Life in Chicago

Friday Morning

I'm home this morning writing. I love Fridays. I love sleeping in and spending the morning by myself at home.

I'll write for a while and then the house seriously needs to cleaned a bit. After that I'll do some errands. We're expecting some trick-or-treaters tonight, which is exciting. I don't think Greg got enough candy though, unless he plans on giving one mini-Snickers to each kid. We'll see. He was pretty fired up over not getting too much candy so I suppose there's no sense in getting too involved.

We're going to see Kings of Leon play tonight at the Vic with friends, which should be fun. Greg is dressing up as that woman who pretended that she got beat up by a Barack supporter. I'm not sure what I'm doing, if anything.

I had anxiety dreams last night about the election. I can't believe it's only a few days away. I've finally convinced Greg to go to the Obama Rally with me. There are people around the country clamoring to go to this event. Tickets are now selling for $500 on Craig's List. Pretty wild.

Okay, off to write and clean the house. Wish I had something more exciting to report!

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I have a new post up on The Huffington Post:
Costa Rica: Still Some of the Greenest Travel Around

Updates

I'm in that last stretch of morning time, just after finishing breakfast and just before I head to work.

It's Thursday, which means weekly IDT meeting, which I've actually begun to look forward to. Hearing all the diagnoses and the details of our patients' illnesses don't bother me anymore. Whatever place of anxiety I was in over the summer has vanished, leaving something calmer in its wake. For the most part, I'm really enjoying work these days.

I'm also working on a new book project but it's going to be a little different than my last project. Although much of the subject material is the same -- more nonfiction/memoir -- I'm not throwing myself into it full throttle like I did last time. But it feels good to be working on something more substantial and of a deeper substance, even if I'm only doing so a couple of times a week.

In other news, the election is almost here. 5 days. I'm ready for it to happen. I feel like it's just taken over everything these last few months and I'm looking forward to a new focus and to a lot of change in this country. Greg and I are going back and forth about whether or not to go the big celebration in Grant Park where Obama is scheduled to speak on election night...or to stay home and be cozy on the couch.

We actually scored tickets to the Obama celebration and I'm really leaning towards going. I think it sounds fun to be out in the city for this historical event. But Greg REALLY wants to stay home and I'm sure when he reads this, he'll get annoyed all over again that I still haven't come over to his side. I just feel like we've spent enough time at home watching and obsessing over it all and I think it's so cool that we're here in Chicago where Obama will be and I want to be out celebrating with the whole city....I guess we'll decide last minute.

Happy Thursday to everyone.

Tuesday Morning Thoughts

It snowed for just a moment yesterday.

As I sat at my desk in our little second floor flat, snow drifted softly past the windows to fall on the roof next door. But today it's back to being fall, the leaves a bright auburn color, a chill in the air warning of the cold night ahead.

I've been thinking about death this morning. And how my thoughts on it have evolved in the last year. I read a story in a magazine at the gym yesterday about a girl who became bulimic after her mother died, so ruptured was her world with this loss. And I thought about myself at age 20 in New York City, my world collapsing around me as I tried to make sense of my mother's absence. It never ceases to amaze me how huge these losses can be.

But today I've been thinking of my father and of the nights when he sat on the edge of my bed, rubbing my back as I wept. I think about the things he told me about life, about how swiftly moving and vast it can be, about how wonderful it is to be alive, about how life will present nothing but constant change. The world is what you want it to be, kiddo, he'd say. Life is always worth living.

And I've been thinking this morning about how many times he told me those things. But how it wasn't until I truly learned them myself that they made sense.

I don't feel sad at all anymore that my parents are gone. I miss them sometimes and I'm often so grateful for them that tears well up in my eyes. Sometimes I wish more than anything that I could talk to them, that they were still here to be my parents. But I'm not sad that they're gone. I'm not sad that this is my life, that I am who I am, that my life will continue to unspool as it does.

Death, it finally seems to me, is no different than life. They are each other. And perhaps that's the one thing that will never change.

