My Recession Miracle

I’m probably not the best personal banker in the world — I don’t log on to check my checking account on a daily or even weekly basis. And since my expenses are fairly static and most of my deposits are direct deposits, I generally know how much I have. Since I still only use a bank in Princeton and make car payments through my parents, they can usually see my balance too.

As a result, I was really shocked today to get an email from my mom asking if I realized I had $X amount of dollars in my account. Without being specific about the amount, just know that $X was exactly 10 times the usual amount.

Sure enough, I logged into my account and saw that she was right. On June 24, somebody that wasn’t me deposited enough cash to help me breathe a LOT easier during this bout of unemployment. I looked at my balance and wanted to cry in relief, thinking “Wow, God really DOES work in mysterious ways.”

I started to imagine who my anonymous benefactor might be. Perhaps it was an undercover Robin Hood type, one who bears a striking resemblance to George Clooney, who stole money from my last employer’s coffers and used my direct deposit information to give me a cash infusion. Or maybe it was a merry band of guerilla do-gooders that infiltrate banks in the middle of the night to plump up the bank accounts of the recently terminated.

In my head I mentally started writing another essay I would inevitably send to Chicago Public Radio about my Recession Miracle. Other listeners would call in and share their stories of finding a bit too much money in their accounts. Eventually, word would leak that it really was the doing of the Obama administration’s secret Random Acts of Kindness provision in the stimulus package.

But, alas, this isn’t the kind of banking irregularity that can go unchecked. If someone out there had my account number, they could withdraw as easily as they could deposit. The more likely scenario was that my dad goofed while depositing money from the hardware store. So I called and told him to check his account balance, and sure enough he had deposited into the wrong account.

My hopes were crushed. The giant sigh of relief I had started to breathe deflated. My healthy, vital bank account would have to go back to being pathetic once the banking error was fixed. I thought of all the different ways my life would be different if I always had that much money in the piggy bank (for better or worse). So maybe it’s not an altogether good thing, but it sure was nice while it lasted.

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.”

Say No To Bugs

A few minutes ago I heard the very, very worst sound in the world: the sound of pigeons cooing. It seems that two of them found a fun little hangout on my bedroom window ledge, just to the left of where their other feathered friends set up their quaint little home last year, on the other side of the window unit. The instant I heard their innocent-seeming noises, I took the pad of paper I was writing on and swatted the bejeezus out of my window until they stubbornly flew away. They were plotting against me, I just know it. Trying to figure out my daily schedule so that they can come back and build a new nest as soon as I'm gone. But I am thwarting their plan. I called the building manager and requested more pigeon spikes. When I get home from my nannying gig, I won't hesitate to get out the anti-pigeon goo and smear it on the ledge. This is war! That is, as soon as I stop itching.

Rumble at the Altar

One of the reasons I signed on to be an on-call nanny while I job hunt is that I have found that being around some kids — usually in direct proportion to their cuteness quotient and degree of crankiness — can give your mood an unexpected and always welcome boost. There were days when I was sick a lot and living at home — days that make unemployment seem like a cake walk — that visits from the kids next door were a godsend. They typically bopped on over, either one-by-one, all at once, or in pairs, unapologetically in search of candy and/or chocolate milk.

When I got better and moved to Evanston I missed their daily knocks on the door. Which is not to say they always knocked. Sometimes I didn’t even know there was anyone else in the house until they knocked on the bathroom door while I was getting out of the shower. But I always made sure I saw them on visits home. There were even some tearful  (theirs, not mine) partings when I inevitably had to leave Princeton.

Now, all of that kind of pales in comparison to the relationship my sister’s fiancé, Ryan, has with them. Their reaction to him can only be likened to Beatlemania. All of them, from the 10 year old to the toddler, can’t get enough of Ryan. And vice-versa. Ryan somehow has the stamina to give countless piggy-back rides and the ability to spark fights over who gets to sit on his lap and who gets to sit on his shoulders. When the kids are worn out from using Ryan as their own personal jungle gym, they curl up next to him and unwind for a while.

