just writing

Apropos of very little:

Be careful what you get good at doin’, ’cause you’ll be doin’ it for the rest of your life.

— Jo Carson

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On Monday, it’ll be a month since I started my new job. I spent the first weekend afterward traveling and worked for 10 days straight. The next weekend, I tried my best to recover; the weekend after that, a friend visited from out of town, leaving me exhausted and despondent come Sunday night.
So I declared this weekend all mine. No plans, no dates, nothing but what I wanted to do.
Which apparently includes Friday night grocery shopping, making myself sick (like old times) from too much raw cookie dough, waking up for class at the gym, and spending the day wandering my neighborhood, weaving around the green-clad day drinkers with freshly painted toenails and a bag from the wine shop clinking with bottles.

Somewhere around lunchtime, I became obsessed with the idea of going to Target and buying the patio set I’ve had my eye on. I tried, to no avail, to find a friend willing to drive me there and back — turns out, everyone was either out drinking or holed up even more than I’d decided to be.

So after I’d tidied the kitchen, stripped my bed and bathroom towel racks and taken two loads of laundry to the basement, I got on the bus and headed north toward the store. Decided I’d figure out the getting home part when it came time. I wandered aimlessly through Target and found it, and my eyes widened when the associate wheeled the box out from the back; once it was in the cart, I couldn’t even see around it.

Panic: How in the hell would I get this home?

A painted yellow line just outside the automatic [caution] doors ground my cart’s wheels to a halt and nearly sent me flying. I stuck my arm out from near the door, and several cabs passed until I realized I was actually too cheap to pay one to take me home.

So I heaved the box to the curb in a bear hug and took the bus. The first of two.

At the stop, I talked with a woman about motorcycle drivers too cool to wear helmets; she had just bought new pillows after years with the same ones — she prefers hers old and smooshed. She smoked a cigarette while she told me about her 5-month-old son, and when the bus rolled up, we parted ways wordlessly.

Then I waited.
At the next bus stop, I waited for 40 minutes. The bus tracker even told me how long I’d wait. But I was more and more obstinate as cab after cab passed me, determined not to spend any more money than I already had, when I’d already proven I could handle the bus and that massive box.

After 10 minutes, I slumped against my box to the shaded sidewalk, flanked with strollers. I’ll admit to feeling decidedly gangsta there, Girl Talk blasting through my earbuds, as traffic passed me for another half-hour. Taking the easy way out.

The last leg of my journey home — just two miles as the crow flies — seemed like the longest. Halfway there, the driver’s shift ended, leaving a bus full of passengers who had waited and waited for their ride…waiting. Some more. And then the buses that had arrived back to back had to consolidate their passenger loads, for a reason that remained a mystery to us all.
I was furious. The dusty cardboard had already rubbed insides of my arms raw, and my pedicured feet were filthy with city grime stuck to the salon’s cheap scented lotion.
I wanted my damn patio set, out of the box and ready for cocktail service.

As I searched for a kindred spirit who could share a contemptuous moment with me against the CTA, I spotted two children a couple of rows back. One of the stroller babies who’d been with me since the waiting stop was waving to another little girl, eagerly reaching out for her hand. She grabbed it and smiled.

Hi. Hi. Hi.
Hi. Hi. Hi.

A moment of total innocence, an instant friendship formed.
The boy in the stroller waved goodbye to everyone on the bus as his mother wheeled him out backward. He was so happy. He didn’t mind the waiting.

And suddenly I was happy, too, as I hobbled off the bus with my box just a block from my house. Even happier when the world’s kindest cab driver drove me through the alley, not even half a block, for free — then carried the box through my back gate, where I tore it open, plunked down onto the pavement and put the whole thing together.

The neighbors in the house next door were celebrating their little boy’s second birthday. He and his friends shot at me (shyly) with makeshift firearms. I bonded with the parents over my glass of wine and utter determination to finish this project, despite their child’s wiffle ball sailing over the tall wooden fence and smacking me in the head.

A neighbor in a Kansas T-shirt came downstairs to start her laundry. Turns out we grew up just a few miles apart; we know some of the same people, and she went to Miami of Ohio, the college I’d planned to attend until July of my freshman year. And she lives just downstairs.

I fought with the included Allen wrench for the next hour, fumbling with bolts and washers, positive I’d do something catastrophically wrong. Until I finally flipped the final piece over and surveyed my work. At that point, I realized three things.

First: It would be impossible to screw up something so stupidly simple.
Second: The whole set is perfect, from the lovely latticework down to the sunny yellow cushions.
Third: It’s hard to say which I’m more in love with, this new table and chairs that ate up my entire afternoon…

…or the people I encountered between the automatic doors that stopped my cart and the set’s new home at the top of the stairs.

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At 4:37 a.m., I finally gave up.

I tossed and turned all night, growing progressively more frustrated as 5:30 crept closer. I was so exhausted when I finally fell asleep, but there’s no rest for the weary, I hear. So with quiet resignation, I rubbed my eyes and creaked across the dark living room to bring my laptop back to bed with me.

There’s a different kind of darkness on the other side of midnight. It’s a secret darkness no one is supposed to be able to see, usually blanketed by bleary eyes or set ablaze by the two-second cell-phone glow of a drunken text message. I don’t like it.

The music propelling me toward sunrise feels like an intrusion on the night, floating over the cycling of the toilet tank and the persistent clank of the radiators. It’s so quiet, but it seems loud enough to wake the neighbors.