This Week

I can hardly believe it's Monday morning again. It was all I could do to drag myself out of bed this morning, even after 8 hours of sleep. The windows in the house are covered in clouds of moisture; it's cold today. It's actually supposed to snow late this afternoon, which I can hardly believe.

I had the nicest weekend with my friend Liz who was in town from Los Angeles. On Friday night we went to see her boyfriend Doug play at the Riveria in a sold-out show for Lucinda Williams and it was a great show, full of lots of energy.

Saturday Liz and I rode the brown line down to the Loop and walked amidst the bustling crowds on Michigan Avenue, the icy wind whipping in off the lake and blowing everyone's scarves and hats askance. We spent most of the afternoon in cozy bar on the 7th floor of a hotel, sharing a late lunch and catching up on each other lives.

And the weekend kind of continued on like that. Cozy restaurants and long walks through Chicago neighborhoods, a chilly breeze and leaves crunching underfoot. We have new downstairs neighbors moving in this week and we met them briefly on Saturday as they brought over the first load of boxes. They seemed nice enough; a young married couple, excited about their new place.

This week is blissfully mellow. Last week and weekend, I managed to go out every single night but I'd prefer to do the opposite over the next several days. I want to curl up in the evenings and read and watch the news. I can hardly believe that there is barely a week left in the election. I don't know what we'll do when it's over...it's been so enthralling and time consuming to keep up with.

Off to work soon. Must find winter coat in the closet.

Friday Morning...and Raccoons

It's a cold, rainy Friday morning and I'm home for the day with a pile of writing projects to work on.

My neighbors have trapped a raccoon on their roof for the second time this week and periodically I get up to stand by the dining room window, watching the poor thing try desperately to claw it's way out of the impossibly sturdy metal cage. They claim that the raccoons have been getting into the walls of the house and that they are setting them free after trapping them, but that didn't stop me from crying for over an hour on Tuesday when they trapped the first one.

On that first day I watched the raccoon huddle in its cage against the bright, cold daytime blusters. Sometime after nightfall, the landlord came to get it. I have no idea where he's "releasing" them. But last night I met a friend in the loop for dinner and coming home late, I walked through my neighborhood streets from the train station in the rain, having forgotten my umbrella. The landlord next door had replaced the raccoon trap after releasing the first one and I remember thinking, as I walked along in the rain, that I would be very upset if I got home to another one trapped again.

But there it was, an even bigger one. All night as I listened to the rain come down outside the windows, I thought about the raccoon, unprotected in its metal cage on the roof. And now it's morning and it's still there, even though they were supposed to get it "first thing." I've listened to it cry for the last 45 minutes and I sent an email to my neighbor telling her I think this is cruel. I'm not sure what to do besides trespass on their property with a ladder and release the poor thing.

I just really can't stand for cruelty of any kind. And I know this isn't that terrible but nonetheless, my heart breaks for the little guy out there. I just think that if you don't want an animal messing with your roof, and you're going to trap it, at least be a little more compassionate and don't make it sit in the cold rain all night.

Okay, enough of my tirade. It's Friday, about which I'm glad. I even like the gloomy weather outside, the cats sleeping in cozy perches all around the warm living room. I'm going to make some oatmeal and get started on writing in just a moment.

My friend Liz from Los Angeles is here this weekend and I can't wait to see her later. Her boyfriend of several years is Doug Pettibone, a singer-songwriter who also plays with Lucinda Williams. Tonight he's opening for Lucinda at the Riveria, which I'm looking forward to. Following the show, he's off to his next tour stop but Liz will spend the rest of the weekend with me and Greg. We just stayed with her when we were in LA, so it will be so fun to see her so soon again, as if we were real-time friends, like we used to be.

I just checked. The raccoon is still there.

Blogging

I had dinner last night with some girlfriends and it was so nice to be out and part of a group of a women at a restaurant. Since I moved to Chicago and got married, I don't do that as much as I used to.