Watching Katie and Ryan and the kids interact is a sight to behold. So it was only fitting that they decided to include the girls in their wedding in October. And I, for one, can’t wait. If the ceremony is any reflection of my sister at all, it will be a most low-maintenance and relaxed affair. She is the bridal equivalent of Barack Obama — inviting of others’ opinions and open to suggestions. It’s telling that she was able to find The Dress off-the-rack without any need for alterations. (And sidenote, speaking of weddings, what's wrong with you, California?)

I’m 99.9 percent sure that the whole show will go on without incident. But it would be shortsighted of me not to consider the following scenario: that Garity and Hensley somehow decide that they can’t share Ryan with my sister and make their feelings known when the minister asks if anyone objects to this union. I believe there’s a very small chance that a scene straight out of The Graduate could ensue. Or, in the very least, Ryan may have to compromise and give them piggy-back rides on his and Katie’s way down the aisle. So what makes me concerned? I present some photographs as evidence.

Clearly, Katie and Ryan love each other. Their engagement pictures could warm the cockles of even the most cynical singleton's’ heart. 

See, Ryan obviously loves Katie:

And Katie definitely loves Ryan:

Looking at these pictures, it’s easy to see that Ryan’s adoration of these kids is reciprocated:

Look how Jacob, 10, lights up while he wishes Ryan a happy birthday over the phone:

And if you so much as say Ryan’s name to Garity, 5, you get this sweet little face in return:

Also, when Hensley, 7, turns on the charm, you’re kind of powerless against it.

In the end, though, romantic love will win out.

I mean, look at them.

(If you think this is schmaltzy, just wait till I write my toast for the reception).

Next Stop: The Killing Fields

Perhaps it’s telling that my idea of a pleasant afternoon these days involves making the short trek to Skokie to visit the new Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, but that’s exactly what I did today. Back in April, when it opened, I had found out too late that Bill Clinton and Elie Wiesel were speaking at the grand opening, and missed my ticket-buying window. But due largely to a lull in nannying gigs and a Sarah Vowell reading binge, I decided today was the day I’d finally get over there.

Feeling a little cocky about my own Holocaust knowledgebase and past visit to the mother of all Holocaust museums in Washington, I wasn’t expecting to come out feeling significantly more informed. However, I think that because of this museum’s much smaller footprint, I got a better sense of the enormity of the Holocaust itself. Also, the it’s the fact that it’s in Skokie, and not in a city packed to the gills with overwhelming museums, that brought the experience home. Knowing that plenty of Holocaust survivors and their families live in the area makes it more tangible than looking around and seeing hordes of tourists exiting tour buses.

The most jarring part, initially, was actually entering the museum. The reviews I read correctly reported that the main entrance is difficult to find. Though to be fair, one docent did apologize for the signage throughout not being so great yet. However, there was one museum employee that looked as if he walked the perimeter of the building expressly to find wayward patrons like me and direct them in.

The fact that today may have been the sunniest day of the year so far added to the shock of finally gaining entrance. The box office area is almost completely dark — so much so that it took at least 10 seconds for my eyes to adjust and recognize the faces of the people in the ticket booth and security checkpoints.

When you see the museum from the Edens expressway, you can see that half of the building’s exterior is black and the other half is white, so that you enter in darkness and leave in a much brighter and sunnier part of the building. It’s symbolic for many reasons, which I’ll let the architecture critics and journalists explain more succinctly. But the desired effect works.

It’s been so many years ago that I visited the D.C. museum, so it may very well be that it has a sizable collection of genocide-inspired works of art, but for me, I appreciated that element of the Skokie museum the most. The works of art on display paid homage to other genocides before and since the Holocaust in places such as Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia, Darfur, Armenia, Ukraine, Russia and others. And since I’m as inept at describing art as I am describing fragrances, I’ll just say that you should see it in person to get the full effect.

