City Love

I think about moving all the time, but as I ponder adventures in new places - one thing remains.  I have to live in a city.  Here's a perfect example of why.

My eyebrows are out of control.

Image (via)

Its totally inexcusible because there is a fantastic spot near my office that will fix that business for $10 (including tip!) but they are only open until 7 - and believe it or not, if I am still up in that neighborhood at 7 PM, chances are its because I am still working.  Every effort to get there by 7 PM this week has been thwarted by meetings, teenagers and the stupid win $250,000 game at the Jewel-Osco.

But I live in a city. And there is a salon in the first floor of my apartment building.  Its more expensive but what it lacks in fiscal responsibility it makes up for in the fact that I don't have to spend a 45-minute commute looking like a terrifying red-faced alien.

What's even better? I go downstairs (without anything besides a credit card & a house key), she says it'll be about a 20 minute wait.  I tell her I can come back down whenever, just let me know what time works.

"Why don't I just buzz your apartment when I am done with this client?"

So now I get to sit in my apartment with my cat, my 30 Rock and my glass of wine and wait until the second I can get my face fixed.  Then when its all done, its just two flights of stairs back to all of my things.

This is why I live in cities. Because they don't always require cars or schedules to work out.  Because they thrive on impulse and tend to have better snacks.

birds and the faces

My friend SOB sent me this picture and it completely made my week.

For some reason the caption doesn't come with the picture but here it is:

Fifth-graders react as they watch real photos of a developing fetus inside the uterus while senior health educator Andy Wentling presents "Life Begins," at the Robert Crown Centers for Health Education. (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune) (Chuck Berman/Chicago Tribune)

And the article (which you should read because it will make this blog post make a ton more sense)


Well, first of all, Kudos to Mr. Berman.  This is probably the best piece of photojournalism (that hasn't made me so miserable that I want to move to Mars) that I've seen since the picture of President G-Dubs Bush touring Fort Detrick in shoe-covering booties and one of those guests-in-surgery scrub caps (the poofy ones).

And the best part about it is its a total accurate depiction of what I (and the friends that I've polled) felt when we came face to face with sex education.  In some way, this picture is incredibly comforting.  My knowledge of what 5th graders know these days is limited but I am glad to hear they are still shocked/disgusted/mildly entertained by what happens when we all grow up.  

I remember the first time someone explained to me how my body was going to "change," my first thought was, "Old teacher lady says Whaaaaa?" and then my second  was, "me and my body have talked it over and we've decided that all this is NOT going to happen." 

But, you know, it did.  And I've handled it with all the awkwardness and bitterness that you would expect (although thank everything above that I got to learn from Ms. Officer instead of Mr. Boyer, who would wear the shortest of shorts and then put one foot up on a chair... I won't describe the rest, but needless to say he should have been fired...and I'm sure it was a scarring experience for the young gentlemen in my year).  

When Sean sent this article to me, he had it linked from Fox Nation, a website with the tagline - "The Fox Nation is for those opposed to intolerance, excessive government control of our lives, and attempts to monopolize opinion or suppress freedom of thought, expression, and worship."  Which is a statement that has just enough substance for people to use it against each other but not really enough to actually give a real point of view.

Anyway - it gave me the opportunity to read the comments generated by the readership. 

Here's the thing, commenters - you really have no idea what you're talking about.  First of all - everyone gets the "how a baby grows" talk together.  They separate boys v. girls for the "our bodies ourselves" portion.  Boys should have to know what has to happen inside a lady for a baby to come out, because otherwise they would not run to the corner store for ice cream and dino nuggets once they knocked a girl up.

Also, my Mom knew girl whose parents had told her that if she ever let a boy touch her hand she would immediately get pregnant, which is an excellent example of why we don't let parents be in charge of the "how babies are made" discussion.

And the idea that sex ed is making more teenage girls pregnant is laughable.  I'm pretty sure that if you showed every single teenage girl the video they made me watch in 9th grade (the one where the baby actually gets borned), once a month for like a year or so  - we would have exactly No unplanned pregnancies.

