der Landstreicher

Catchup Day

2012-02-05T23:11:00.000-05:00

But not really. There is never time to catch up on Sunday, even if I get off work at six instead of eight like today. The past week held me up in different ways. Last weekend (not the one that is currently ending) was fun, friend-filled, and action-packed. No time to blog.

Last Friday we lit candles and drank Riesling and listened to music. Saturday, I worked out at the Y for the first time, wearing my stinky old wear-to-the-restaurant sneakers. Then Maraia came to visit from Kalamazoo; it was the first time we'd seen each other since the summer, I think. Impromptu burger for lunch with the boyfriend—this should happen more. I went shopping for some essentials, like a new external hard drive that (probably) works (unlike the first attempt, which would not format to Mac) and running shoes! to use at the Y, now that I am a member. I made apple cinnamon muffins, watched some more of the Wire (for the second time) with the urban planning people, then went out for a coworker's birthday part three or four or who knows what.

This is not that club. This is the KGB Wodkabar in Freiburg, and the lights are pretty. Plus, no crowd that night. But I thought you might want a photo.

I learned that I hate places that are clubs or like clubs. I was not surprised to dislike the atmosphere, the crush of bodies and the strangers/unwanted dance partners that appeared out of nowhere, but I was surprised by how quickly and how acutely I hated it. While waiting in line (I had forgotten that places like this have lines on Saturday nights, because that's not the kind of place I generally choose to go), I looked, then stared wistfully across the street, where I could see the lights of a brewpub, the Jolly Pumpkin, twinkling through the wintry scene painted on its windows. I've never been there, but I know they take care with their drinks and you can probably have a conversation.
I really prefer conversation. But! Saturday was good. Birthdays are good. Experiences are experiences.

Sunday was work work work, comme toujours, but then it was impromptu post-work beer with Emma, and Important Hand Cream and Unimportant Subtle Goldy Nail Polish Purchasing time at CVS on the way home. ("Because You're Worth It" is the color's name. Barf, L'Oreal.) I also brought my second and final pair of wear-to-the-restaurant, stinky sneakers to the restaurant, which is to be their final home before they meet the fate of my even older, stinkier ones that already lived there. Those, I plopped into the trash, and everything was good.

This week, a cold put all my plans on hold. I was sick on Monday. I was sicker on Tuesday. I was less sick on Wednesday. Unpleasant to miserable to hoarse-sore-voiced. But friend, boy- made a pot of chicken soup just for me, even though he'd just done it a week ago. I've had eight bowls of chicken soup this week, and that was a definite perk.

Then I was okay on Thursday, and Emma and I worked out before having cheap yummy dinner at IKEA and splitting a beautiful little slice of the Daim cake, the one with an extra layer of cream just under the chocolate coating. Then it was impromptu drinks with Caitlin time—surprising, but so satisfying. Friday involved a nice post-work hot-chocolate chat with Jessie, and her delicious chocolatey pretzel treats, and I was in a great mood. Saturday, we'll talk about later, with photographic displays of deliciousness and fishiness—but not the tilapia I ate for dinner. For now, suffice it to say that a trip to Detroit was joyfully made, the sun shone, and I had terribly persistent sniffles and sneezes. Sneaky second sickness-wind! Sunday, today, I wasn't late for work. The weather was so perfect, though, that if I'd run into Louis the Cat on the way there, I might have quit like I wanted to last time I saw him on the way to work on a Sunday.

My nails are very golden and I am eagerly anticipating the arrival of a great person with ice cream in his arms. Or something like that.

Buying Extra Calories

2012-01-27T13:48:00.000-05:00

This:
was followed by this:
and this:
(Emma's pancakes were stuffed with honey and oats and almonds and brown sugar and amazingness.)

Unfortunately, we didn't use the facilities today. I was on a tight schedule (now I'm at work! blogging!) so there wasn't really time to change into workout gear and break a serious sweat and all that. And all I'd had to eat so far was a banana. Breakfast celebrated the days, weeks, months of fitness to come.

I'm excited. Part of me even wants to go back tonight (if I get off work at the restaurant before 8:30) and face my first go with an elliptical in over a year and a half. Part of me thinks that can wait until tomorrow/until I get new sneakers. But I know it has to come soon. Momentum! Building momentum is important. Wish me luck.

A Year of Carlessness

2012-01-26T00:30:00.000-05:00

It's been a year and a day since I wrecked "my" car—spinning out from some black ice in the fast lane on I-94, ending up three lanes over and down the hill and smashed into a harmful, helpful tree (at least I didn't end up in the creek!).

I survived, obviously. I survived the crash, which is the important thing. Then I survived the carlessness. The car connected me to my boyfriend, living then in Detroit, endless miles away (okay, like 42). Then the car was gone. But he got a car. I took the train. Sometimes the train even showed up when it was supposed to! (I was unlucky in that my most frequent train-riding coincided with the Norfolk Southern debacle resulting in "up to 90 minute" delays. On top of the already frequent 1-3 hour delays, come on, guys, get with the future. By the time MDOT decided to buy those tracks—at which point I assume they stopped fighting and making people late on purpose constantly—we were together in one city.) Sometimes the train showed up at four a.m. and I was in bed and I don't remember how that affected the weekend anymore—so obviously, we survived.

And my fridge survived, too. I walked to buy all the frequent groceries at the co-op, even though it's more expensive. I even ate peanut-butter pitas for lunch for a few months, and was sort of forced to buy organic. Kroger and Trader Joe's and all the rest became always-communal adventures, which is mostly fine.

My bike, already a frequent companion while in Ann Arbor, rose to new heights. My boyfriend's apartment on the other side of (central) Ann Arbor didn't feel far away. There was no faster way to get from job A to job B, except maybe a moped. Then the rain and snow and ice came, and everything is now half an hour apart on my ever-plodding feet, but it'll be okay. I got a puffy coat with a fur-lined collar as well as fur-trimmed hood (all fake of course), and me and my leggings under my jeans with my wool socks and snow boots and everything else? We regularly walk 60-90 minutes in one day and ~~love~~ ~~hate~~ ~~survive~~ are okay with it partway through most walks. (Remember that time I said I was sick of first person plural? Probably not, that was three-plus years ago. Anyway, this appears false because I was 'we' with my car, and my cats, and friends (girl- and boy-), and now even with my clothes.)

Look at that fur collar and that Fishbowl-glare. It's the best I can do on such short notice.

Like anything else that breaks or you break up with (mainly the latter), you forget what it was like to be together. I don't think about it that much. I'm a girl without a car. I manage, and I also sort of hang onto people and jump at every chance to be a real suburban consumer (not that I really want to be that). I was never the person with an entire backseat of dirty clothes or old books or even just CDs. I had my ice skates and sometimes a sled or winter boots in the trunk, yes, yet I didn't live from my car. I mainly only used it to buy groceries, pick up roommates, and drive to my parents or my boyfriend. It really belonged to my parents, or technically to them but really to me, and so I acted like my parents and I kept it cleanish and called it "the Accord" to all interested parties (i.e. parents, brother).

But the car was part of me. (And ten minutes ago, I knew exactly how; then I forgot.) It wasn't just the hours I spent sweating in it in the hot heat of air-conditionless summers, or the nights I spent singing in it, driving when I should have been sleeping. It wasn't just the relationships it maintained, the road trips, the reluctant goodbyes. Oh, right, of course, the reason Americans Drive Cars and stand in the way of beautiful public transit like that of Germany, which I miss every day—it was the freedom. The freedom and the feeling of power that the freedom granted me. I could work until 11:30 on Friday nights and still wake up with my boyfriend on Saturday morning, even though he was in a different city. You could propose the idea, I could offer the car and probably drive most of the way. I guess I liked performing feats as well as making plans all on my own. Though the distances haven't changed, without my own car, people and places are farther away from me. And that stinks.

But—we all already knew cars were more dangerous than planes or trains or most things we encounter on a day-to-day basis, right? Drew totaled the car he used to (literally) live in, Ali flipped over in her SUV last winter, I crashed my car, Ali hit a deer, Emma only has one actual headlight and one functioning side mirror, and on and on. But I was reading about sunscreen, and then I was reading about the safety of the HPV vaccine (which is safe, duh), and then the bubble for likelihood of dying in a car crash was WAY BIGGER THAN EVERY OTHER DANGER-BUBBLE. (Except cervical cancer, that bubble was also very big and that is why you get vaccinated.)

Trains, people. We need a ton more trains.

Tiny Food

2012-01-25T10:59:00.000-05:00

January: The Month of Tininess? Tinyness?

No. But, maybe.

The other day I felt kind of sick, so when I finally got around to eating something for dinner, I got out my smallest nice-looking bowl--a red ramekin--and filled it with leftover mac and cheese. It was lovely. It wasn't actually that small of a portion, though. Smallish, but not crazy if it had been just one pile on a plate with three or four different things, instead of just a clementine. I think. It was really more than a few days ago, I don't remember!

(Here comes the first internet-glimpse of my cooking/eating area!)

When I reheated my leftover Chinese food from the weekend, using two ramekins seemed the most logical. Neither the rice nor the chicken and broccoli would get overcooked while trying to heat the other fully, and it wouldn't let a lot of steam out--important for rice.

And it was cute.

Cute red little ramekins and tasty food make me happy. And are good for portion control, maybe.

Okay, you're right. Time for a better post. Soon!

Desk of Tiny Things

2012-01-07T16:55:00.003-05:00

The exhausting process of purchasing and wrapping presents, cleaning and cooking in a house of invalids (this year, both parents), and celebrating Christmas is over. The brief relaxing spell that barely came is gone. The New Year's journey and revelry has passed. All the out-of-town guests are flying back to their homes and universities. I'm back in my bedroom, back to sleeping in my own bed, after those busy itinerant weeks.

Let's the start the year off right with a post about my Desk of Tiny Things, because that is relevant and fascinating.

It is relevant. I finished eating those clementine wedges mere moments ago. Little bit of orange on a little blue plate on a little white desk, next to a little bit of tips. To tell the truth, three dollars is a decent tip-haul at my restaurant, which is not full-service, but in the land of tips, three dollars for one night is tiny.

