got a lot harder after that summer. A few short months later 9/11 happened, George W. Bush settled into office and my own physical health threw a giant wrench in my plans for the future. Things started to rebound in 2006-2008 with the success of my stimulator surgery and the landing of my best job to date. However, 2008-2010 has been a rollercoaster that I’ve documented pretty thoroughly in this space.

One of the benefits of being born at the tail end of 1979 is that every time the world marks the end/beginning of a new decade, I get a nice, even number to start the decade with too. For example, I turned 10 right before 1990, and turned 20 in time for the beginning of 2000. This year is no different – I turned 30 shortly before the dawn of 2010. Somehow this makes all the looking back at the last ten years -- and forward to the next -- all the more cathartic. And it’s for this reason that I so welcomed the age 30. Turning 30 is giving me a chance to “start a new chapter of my life.” [That sounds a lot less cheesy when I say it in my head].

If you’d asked me a few years ago, I probably would’ve admitted some dread about reaching the big 3-0, citing hubris such as lack of professional or romantic success and financial instability. I had one friend who celebrated her 29^th birthday two years in a row, and another who celebrated her Sweet Sixteen instead of age 31.

But for some reason, the opposite happened to me. At least six months before my 30th birthday, I began overusing the “But I’m almost 30” excuse to rationalize far too many decisions and actions: “I’m almost 30 – that’s too old to still own a futon. It’s time for a real couch,” or, “I’m almost 30, for crying out loud, applying for entry-level jobs is beneath me.”

So far, all signs are pointing to good things to come in this new decade and for my 30s. Nearly every birthday, Christmas or New Year well-wish I received this year contained a variation on a theme: “2010 will be your year,” or “I’m sure your 30^th year will be much better than your 29^th.” One pair of thoughtful friends went so far as to give me 30 gifts and 30 cupcakes. I can’t think of a better way to put a sugary spin on some rough years.

One of my closest friends, who also turned 30 two days after me, sent me a new journal as a gift. There's an inspirational block of text on the cover and on the back of the notebook that I'm briefly excerpting here:

"She's turning her life into something sacred: Each breath a new birth. Each moment, a new chance...It is here where she must begin to tell her story."

Fitting, huh?

I have been far from alone in enduring the trials and tribulations of this decade, but even Time magazine’s morose “Decade From Hell” article offered some glimmers of hope, and all things considered, I have many, many things to be grateful for. And some day I’ll try to look back at the last ten years and count all of the lessons learned and why it was imperative that I remember them. But until then, I’m gonna stuff those memories back down for a while, and party like it’s 1999 all over again.

George Clooney Can Fire Me Whenever He Wants

I reached a point this summer where I let my self-consciousness get to me and stopped blogging out of fear that I was branding myself as “that unemployed girl.” A similar phenomenon occurred when I blogged my stimulator process a few years ago. After all, I reasoned, both then and now, self-pity doesn’t exactly make for good reading — or writing.

But lately, I’ve been missing it. Not having a job hasn’t stopped me from gaining insight about myself and the millions of other people paddling this boat with me. And when I had the chance to catch a free screening of the new George Clooney movie “Up in the Air,” I got the itch to blog again after watching Clooney’s character fire dozens of unsuspecting (albeit fictional) workers.

Before I get into the movie I want to briefly touch on the awesomeness that is entertainment on a shoestring budget. My boyfriend is incredibly adept at scoring free tickets to movies, the theater and even concerts. In the short few months we’ve been dating we’ve had box seats to “Animal Crackers” at the Goodman Theater; two pairs of free tickets to see The Pixies at the Aragon Ballroom, and movie passes to “World’s Greatest Dad” (including a Q and A with the director); Jim Carrey’s “A Christmas Carol” in 3-D; “A Serious Man;” and “Up In The Air.” Everything is more fun when it’s free.

Anyway. The timing of the “Up In The Air” screening couldn’t have been more unfortunate. I had just completed three grueling job interviews in three days, received disappointing news from two of them and correctly suspected the third wasn’t meant to be either. I was also beginning to feel the pressure of the end of my COBRA subsidy and was battling worries about running down the clock on unemployment insurance payments.

Because the screening for the movie was a couple weeks before the major release of the movie, I hadn’t yet read many reviews. All I knew was that George Clooney’s character works for a company that downsizes employees whose own companies can’t be bothered with the dirty work. Imagine your boss hiring someone else to give you the news. Ouch. What I didn’t realize was the extent to which this scenario is played out in the movie.