So, in conclusion: definitely visit the museum yourself. And spend the time watching all of the great film snippets throughout the exhibits — since the museum is small you can watch them all and still see everything in a few hours or so. And be sure to plan a less somber activity after you leave. You may need to decompress even after leaving from the white wing.

Monday Night Medical Experiments with Mary

As any parent, pre-school or elementary school teacher can tell you, one of the occupational hazards of spending eight hours a day with little rugrats is acquiring every cold or flu bug that comes around. I should have known I was in for it when I attempted to wipe the nose of a three year old I was babysitting last week. She wouldn’t let me near her with a tissue in my hand, insisting “I’ll just lick it.” I’m trying to learn to pick my battles in the nannying realm, so, “OK, suit yourself,” was all I could do.

 As soon as my cold symptoms started to present themselves yesterday I started reading up on swine flu — err, H1N1 — and determined I wasn’t patient zero. But, in the interest of getting over this cold quickly, or faster than Sudafed could accomplish, I decided to experiment with a neti pot based on the rave reviews of everyone I know who has ever used one — despite warnings that the treatment is often likened to self-waterboarding. After taking a brief poll of 120 of my closest Facebook friends, all of whom endorsed the practice, I bought a $15 neti pot kit at my friendly neighborhood Jewel-Osco.

First, I watched a few YouTube tutorials to study up on technique. It looked straightforward enough. (This guy looks like a pro – maybe he trained at Gitmo?) I did as the instructions directed: lowered my head parallel to the sink, turned my head to the right and poured the water in. However, instead of exiting out the other nostril like it was supposed to, I ended up swallowing the salt water concoction instead. It tasted much like I would expect the Dead Sea to taste. Yum. I tried the other nostril and got the same result. My conclusion, then, is that I acted too late. It would take nasal-grade dynamite to irrigate my sinuses.

So, neti pot FAIL. I guess it’s back to Sudafed, tea and Purell for prevention. The last time I was sick, this happened. It could be worse, I suppose.

The Etiquette of Unemployment Revisited

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

For the fourth hour of the Today Show, this is shockingly informative! And it kind of complements my prior musings.

Unemployment According to Vogue

As a general rule, I try to avoid buying magazines that will inspire only rage — such as any issue of Maxim — but the May issue of Vogue called out to me from its impulse-purchase post in the grocery check-out aisle. It was the coverline reading “You’re Fired! Surviving and Thriving After the Pink Slip” that got me.

I thought that maybe I’d kind of be able to relate to the article’s author, a recently laid off Village Voice reporter/editor. But either alternative dailies pay a LOT better than I would’ve thought, or this woman has some other huge source of income that she isn’t disclosing. I can’t figure out if Vogue thought it was providing service journalism or material for a future chick lit novel with this article, but it definitely did not succeed on either front since I could not a) relate to the author or b) feel even the least bit bad for her. Here’s why:

1. For starters, it’s poor form that she even mentions her former company by name. I may not live in Manhattan, but I know the New York media world is small and most people can’t afford to burn bridges like that.
2. The author probably thought she was humbling herself when she said “After the shock wore off I realized I was in much better shape than a lot of other Americans,” and then goes on to admit that she already has a flourishing freelance career. But if that’s the case, why is this article even worth publishing? Finances can’t be that bad if she doesn’t even have to file for unemployment.
3. The author reveals that her low point was the day a fashion designer advised her to attempt to live only off of her freelance income and have her severance payments direct deposited. “I hated this idea. Previously I had kept the money in one big lump and just bought whatever I wanted.” She then suffered the indignity of being told by a banker that after considering fixed expenses, such as her mortgage, maintenance, cable, etc., she should endeavor to spend only $50 a day for everything else.
4. Because she’s a mathematical genius, her BlackBerry’s calculator indicates that she needs to earn a minimum of $92,000 annually to survive. Her attempts at economizing include not spending $900 for a sweater, and buying a stamp pad to make her own business cards instead of having them done at Tiffany like all her friends suggested. She also opts for a $118 silk blouse from Anthrpologie instead of a $1,000 designer version.
5. For an alternative newspaper reporter, this woman is shockingly out of touch with the price of things, especially considering her self-professed shopping addiction. She expresses such sticker shock whilst shopping for home-office supplies: “So we were at Staples, where to my amazement I learned that a combination printer/copier cost only $99, or far less than the cheapest Marc Jacobs T-shirt.”
6. Another pearl of wisdom: “I finally abandoned the budget business entirely. Instead, I concentrated on getting assignments. I stopped being snobby about writing for the Internet.” Oh, the horror!
7.  Finally, Vogue readers are supposed feel uplifted by the author’s moment of clarity by way of the First Lady’s fashion sense: [ed. note: I’m sorry you got dragged into this, Michelle] “On January 20, when Michelle Obama turned up in her glorious Isabel Toledo ensemble, it was impossible to be depressed. If Toledo, the consummate downtown designer who’s had plenty of ups and downs herself, can triumph, I thought, then maybe so can I.” Empowered, she runs back to reclaim an antique sapphire and diamond ring she had to return to the dealer after she was laid off.

Wow, thanks, Vogue. I feel a bit better about myself already!

Read here too.

She Had Me At “I want to be a neurologist when I grow up.”

For the past few weeks now I’ve been working as an on-call babysitter for a nannying agency to tide me over until I find a shiny new full-time job. It may lack benefits, financial security and predictable hours, BUT it’s flexible, doesn’t involve cubicles and always manages to get my mind off of myself. And while I still waffle between “Yeah, I love hanging with the shorties” and “I’m getting my tubes tied immediately,” I have managed to learn a few things:

1. Rocking a baby or toddler to sleep is incredibly soothing -- when you're not the one being rocked -- even if it means leaving someone’s home wearing a cardigan covered with white, crusty baby drool.
2. Potty training — good! Four-year-old diapers — very, very bad.
3. It’s still so funny to me that the same five year old who uses the phrase “Like the pot calling the kettle black,” and says she wants to be a neurologist (and offer a good description of what a neurologist studies) when she grows up still dissolves into tears within seconds of having a Barbie snatched from her lap.
4. I’ve decided my childhood could have been at least 20 percent more fun if I had one of these to ride when I was 5 or 6 (and it's still pretty fun at age 29) instead of Big Wheels: 

5. Child care is exhausting; being an editor is not.

A Day in the Life

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts this Easter weekend I was finally confirmed in the Catholic Church, after many years of procrastination, skepticism and doubt. And as I’ve also mentioned, I decided to use St. Teresa of Avila as my saint name. Saint Teresa is a popular figure at St. Nick’s, and now I can see why. She’s the patron saint of headaches and writers, and is one fiery little woman. As a confirmation gift, my sponsor, Mary, gave me a St. Teresa doll, fashioned by a company that will make any doll if someone sends them a picture of the character they want created.

So, it only seemed appropriate to bring St. Teresa along for my first day as a fully initiated Catholic.

Teresa started her day with a little quiet prayer and reflection. 

Next, Teresa decided that since she had such a long night at the Easter vigil service, she would need a little jolt of caffeine to get through the first part of her day.

Unfortunately, because of the busy weekend and lack of sleep she endured, Teresa developed a migraine, which is fitting considering that headaches were a big part of her life. As she wrote:

No sooner does our head ache than we stop
going to [prayer], which won’t kill us either.
We stay away one day because our head ached,
another because it was just now aching, and
three more so it won’t ache again.

Teresa was also a voracious reader. To my surprise, Teresa and I have a lot of the same books on our shelves!:

Here, my two favorite ladies chit-chat about their shared history of headaches and love of writing.

Teresa approves of this book too (even though it's on loan).

Teresa likes to read up on modern nuns (especially the Carmelites) in the book Unveiled: The Hidden Lives of Nuns.