Rachel gave Emma and me tiny glass creatures for Christmas. Mine is the penguin, a popular choice because I love them. (Ali gave me a festive penguin travel mug.) The alligator or crocodile or whatever has silly warts on his snout to go with his goofy eyes.

Fox fox foxy fox—named by his creator, Emma (the person who named a respectable feline "Table Cat").

He's the best needle-felted Christmas gift I've ever witnessed. Look at that tail.

Time to venture out into the wild world of grocery shopping, but first—happy new year!

Out of Great Misery, A Miracle

2011-12-19T23:42:00.001-05:00

One of my favorite things to eat in the whole world is my parents' "Bread Soufflé" (not the most appealing name, but that's immaterial). I prefer to call it a cheddar soufflé, because that describes the flavor, not the part where the whole recipe is cheating. Instead of doing all the work for a soufflé, which, I guess, might not actually rise, you cut up (generally sandwich, preferably staleish) bread into squares, mix it with grated cheddar in a baking dish, then soak the whole thing in a milky-egg mixture and bake. Delicious.

I got home yesterday, from day fifteen of my nineteen-day work-every-day stretch, and the only thing I wanted to eat was this soufflé. But it takes an hour to bake. I was hungry and tired. So I spent an hour on the computer, and I was still hungry, and still tired, and no soufflé.

Then it came to me. A thought I'm sure I've had once or twice before. The miracle.

French-toast grilled cheese. (Sadly, not actually an original idea. I checked afterward.)

And some bacon, because—why not? And apple cider, because 'tis still the season.

How did I accomplish this feat? Egg and milk in a shallow bowl like usual, minus vanilla or cinnamon or anything like that. Soak the bread, not too much. Cook one side of one slice, take it out. Cook one side of the second slice, flip it over. Put the cheese on the cooked side, which is facing up. Place the first piece of bread, cooked side down, on the cheese. Cook, flip, cook, cut, watch the cheddar ooze out, enjoy.

Soufflé is better. The crispy edges and crispy cheese on top. The cheese mixed in with everything else. It might be good to sort of burn some grated cheddar onto the outsides of the sandwich, but then it could get messy. I wasn't feeling that adventuresome.

(How many times can you say 'soufflé' in a blog post without sounding completely ridiculous? For example: soufflé soufflé soufflé soufflé...)

Good News, This Time for Real

2011-12-13T20:10:00.001-05:00

You can tell I have internet because I'm streaming 30 Rock from Netflix. What you can't tell from this screenshot is that the little spinning rainbow circle (called by Jared and probably the world the "wheel of death," if I remember correctly) was my cursor at that moment, and I had to restart Firefox. Internet can't fix an old computer. Slash I didn't pay for the fastest internet.

X = the Internet

2011-12-13T14:46:00.002-05:00

I guess I jinxed it with my last post. I was too busy drinking "November Cider" and eating crème brûlée at Cafe Zola to install my internet. On Saturday, between IKEA and work and more boyfriend-birthday-events, I tried twice. On Sunday after work, twice more. On Monday evening, I called the help line. First a robot tried to help, then a human, and tonight I get a real human presence.

It's been a month and two days since my internet was supposed to be activated the first time.

I've come to realize I operate in a sort of flow-chart way. I need x settled before I can figure out y, and then hopefully z will follow. I also can't do a or b until x is taken care of. X has been "the internet" for a long time, so being disconnected from the world has stood in the way of a lot of things. Probably not all of them are logical, but oh well, it's how it works. (I'm in a freezing-cold-despite-space-heater plus boredom-induced workplace stupor right now, so I can't even remember most of the goals for which progress has been stalled these several months. Besides "can't write another blog post until my internet is set up.")

It's a really good way to not get anything done.

That's not true! So many gifts purchase/wrapped/delivered/coveted by me to the extent that you might not get yours John (sorry), so much delicious fatty food consumed, so many candles burned.

One of my current projects is being more of a girl. I may be copying Jane Marie's HOW TO BE A GIRL column, or just reading it on those days I bother to open the Hairpin on my office computer, but mainly this is a joke and I follow neither her nor anyone else. I just want better skin and maybe nicer makeup brushes, the latter of which I do learn about from the internet, and other things. Like candles!

My exploration into candles has been successful. Too bad I never have dinner parties or quiet get-togethers with more than two people where I could make use of my now-plentiful candle options.

I was getting into the holiday spirit. Except for those first three summer-stragglers. They're cubes, though, so they could stand in for presents. If I were crazy and had a Christmas-tree candle. (I'm not and I don't.)

Also, did you know that with block candles, you're supposed to cut off the excess wax when the wick sinks down more than some number of centimeters from the top? Who does that?

Good News

2011-12-06T17:01:00.000-05:00

Good news indeed. I should be blogging from the comfort of my own home in a matter of days. Does that expression even make sense? A matter of days.

I've been hard at work spending all my money on the people I love. Christmas comes and another year goes by without my paying back any of my student loans, just racking up interest. But the sparkly things I've purchased! The holiday cookies I've already eaten! (Only two. In two days. 'Cause they are "decadently enrobed" in chocolate.)

Things I am going to do once I have internet:

1. Not use it for at least the first three hours it is available, because I will be working when the internet magically turns on a 8 pm on Friday.
2. Read the entire archives of The Hairpin's Ask a Clean Person series. Because I enjoy them.
3. Download the last few months of bank statements.
4. Read all those things I've been putting in a list of things to read when not busy doing other things (i.e. working, being at work, NaBloPoMo-ing or trying to). Nope. Probably never.
5. Write emails to my far-off friends, which is too hard to do when in a public place like work.
6. Then I will watch all the rest of 30 Rock on Netflix, all in one sitting, because I don't have to wait for DVD holds to come in at the library anymore.

It will be a good weekend full of headaches.

Success

2011-11-30T22:40:00.000-05:00

Waking up.

Coming home.

I'd forgotten how magical winter light is with snow on the ground and up the sides of the trees.
* * *
With the first significant snowfall yesterday evening, I'm oh so ready for December. So many snow-smiles today.

But November, now: I did it! I didn't publicize it, but I was doing NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I thought about trying my hand at NaNoWriMo again (Novel Writing), but I knew with every fiber of my being that it would not, could not go well. I barely managed a blog post a day, so forget seven pages of fiction.

I bent the rules early on. A post a day, before a midnight-deadline, was impossible. But thirty posts in thirty days is basically the same, and something I could manage. I backdated the late ones so that it would be obvious I had fulfilled my task—a post for every day, if not posted every day. If I'd had internet in my home, I might have kept the rules stricter, but sometimes there's just not enough energy left for a walk back to campus. With this post, I've hit the thirty-post mark. I've got the momentum back. I think, after all those false starts, I've brought the blog back.

Yay!

Crunching Through December

2011-11-29T23:59:00.000-05:00

It's horrible-time in horrible-land.

Okay, fine, sentences with meaning. It's crunch time in university-land. Exams, term papers, other papers. Sometimes you get to turn in five in nine days, and also become a year older and not really celebrate! If you are my boyfriend.

It's crunch time in my land, too, but I am crunching toward December 1st, not crunching toward sometime closer to Christmas. Maybe this crunching thing doesn't work as an extended metaphor. I did finally buy some potato chips yesterday! With the end of November end my blogging obligations. (Blobligations? Bloglibations? Neither!) (That syntax back in the non-parenthetical preceding sentence would totally work in German, instead of sounding almost cool but actually just wrong like it does in English.)

This post is the last thing I have to write tonight before I can trudge home through the sludge to my bed. When November ends, NaBloPoMo ends, and I can write without guilt spurring me on, and spend less time commuting to internet (especially once December 9th rolls around and internet is activated in my home). But my boyfriend is busy. Very, importantly busy. So with my new-found time, I am going to make things. I will cook dinners—everyone has to eat, so he can multitask when he sees me. I will cook things I haven't cooked before, and cook for just me. I will read some new books. And I am trying my hardest to hang out with friends. Movies, dinner, coffee shops, grocery shopping. You offer it, I'll take it. I offer it, you better take it.

Even though yesterday, he told me,

"this is death week though
fucking term paper
all the weeks are death weeks"

today, my brother invited me to eat delicious fried rice he's making on Thursday, and next week to an experimental more-authentic pasta alla carbonara. If I play my cards right, John could fill all my free time, be all my friends, and all my new cooking experiences.

No. He does work sometimes.

* * *

I lied. I have other things to do, deadlines to meet. What's with all these December birthdays? It's hard enough to think of and afford Christmas presents for everyone. In fact, I usually fail.

Saturday's birthday girl lives many states away, so her presents should be in the mail. Since they go by mail, her Christmas and birthday gifts should travel together. My sad busy boyfriend's birthday is Wednesday. I don't know which night, if any, I'm taking off to celebrate.

I have been working on card designs, and silly details to go along with things, and creative packaging materials. I'm not so clear on gifts. Once I make it past the early-December birthdays, there's a translation I want to do for someone, and photos to pick to print, and frames to find, and everything else to figure out. Christmas celebration number one is December 17th. There's not a lot of time!

Fact Into Fiction

2011-11-28T23:49:00.000-05:00

I've gotten used to the loud raindrops that fall on the roof right on the other side of the wall from my pillow. A gutter spills or leaks from the third-floor roof onto my second-floor, almost flat roof, so that it drips even after the rain has stopped.

I wonder if I'll remember this, so that someday it will find its way into something else, where it can fill a gap and fit in.

Negative Anticipation

2011-11-27T20:26:00.001-05:00

How do you overcome the end-of-vacation dread? Or, if you're me, end-of-tiny-one-day-weekend or sometimes simply end-of-Thursday dread, because Thursday is a nice, pleasant day, and Friday is not.

I had a great Thanksgiving break. Wednesday night, I got to go to IKEA and eat the new version of the Daim-Torte that has cream! on top under a layer of chocolate, and my boyfriend bought a couch. Which I will get to sit on! someday in the future when perhaps I, perhaps he, perhaps a team effort has put it together. And then my dad had cooked my brother John and me meatloaf for dinner. In the morning, my family actually left on time to drive to my cousins' in Lansing, where we drank delicious late Riesling and I ate my third Thanksgiving feast of the week. On Friday, I went to my five-year high school reunion, and it was actually really fun. It was actually too short, or maybe just too crowded by the end. (We agreed that no one had really gotten fat.) I spent Saturday morning catching up with a friend from my year in Germany, and the afternoon was the fourth and final Thanksgiving, complete with tasty apple crisp—there's something different at every one—and a timid cat who not only allowed, but asked me to pet her for the first time ever.