To add to the realism, director Jason Reitman filmed the reactions of real people — in addition to actors — upon finding out they’ve been let go. These scenes are used throughout the movie so they couldn’t all be avoided by a well-timed bathroom break. I had thought I’d gotten past the trauma that is hearing the news for the first time, but the scenes were so eloquently and accurately portrayed that it was like reliving the experience over, and over and over again.

The saving grace here is that Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, stays respectful, sympathetic, professional and compassionate regardless of how an employee takes the news — be it threatening to jump off a bridge or bring a gun back to the office for revenge.

Bingham faces a challenge, however, when his boss informs him that to conserve costs, the company is considering using a technology along the lines of Skype that would allow them to fire people over the Internet. Bingham rightly insists that his responsibility is to provide a human touch at such a critical time. To prove this he takes the young business whiz that developed the Skype system on the road with him and teaches her the tricks of the trade. Watching the trainee, played beautifully by Anna Kendrick, crumble after firing her first worker face-to-face, is heartbreaking.

What’s not heartbreaking, however, is the skill and care with which Clooney’s character breaks the news and offers consolation to the recently terminated. His signature line of comfort, “Everyone that has ever conquered an empire or started a new corporation had to go through what you’re going through to get there,” sounds sincere whenever he says it. When recycled by other, lesser characters, it loses its ring.

In an especially moving scene with J.K. Simmons (aka Juno’s dad), Simmons’ character worries that he’s too old to start a new career or find a new job that can provide retirement benefits. Unbeknownst to him, Bingham has gone to the trouble of procuring the man’s resume and notes that before he accepted the job he was fired from 30 years later, he attended culinary school. Bingham explains that most people ditch pursuing their dream job in favor of a comfortable but not-quite-challenging career where they stay trapped for years. Being laid off, he rationalizes, gives them a second chance.

When this message is expressed with nuance, the being downsized experience almost becomes therapeutic — at least it was for me, almost 11 months after the fact. People always try to tell you this in subtle, tentative ways that make you immediately defensive.

In a lighter moment, Kendrick’s character asks Bingham if he ever does any follow-up with his clients, and he replies it’s usually not helpful. This made me feel sorry that I’ve had to contact my former HR person more times than I’ve wanted to regarding paperwork. I bet she thought the hard part was over too.

I was beginning to recover by the time the credits rolled on the movie, but Reitman uses the credits over which to dub more audio of real people talking about their layoffs. It even features a musician describing how he wrote his song, “Uncertainty,” about the experience, and soon he’s heard strumming his acoustic guitar. At that point I grabbed my boyfriend’s hand and insisted we get away from the theater before I ran out of dry tissues.

Although the experience of seeing “Up In The Air” was traumatic, I’m still glad I saw it, even though it dredged up some of the anger and shame I thought was gone. The movie never would’ve had the same resonance — in my humble opinion — if it’d been released when the national unemployment rate wasn’t 10 percent. Nothing makes an experience feel more universal than seeing it portrayed in an Oscar-bait film. I prefer to use movies as escapism these days and look to the nightly news and documentaries for my dose of realism. Even still, it’d be a thrill to get fired by George Clooney.

Books, Bikes and My Brain

In case anyone was concerned by my complete lack of posts recently, no I haven’t had any bike-related injuries rendering me unable to type. Which is kind of a miracle in itself, really. I was completely expecting to have at least a couple “Mary Bites the Dust” stories by now, but so far, smooth sailing. I can scarcely believe it myself.

On my way home from a ride last night, I ran (not literally!) into a friend who was out for a walk. After I introduced her to Hildy, she told me she’d been holed up all day working on a spiritual memoir. More specifically, she said the memoir is about her search to figure out where God is during a trauma — in her case, a life-threatening childhood illness. The ensuing conversation reminded me that I hadn’t yet properly reviewed the migraine memoir “A Brain As Wide as the Sky” yet like I promised I would a few weeks ago. I realized the reason I hadn’t written the post yet is the same reason I haven’t written openly about my own migraines since immediately after my stimulator surgery: I had long given up on trying to derive any meaning from them.

I’m not sure how it happened, but somewhere along the way I had internalized the belief that constantly writing or thinking about how migraines impact me means I’m “dwelling” on it too much — and everyone knows that dwelling automatically leads to self pity. And people who indulge in self pity start to use their illness to get out of things and avoid responsibility. This is nonsense, of course, but it took me a long time to understand that.