The dinner was with my friend Emilie and two of her girlfriends, one of who I met randomly at a dinner party recently -- and upon chatting we quickly realized that we both had Emilie in common. The other girl last night was a third friend of Emilie's who has been reading my blog for several months, but whom I've never met. She and Emilie discovered that they had me in common over the summer, strangely enough. So it was a funny convergence of connections and a really lovely dinner.

It got me thinking about this blog though and the people I've met  because of it. It's been 5 years now since I've been writing so publicly like this and I've actually met quite a lot of my readers. I think it's always much stranger for them than it is for me. I know there's a voyeuristic quality to reading what I write here so I imagine it must be weird to meet someone you already know so much about.

But it just never feels that weird to me. Sometimes I get a little self-conscious talking about myself because the other person already knows so much that I don't want to bore them with things they already know. And I also always wonder if I live up to whatever kind of person comes across in these posts. But sometimes it's almost easier to meet someone under those circumstances, if that makes sense.

For the most part though, I'm really so grateful for everything that's come from writing here all these years. I get the nicest letters from time to time. I've met fantastic people who have become friends. (Greg's best friend Tarek has actually been dating a girl for a year now that I met through my blog - her sister is a regular reader and thought we'd like each other so we met up when I moved to Chicago.) I've made some great writing contacts and, even if I don't comment back all the time, I love all the comments from readers. I love the different perspectives and opinions brought to these pages from around the world.

Sometimes it dawns on me that I don't really think about ever quitting the blog. But does that mean I'll write here forever? I'm not sure I can imagine myself at 85 blogging about my nursing home facilities...but you never know.

Lately

I'm sitting here, spacing out at my desk, having just finished some oatmeal. The sunlight is playing through the trees outside the window and casting dancing shadows on the floor around me. I can't quite remember what I was supposed to do today. I woke up with a headache and have felt a little fuzzy ever since getting out of bed.

That said, things have felt good lately. Chicago. My job. My marriage. The cool weather.

Ever since coming back from LA I've really felt more settled than ever here in Chicago. I no longer feel that nagging persistence to return so urgently to California. And fall feels good as well. I bought a new winter coat the other day, and some boots and yesterday, stepping out on the deck to retrieve one of the cats, I was struck with the smell of autumn, the chill in the air causing me to pull my arms around myself, and I was glad for it, and turned my face up to the sky.

And something about work has been better as well. I think part of it has to do with my new grief group and how much that fuels me to work harder for the participants, but I'm also just feeling more and more settled into it. One of our really long-standing patients, who was also a favorite to all of our team members, died late last week. I've been thinking about her and about her transition out of this life. And about whatever role I played in the last months of her time here. And I feel good about it. Like I truly helped enrich her last days, like I did my part in enabling her to have a peaceful death, something she really wanted.

In a grief counselors meeting yesterday, one woman talked about this month's beautiful red and yellow autumn leaves and how they are always a reminder to her that life can often be most beautiful just before death.

New Huffington Post

When $605 Isn't Enough: Going Door to Door in Indiana for Barack

I didn't do much during the last election. I was twenty-five and still finding my feet politically. Coming from a staunchly Republican household and an oppressively conservative father, it took me a while to recognize and embrace my true liberal values. The last election was actually the first I ever voted in. But leading up to that day at the polls, I got my feet wet, trying to make sure that Bush didn't take on another four years in the White House. It was a painful process in the beginning. More than once I cried, thinking about how uninformed I'd been for so long. I helped cater a Howard Dean fundraiser at David O. Russell's house in Hollywood and I donated to the Kerry campaign. But besides buying a "Kerry Me" T-shirt and voting on election day, I didn't do much more than that.

And on November 3, 2004, I'll never forget the feeling of despair that washed over me upon waking to learn that Bush had been re-elected. I went to breakfast that morning with friends and as we sat around the table in a cloud of depression, we each vowed not to let this happen again. We vowed to do more, to try harder, to not just talk about everything. But until yesterday, when I spent the better part of the day walking door-to-door in a low-income neighborhood in Indiana, it seemed that's all we'd been up to. READ MORE...