And then it was home again, home again. I was sullen because I didn't know how I wanted to spend those last few hours of freedom. I'd been in a bad mood all day, when not otherwise occupied, and I couldn't shake it. Like I've written before, it gets better once I'm in it, it being that stupid normal thing that happens all the time and yet I dread, but it's so hard to convince myself ahead of time. At work at the restaurant on Sunday, we were doing what you might term 'deep cleaning,' because there wasn't a lot of business, and cleanliness is great. They're not all pleasant tasks, but it was fine. I got some stupid satisfaction from making things clean, and I chatted with my co-workers between tasks. When I left work, I was in a good mood. Once I sat down in the computer lab, after standing for seven hours, I almost fell asleep. Then I almost had Panera for dinner, but it closes early on Sundays. Then I almost made Kraft mac and cheese for dinner, but—surprise ending!–I had dinner with a friend and her mom who had just finished seeing a movie at my favorite theater, and everything was nice. I just wish I had been able to avoid the negative anticipation of the day before.

How can a regular human being like me avoid it? Or—why are vacations so seldom long enough?

Correlation, Causation, Nope

2011-11-26T20:14:00.000-05:00

Apparently, the Rudolph who attends the Grosse Pointe Thanksgiving Parade (and delivers the presents to little Grosse Pointers?) hasn't grown his full antlers yet. He looks pretty sad.
If reindeer delivered fresh-baked bread to Trader Joe's, I could blame Rudolph or Santa or Dasher or Dancer or Prancer or Blitzen for there being no fresh bread that day. They were too busy showing off at the parade.

Festivity and Tree Troubles Anticipated

2011-11-25T15:28:00.000-05:00

I remember this commercial from last year fondly. Such pleasant Christmasy sights and sounds. Such a funny little quivering rein-dog at the end. Drew, let's get some Stella. Heyyy, advertising.

In the minds of the semi-insane, it is now justifiably Christmastime. I agree with the lights on the trees—they can go up as soon as the leaves are gone, in my opinion, so they can start saving us from winter despair—and decorated storefronts are acceptable, considering consumerism and all that. (They were not acceptable at Halloween.)

But my family will never have a Christmas tree before the 22nd or so. We make up for it by leaving the tree up forever once it's there, because lights are nice, and who wants to put the ornaments away? Emma and I did it differently. Knowing we would be gone from Ann Arbor at the crucial Christmas-tree time, we got them the first week of December or so, to make the most of the purchase and prolong the holiday joy. We then suffered as a result of those ten- or fifteen-dollar Scotch Pines for the rest of the year. There were always more needles to be vacuumed.

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos. Taken at the Weihnachtsparty ( = Christmas party) senior year.

Those Scotch Pines at Home Depot were the cheapest trees we could find. We wanted smallish trees, because full-sized trees awaited us (or at least me—Emma and her mom like cute, manageable trees) at home. My current apartment requires something much smaller, though, and I think that means I have to buy a living tree. The best way to get a tiny evergreen is one in a pot, for a lot more than fifteen dollars, but I don't want a fir tree of my own, to plant where afterward? We have too many trees in my parents' backyard as it is. So I might get a houseplant sort of tree and hang lights on it. Maybe a Norfolk Pine. My dad brought one of those home for Christmas one year, along with a traditional Douglas Fir. The Norfolk came with extremely lightweight, somewhat tacky, little gold-colored ornaments that attached with golden pipecleaners, which we saved to use every Christmas until the tree got too big for our house and he donated it to city hall. I hadn't thought about my small array of ornaments being too heavy for a non-traditional Christmas tree. I want to use them. Maybe I'll have to take Emma's advice and get a silly little, totally fake, white or silver tree.

Let's All Get Couches!

2011-11-24T23:32:00.000-05:00

I am thankful for my red leather Klippan couch, which is truly a dream come true for me. Not everyone likes IKEA, not everyone likes this iconic model, which is mainly known as a cheeeap couch, not everyone likes leather. I don't really like leather. But when I saw this couch the first time, I knew I had to have it. If I entered and won that $500 IKEA sweepstakes, that beautiful beautiful gift card would have bought me my $500 red leather Klippan. At the time, it seemed like an exorbitant amount to spend on a couch that's not even that big (it only comes in Klippan-"loveseat," which while bigger than a loveseat, is not as big as Klippan-"sofa"). It would be a frivolous purchase, even if it waited until I was older with a job and things. Because it's red, and leather, and a little silly. But someday, I would own it—my future self, who has $500 to spend on a single item. (Can I talk to you, future self, about some things you could buy for me?) The couch would last, and then when I became more serious and needed more couches and a real life and had children and new boring concerns, maybe it would be moved into the bedroom, where it would be a wardrobe-extension by day (putting clothes away is hard), occasional site of refuge, reading in the bedroom with the door firmly shut, by night. It would be the symbol of a wilder youth.

My youth, you guys—it has been so wild. Still, the couch would be a prize, held onto and cherished and hidden from children who might throw up on it or scratch it. I imagine that children are loads of fun all the time, you see.

But lo, a miracle. $250 advertised on Craigslist. $220 in person. Used, but gently. It's the second year of my dream couch and I still love it.

Moving it (and my super cheap IKEA sofabed stacked on top, and my bedding and my popcorn maker and my printer and my fan and my everything) in my parents' minivan to Emma's and my attic apartment, last August, not this August that just happened. My dad is a great packer.

I'm also thankful for Table Cat, even if he is blocking the view of my couch. Ah, attic living.

I'm thankful for this delicious turkey soup, made from the carcass of the turkey my boyfriend's mom made. Yum yum. So lovingly separated for me from the rest of the broth before unnecessary vegetables were added to it. It kept me happily fed those last two days before heading homeward.

Thank you, friend, boy-, soup-maker, for cooking that carcass for seven hours until I got to enjoy that wondrous turkey broth. (I will, apparently, never type 'broth' without typing 'brother' first.) Even if you hide from photos that incriminate you as a wearer of sunglasses, you did pay for an entire day of me in Toronto, complete with you reading the maps, me sleeping on a beach in the Beaches, each of us eating two scoops of some of the best ice cream ever, and all the rest, just because I turned a year older sometime in the past month.

Thank you for actually picking out and purchasing your couch after three trips to IKEA in as many months. Such a feat. Even if yours isn't quite a dream come true. Let's all get couches!

Where Are My Potato Chips?

2011-11-23T16:24:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was never-ending rain.
Today is sunshine.
I've seen potato chips on two separate desks in this office. Clipped shut. Abandoned.
Can I just eat some chips and leave while there's still light?

Packing Is the Worst

2011-11-22T22:37:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to pack for Thanksgiving. Tomorrow I've got a haircut, a phone date (hi Ali!), work, and then a ride home (hi Emma!), perhaps with a detour to IKEA. So basically, there's no time tomorrow and I need to do my dishes and pack tonight. But that means I have to come up with the clothes I want to wear to all these occasions with real people at them, people I don't see all the time, occasions where I don't just wear one of my boring uniforms (in other words, I'm not going to wear mayo-streaked black pants soaked in the greasy air of a commercial kitchen and a baseball cap, nor am I going to wear grey khakis and respectable flats and a sweater) but instead wear clothes that are nice. Or, like, one of my two pairs of black flats, but the cute ones that can't go out in the rain, and the same jeans I wear whenever I don't have to work, because they are THE ONLY JEANS LEFT, and then that turtleneck sweater I got three Saturdays ago and have worn EVERY SATURDAY SINCE. (Not this Saturday, I swear.)

But there are two Thanksgivings to go, and a high school reunion. That means, hopefully, three different outfits. Plus something to wear to IKEA and to get my glasses adjusted on Friday so I don't look permanently crooked at the reunion/for the rest of the year. I'm sick of being crooked. And when am I coming back to Ann Arbor? What am I doing in the time that's not already violently scheduled? Probably being violently mauled by my Isabel, in which case I will just wear sweatpants and clothes I can leave behind because they are covered in her fur.

I was sitting on my couch last night, staring at my open closet, trying to convince myself to deal with this wardrobe situation and not watch a second or third or fourth episode of 30 Rock (I stopped before four), when I realized that a substantial number of the items hanging before me were five years or more old, just like my high school diploma. There's pretty much no way I'm not using my black leather purse this weekend—the one I picked out for Christmas senior year of high school. I don't think anyone will remember, or care, but most girls have more than two purse options for going to the bar. I pretty much only have one I would consider for this weekend, and its handle is dried out and cracking, its lining has black ink from an exploded pen all over it, and I've been carrying it for nigh on six years. The other options are too schooly, too summery, too utilitarian, or too fancy. (Where's my -y word for 'utilitarian'?) Then again, maybe I don't need a purse for an open bar, just a license and a cell phone. But then I have to wave my cell phone around all night, because I will not have it bulging out of my pocket.

I always assumed I wouldn't go to a five-year reunion. It seemed like it would be too early to care. Too early to have succeeded at anything, if reunions are about showing that you are great! and not fat! and not alone! like TV shows always tell us (including 30 Rock, this evening, playing on my computer screen). We have Facebook, so we've got some sort of handle on the lives of most of the people we care about. Except for the ones that made their Facebooks tiny-profile-, no-wall-only. Or the ones we missed in that friending-rampage that shook the internet when we graduated and made our college profiles, and then couldn't just friend later, because it was weird to do it later, even if they were in more of your classes than those other people who friended you, who you never really talked to.

Anyway. Reunions. Weird. I was reading some advice column or something on the Hairpin the other day, and whoever was dispensing advice said something like, "College friend? Why does he still care about his college friends? They stop being your friends after like five years." I was flabbergasted. Or some emotion less silly-sounding. I thought college friends were supposed to last. My situation isn't totally normal, in that some of my closest college friends are my best high school friends, in which case they transcend those labels and are just my best friends, leaving room for other people to be best college friends, but still. I make friends seriously. For keeps, maybe.