I knew I would love this book when I saw an excerpt on Amazon where the author, Andrew Levy, compares having a migraine to “being punched in the face by God.” Shockingly, he doesn’t resent God for this — quite the opposite actually. He writes: “Look at what most appalls God: stiff-necked people, people with hardened hearts. As Elaine Scarry writes in an absolutely perfect phrase, God’s ‘forceful shattering of the reluctant human surface and repossession of the interior’ is where the Old Testament action really lies. God doesn’t have an agenda: He just wants us to be pliant, humble, cracks us open like eggshells because that, really, is all we are. And pain is the agent that makes this happen.”

As I mentioned, this book is the reason I decided to call my bike Hildegard, after the eleventh century migraine sufferer and saint, Hildegard Von Bingen. Levy opens one chapter with a passage from her writings: “But I, though I saw and heard these things, refused to write for a long time through doubt and bad opinion and the diversity of human words…until, laid low by the scourge of God, I fell upon a bed of sickness; then, compelled at last by many illnesses, I set my hand to the writing.”

Thankfully, Levy doesn’t spend the whole book talking about migraines through a Christian-only lens. He offers an equally fascinating take on chronic pain and its reasons for existing from Buddhist, Darwinian, Freudian and historical perspectives. For example, he says Buddha is the man for pain: “It seems to me that the migraines accomplish much of what Buddhist teachers hope to accomplish for their pupils with meditation. They clear the mind wonderfully. During a migraine (the worse the better, of course), you will not be thinking about food cravings, or sexual desire, or work anxiety, or all of those worldly matters that calm breathing practices are supposed to sweep from the mind. You will be thinking about the migraine, but even this, somehow, seems right: the Buddhist teachers often recommend focus on some single mantra, some process, some conundrum, some object.”

The historical perspective Levy uncovered was new to me also. I used to consider myself a bit of an expert on famous migraineurs, such as Elvis, but this book was eye opening in that I learned so many of my favorite artists and writers suffered too — no wonder their work has spoken to me for so long. Their ranks include Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keefe, Van Gogh, Picasso, Dalí, Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Nietzche, Susan Sontag, Monica Seles, Oliver Sacks, Ulysses S. Grant, Chopin, Rudyard Kipling and lots of others. That these people, despite their level of disability, were still able to make such significant artistic and cultural contributions in their less painful moments is hugely encouraging. His discussion about how pain affects creativity is something I’ve missed in my attempts not to “dwell” on my own suffering.

Writes Levy: “They were all rebellious thinkers — although, sometimes, surprisingly reserved ones, often disabled by what liberated them…it is not enough to tough it out. When migraine doesn’t want you catatonic, it wants you making something new and won’t rest until you do.”

What I appreciated the most about this book though, is how Levy doesn’t sugarcoat the reality of chronic migraines. He doesn’t try to minimize it or spin it into lemonade. He talks about the resentment, the fear, the depression, the anger and the frustration it also inspires. He writes about the dark sides in a way I’ve never been able to fully recognize or articulate. He writes about it without fearing that others will see him as lazy or faking it. He acknowledges that migraine is often seen as a woman’s disease and thus, stigmatizing.

When I saw Andrew Levy speak at the Printer’s Row Book Fair earlier this summer, he and the discussion moderator, Paula Kamen, brought up a point I had never considered before: When you go through life constantly trying to cure your headaches, you’re really missing out on life. By waiting for so many years for my head to get better before making a go of it by myself, I had put my life on hold. Immediately, I was sad it took me 29 years to recognize this, but then I realized some people never figure it out.

In closing, I offer this paragraph from the book (which you should totally read, by the way):

“In the end, you cannot divide the headaches from the art they help produce (or suffocate in infancy). And the wild treatment, the headlong dive across Europe, one’s own skull as the canvas or the clay? In the end, you cannot divide the desperation to find a cure from the need to create, or from the intellectual desire that compels you to try and answer these damn questions, and not live with the question marks.”

Feet, Meet Pedals

What’s the fastest way to combine all of my biggest fears at once: seriously losing my balance in public; flying ass-over-teakettle over the top of a hastily opened car door; running over a small child; making ill-fated impulse transportation purchases; going through a well-intended, going through half-hearted but mostly inexpensive phase?