Anyway - its an amazing picture, and the organization that is going out there and making sure kids get all the information they need deserves all the support they need - if anything for making it so that normal parents can have this conversation instead:

Mom - "So uh, I guess I am supposed to have a talk with you about stuff."
Son - "Oh. Uh..."
Mom - "So you know everything you're supposed to know, right?  About everything."
Son - "Yeah.  I'm good."
Mom - "Great.  Good talk then."
 

all the things

There's been a whole bunch going on in the past few weeks - I apologize for the lack of posts, but life keeps getting in the way.  It seems that with life and exercise and the need for cat food (how are we always out??), I can only manage to spend an hour or two at home before bed and that hour, I've decided, is best spent away from my computer and with Boyfriend and the hungry, hungry kitten.  And of course - on the never ending search for the missing drill bits.

Anyway - here is some stuff that is happening.

1-Last weekend Kristin and Howie got engaged last weekend.  Making them the 7th couple I know to get engaged since Christmas.  Congratulations KristinandHowie!! and the rest of you - and the 4 couples getting married this year.  I am totally happy for you - and also wondering if there is some sort of Kool-aid or water or something that I should be steering clear of.

2- I had blood drawn today and x-rays.  Nothing too big, but it required me to fast from midnight last night to 9:45 AM.  For normal people this would be no biggie - but I am an emotional wreak when it comes to food.  I am used to eating by 7 or 8 AM, if I'm awake.  So the fact that I did not get to eat until 11 (after all the testing was done) - meant that I was completely irrational.  There was a farmer's market inside the hospital (a bizarre occurence that I never even though to question while I was experiencing it). And so I had to buy 2 pounds of organic, free-range bratwursts and a loaf of banana chocolate chip bread.  This, in hindsite was dumb but I was so hungry!  They say not to go to the grocery store hungry. I say - don't put the grocery store inside a place where I am forced to be hungry.

3- I am excited that people are deciding to visit me this year.  Cougar AND Buttmunch might be coming, and my big 'Cuz!  Summer in Chicago is amazing, but its a bajillion times better when you get to share it with other people.

4- I finally bought a day planner two weeks ago.  I thought that maybe this would be the year I would become a digital planner, but since I STILL don't have an iphone (come on July!) this is not the case - because I have no way of synching my computer with my phone or anything else.  At least 5 days of the week - when I am glued to a computer, this is not a problem, but on the off chance you try to plan something with me on a weekend, for the entire month of January and most of February - There was a chance we would make plans and by the time I got home and powered up the laptop, I would have forgotten.  So I went to Borders and bought at $1.00 planner.  I keep forgetting I have it though.  At 10 cents a month, I still feel like I am getting my money's worth...

5- E! plays Sex and the City from 7 - 8 PM every weeknight.  It has made my hour on the elliptical far less tedious.  Even though I think I've decided I hate Carrie Bradshaw - its a nice walk down memory lane.

6- I think this might be the year I go downtown and watch them dye the Chicago river green for St. Patrick's Day.  I have a meeting that morning, so I won't be down there until noon, at which point it might be back to its normal green color.  I have this funny feeling that if I don't make a concerted effort to go see it in the next two years, I will be moving away in a decade or so and realize that I never saw them dye the river green.

That's all.  See you in a few days.

tighty Tyrannosaurus

So, I try not to get too graphic on this blog but there has been one thing on my mind all day.

My underwear is too small.

I am only kind of snobby when it comes to underwear. I'll wear whatever is bought for me, and if I'm buying normally there has to be some sort of deal involved. I tend to buy at Victoria's Secret or American Eagle because I'm consumerist and blah blab but that is not the point of this blog.

I will occasionally purchase underwear else where and, about a year ago, I bought some cute lil boy shorts at Urban Outfitters because they were like $3 and adorable.