I'm excited to see the friends (hi Sarah!) I know I'm going to see at the reunion. As long as no one asks me what I'm doing. And no one thinks I look fat.

That was a joke! Mostly! What am I going to wear?!

Maybe I Should Make a 'Transportation' Label

2011-11-21T23:07:00.000-05:00

This is my bike. Not the lovely, white, somewhat antique Peugeot in the back; it's the beat-up Huffy in front. I've had it since sometime in high school—all my other bikes were tied to birthdays, so I can pin them down, but not this one. There was my first bike, on my fifth birthday, an extremely 80s white one with thin black squiggles of wild paint and fluorescent yellow wheels surrounded by white tires. I think we tried to name it Zebra at some point, but naming bikes doesn't really work for me. The next one was Black Beauty, or maybe the Black Stallion (not so feminine, nor beautiful), but that name didn't stick either. It was a black Magna with yellow and orange bits. On that bike, I finally learned to balance on two wheels, and then to start the bike rolling on my own, at which point I convinced my parents I could have a proper girls' bike that I wouldn't have to pass on to my brother. I was turning nine years old. This bike came with a name, "Glamour Girl," as well as shiny streamers on the handles and serious glitter you could feel as little bumps when you ran your hand along the shiny turquoise body. The color and the glitter outweighed the stupid name; though eventually, I had to rip the streamers out and peel off the Glamour Girl and all other associated labels.

My dad bought me my current bike less than two years after he bought me my first full-size bike, which was a nice, dark purple with a comfy, wide old-lady seat. Once I realized that was something to be embarrassed about, I was, but I also loved that bike. (I wish the current one was as comfy as that one was.) My dad has a habit of forgetting to close the garage door; one night, that cost me my bike. So we went to K-Mart, I think, and I chose this purply-blue Huffy (historically a favorite color of mine) with thick curves inspired by old-fashioned bikes and a matte finish (still with subtle glitter). It turned out that a water bottle doesn't fit in the normal place because of the way the bike curves; the lack of space can also make locking it difficult, since I use a thick lock with little give. The suedey finish on the bike seat, soft and appealing when I first got it, has dried out, cracked, lost a layer, and now soaks in all moisture it meets. If I leave a plastic bag on the seat overnight to protect against rain, I'm confronted with a wet seat inside from condensation. It takes forever to dry out. The handles are cushioned by foam, which, like the seat, has dried out and holds in moisture. The gears don't like me very much, and my back brake—you know, the important one—needs to be fixed again.

Still, it's essential. My bike keeps me within ten minutes of everywhere I regularly need to be, as it has for the past two years (excluding Detroit, an important destination for the past year if not anymore, but one that required my dearly departed Honda). I am, with my bike, less than ten minutes from the train station. Both jobs, my brother, my boyfriend. If there was anywhere I actually liked to buy groceries in this radius, I'd be set. Still grumpy, but more contentedly self-sufficient. Between downtown and campus, it's usually faster to bike than to drive, anyway, partially because traffic laws feel flexible when you're on only two wheels.

But I kind of hate it. I hate the hills in Ann Arbor. I hate how I bike up the same ones, day in and day out, and it never gets easier. I keep doing it, and I keep getting exhausted. We lived for a year at the bottom of a hill, and every day I biked to class—often in the rain, sometimes in the snow—I had to pedal up that hill. It felt like it took forever to reach Hill Street (ha ha) and be able to catch my breath and charge forward onto campus and to class. Coming home, though—it was great. To work hard to get to class, a place I usually didn't really want to be, made sense in some way. It was unlikely I would enjoy the way there, but the way home was fantastic. I raced down East University once, sometimes two times a day. If the street was dry, the traffic sparse, I'd let go of the handlebars completely and fly down the hill. Sometimes I dared keep my hands off even at the curve, so I could practice steering, not just balancing, simply with my body.

These days, I bike on busy streets, steeper, faster hills, in the wind and the rain (and the snow, as of last week). On these streets, I'm too cautious to fly, and I don't really want to bike for fun when I've been biking back and forth all day. It's also cold. If I were writing this in the spring, it might be different. Now walking feels like a treat sometimes. My impatience and my chronic tardiness are the reasons I bike so much more than I walk. Even if I don't have to be somewhere as soon as possible, my instinct is to pedal pedal pedal, make as many lights as I can, and be done. I'm better at relaxing while walking than biking, though again, the cold makes me want to get from A to B with the utmost speed. It's also easier to keep your pants dry when your legs aren't perpendicular to the sky.

Thanksgiving 2011, Part II of IV

2011-11-20T23:40:00.000-05:00

Yesterday we had Thanksgiving with my boyfriend's mom and brother, before heading to Cranbrook. Today, I took off the last hour and a half of work at the restaurant so I could make it to my brother John's apartment in time for the appetizers at his and his roommate's lovely Thanksgiving—which was the site of my brother's first turkey attempt. It was a success, and the gravy was, in one guest's words, the "best [she'd] ever had."

Skins in mashed potatoes is a crime in my book. But never fear—you can bake the skins with oil and enjoy them, instead of throwing them in the trash! This was a revelation for some of us.

The great tragedy of the evening was that the double-batch of corn casserole, which is a must for any Thanksgiving meal John attends, failed to bake in a timely matter. The shape of dish and the sheer mass of it resulted in a jiggly mass of corn muffin mix, sour cream, and canned as well as creamed corn hours after it should have been done. The crispy edges that baked were still delicious. But I, foolishly thinking my stomach was recovering from the meal, ate two buttery little morsels of it. And I could feel how there wasn't any space free for them.

The table was beautiful (complete with name cards!), thanks to Rachel, his roommate, and the mulled white wine sangria was delicious. We finished it all off with raspberry chiffon and apple pie—prettier in person, I promise.

Eventually, I ventured forth toward bed. I cannot convey to you the pain of biking with Thanksgiving in your stomach.

This Evening

2011-11-19T23:11:00.000-05:00

...we went to the newly-reopened Cranbrook Art Museum. We couldn't find the entrance, at first, because the original entrance is opposite the library entrance pictured above. We knew it was supposed to be the original entrance. But it looked so dark, that we went looking for another one at first. But you should know, if you go there, that the entrance is up there, past the fountain that my night-photography skills couldn't capture. And it's nice.

It's open a few more days—11 days from 11/11/11, 11 hours each day.

Chez Moi

2011-11-18T17:27:00.001-05:00

I've lived in my new apartment, the first home I've had all to myself, for almost three months now, and yet so few people have seen it, it seems. I guess I introduced my desk, and another brief glimpse of my bedroom back in October, but it's time to unveil the oasis.

What? If it's being unveiled, it must be exciting, like an oasis. It certainly isn't large, so that angle's out, nor is it impeccably decorated. I'm trying, but there are gaps. When you boil pasta or take a shower, it is steamy like a jungle , and it is an island of warmth in this cold, cold sea. It's hard to fit the whole bed+living room in one photo, because, well, it's just so small. And cozy!

This photo from when I was in Ireland needs to go on the wall between the window and the cabinet.

Here are the gaps I'm talking about. I've got a map for over the desk, one framed poster (Croatian naive art bought in Zagreb!) to go over the couch, but it needs a collage of other frames (to be purchased) with it to fill that massive space—I have nine-foot ceilings! My obliging father painted it for me, and he just brought a paint bucket to stand on, because it was easier than a ladder and worked at home. At home, we have eight-foot ceilings. Thank goodness my landlord keeps a painting ladder in the basement.

My cantilever chairs are antiques. I'm so cool. My parents bought them in the seventies when they moved into their first apartment together (also in Ann Arbor). My dad says they're from the beginning of the twentieth century. ~~He helped me~~ I helped him reupholster them for Emma and me to use last year. Can't wait 'til Deutschland is on the wall. The pastels of the different Bundesstaaten (states) go great with my "ice cube" walls. They're so pale they don't quite show up right in these photos, but you can take my word that they're lovely. Oh, and that hallway is my breakfast-lunch-dinner nook, which leads to the kitchen and then the bathroom. But those are for another time.

Close-up of my ivory velveteen curtains (which I still have to hem). Funny story—I washed the velveteen for the curtain for the little window over the bed, to pre-shrink it, and when I took it out of the dryer, the raised leaf pattern was gone! Thank goodness I didn't shrink the big curtains.

These are my lovely Simply Shabby Chic sheets, which were discontinued before I moved, causing much anguish. But I found them on eBay, and now can happily coordinate with my walls.

The biggest question: where will I fit a Christmas tree; or: where will I find a tree small enough to fit?

I Need More Friends, Feline or Otherwise

2011-11-17T19:46:00.001-05:00

Yesterday I stopped to visit my kitty friends on my way to Nickels Arcade, where I intended to and did enjoy a pain au chocolat. (Side note: how can anyone get anything done at Comet? The baristas were chat chat chatting away with the customers, and there were so many people going back and forth, that I couldn't stop listening and watching. It was great, but I didn't get a lot of reading done.) I met with early success—the mother cat retreated to under the porch, and the kitten, lulled by my flicking-leaves-with-leaf-stems ways, allowed me to pet its head and its chin and its back. It didn't quite get that it was supposed to enjoy it though. I tried to pick it up, but the mother's head popped out, hissing ferociously, so I gave up.

She hates me.

Well Maybe Just Half a Drink More

2011-11-16T22:05:00.001-05:00

You know what's great? Sidecars. Look how goldy that beautiful thing is. Look how pretty, the sugar rim. And the shadow!

If only the Coach Insignia, the restaurant at the top of the Ren Cen, was less boring-slick and more cozy-fancy. It's still a great stop on a birthday night (that was almost six months ago but I can still bring it up), and you can't beat the view in this part of the world. It's even better to have a Detroit expert with you, but either way you're so high in the sky and there are so many lights forever, because that's how this giant metro area works.