Turns out buying a 30-year-old bike on Craigslist accomplishes all of the above. After the Jetta-buying Fiasco of 2007, I vowed to wait longer than 24 hours before buying anything with wheels ever again, but a deal is a deal. Which is why I named said bike, a pretty sky-blue1973 Schwinn Suburban, after St. Hildegard, an11th century nun and severe migraine sufferer. A bike can’t go wrong if you give it a saint’s name immediately, right?

(I first read about Hildegard von Bingen in the excellent new migraine memoir “A Brain As Wide As the Sky,” by Andrew Levy. Incidentally, Levy signed my copy of the book at the Printer’s Row Book Fair last weekend, and I plan to post a much lengthier review of it in the very near future.)

The thing nobody realizes when they say something like “Don’t worry, you won’t forget, it’s just like riding a bike,” is that getting back on a bike after many, many years is really hard! If I lived in Princeton I’d haul the bike to a cemetery and re-teach myself the basics — you know — important things such as starting and stopping, making 90 degree turns, playing chicken with cars on narrow roads, and avoiding other potentially deadly hazards.

Instead, on my first jaunt today, I reminded myself of one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. One day Katie, Ryan and I saw a father teaching his little girl how to ride her bike on a busy street in downtown Evanston. While we waited for a stoplight we overheard the dad ask the girl “Are you OK? Are you scared?” To which she said “Yeah, I’m scared!” Then her dad asked, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how scared are you? Really scared?” “Really scared, a 10,” she said.

Using the same scale, I was probably at a 6 on the relatively quiet residential streets I practiced on today. But I’m within riding distance of a couple big cemeteries, so stay tuned.

But, and this is key, the most important thing is having a patient teacher.

It’s Come To This

The train wreck that was my first real car purchase is a long story — and certainly much more expensive than the pigeon fiasco. I’ve only refrained from telling it on here because I’m still hoping for clearer hindsight. The title of that post, when I inevitably write it, will be “10 Stupid Things I Did In My 20s.” (Look for it in six more months when my 20s will be behind me.)

But since I’ve heard almost entirely bad news from everyone I know this week, I know I could use a little laugh. Even if it’s at my own expense. So what the hell.

With money tighter than usual, whenever the tiniest symptom of potential disaster presents itself, I react with maybe just a tad more urgency than usual. For instance, I emailed building management the second I saw a pigeon land on my windowsill (see post below). When Firefox or Chrome loaded too slowly one day, I rushed my computer to the Geek Squad and made several contingency plans in the event they had to send it out (they didn’t).

So when I got lost on my way to a nannying case last week, I froze when I heard my car make some ominous noises. My radio is almost always on, usually loudly, so I’m somewhat unaware of my car’s usual sounds. If my muffler someday started sounding a little loud, I would be the last one to know. But when I turned the radio down so I could call the family, I noticed a weird rumbly sound I’d never heard before. It seemed to happen whenever I braked, but not the usual squeaky-brakes squeal. Just rumbly. Sickeningly so. I had to be back with the same family the next day and determined I couldn’t take action for a couple days. So I cranked the radio back up so that I could put the scary noise out of my mind — or at least earshot.

Two days later I decided to get it looked at. But after consulting my usual panel of automotive advisors learned that I first needed to take my car for a spin with the radio off and the windows down to get a better sense of where the sounds was coming from.

The minute I got in the car I knew what the problem was: an errant partially full Nalgene-like water bottle. More specifically, my last bit of swag from Kettle Foods. It’d been rolling around on the floor of my backseat — in the company of a couple cans of tennis balls — for a while.

Sure enough, I moved the bottle to a secure location and heard nothing suspicious. I laughed like an idiot for a good three blocks and thanked God that I hadn’t gotten as far as my reliable Firestone. Moral of the story: listen to your dad when he tells you to occasionally turn the music down. And, for the love of God, don’t call “Car Talk.”

The Etiquette of Unemployment

For the newly laid off, one of the coldest comforts is that in this economy being laid off doesn’t carry the stigma it used to. And chances are good that if you lost your job, you don’t have to look very hard to find someone else in your situation. In fact, if anyone were to ask me for advice on handling unemployment, I would tell them to immediately begin looking for a layoff buddy, whether that person is another victim from your company or industry, or even someone who’s currently employed but has been through it before. This is important for me partly because I can’t seem to find any clear cut etiquette guidelines for being unemployed. I keep hoping someone else will teach me the ropes.