I like light. I like early to bed, early to rise. Healthy, wealthy, wise — that kind of thing.
I like mornings. Though I don’t think I’ll like this morning. In fact, I’ll go on the record and blame daylight-saving time for screwing with my meridians or circadian rhythm, or whatever.

Even as I say that, I know it’s a lot of other things that I have a lot more control over, but at this hour, it’s comforting to blindly cast aspersions on the universe. I just split an infinitive: Go with it.

The past weekend was a bright spot at the end of a fairly dark month. Jon, one of my best friends since college, flew to Chicago on Friday night to spend two whirlwind days with me, eating and drinking everything in sight, playing tourist.

We sat in the corner of the Violet Hour, a speakeasy-style cocktail bar in Wicker Park, sipping $12 cocktails and reacquainting ourselves with the sight of each other outside of Kansas — it’s been years since he came to visit. We’re the same, but more tired.

We ordered a deep-dish pizza and sat side by side on my little sofa watching “Archer”; I nodded off before the first 20-minute episode had even finished.

We waited in line for at least an hour at Hot Doug’s, the encased-meat emporium (their phrasing, not mine) in Avondale with a basic-cable cult following. We ordered an obscene spread, filling the table with corn dogs, gourmet sausages and French fries cooked in duck fat. I misjudged the distance to the train station after we ate, so we burned off six fries each walking through no man’s land, past shuttered shops and so many barbershops we lost count, under highway overpasses to the Blue Line station.

We watched the ice skaters at Millennium Park and took pictures by the Bean. I was wearing brand-new, bright green jeans and spotted myself instantly, from the back of the plaza, in our wobbly, metallic reflection. I was giddy pretending to be from out of town.

It was so warm, windy and wonderful outside; the city was so, so alive.

It struck me how little I actually get out anymore when we walked into GT Fish & Oyster, a still-novel, newish seafood restaurant in River North, at 9 p.m. We were still a half-hour early, so we stood behind the bar with more cocktails — our third of the night — and waited with the beautiful people.

Somehow, with my massive grandpa sweater and windblown hair, I didn’t feel like an outsider. That darkness, interrupted only by the humming Edison-style bulbs overhead and orange glow of streetlights outside, made us locals again, just waiting for our reservation. Later that night, a gorgeous woman perched on four-inch heels stood behind me in line for the restroom; we talked about the comical anguish of online dating. We were equals, a feeling I don’t normally allow myself with people like that. I wonder if she doesn’t, either.

We spent Sunday sleepwalking, really waking only to labor over the New York Times crossword. We tackled it with a single ballpoint pen and finished it after a little over an hour. We took a triumphant victory lap around the park, settling in on the swings and talked about our mutual states of arrested development as parents pushed their infants in bucket swings and chased their toddlers across the mulched playground.

We wandered my neighborhood for the rest of the afternoon, trying to slow the passage of time before he had to get on the train to Midway. A classical guitarist sat in the square, a blue trash can bungeed to his portable amp with a duct-tape “TIPS” sign, playing an arpeggiated soundtrack mixed with the staccato squeals of children still in their church clothes.

We said our goodbyes on a crowded shuttle bus.
I get a strange, dark feeling when a houseguest leaves, a mix of guilt-inducing relief that my life is only my own again, and abject sadness that…well, that my life is only my own again.

I remember now what it’s like counting down to payday. I hate the feeling, but this is the cubicle prison I wanted, right? It has to be better than holding my breath on the way to my mailbox, hoping there’s a check that’ll bring my bank account back to black so I can scrape out another month’s rent.

If it makes weekends like this possible, that’s what I’ll keep telling myself.
It’s 5:29 a.m., and Emaline’s asleep at the corner of the bed after standing on my head all night. An old Hootie and the Blowfish song started playing as my 5:30 alarm sounded, and I won’t be skipping past it.

I’m feeling rough.
I’m feeling raw.
I’m in the prime of my life.

Time to pretend.

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I have my eye on a white metal bistro set from Target. It’s just big enough for the gangway behind my apartment during warm weather, and it’ll fit perfectly in my sunroom when it gets too cold outside. I’ll find little cushions for the chairs and a tiny floral tablecloth to lay over the tabletop when I’m feeling fancy.
(Often.)

On Sundays, I’ll take my coffee — brewed double strength and poured over ice — and iPad to the back deck, my bare feet on the peeling, teal-painted planks and sit for hours, scrolling through “oh, I’ll read it later” article after article on the fingerprint-smudged screen. I’ll play NPR inside and listen through the screen door, or turn off the stereo and just let the city symphony of rustling leaves, banging doors, alley traffic, Brown Line, church bells, baseball-bat cracks and scuttling squirrels lull the week away.

This is the first time I can remember longing for summer.
Yearning for it. Craving it.

I’m an autumn girl in a summer city.
But lately, I’ve never wanted warmth so badly, to fling open my windows and let the warm cross-breeze blow through the apartment, to feel my hair cling to the back of my neck, to escape to the puppy beach on the weekends, to wear flouncy, low-back sundresses and flippy sandals and sip sparkling rosé on a buzzing patio until the sun dips below the low-rises on Western Avenue.

Green shoots of tiny crocuses are starting to poke through the dry, cracked soil along Leland Avenue, the street I take to get home from the train station, and there are already fuzzy buds sprouting tentatively from the magnolia trees. It even smelled a little like spring today.

People have started to trickle back outside, realizing the wet, messy winter we were promised never reared its ugly head. (And, of course, there’s still time for the ugly, but if this is “in like a lion,” March, I’d like a word with your casting director.)

I don’t know what’s changed about me, or whether anything has at all. None of this means much. I guess I just wanted to say…I’m ready.

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