We were there on the weekend (two weekends ago already!) with Emma and Ali and Drew. Drew's friend joined us, taking a break from night three (?) of the anime convention taking place in the building. Why I didn't take photos, I don't know, but there were teenagers and not-teenagers in all sorts of costumes running all over the place. Not so much in the restaurant. We didn't see many people who were old enough to drink, and if you're doing it all weekend, you probably don't want to be paying Coach Insignia prices. Cocktails, all weekend! Nope.
Ali and Drew posed perfectly. It was their last dating anniversary—next year, they'll be married! I don't know why they wanted to spend it with us, but I enjoyed it. The photos with me in them failed, so I shall allow them to fade out of memory.

Ali's drink was also pretty. It was pomegranate liqueur and champagne. Not as good as the nineteen-dollar Kir Royale I had once by accident (the accident was the price, not the drink). Drew passed up drinks for a huge, delicious piece of apple pie. Also not pictured, because I'm not used to keeping up with my blog.

Now comes the part where we think about winter.

This is what's coming. I'm sure of it. Sunsets, and broken-up ice the whole width of the river. And down coats with fur-trimmed hoods—I got one this year. I'm ready. Just like Emma, pictured above.

My ice-cold indoor nose is not ready, however. I get that computers are hot, but do they have to air-condition the Fishbowl this much? Glühwein, anyone? Such a nice word. Glow-wine. Mmm.

Stream of Consciousness and Stone-Ground Wheat Crackers

2011-11-15T21:11:00.001-05:00

I really want to eat those Trader Joe's stone-ground wheat crackers I have in my cupboard at home. Let's be honest here—I want to eat those crackers with generous portions of butter on each one.

I want to want some decadent ice cream, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't enjoy my crazy fudge moose tracks fancy store brand ice cream as much as those crackers with butter. I'm cold. The Fishbowl, that famed computer lab where, the tour guides tell you, "I've never had to wait for a computer," even though the Mac section with seats is usually almost or completely full, and the PC side not much better, is so cold.

My strawberry banana with pineapple juice smoothie (smoothie 4A!) is also cold. My fingers are very cold. If I had internet of my own, I could write you a blog post that was about something, because I could be warm and reclining on my couch at the same time. I was supposed to have internet today. But the website lied, the service it sold me is no longer offered in my area, and though I will eventually receive a Visa rebate card for the stupid expensive modem I have to buy, I have to wait until the ninth of December for it to be activated. (Can you guess how excited I am to buy a $100-item during holiday-shopping-time, and not get the rebate Visa card until after holiday shopping is over? Bad timing.)

UPS delivered the setup package for the other, simple DSL to me today anyway. I was excited to get a package—could it be cookies from New York? Something else from New York? (My favorite aunt lives in New York. State.) No, it's instructions and cords for internet that I don't get to have. Thank you, AT&T.

I finished the current Outlander book I was on. Safely landed on the coast of Georgia, thank goodness. Books like that are addictions. I got within forty pages of the end and there was no way to stop. So I'm waiting, a bit, before I start the fourth book. I don't want it to go too fast. (At the same time, I want to read other books, Literature of Merit, Foreign Language Literature, that thing I guess I'm trying to translate for a competition eeeeeeeeee, seriously, that's how I feel.) It can't really go too fast, because there are four books left, at this point. Two of which I haven't read before! But the tunnel vision, that great need to be reading the book—I've got to stave it off for a bit or else I might not think about anything else. And then what will I blog about for the rest of this demanding month?

So I'm going to bike home, stick that disc of 30 Rock in my laptop, and eat some buttered crackers. Two episodes to go before I have to return it tomorrow. So doable!

I can't believe there aren't any pictures of those crackers on the internet. In the first few rows of Google Image results. How?

Not A Fellini Film

2011-11-14T10:27:00.001-05:00

Did you do your homework? Just kidding.

In another life I would be your girl
We keep all our promises be us against the world
In another life I would make you stay
So I don't have to say you were the one that got away

For now, unlike Katy Perry in this song, I don't need another life where I would "make [him] stay," because I'm in the relationship-continues-to-exist universe. Hear that, honey? Our relationship continues to exist. In a good way!

There's been an awful lot of Katy Perry playing on Pandora in the kitchen where I work. And I'm okay with that, okay, because sometimes, Katy Perry is great. And by sometimes, I mean usually, especially if it's "Teenage Dream." I agree one hundred percent with what this Hairpin writer has to say about "Teenage Dream" in this incredibly long but interesting post about Marilyn Monroe:

Niagra [sic] also has an amazing scene where, when asked why she put on a particular song, Monroe replies “There are no other songs.” I know the feeling, Marilyn. That’s how I responded when people asked me why I listened to Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” for five weeks straight.

Except five weeks? I think it was longer for me. The release of "Teenage Dream" as a single coincided with the first month of our relationship being official, as well the first month of my living independently again after a summer with my parents, which made things less teenagery and much better. Anyway, the sentiment fit and it was SO CATCHY. Finding "Teenage Dream" on the radio was often my primary form of entertainment on the drive from Ann Arbor to Detroit on Friday nights.

But I'm not writing about "Teenage Dream," because there isn't much to say about that. "Teenage Dream" is straightforward. Love, happiness, skin-tight jeans. "The One That Got Away" is a fraction less obvious. Oh god, I just watched the video. Katy Perry in old-person makeup. Death. Did not interpret that song the way the video did. Did not interpret it very much at all. See, it's less obvious than "Teenage Dream," because there are multiple interpretations. You can lose someone to your being a bitch, to another woman, or to death. What's even less obvious is why I'm using a song about losing the love of your life to write about my current relationship. But it made me think about it, so you're gonna have to deal.

The thing is, we dated before. We dated for a couple months in our final year as teenagers, at the dangerous age of nineteen. Uh oh, I promise I didn't see another song coming, but this one is unavoidable in my personal mythology. And the Old 97's are great.

Nineteen is not the age of reason
I didn't have a reason for setting you free
I've seen a lot of love go sour
But that's not our love, you see the problem was
I was only nineteen

He was at the end of nineteen, I was at the beginning, and we'd both been dating other people, long-distance, the first year of our friendship. That detail isn't really relevant, that we'd met each other while attached. I guess it's relevant in that those broken friendships continued to affect us after we got together. I'd been dating my first boyfriend, my high school boyfriend, up until two weeks before we suddenly but also not-so suddenly leapt into a relationship and proceeded to float on the surface for a little while, before he called it quits and I acquiesced, quietly, then finished falling apart on my own. Nineteen was hard. Most of my friends agree that sophomore year of college was something like torture (except maybe Andrew in some random Facebook outburst where he declared he wanted to go back to sophomore year, but even he does agree with me when in the right frame of mind, and maybe he was being a masochist, anyway). There were money problems, and future problems, and friend problems, and no-longer-boyfriend problems, and those in turn led to sleep problems, and that's no good. (For my pride, which still exists even though I at one point declared that "I won!", I would like to state here that the insomnia preceded the breakup. If anyone's counting.)

It had started on the internet in the agony of the summer that preceded sophomore year, when we lived with our parents again. It started sitting next to each other on the impressively wooden-looking dorm room floor with an illicit bottle of wine, only two wine glasses, and several more people. It started sitting on my new couch, probability says it was after a Fellini film but I'm guessing that wasn't true in this case, with that request that guys usually only have to make to girls who are scared of their first kiss, or in this case, scared of their first kiss with not their first boyfriend. I'd really like to kiss you. I was a bundle of nerves, for one reason or another, for at least six months, not that the relationship lasted anywhere near that long.

My friends told me that we might get back together. We'd probably get back together. Then it was that we would never get back together and even if he wanted to, we shouldn't, and I had to forget and move on and give up. He left for South America, I for Europe. I let go, I even forgot the feelings I had had, but not entirely. There were too many words I could remember if I tried.

You should come over in a little while, otherwise I might take a nap. I might just fall asleep too. That's why we go so well together.

Ali, endless romantic, never really lost hope. She'd send me love stories from blogs whose entire archives I later read. But the first posts I read by those bloggers were about meeting his now-wife sophomore year before leaving to study abroad; her then-boyfriend, years before they dated, with years of an ocean and other boyfriends and girlfriends between them. Proof, that it could happen and did happen and would happen.

And somehow, she was right. He didn't get away, not yet. Eventually, we were done with college, we were both single, and we weren't being too crazy. We were living in different cities when it started, and I proceeded to move to his city as he was moving closer to mine. But it happened.

P.S. Maybe Emma should help me do a post about our favorite Emma-developed cocktail, the "Teenage Dream." It's a variation on the Fountain of Youth, and so delicious. It may involve juice with corn syrup, though. Sometimes, that's all Meijer will give you.

P.P.S. So the Katy Perry tie-in was weak one. Let's be honest. I just have "The One That Got Away" stuck in my head, and I wanted to talk about my boyfriend.

Prereqs for Monday's Post

2011-11-13T20:07:00.000-05:00

I'm sure most of the world doesn't care, but this could be important for what I'm posting Monday night. Two are songs I love, two are from a more-than-platinum album, two involve teens. Correction: Two sets contain the same two songs. All three are catchy. Riddle me this!

Old 97's – Nineteen

Katy Perry – The One That Got Away

Katy Perry – Teenage Dream

Yellow

2011-11-12T15:27:00.001-05:00

I went on an early afternoon walk to breathe in the air and soak in the sun (not an activity approved for my skin type) and maybe entice some cats into my loving shadow. Either this yellow ginkgo tree or some chubby squirrel arms were the best part (all cats encountered were otherwise occupied).

I and my reluctantly functioning computer have been sitting with this view, but the sun is diminishing and I think I should go back outside before my chance for sunlight is gone. Two days ago it was snowing and I was trying out my new down coat; today I'm wearing a cashmere sweater for a jacket, but who knows how long this can last.

Plus I was going to bake some banana bread and think about going out to dinner. Saturdays are the best.

Goddamn, It's Friday

2011-11-11T16:23:00.001-05:00

I know, I know, I'm a twisted individual. It's Friday! The week's over! Exhale, change out of your work clothes, and have a drink. Go to a movie, an art gallery. Read a book in bed for the next twelve hours and then sleep until 1 pm.

No, don't do that, you will be so tired and then it will be practically dark again by the time you've gotten dressed and had breakfast.