Monday Morning

It's Monday morning and I'm drinking grapefruit juice in my bare feet, light still breaking into the sky outside the windows. Our landlord came by over the weekend and finally turned on the furnace so that the  radiators are finally giving off that subtle warmth I've been craving these past few weeks.

We had a nice weekend. Greg's mom came for dinner on Friday night (she's been in town helping out my sister-in-law with her new house for a few days) and I made a butternut squash soup and quiche lorraine. When Greg got home the three of us went for a long walk around the park and enjoyed the changing leaves and caught up on what the Booses are all up to. I would say that I'm still getting used to this big family and to even just having a mother-in-law, but I'd also say that I'm liking it more and more.

On Saturday morning Greg and I drove to Michigan City, Indiana and spent a couple of hours canvassing a LaPorte County neighborhood for Obama. We talked to people about early voting and where their polling places were. We answered questions as best as we could and we left information for the people who didn't answer their doors. Overall, it was a fantastic experience and we were both glad we did it. (I wrote a piece about it for The Huffington Post which I'll link once it goes up.)

We came home from Indiana exhausted though and each fell asleep for close to two hours. That night we had dinner at Ethiopian Diamond in Edgewater with Kate and Tarek. It was Greg's first Ethiopian experience and, while he enjoyed it, he puts it in a close category to Indian food (which I can kind of understand) and says he prefers Indian food. I enjoyed dinner a lot since I hadn't had Ethiopian since hitting up Nyala on Fairfax in Los Angeles.

On Sunday we stayed around the house mostly, reading the news and both of us working on blogs for The Huffington Post and restaurant reviews for BlackBook. I watched Colin Powell's endorsement of Barack Obama on Meet the Press and it almost brought me to tears. He finally said what I've been wanting to hear all along: Yes, it's true that Obama is not a Muslim but SO WHAT if he were? Is that what this country is about now? Is that the message we want to send to Muslim-Americans living here? To Muslim American children? That there is something wrong with them?

In the last several months of these campaigns I've found moments to be incredibly proud of the people in this country and moments where I've been extremely disappointed. I'm ready for election day at this point. And I'm ready to have a clean election. I'd like to see Barack Obama elected without a bunch of protest or voter fraud accusations or last minute scare tactics. I'd like to see this country move in a new direction, albeit one that will take a lot of work, but one that is desperately needed.

To not close on politics, I'll say that we had a lovely dinner with our newly-married friends Hanna and Chris last night in their new condo. Hanna made a fantastic vegetarian chili and I made poblano-cheddar corn bread. We came home at 10 and crawled into bed, Greg wishing he had one more day in his weekend, and me just glad for sleep.

And now it's Monday and I'll shower soon and try to remember what I have to do this week.

Impending Changes

Last night Greg and I went over to my friend Erica's for a little debate watching party and over yummy snacks and glasses of wine, we all yelled at the television as we watched Barack Obama debate John McCain in the final presidential debate.

I can't believe the election is so soon. I wish it were tomorrow though. The suspense is kind of killing me, although at this point, I'm confident that Obama will win.

Part of me can hardly imagine that though. Throughout most of my adult life political elections have been nothing but full of disappointment. I'll never forget the morning after the last election, going to breakfast with friends at a little spot in Venice, all of us just shocked and numb with the realization that we were entering into another 4 years of George W. Bush.

But this year it's going to be different. I can't wait to wake up on November 5th, feeling good about the direction this country will finally be moving in.

I like how huge these days feel right now, leading up to the election. I know that I'll look back at this time in my life, 10 - 20 years from now and feel nostalgic for all that hung in the air:  my new marriage and life in Chicago, the very beginnings of major changes in this country. I'm determined to hold onto the idea that Obama will win and that we are on the brink of a special time in US history.