However, Teresa has one interest that I don’t share, and that is her taste in music.

After a busy morning of chatting about books and drinking coffee, it was time for me and my parents to go to Ryan’s dad’s house for dinner. Teresa kept us safe on our drive up to Lake Forest from her post on the dashboard.

Here, Teresa displays her notable appreciation for fun and whimsy.

For desert, Ryan’s grandfather made his famous whiskey cake. And guess what? Teresa liked it too!

Finally, Teresa and I brought our long day to a close.

Happy Easter!

The Cheese Stands Alone

Last spring I wrote an essay for Telling Stories but wasn't able to be in Denver to read it myself. The theme for this particular Telling Stories show was "Table For One." When I was spring cleaning my hard drive this afternoon, I saw that it needed some cleaning up too and decided to post it here. 

The Cheese Stands Alone

Whoever coined the phrase “God works in mysterious ways” didn’t know the half of it. My own connection to God, or any deity, is flimsy at best sometimes, so there’s a pretty good chance that I’ve missed a lot of the hints that the universe has been trying to send my way. In fact, it’s possible that I’ve become so closed off and so oblivious that one day God finally got sick of it and decreed: “Mary, I couldn’t possibly be more obvious – if you miss the symbolism this time, I’m sending you back to high school English.”

Life changing revelations, I’ve learned, don’t present themselves all at once. Rather, they are small and cumulative, and if examined individually, don’t amount to much. But sometimes they come on so fast, and so quickly, you almost miss them.

**

In October of 2005 I was 25 years old, living at home with my parents in my small, rural Illinois hometown. I had been there since I graduated from college -- with delays -- in 2002, and there were very few signs that this arrangement would be changing any time soon. Although living with one’s parents after college reeks of laziness in healthy people, for me it felt like anything but. When I lived by myself for my last year and a half in college, it took all the energy I had to make it to my classes on some days, so there was precious little leftover for basic cleaning and grocery shopping and multiple doctor’s office visits. Moving back in with my parents didn’t feel like defeat — it felt like a relief. A relief to not have to worry about getting everything done by myself. And it gave my parents some peace of mind too. Being a four-hour drive away took its toll on them, so they were more than happy to be able to keep tabs on me.

So by October of 2005, I had been trying for over a year to qualify for a very experimental surgery that offered some hope for helping the migraines that sidelined me. After a grueling screening process at the hands of a highly selective neurosurgeon, I had finally been given the green light from him, but then faced an even bigger monster: an insurance company that didn’t recognize pain management as “medically necessary.”

The months leading up to the insurance company’s refusal to comply had been so bleak that my parents thought it might perk me up to take me along on my dad’s business trip to San Diego. Even though migraines aren’t conducive to the unexpected hassles of air travel, or the invasions of privacy involved in sharing a small hotel room with one’s parents for five days, I relished the thought of a change of scenery. This would be my first trip to California, the west coast and the Pacific, and maybe a chance to experience the famously laidback culture in a way I could bring back with me.

Instead, what should have been a restorative, worry-free trip became just the opposite. I was too ill much of the time to enjoy or participate in any of the sightseeing, and when I wasn’t sick I moped, felt sorry for myself and burst into tears in restaurants, convention halls, gift shops, the San Diego Zoo, hotel lobbies. Two of my dad’s relatives from L.A. came down to meet us, and despite my protests that I would be a huge buzz kill for the rest of the afternoon, they convinced me to come along on a trip up the coast to La Jolla, a place I only associated with reruns of “My Super Sweet Sixteen.”

I did manage to take at least some joy in parts of the trip – the sun, sailors (it was San Diego’s Fleet Week after all), having mountains and foothills on one side of me and an ocean on the other; even the Santa Anna winds weren’t unbearable. But mostly, the trip just served as a reminder that I needed someone else’s help to get through something as easy and run of the mill as a vacation. My silly, self-pitying self wondered if I would’ve been able to navigate the airports, keep track of my boarding pass, negotiate transportation, make reservations — all the minutia that planning even something fun involves – on my own. How was I much different than those insufferable Sweet Sixteeners I scorned? But mostly, on that trip, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was a third wheel, and that what my parents really needed was a vacation from worrying about me. I had never been so anxious for a vacation to end, and I suspected my parents thought the same.