But Friday, for me, is the worst. You'd think I'd be used to closing Friday nights at the restaurant. This is what, my eleventh month doing it? Before, though, I had Saturday and Sunday off so I could spend it with my boyfriend. You have to get your priorities right when you're in a long-distance relationship, no matter how long the distance is. Before, I just worked the six- or seven-hour closing shift, sweeping and mopping my way to weekend freedom. Now, I work at the law firm for four hours--easy, I know--bike over to campus, eat reluctant Italian-inspired dinner, maybe read a bit, and start working by six. I usually get home after eleven and want nothing but my bed, after over ten hours apart from it.

The biggest problem, though, is the ANGER. It's like the time I closed the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I volunteered to do this. And then I was standing there at the register, let's say 6 p.m., and it's black outside. And no one is coming into the restaurant. (I was actually probably scrubbing the inside of a refrigerator because there were so few customers.) Why, you ask? Why? Because it's Thanksgiving! They are on their way to or already with their families, you dummy! Why are you working? But it was just one time. I was okay. I went to the parade in the morning, and Thanksgiving went on.

This is almost EVERY FRIDAY. I have to serve jerks! Who can afford to eat out! On Friday! And add extra toppings, ninety-nine cents a pop! And a pop to drink! I don't buy drinks on Friday night. I scrape creamy marinara sauce out of bowls and wash them in soapy bleach-water that turns my hands to painful red monsters. On Friday night! And then I only have one day off before everything starts again.

Of course, I chose Friday night. I wanted one day completely off, and I picked Saturday, and that is my fault. It is also my fault that I haven't tried to get a Real Job that pays Real Money. Okay. You win.

So go forth, all ye who have the night off, and have a great time, while I try my best to reset my head to forget it's Friday so I don't scowl all night. Either way, don't come near me after 9 p.m. I will stab you with a to-go fork, or smother you with a to-go bag, because YOU DON'T NEED TO EAT HERE I WANT TO GO HOME TAKE YOUR FOOD WITH YOU BUT DON'T TAKE A BAG WHEN YOU ONLY HAVE ONE BOX TO TAKE WITH YOU, YOU INSENSITIVE EARTH-WRECKER.

Okay. No. It's just funnier this way. I'm okay. I can breathe. I'm gonna go enjoy some fettuccine alfredo. With broccoli, so I don't die.

Give Me a Home Where the Catamounts Roam

2011-11-10T21:38:00.001-05:00

Today, when I got out of work at the law firm, it was snowing. Not the weird pellet-snow that it started with, but actual snow, wet snow, and I had a broccoli to buy and a bike to ride. (You may be noticing this is a theme in my life. I mean the bike and inclement weather.) The only problem with the broccoli is that it is so sad to stop biking and go into a warm, dry place, and then have to leave it to hop back on the bike and get your glasses and pants wet some more before you get to be home. Also the broccoli at the co-op, surprise!, was sort of brown-y and weird on top and also in huge huge stalks that one person cannot eat fast enough when she has two super-long-have-to-eat-at-the-greasy-restaurant days in the next four, so I didn't buy any, and they also had no reasonably-sized potatoes, and then I just had bread and cheese for dinner. With some orange juice, but no pulp, so I will die unhealthy. (That will actually probably be true, when it happens.) So it seems I could have skipped that tragic stop in my tragic ride in the light snow—it wasn't tragic, it was so much better than yesterday's pouring rain.

The point is that I was looking forward to being in my warm home with its overactive radiator and its coat rack newly on the wall (!!) and everything mine mine mine, everything in its proper place, because I tidied up last night or whenever it was. It's such a good feeling to sit down on your bed and take off your coat—okay, normally you probably want to take off your outerwear before you reach the bedroom, but my bedroom is my living room, so not a lot can be done—and put the important pocket-contents (keys, bike light, phone) in their proper places next to the other things in their proper places.

But it's not as good a feeling to look down at the carpet and the computer cord snaking across it and think how a little furry black head would be turning the corner and rubbing up against your legs if you'd just give him the chance. Well. The image is a little off. Haroun would be sleeping on the bed, and probably not get up. Table Cat would have been waiting at the door as soon as he heard feet coming up the stairs, so he would have followed me from my door to my bed. Living in a studio—no, let's call it a 2.5-room apartment—would probably intensify his need to see what's beyond the door—so he might have darted out into the so! exciting! bone-white painted! brown carpeted! weird-smelling! (that's why he'd do it) hallway.

So I imagined my closest kitty friends being in my life today, and you might say it hurt my heart a little if you were cutesier than I, but I've mostly hardened myself to the thought. I've met some kittens a block over, kittens and their little cat mother and sibling from another litter, kittens who live under a porch and need homes for the winter. I know the people in the apartment below me have cats; I've seen them peeking through the gap in the curtains and said silly cat-things to them in my silly, high-pitched cat-voice. I can't help it. I say hi to my kitten not-friends every time I bike past their porch, even if I can't see any of them. Even if I could convince my landlord to let me, though, I can't adopt a cat.

The practical: The apartment is small. A kitten needs space to bounce off the walls. Table Cat would need space to feel like a panther. Haroun might be content to waste away in near-constant indolence, true. But there's also no place to put a litter box, unless I wanted to smell urine and watch Haroun dig for treasure (maybe you don't want to hear about Haroun's issues?) while cooking my meals six inches away.

The crazy: I care too much about the cats I've already lived with. I was torn when I felt my childhood cats falling behind the college cats in my affection, but it was too late. Haroun and Table were my day-to-day life, sometimes the only living bodies in my apartment with me. When I get my next cat, I give up my claim to Emma's cats, whom she really didn't want to let me name (I got Haroun at least), whom she really didn't want me to have. Who aren't mine. But I don't want to let them go.

The considerate: I'm often gone. I work two jobs, and I go to my boyfriend's, which is just far enough across town to make lazy me want to stay put, and I'm only one person. Emma's cats were outraged when I left for the weekend. Heck, I think they were outraged when she left for class while I was at work. I don't have any big future plans right now, but if I did, I wouldn't want to abandon my cats for six months or a year. My parents wouldn't want to take them. Ali's dog would eat them.

But the biggest thing is that they wouldn't understand. You can't tell a cat you're going away for a while, but you'll come back for him. You can't call him up on Skype and have a really good purr-fest together, then catch him up on all the cheeses he hasn't licked while you were in the bathroom. Sane people tell me that cats don't remember. But I know they recognize me. You should have heard Haroun meow at me through the screen when I would go see them in the summer while Emma was in Poland, and they lived across the street from me. If you heard him, you'd swear he was in agony and only I could save him.

And Isabel. My Isa-kitten, who made a mess in my parents' bed the day we got her and was subsequently banished to the bathroom, who I rescued from her mewing solitary sadness and ever since, she slept next to my head, taking up half the width of the bed. Until I went to college, that is, and stopped coming home on weekends and for the summer. When I did come home, she ferociously bit me. Then looked sad, worried, ran away. Came back later, all love and purrs. And bit me again.

I have suffered through this relationship for years. And I will not have any more of my kittens turn to vengeful little she-cats in their middle age if I can help it.

Animals understand more than we think. Some sense our moods, and act accordingly. Their lives may be mainly in the present, but some of them rejoice when we return to them. And not just the dogs. As soon as I walked in the door—well, until she almost completely gave up on me—Isabel would bound up the stairs to my room and meow for me to open the door so we could hang out together in the sanctuary I'd stolen from her with my absence. Animals care more than we can be sure of, though they obviously understand less than we might like them to. And that's why I think we humans have such a responsibility. I'm not going to adopt and coddle and spoil another kitten with all this crazy affection bubbling up inside me until I know that I can continue to coddle and spoil it all through its life, because that is what it will expect.

Unless Emma trains Haroun to use a toilet. Take away the litter box argument, and all bets are off in terms of my dearly-missed feline flatmates.

P.S. Let's just have an unspoken rule that the label "cats" comes with "crazy" attached, okay?

P.P.S. Anyone know anyone in Ann Arbor who needs a cat sitter or dog walker, not too far from Kerrytown? How about a cat walker?

Oh Schicksalstag and Lizard Hips and Alligator Eyes

2011-11-09T21:40:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting in my brother's kitchen. He's trying not to get killed by a hot wok full of expertly-minced onions that will soon be joined by marinated chicken and rice and eggs. We can hear characters from Gilmore Girls being hysterical but I guess it's just background noise, because the screen is too small and too at the wrong angle and no one's paying attention anyway. We shared some tiramisu I brought from work. It's really windy and I don't want to bike in the wind but I want to get home quickly to my warm shower and maybe my popcorn maker and my book on my couch under a blanket in the glow of one lamp. I think that means I should leave this little internet attic haven, and go forth into the wind toward my bed.

But today is November 9th, which is kind of a big deal in German history. It's called the "Day of Fate," because so many important things happened on that day in different years. Here's a link to my three-years-younger self's explanation of this phenomenon, written during my year in Freiburg. I thought it was pretty crazy and interesting.

SCHICKSALSTAG = DAY OF FATE

The Reichstag (German parliament building) to the left, Brandenburg Gate to the right, and the wall went between. Taken from the holocaust memorial.

Since it was the day the Berlin Wall fell, I might as well link you to the excerpt of the German novel I translated, too, about a Turkish-German 19-year-old who rushes back home to Berlin from school in Istanbul as soon as he learns his city is reunited. Published in the University of Michigan's Canon Translation Review.

Scotland the Brave

2011-11-08T22:05:00.000-05:00

I'm currently rereading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which is an amazing historical fiction/fantasy (there's time travel to get the historical aspect) that also—yes Sarah, yes Maraia and friends—contains a passionate romance, depicted in bodice-ripping detail. That's not what's important, though. It's the carefully crafted story, told in thousands of pages of detail. It's the vividness of the characters, their strength, their relationships, their appeal. Well. Some of them elicit revulsion, or simple anger, but not the protagonists. I gobbled up Outlander, the first book, in just a few days; Dragonfly in Amber took me much longer, because I knew, as Claire and Jamie Fraser both knew but were hoping could be changed, that Bonnie Prince Charlie would lead Scotland to the Battle of Culloden, the massacre of the clans and the subsequent terrorizing of the Highlands. I didn't want to get the declaration of war, and I certainly didn't want to get to April 16th, even though I knew there were multiple sequels, even though I'd read those sequels.