Before this recession started to affect me and my friends and colleagues, I might have advised against discussing the layoff at length in public forums such as this blog. But since unemployment is cutting across so many income levels and tax brackets in this recession, talking openly about it seems like a win-win for everyone.

But this new openness has its drawbacks too. I was relieved to find out that another one of my friends has been struggling with the same etiquette-related conundrums I have been. One of our biggest bugaboos is trying to figure out how much whining and complaining is allowable and expected.

It’s only natural to react strongly to losing your job early on, as you figure out what you have to do to make ends meet and launch your new job hunt. But at what point, or after how long, does your worrying become excessive and wearying for others? The statistics seem to report that American workers are facing longer bouts of unemployment than in the past. It’s fine to confide your worries and frustrations to friends and family, but it’s hard not to feel guilty about dragging them as well. But, at the same time, like my friend said “I know I’m not exactly starving to death in Darfur, but I need to vent too!” There must be a socially acceptable happy medium.

And then there is the delicate issue of what to do with your social life when you lose a big chunk of your livelihood. Your friends — who most likely are facing economic worries of their own — aren’t going to be able to buy you drinks for the duration. And you shouldn’t want or expect them to. Sure, you can entertain at home more, but having the spare time to catch up with friends for lunch or drinks is one of the upsides to not having a 9-to-5 job anymore — at least in the beginning.

So, again, the layoff buddy comes in handy for these kinds of troubles. But the one area of unemployment that you kind of have to navigate on your own is the tricky business of figuring out what to do with the residual anger that latches on to you when you lose your job. After all, nothing is more impolite than walking around with a chip on your shoulder. Commiserating about the circumstances of your layoff ad nauseum won’t help you much in the long run, either. Doing this can lead to an “us-versus-them” mentality, which can sabotage your efforts to land a new job.

One of my tricks for combating this is by practicing what I call Therapy By Proxy. When money is tight you’re less likely to run out and hire a therapist to guide you through the recession. But that doesn’t mean you can’t listen to the advice your friend’s (who may or may not be your layoff buddy) therapist gives her! For example, a friend’s therapist advised her to journal all of her angry thoughts, telling her that once she gets them all out of her head, she’ll figure out what to do with them.

 I decided to do something similar. Since I’m planning to be confirmed on Easter, one of the hurdles I had to clear was going to confession for the first time in many, many years. I thought that if I was able to vocalize to a priest all the anger I felt towards my company, I could be free from it. I kind of expected to experience a flood of relief after he assigned my penance, or that I would feel “shiny and new” as one friend put it. But it wasn’t that dramatic at all. I finally just realized sloughing off all the resentment is more of a process than I thought.

So I guess the moral of the story is this: don’t feel guilty for having a very emotional reaction to losing your job, and don’t feel like you must be a robot if you find yourself feeling kind of detached. Also, flood “Dear Prudence” and “Ask Amy” with emails begging them to write an etiquette guide for the newly unemployed. Someone’s got to do it.

*I wrote this for Hard Working too, hence all the layoff-related posts.

Ain’t No Bugs on Me: Part III

In the spirit of reconciliation and atonement — (last night was the first time I’ve been to confession since I was 13) — I was prepared to make peace with all of pigeonkind, including the nest above the doorway of an apartment two floors below me. The first time I saw the nest back in January, I contemplated calling Vasco again to see about removal. But, it was in the middle of a long winter and I didn’t want to render two proud pigeon parents childless yet again. 

Besides, I had noticed that someone got rid of the initial nest, leaving the eggs unattended for what I thought was a fatal length of time. When I saw the nest had been re-built I was kind of touched to find the parents tending to it again. When I asked an uncle, a bird expert of sorts, about the eggs’ chances for survival, he said the odds were low that baby birds would result. The pigeon parents, however, would be just as likely to tend to marbles as they would viable eggs.

But no such luck. Before long, the eggs hatched. I couldn’t very well ask for the nest’s destruction at this point. That would mean committing avian infanticide. So I kept my mouth shut as long as I could. As the babies grew, the nest started to fall apart and scatter all over the landing. Also, four pigeons means four times the pigeon poo, which for a tiny space is a lot of poo. Getting the situation solved took three phone calls and a lot of psychosomatic itching. But at least it’s gone and I remain guilt-free.