**

Flash forward about two and a half years.

It’s the second week of January 2008 and I was about to embark on a business trip. It’s been a year and a half since I finally procured the aforementioned experimental surgery.  I still have migraines but am outfitted with a tiny titanium battery implanted in my lower back, attached to wires that snake all the way up my neck and back, to my head, where electrodes are attached to a nerve under my skin and held in place by some trusty scar tissue. The system isn’t perfect, but it’s much better.

In December my boss asked if I would mind attending the Winter Fancy Foods Show, which is put on twice a year by the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade. The show takes place in a massive convention center packed with 1,100 or so exhibitors showing off only the finest specialty/gourmet foods that, quite literally, the world has to offer. The show is usually held in San Francisco, but this year it was moved to San Diego.

When I started to make my travel arrangements I had no intention to plan a trip that so closely paralleled the one with my parents, so it was mostly a coincidence that I picked the same Holiday Inn I’d stayed at with them. It helped that I subsequently knew the lay of the land, and which direction the convention center was from the hotel; of course the show was in the same convention center that my dad’s had been.

To some degree I was worried that all the leftover bad karma from the first trip would contaminate the second — that the whole déjà vu feeling would trigger some sort of meltdown. It didn’t. I even kept my cool when I had to endure the full body pat down by the TSA agents in the airport, as I can’t go through metal detectors with my device. Actually, I suspect the agents were more uncomfortable than I was whenever they assured me that they were using the backs of their hands when they reached a “sensitive” area.

The room was almost identical to the one I shared with my parents, but I was almost giddy with the contentment of having it all to myself. I loved the foghorns, the tacky paint job on the Holiday Inn’s exterior, the rude concierge and the irritated Chinese delivery guy. I didn’t even care that the takeout was crap since I knew the next three days would make up for it.

It wasn’t until the next morning when I stepped out onto the room’s patio in an attempt to soak up some much needed California sun and fresh air that I started to sense that I didn’t need to worry about the rest of the trip being a repeater of the first one — that it might be possible to replace the bad memories with the better ones.

The rest of the day is a blur of high-end chocolate, champagne, gelato, fair trade tea, specialty cheese, and gourmet popcorn. I got over my fear of talking to all the exhibitors about their products, and in some cases invented ridiculous reasons to stop by some booths for more samples, even though I had already been by once that day.

For dinner that night, my dad’s relatives came down again from L.A. to see me, and I picked a spot in Little Italy that my parents and I had been obsessed with. When we found each other in the hotel lobby, we all immediately remarked on how different the reunions were and marveled about it the rest of the night.

The next day, my second day of the show, was much like the first except that I was attending a press trip to La Jolla, sponsored by a dairy industry association. The restaurant we were going to even had a startlingly similar name and was only a few doors down from the restaurant my parents and I had been to with our relatives.  

When we got to the restaurant, I immediately gave away my newbie status when I tipsily wondered out loud if it would be tacky of me to pull out a notebook and write down everything I ate, and its price, so that I could remember later. Turns out, a month or two later, I still remember.

**

A few days ago at work I received two big hunks of suitably aged — and correspondingly smelly — Wisconsin cheese in the mail, courtesy of the association, who apologized by saying the cheese wasn’t at its prime when we sampled it in La Jolla. When I opened the Styrofoam cooler that held the cheese and ice packs, I got the feeling that the noxious fumes were another sign, or reminder from the universe — or whoever it is who’s in charge of dropping hints — that I’m more than capable of taking care of myself now. What’s even more absurd is that I ever doubted I could. On that trip, I was so content to fly solo that I almost regret that I never had the opportunity to ask for a table for one.

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.