So the very, very basic plot is that Claire and her husband, reunited after World War II is over, are taking a second honeymoon in Scotland when Claire, collecting plant samples at a circle of standing stones on the feast day of Beltane, accidentally travels two hundred years into the past (it's always two hundred years in the fairy stories). She ends up marrying Jamie for protection, they fall madly in love, everything is hard/great. When she tells him where she's from, he takes her back to the stones, but she can't leave the love of her life. Blah blah lots of problems, the biggest of which is that Claire's first husband was a historian, so she knows about the Rising of (17)'45 to come, and that it is doomed to fail. Can you change history? They try, but I don't think I'm giving too much away when I say that in the end, all of Scotland gets punished for the ambition and pigheadedness of Prince Charles Stuart.

The last big series I read was also centered around Scotland, although it took a long time to get there, from Belgium to Trebizond to the Gold Coast of Africa to Austria to Iceland to Poland to Georgia but always back to Scotland. The desires of the royal family (also Stuarts), far off and remote from the great powers of early Renaissance Europe, to catch up to their rivals. The attempt to take England—with or without support from France. The cold winters in Edinburgh. It's much the same a couple hundred years later.

I'm really thinking most about the cold winters in Edinburgh right now, boring as that may sound. And the winters in the Highlands, harsher still. At the start of the third Outlander book, our fair hero, after seven years living in a hole on his own estate, has one of his tenants give him up so that his people can collect the price on his head. He's sent to Ardsmuir prison, in the north of northern Scotland, where a new commander has just arrived as well. To be posted at Ardsmuir prison, in the far north of the godforsaken highlands, on a peninsula jutting out into the cold, cold sea, is a punishment. The landscape is composed of forbidding crags and treacherous bogs. Communication with England is slow. Worse yet, there's no Society with a capital S out there, just a small Scottish village, the usually drunk soldiers, the prisoners, and loads of whisky—cheap for an English soldier willing to use the power of his red coat.

In some silly way, this made me think of my good friend Emma's mother, who moved from the proper, civilized, beautifully seaside East Coast out to savage, grey, flat, boring Michigan right after getting married and has been stuck living here ever since. People in Michigan have a sick fascination with the weather. People in Michigan get sinus infections. Everything is wrong. I, obviously, think this is all nonsense, although last winter was horrible and the rainy fall is horrible, et cetera et cetera, but Michigan is also my home, and I like it, and I think there are great things about it. But it certainly lacks the romance and excitement of old Scotland. I know part of it is that when I'm looking for dramatic, engaging novels, I'm usually looking for something pre-1800. Michigan barely existed then. Our written history is shorter. But the French came long before the colonizing Americans hopped over the Appalachians. There were the Objibwa and Ottawa and Potawatomi. Where are our exciting novels? The Young Voyageur: An Exciting Historical Novel of Mackinac, which Emma and I were forced to read in fifth grade (assuming it was part of the Michigan curriculum and not the Explorers curriculum), is definitely not it. That book enraged us. I don't really know why, besides that the text was printed green, and it was probably boring, but I know that it is for children, not compelling, and I will probably never open its cover again. I did read some interesting things about voyageurs and how they were the first people to penetrate the continent and all, but that was just in some history/memoirs about how railways built America and Canada. They were great books (I liked the Canadian one better), but somewhat lacking in excitement, and the author skipped Michigan altogether. (Sure he traveled every track in the country, of course the ever-late Wolverine line from Chicago to Detroit doesn't exist, and I haven't made my way to Detroit alone since crashing my car. Nope.)

The last book set in Michigan that I both remember reading and remember liking—and I'll admit that I may have forgotten something because there must have been something in the intervening decade—was That Wild Berries Should Grow by Gloria Whelan (who I think my mom knew somehow at some point, weirdly), but that was in fifth grade, and about a little girl growing up during the Depression, and that doesn't really fit what I'm looking for.

Excitement. History. Romance (not necessarily bodice-ripping!). Strong characters, strong plot. Plus Michigan. Does it exist?

Free Time

2011-11-07T22:46:00.000-05:00

The best part of the day is often when I get to stretch out on my couch or my bed and just let go. Sink in, spread out, and breathe. Feet up on the far armrest—hopefully not usually kicking over the new, unopened bottle of some sort of face wash with sulphur in it for the perfection of the skin of my chin like I just did now, god I love my life and my desire for Face Progress—and also hopefully not at 10:30 a.m.

Some of my best naps are just after I've eaten breakfast. Once I've gone to the bathroom and filled my stomach and decided to leisurely read for the morning before biking to the office at ten to one, the body that just couldn't sleep from 7:50 onward is ready to give it another go, and my mind checks out and then there's nothing to do but set an alarm for noon and hope I'm not too sad when I wake up and realize I have to move and also all my beautiful, daylit free time is gone.

But the relaxation that doesn't herald a guilty nap, that's golden. (I want to take a moment here to mourn the loss of class schedules and dorm living, because the best naps of my life were the winter of my sophomore year. I had eleven to one free, or twelve to three, and that totally justified an afternoon nap. If I didn't eat lunch I could just head up to my room, peel off my scarf, cardigan, jeans, and socks to reveal the perfect nap uniform of tight but cozy H&M turtleneck and leggings. The only good thing about our room facing the weak winter north was that the drapes made it dark enough for a good nap. It was the best. And the point was that this oblivion was guilt-free. It was earned.)

In the evenings, if I'm at home and without plans, I eat dinner and tidy up my living/bedroom, but probably don't do the dishes in the kitchen because that's such a morning thing to do. I read nonfiction, or a novel (nonfiction's really more for the morning too, I think, except that it is sometimes one of the factors leading to the guilty 10:45 a.m. nap; I don't know that I can ever go to grad school because every time I read something factual I fall asleep), or I watch TV on DVD, maybe with popcorn. I breathe.

If I had internet, I could connect with friends far away, but some of their time zones make this unlikely. If I had internet, I might not breathe because of the clicking frenzy and the typetypetyping storm. I'm typing this now sans internet, and I still feel that boring computer rush, the one that locks me in and would keep me up until 3 a.m. when I had people online or no real reason not to. It can't win tonight, because there's just me and this screen, no other people, nothing to read, and a bed calling out to me.

I was thinking I should do yoga every time I blogged. That sounds weird. After an evening blog post, before a morning one, something like that. Because I should do yoga every day, because exercise, flexibility, clearing one's mind. But if that were a requirement, I would probably quit this blogging streak. It's a lesson I learned long ago: don't try to develop too many new habits at once, because you're more likely to develop none.

This Feels Like Cheating

2011-11-06T23:56:00.002-05:00

Back in July, or August, I got cupcakes with a darling friend and ex-housemate, whom I hadn't seen in weeks, and afterwards, I realized that I have a problem with the past. It's one of the reasons I haven't blogged much in the last year; the only posts I really like are written fairly in the moment, when thoughts flow and feelings are clear. We were catching each other up our lives, and I could do the current situation, how I'd gotten to that point—

I am now the receptionist at an Ann Arbor law firm, replacing another friend who moved down to Georgia for graduate school. So I'm staying in Ann Arbor another year. So I found a new apartment, a studio, where I exist solo. No cats, no roommate, just a boyfriend in the same town as me for the first time since we started dating, because he's back for grad school here. Well. On North Campus, eons, or at least a bus, away. I'm still at the restaurant, too, working a few nights—

and I can do the future. I can do the future great. Plans plans plans. (I should probably say the near future. The things I am going to do in the next month or so. I love—no, I have a pressing need—to pin those details down.)

One thing about me, which I already knew, thoroughly, is that I'm usually only comfortable with certainty. I miss my exhausting, seven- and eight-hour shifts at the restaurant because I know how to do everything there. I could make every salad (except some of the ones from the "nutritional combos" menu) from memory in under a minute, probably. (Before everything got switched around.) I know the prep tasks, the ins and outs of the menu, the closing choreography. I am good at that job, even if I don't like it as a job. I like it because I'm good at it, the co-workers are friendly, and because it pays my bills.

I like the law firm job for different reasons, mostly boring reasons, because it is a boring job working within boring parameters. At the time, I couldn't say much about it, though, because it was only a couple weeks in, my position felt tenuous, and I didn't know if my impressions of the job were due to the way I react to this job, or just a product of feeling uncomfortable in a new setting. I think I explained that to my friend.

But it was a pretty big gap we were trying to fill in. We lived in the same house for a year, but it had been over a year since we'd graduated and I'd moved home. We only saw each other occasionally, so there could have been so much to say. She'd just gotten back from Africa, so there was lots there, and other things, but I wasn't feeling particularly verbose about the things about my current life that were easy to say. And then there are the obvious questions that you can answer in a heartbeat, fairly meaninglessly, or else take very seriously and plunge into a study of yourself for the past few months.

And that's the thing. It seems so hard to remember precise worries of a month or two ago, and the general response I had to them, how I felt day by day. I remember the rage I felt at the entire GRE test-taking process. I remember the stress of finding somewhere to live beginning at the end of August, when it was already partway through June. I remember the horror of moving. But how did I feel about living in my new apartment the first full week? When did the solitude become too much? When did it feel right? As long as you can remember things that happened, things you felt, the details don't need to matter. The important thing is that they happened and that you understand them and share them if you need or want to.But I hate to get things wrong. I want everything told right, in order, just as everything should be cleaned in order, from the top shelf to the counter to the floor. I just want it to make sense.

This is the secret: I wrote the first half of this post back in July, the day we met for cupcakes. I didn't finish it, I stopped at a key transition and I no longer remember exactly where I was trying to go with it. I don't know if what I did write makes sense. It rambles, maybe. I think I'm missing the punchline, so to speak. Maybe there never was one, and that's why I quit writing it.

Oh well.

Too Busy Being a Girl

2011-11-05T23:35:00.000-04:00

Emma and Ali and I were walking down Main Street when I called my boyfriend to say we were done shopping, we were planning on getting Chinese food for a late lunch because we'd gone out for breakfast and were still super full, so we couldn't eat yet. We were going to get coffee. Did he want to join us later for lunch?

It was impossible to say at the time. I said I'd call him when we made the next move. He said, "Have fun being a girl!"