So, back to last summer.

After three days of getting nowhere on the extermination and delousing front, I took up residence at a Fairfield Inn where the bed linens were gloriously white and free from the creepy crawlies. If there were any residual mites left on me or my clothing, I would surely find them on the spotless sheets and commence killing. After finding out that the skin infection I had, called impetigo, wasn’t contagious, I went back to work as usual.

Having not heard from my building’s management for days at this point, I started calling all the departments in Cook County and the city of Evanston that I thought might be able to intercede. After a couple calls, I was able to determine that this could easily be considered a public health issue and went from there. The kind man who answered my call at the Health Dept. said he’d call management and see that it got taken care of.

Within minutes the building manager got back to me after three days of missed calls, and agreed to pay for half of the time spent in the hotel; for a cleaning service to come in; the doctor and drug bills; the cost of cleaning supplies; the cost of laundering all of my clothing, bed linens, futon cover, throw rugs and blankets; as well as the cosmetics, toiletries and pillows that I had to replace.

After that, everything rapidly started to improve. Giddy with relief, I was able to find a nice cleaning service that could thoroughly remove all traces of dead mite exoskeletons and remnants my Raid foggers. Then my mom, God bless her, came up to Evanston to help me with the laundry nightmare that was stuffing every stitch of fabric in my apartment into a front-loading washing machine at my dilapidated neighborhood laundromat — a feat that cost $40 in quarters.

But before the professionals came in to clean, my mom and I donned masks and charged into my apartment to bag up my clothes and vacuum what we could with our Shop-Vac. We were chagrined to find that while the building engineer dutifully removed my two window A/C units for cleaning, he neglected to put up anything to cover the open window left behind, leaving god knows what to fly in and wreak bird havoc in my already ravaged apartment. I ended up taping a street map of Chicago over one empty window and a piece of cardboard over the other. Exhausted after our cleaning binge, we returned to the hotel and its pristine white sheets and retired for the night.

The next morning we got up early so we could let the cleaning service in and then resigned ourselves to the laundromat for what turned out to be about 14 loads of laundry. We ran a shockingly efficient operation, shuffling loads between the washers and dryers and making polite small talk with the homeless people that wander in and out of the facility all day. By noon, we were done with the laundry just in time to pay the cleaning service.

The hard part, now, was keeping my paranoia at bay while I got used to life without bugs.

I vacuumed every inch of my mattress and furniture and invested in a Dustbuster in case I ever had trouble telling the difference between lint and mites. Still traumatized, it took me three nights to work up the nerve to actually sleep in my bed. I was convinced that the mites had all laid eggs in the mattress and that hatching was imminent. Then, it was weeks before I could get into bed without giving my sheets a good once-over. I briefly considered buying a magnifying glass for this purpose.

In another exercise in paranoia, I asked the building manager to install pigeon spikes outside all of my windows. Through a little online research I learned that pigeons prefer to roost on ledges on a building’s top floor, and especially on ledges facing a courtyard, which mine did. Since I knew it could be a few days until the landlord got around to doing it, I bought what I can only describe as anti-pigeon goo. This concoction is designed to burn the feet of any pigeon that chooses to land on a surface covered with it. It only bothers me a little bit that I have no reservations about being this vigilant.

Thus far, my paranoia has paid off as my apartment has been spared from any further infestations. However, this is just the first step in my crusade against infestation. I will not rest until I see pigeon spikes on every ledge of my building. And my neighbors will thank me. Oh, how they will thank me.

On The Radio

And now that I have that Regina Spektor song in my head...I will be making my first -- and hopefully not last -- appearance on Chicago Public Radio/WBEZ tomorrow morning on the program Eight Forty-Eight. I will be reading the essay I wrote about narrowly avoiding a speeding ticket while driving through Glencoe on my way to work last November. If they are able to connect, the producers hope to interview the police officer that gave me life/career advice instead of a ticket. Eight Forty-Eight airs in Chicago between 9:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m. You can stream (click the 'Listen Now' button) the broadcast here. Or, you can read the text of the essay or listen to the podcast here. The incident was one of my primary inspirations for starting this blog, so I plan to publish the full-length version of the story here eventually, as the radio version is substantially shorter.

Scout and Lucy

When one determines that a trip to the brick-and-mortar unemployment office is in order, they would be well-advised to bring a stash of funny anecdotes that they can summon up to counter the much darker thoughts that accompany standing in the unemployment line. Fortunately, the office was closed for President’s Day, but here’s the amusing situation I planned to meditate on while standing in line.

