Before today, I never witnessed a carload of Americans (as evidenced by their flag-a-flyin) drive their vehicle directly into a lake.  This afternoon while baking on the lazy banks of a Wisconsin lake, with my own eyes I saw this vehicle, known as an Amphicar.  I wish I had gotten a photo of the actual blessed event, but it was a little too far away to truly capture.

Rest assured it was exciting as well as delighting.  Almost as soon as the driving/boating party was in the lake, they were out.  Off to get some cheese, I hope.

I took a gamble on a new hairdresser and I have to say I am pretty pleased with the results.  Also, now that I am separated from Billy, I am forced to document my own new haircuts.  It’s sad.  Billy, come live with me and be my personal photographer.  I will keep your shirts crisply ironed.

Today has been a pretty good day.  I am making headway in this life.  I ordered cable!  I got my bike repaired for the second time in two days!  I ate a sandwich with extra mayonnaise!  This is the stuff of which Saturdays are meant to be made.

Last night I went to see the delightful band, Great Lake Swimmers.  Despite arriving at the show exhausted and drunk, I had a splendid time.  The singer said things like, “We decided to stop in Chicago and say hi.  Hi.”  and “So I thought maybe I would try out a new song on you, if that’s okay.”

Oh Canada, we are better just for sharing a border with you.

My status as a part time contributor to the GNP has recently been the cause of some fiscal anxiety. Unwilling to truly alter my lifestyle or spending habits in any meaningful way, I decided that it was about time I began to seek out additional underemployment.

On Monday morning, after a hard weekend of doing nothing in the countryside, my mother drove me to the train station. We discussed this situation at length, and in the end I determined that while I was open to having another job, in no way was I really willing to apply for this mythical position or seek it out in any fashion.

“I’ll just get another job when someone randomly offers me one.” I may or may not have been quoted as saying.

On Monday evening, I got a phone call from a woman who sounded very old. She said I had sent her my resume (I had?) and she was basically calling to offer me a job in a bakery. Always having desired to work amongst butter vessels, I readily agreed to meet with her the next morning. I met with her at the prescribed time, and promptly offered my services to her. How could I not? She is in her eighties, is supremely glamorous and wise cracking, and has a much storied history which she is only too happy to share with me. Moreover, her partner in the bread making business is a woman who is equally old and fetching, and who I can only deduce is her lesbian lover. The office has framed photos of Clark Gable adorning its bright yellow walls. The woman is kind of like the foul mouthed, alluring grandmother I used to have before she went batshit and died.

Today was my first day of sorting out her messy financial affairs while sprouting the first seeds of a cake eating problem. It was a wonderful day in many ways, including the dramatic firing of an embezzler. The best moment came at the end of the day, however, when I went outside to get on my bike and go home. I had parked my trusty machine in front of the gentleman’s club next door early this morning. I returned to find it just where I had left it. As soon as I approached, the bouncer from the titty bar rushed over to me and cautioned me against parking my bike in this spot in the future.

“Someone was trying to fuck with your bike, but I managed to chase him off.”

I thanked the bouncer profusely for thwarting the thievery, but on closer inspection I saw that my rear tire was completely deflated and the valve was utterly destroyed.

I walked the bike for several miles, and then made an idiot of myself and no doubt delayed the afternoon commutes of many Chicagoans as I cajoled a bus driver into helping me put the bike on the bus’s front rack. Intending to take it directly to my friendly local bike shop, I arrived only to find it closed. Instead I went and ate a delicious and affordable vegetarian bahn mi, extra spicy.

It doesn’t escape my notice that the lifestyle I was angling for all along in New York has pretty much been handed to me on a plate here in Chicago, and I am grateful.

Sorry for the incontinence

Last night I made two new friends.  The first one invited me to a poetry slam, which is not really my thing, as far as things go.  The second one invited me to a story slam, which is basically the same idea as a poetry slam but probably not as disgusting.  Now this, this is something I can get into.

There was a time in this life when I was heartily convinced that January was the cruelest of months. Incidentally, this notion was carried with me primarily across the dusty domain of Southern California, where the cruelest measure January is capable of enacting is a well-meaning rain storm.  

I am officially changing my January stance.  August now appears the cruelest month. While it has not delivered up its famously oppressive cocktail of heat and humidity (yet), it has brought to me a bout of sadness that strikes me heavily at least once daily.  Sometimes it is the standard wave of nausea and sometimes it is the tossing and turning all night and sometimes it is both.  Or something else entirely. Being a person well versed in the sadness, it isn’t anything I have not dealt with and even embraced many times in the past.  I think I just don’t want it right now.  Come winter will I be healthy and whole yet confined to the artificially heated interior?

August is also the month preceding that of my birth, allowing me plenty of time to obsess about all of the things I have done and done wrong over the course of what was meant to be my golden year.  Hindsight, I hope I will raise a glass to you.  Once I put some footsteps between now and the now to come, maybe I will view this as an amazing time.  Lately I think about all the vegetables I left in the refrigerator of the apartment in Brooklyn, wondering whether Dom threw them in the trash shortly after my hasty departure or if they might still be in there, rotting away.

Isn’t it pretty great when you listen to the same song on repeat for about three days, and when you finally decide it is time to switch to shuffle mode, that song comes on first?

The gods who govern the corn fields and the blue skies and the wide and well gridded streets are clearly opposed to little old me being allowed to sleep more than three hours at a stretch.  Always being awoken by a dog, I am.  Couch surfing is not without its detractions.

The same gods are also clearly opposed to me being permitting to laze about in my underwear.  I shall resume this activity in approximately three weeks, and I imagine I will get at least three more weeks of decent weather in which to do it before autumn blows in on a cool breeze.  By that time I will have my closets perfectly organized and will delight in clothing my body with sweaters and blazers and the like.

Do you hear that, Californians?  Six more weeks of warm weather for those of us here in this land.  For you, six more eternities.

Newsflash!  I just discovered and immediately rid myself of my first ever grey hair. Everything is happening so fast on this journey to being thirty.

The other day I asked Billy HC how he felt about turning twenty-eight in a couple of weeks and he said, “I feel like I might as well have HIV.”

Do you ever wonder whether or not you have really fucked something up?  I do.  

Riding a bike is pretty fun.