I bought the size I always buy because, well, its the size I always buy and have always bought. And I get them home and after wearing them once I realize that while there is coverage everywhere there needs to be, the elastic around the leg holes is not elastic-y enough. This is tedious, so I buy a pair of the size bigger as an experiment (this was back when I had an absurd amount of expendable income). The size bigger fit great and they are in the constant rotation of underwears.

And the smaller pair? They still live in the dresser. I hardly ever wear them because I tend to remember, before I put them on, how uncomfortable they are. But this morning I was sleepy and it was early and its been awhile since I've done laundry. And so at around 11:30 AM I remembered and it for sure affected my mood (negatively) for the rest of the day.

So why not throw them away? Well, that's probably about to happen now because I am grouchy, but before? Because they are adorable. White with a pink waistband and a floral pattern. And intersperced within the flowers are teeny pairs of tyrannosaurus rexes. So little and they (would) make me so happy were they not restricting the blood flow to my lower extremities.

Anyway, thats my underwear story.

I picked my bracket this morning - I couldn't even tell you who I picked, its hard to pick basketball teams when you haven't watched a single game all season.

drugs. the no-baby-making-kind.

So I switched birth control pills recently (yeah, that's right - we're gonna get real personal right about now). My old one was playing a huge part in the disaster that was my face and at the age of 23 I think I'm old enough to make medical choices based on vanity.

So I decided to switch. My NP is nervous because this new one has diuretic qualities as does another medication I'm on. And the two diuretics combined apparently will give me a potassium deficiency. I don't really understand the mechanics of it. But these people went to school for about 80 years, so I'll trust them.

For the first month, the pill seemed to be working great. There were no babies (which, um, let's leave that part of the equation alone for now). I switched right around the time I started my new job and was told by my mother that I might have an insulin deficiency of some sort (my mother did NOT go to school for 80 years, but she did go for eight, so I trust her medical opinion). This maybe the cause of my recent weight gain and so I've decided to go really healthy (fresh fruits and veggies! vegetarian! (except for pork and Nonna's meat sauce) 100 Calorie Snack Packs!)

I also now have week days off with the new job and instead of lounging around and watching West Wing DVD's I've been working hard at keeping my days off busy. Writing, going to the gym, productive shopping, rearranging furniture etc.

So here is this me that is kind of different from the me of about 3 months ago. I am not really thinking about it until I talk to a friend of mine last night about birth control (this conversation was naturally brought on by the news/gossip that yet another girl from our High School class is up the spout). I mentioned my new pill and she said that it had made her slightly loopy. Then I thought about it for a minute and realized...

I'm pretty sure there are uppers in my birth control.

First of all, I'm hungry. All the time. I equated this with suddenly being on my feet for 8 hours a day but seriously, I find myself constantly eating. While normally uppers don't give you this (hence why they are diet pills) I think its the combination of the estro-whatever and the crack that literally mean I eat for eight straight hours if I let myself. I'm being good about eating grapes and whole wheat sandwichs and trying to keep my caloric intake around 1000 calories a day, but still - your body cannot digest food if you don't stop chewing.

Second- This productive behavior is not like me at all. I mean sure, I get stuff done, but I get it done at the last second, if there isn't anything good on TV. Recently I've taken to cleaning the bathroom without being asked and without there being actual organisms growing in it, I've started going to the gym for 90 minutes to two hours if given the opportunity and actually spending that time working out instead of just sitting around on a yoga mat listening to my ipod. I do laundry before I run out of underwear. I'm redecorating my apartment and making grown up purchases like couches and bowls (although, in my old-self's defense, the bowls are too small to be practical and polka dotted). My room is organized. I'm cooking for myself instead of eating things out of a black plastic dish. Also, the fact that I am even CONSIDERING giving up chicken nuggets, is - to me, kind of crazy. I mean, I laugh at vegatarians, and people who run on tredmills, and own plates. Since when have I become one of those people?

Obviously, it is because my birth control pill is full of crack.

green underwears.