A couple weeks before I was supposed to visit my friend Jennie in Denver, back in October, she asked if I would mind house-sitting with her in a mansion owned by a pair of wealthy philanthropists (I’m still not clear on their actual occupations). To sweeten the deal, she added that the house contained two little dogs that needed only to be walked, fed and loved. Who could say no?

The house itself was a dream, offering more bathrooms and guest rooms than I could count, at least as many original works of art as a mid-sized gallery, multiple floors, meticulous landscaping and home to as many gadgets as a Radio Shack. But without a doubt, the dogs were the best part.

Scout, a Cairn terrier, was the elder of the two, at least as old as Westminster winner, Stump (maybe 10 years old, I’m guessing). We learned at the end of our stay, from the cleaning lady, that Scout was a trooper, having been through a few surgeries and dermatological problems. Scout’s most prominent feature – which was most evident when we took him for a walk – was his derriere. An older dog, he definitely had a few pounds to spare, but Scout had a badonkadonk. That’s right, it can safely be said that Scout had a little junk in his trunk.

Then there was Lucy, the much younger Yorkie, the breed I grew up with. But unlike my Yorkies, Lucy was mellow, relaxed, seemingly happy and had floppy ears. Most Yorkies’ ears stand straight up, but not Lucy’s. She was also a dead-ringer for Natalie Portman’s dog.

But Jennie had come to suspect that Lucy harbored a dark secret – an eating disorder. When she fed both dogs, simultaneously, a curious thing happened. Scout scarfed down his cereal immediately, while Lucy circled her bowl. She would wait until Scout was done eating before she’d give hers a sniff. Finally, once Scout finished his and made a lunge for hers, she’d start eating. But only if Scout sat there and watched her. However, the rest of the week while I was there, Lucy usually ate all her kibble.

Now, Jennie’s house/dog-sitting for the family again and Lucy’s back to her old tricks – but she’s simply not eating at all. Rather than explain how she’s dealt with this, I’m just copy and pasting our GChat conversations (with editing and consolidating):

(I had seen via Facebook that Lucy was not eating)

me: will lucy eat if scout watches her?
Jennie: she just goes and sits by him!
me: awww. Any evidence of canine bulimia? Maybe she sneaks out the dog door outside to purge?
Jennie: aww. She did throw up. It was adorable. I think she might have a stomach thing
me: her puking was adorable!?
Jennie: well, i only saw the product: a tiny little poot of puke
me: can i use that as a header sometime? "a tiny little poot of puke"

Conversation ends, then resumes the next day.

Jennie: she's holding out on eating – it’s driving me bananas
me: we're talking about Lucy, right?
Jennie: yes, ha
me: hmmm, how long is the family gone for?
Jennie: they are back on friday
me: is she still sick?
Jennie: she's not sick. super energetic. and she's drinking water. i'm stumped!
me: even when scout watches?
Jennie: yeah! she goes and sits by him
me: and they stare at the food bowl together?
Jennie: yeah, then Scout tries to go get some. Lucy gets pissed but then won't eat any
me: hahahaha. maybe leave the food out all day, if you can figure out how to keep scout from eating it
Jennie: yeah, that's impossible. scout already got two bowls of her food and he's supposed to be on a diet, ha!
me: right…cuz of the badonkadonk

This conversation ends, but the next day I see on Jennie’s away message that she’s taking Lucy to the vet, so I check back in.

me: are you taking lucy to a vet shrink, to address her anorexia?
Jennie: hahahha. actually, her owner called. i'm going to get a rotisserie chicken on the way home. apparently, that cut up will do the trick.
me: no way! free-range chicken to boot, huh?
Jennie: hahahahahahaha. yes
me: so she's done this before?
Jennie: yes she said, don't worry, this happens with our other dogsitter too. and i felt one million times better. apparently lucy, upon seeing them return pees on the rug to show them her dissatisfaction
me: it reminds me of the crazy girl in Girl, Interrupted who hordes chicken carcasses under her bed. also, that's usuaully what we call "excitement piddling" at the gustafson casa
Jennie: oh yeah! hahahahahaha
me: rotisserie chicken. huh. rosemary or barbecue?
Jennie: ooh. i didn't realize there were options.

Problem solved.