So, everyone has a favorite pair of jeans. They're the pair you buy, perhaps on a whim that you end up wearing three or four times a week until they literally decompose on your body. You stress out every time you wash them because it screws them up for like three days. Yeah, those pants. The day those pants die is a dark, dark day for everyone.

My jeans are from American Eagle. I bought them on a whim (isn't that always the way?) the day before I left for Nantucket the summer after my junior year of college. I then wore them every day for pretty much the next two years. They're the most perfect pair of jeans. Super comfortable and yet almost trendy enough to pull of wearing to a bar when you're just not feeling up to the tight, sexy jeans (uh, I guess I should have mentioned I wear jeans every day. No joke. I own -- seriously-- at least 20 pairs that I wear on a regular basis). Anyway, I got complimented on them pretty much every time I wore them and they looked good. I was a happy girl with a good looking ass.

Time passed and at one point a little hole began to form on the back right hand pocket. Right in the top inside corner. I still wore them a lot because I always have cute underwear on and I don't really have any shame Then something tragic, that I've managed to block from my memory, happened and the entire pocket started to rip off, right at the seam. I began to panic and rushed to my neighborhood American Eagle, naturally they had completely redone their denim section (STOP doing that! You're ruining lives, AE). The jeans did not exist anymore. I asked for a similar pair in their new denim line. The brain trust girl in the mini skirt was of no use to me so I went home and was sad. Then I had one of those minutes where I remember that there are people starving all over the world and some people have no pants at all.

So I decided to mend them. People, I am not a seamstress. In fact in the womanly arts I pretty much fail across the board. I can't cook or sew or clean or be submissive and docile...so me trying to mend denim was pretty laughable, but I did it. Then they got shoved to the back of my drawer for awhile because I thought they needed a rest (which they did), I got a new favorite pair (my first sevens) then another new favorite (probably my Polo Ralph Laurens-- although at this point I really like most of my jeans-- and I have three pairs waiting to be hemmed that will become favorites, I have no doubt).

So last week things at work went balls crazy and I found myself working late and (worse) worrying about work while I was doing the fun 20-something things that should be dominating my mental space. By the middle of this week, I had completely stopped caring about what I looked like at work, basically coming in and running around like a kid off her ritalin and then going home and passing out. I also hadn't done laundry in about three weeks. On Thursday morning, what did my comatose fingers find in the back of the drawer? The favorite jeans. I needed something to be happy about so I threw em on with a fairly long tee-shirt (as the corner hole was still fairly obvious-- though I was impressed with my pocket-seam hemming abilities.

Doodley-doo, off to work I went. The day was nothing short of ridiculous with the running around and the long stretches of time spent staring at a computer screen, trying not to cry. About mid-day I had my third potty break (I'm doing this new thing where I try to drink 2 quarts of water a day and that with the gallons of diet coke really run right through me) and I notice that the seams were starting to kind of stretch and the hole down the seam was getting a little bigger. I yanked down my shirt and went about my day.

At the end of my day (that was supposed to end at 5, but actually ended at 7) I go to the bathroom and once again look at my jeans/handy work. Either my butt grew three sizes that day or the running and the stress were apparently a match for my sewing because the hole was ENORMOUS. Like we're talking six inches, right across my rockin' ass. None of the guys in my office (now its me v. 5 guys all day every day-- its kind of the opposite of fun) mentioned anything about it, which was nice of them. Because seriously it was like every nightmare I had in high school, a giant hole and my green underroos (that ironically enough said Drama Club on them) sticking out for everyone to see.

I thanked my lucky stars that I had had the foresight to carry a messanger bag. I grabbed a men's tee-shirt that covered a little more of my heinie (although had my company's logo on it, which was pretty embarrassing the entire way home) and then I spent my walk to the train/home making sure that the messanger bag was artfully placed directly over the giant hole in my most favorite pants.

...Which I'm still not going to throw away. Nope. You can't make me. They're getting washed now, I'll figure out what to do with them when they're clean. A pair of denim, assless chaps perhaps?!