I was too busy being a girl all day to write a blog post.

My Favorite Cake to Bake

2011-11-04T15:45:00.000-04:00

I first made this cake in the Art of Pastries and Dessert Preparation class I took to fulfill one of my "practical arts" requirements senior year of high school. It's from the Food Network website, and I'm just going to link to the recipe because it's not like I made it up or tweaked it or discovered it on my own. It's one of the best cakes ever because:

1. The caramel. Four tablespoons of butter for half a cup of brown sugar, how do you go wrong?
2. Apples! Autumn!
3. The actual cake is moist and tasty and simple.
4. The actual cake has a little cornmeal in it, which makes it taste better and be more autumny.
5. It's beautiful!

The photos are from last year, but I just don't need to photograph this cake that many more times.
It's not that difficult to make, especially if you remember to let your butter soften and own an electric mixer. But I made it for our big Thanksgiving meal in Germany, where I didn't have a mixer, and both times I've made it this year it was without a mixer, and one of those times I didn't even let the butter get really soft and it was okay. I also made it once or twice in a springform pan, because I was in Germany and that's what they've got. If you disobey the recipe and do that like I did, put a cookie sheet or something underneath to catch the caramel that oozes out. Or maybe I put foil around the bottom of the pan. I don't remember any great disaster, not like the first five times I made chocolate ganache cake and kept filling the pan up to the brim because I was using the size pan it told me to, so why did it always run over and burn on the base of the oven? (So much yelling by my father.)

I guess peeling and slicing 2-3 small apples might be a pain for someone who doesn't peel every apple before they eat it because they didn't like skin as a kid and their parents indulged them and then it was too late...but just think how much easier 2-3 apples is than an apple pie's worth! The recipe tells you to scatter the apples in the caramel and then pour the batter on top. I think "scatter" is the wrong word. By scatter, I'm pretty sure they mean "arrange the apple slices in near-perfect concentric rings." But, you know. Whatever you want. It will taste delicious.

I Wrote This on November Third

2011-11-03T22:46:00.000-04:00

Except for the part I started on the First.

I was going through my list of posts, and discovered quite a few unfinished drafts that I wish I had finished. Most of them are good openings that abruptly end at the transition to the main body. What a stupid time to stop! One of them could have been a complete post. There's not much to edit, it's ready for publication, but it was a retrospective of two summers ago and that's not really relevant anymore. The problem with that one, and some of the half-written ones that could have stood alone as mini-posts, is that they felt a little too open at the time. Open in the wrong way, meaning insecure, fragile, discontented, not open in the way I though I wanted my blog to be, which is consistent, fun, full of details, so that it's easy and enjoyable to keep up with. The way my favorite bloggers write. (Let's maybe not notice that all these bloggers are connected to each other in some way so it's sort of like I'm stalking a group of friends, nope, it's just, links! That's how the internet works!) Not that they all write only post positive things. If your life's too perfect, we might get sick of you.

I've been rereading Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones, which my mom gave me for Christmas senior year of high school. It's a book about how to write, but for anyone—aspiring novelist, poet, essayist, but also businessmen, teachers, anyone else. She uses a LOT of silly metaphors, and maybe how she writes isn't how everyone learns to write, and I think what I liked about it best the first time I read it was the little bits of her life that came through with the writing. But I do think it's good. She emphasizes that the biggest thing is simply writing. You need discipline, to write every day, or write five pages a day, whatever it takes to get you to practice. It's a style of writing informed by Zen meditation. You just sit down, put the pen to paper—computers barely existed when she first wrote it—and don't pick it up again. You write whatever comes out, even if it's pages of repetitive self-criticism, or revelations you don't want to have, or practically the same thing you wrote two days ago. If you write enough, you get to what's real, what has power.

Obviously, the same does not apply to a semi-public blog. I'm not going to set my fingers to the keyboard and keep them there until I've been typing for an hour and a half, and simply post it. For the past few weeks, I've been trying to take the time to just write, pen on paper (it helps that after two months I STILL don't have internet in my apartment). I haven't tried that hard, I guess, but I am figuring out how to get myself to focus better. Step one was getting a smaller desk to replace the one that didn't fit in my new apartment. The smallest IKEA MICKE desk fits exactly in the space by my couch, and in pure white, it fits the decor perfectly too.

A desk isn't enough to get me to focus, though. I can fidget in a chair at a desk for hours. I pretty much spent two months doing that while I tried to write my 15-page, 1.5-spaced German term paper (probably the most painful thing I ever wrote). What does seem to work like a charm is darkness. I turn out the lights, light a candle or three, and it's kind of like a reset button. The room changes, but in a lovely way that makes me somehow more content. The paper glows, and the desk, and nothing else, and then I can set myself to the task of taking myself seriously without any worry about anyone or anything else. Until I run out of things to say, which can happen surprisingly quickly. But it's progress.

If only there was something similar that made the distractions of the internet go away. (And I don't mean that weird program that shuts down your internet/specific-website capabilities for a timespan set by you, unless I do mean that, in which case, what is it called?) I find it very difficult to focus when what I'm focusing on is a glowing screen with Facebook in the background.

These were the closest things I had to jack-o-lanterns this year.

Catching Up with the Cats

2011-11-02T23:54:00.000-04:00

After two months apart from the kitties, I saw them tonight for a little while. Aren't you happy to see me, Table Cat?

Don't worry, he was. Unfortunately, the "Cat Preserve" is a basement, and Table Cat's eyes don't get along with the flash very well.

What an alien.

Hey Harouny on a treadmill...

You're doing it wrong.

It was all too brief, but I am a tired person who worked four hours at one job, three at another, then drove home in the deep dark in a car she just can't get used to driving. And my Isabel cat needs my love too, in my parents' house across the street from Haroun and Table. And Emma!

Allerheiligen

2011-11-01T23:59:00.000-04:00

Allerheiligen is All Saints' Day. I'd forgotten that was today—Facebook has updates about the word counts my friends have already reached for NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month, of course), or whether or not they are honoring No-Shave November—but not how All Hallows follows Halloween. I already forget what made me remember.

The only time I ever observed All Saints' Day was—naturally, I think—the fall of my year in Germany. The first month we were in Freiburg, we took intensive German classes at a language institute located by the university. At the end of October, when the Wintersemester began, we began an "Aufbau" course at the institute, in the evenings after our university and program courses were over, to help build up our writing skills and prepare us for those scourges of the German university system: Referate (presentations) and Hausarbeiten (term papers). We didn't get out of Aufbau until the dark of 8 o'clock, if I remember correctly.

The weekend of Halloween (it fell fortuitously on a Friday that year) I made into a long one. That Thursday, I lugged my suitcase to Aufbau, then rushed right to the train station after class to catch the first of several regional trains that would take me, cheaply and leisurely (slowly), to Aschaffenburg, my expatriate aunt, and her German wife. They visited our family in Michigan almost every year, sometimes with my cousins, sometimes without, but I'd never been to visit them. At the end of the weekend, I was happy I had gone because of all the good food (meat dishes! all my friends were vegetarian! also Kaffee und Kuchen in kleinen Cafés!) and the first cats I'd encountered in Germany (living in their lovely penthouse, only friendly on their enclosed balcony) and the fact that my aunt had made me speak German for a significant portion of the weekend.

On Halloween—which is an entirely American holiday—I missed a wild party back in Freiburg, which I hadn't really thought about beforehand, and didn't really care about once I did. My aunt, her wife and I celebrated in our own way, going on a walking tour about the witch-hunting history of their town. I remember the group was big, and it was hard to hear everything the tour guide said (of course in German). It was also very cold, and long. But that meant I got to see a lot of the city under cover of darkness. Sometimes my aunt or her wife would fill me in on what I had missed, or add another detail that hadn't been mentioned. Afterward we went to a bar. They had beers, I had an Apfelschorle. Wie immer.

The next day, I think, was the day we went in to Frankfurt to sightsee a little, eat some cake, have dinner, and see an English play, with one of their other Esel-friends and one of my German cousins. (Esel means donkey, but it stands for English-Speaking Ladies, which is a group of friends that meets every other week or so.) What I remember most clearly is visiting the cathedral (pictured above). The building is red stone, like Freiburg's Münster and so many other churches in southern Germany. I'm not particularly fond of the red, for whatever reason, but I liked this fairly plain cathedral, which was almost entirely destroyed in the war. Part of it was the iridescence in the plain, un-stained glass, which shone a grey-blue in the waning light. Part of it was that my aunt studied the Middle Ages (Middle English in particular), and both she and her wife were always telling me stories about the building of the church, or the tale of the saint in this fresco, and always, always searching for another depiction of the Death of Mary. It's my aunt's pet subject, part of the reason she might like to get a second PhD, I think, and her wife knew all about it too, after all those years.

As we were leaving, my aunt stopped to light a candle, or else stopped to say something about not lighting a candle. But I think she did, because that's the thing to do when you're in a church, to leave your little coin and light a candle for the dead. By then, my grandpa, her father, had been gone just over four years; her mother, just one year more than that. I think it was as she was getting her wallet out that she mentioned they had finally left the Catholic church when Ratzinger became pope because of his strong views on homosexuality, not to mention all the rest. They were married five or six years before, in a civil union recognized by the German state, but not the church they were both raised with, on either side of the Atlantic.

Before we drove out to Frankfurt that afternoon, we met her wife's parents at the cemetery where much of their family is buried. I don't think we stayed to hear the priest speak—over loudspeaker, they said is how it's done now—since I have no memory of this event, just that I was told it was always boring. Maybe I did, and it just wasn't memorable. I do know that I met her parents, she probably went to the graves quickly before everything started, and then we were off to pick up the Esel-lady and head into Frankfurt like the rest of the not-so-religious (across the border from Bavaria, in Protestant Hessen, where Frankfurt is, I think it was a big sale day).

That was already three years ago. I don't remember it so well. I do remember the dinner they cooked, maybe the next day, maybe the day before. Chicken roasted in Calvados (apple brandy from Normandy) and stuffed with apples, which came out of the chicken after cooking as the most delicious chickeny-applesauce, I don't care if you think that's gross, it was the best thing. I remember how, coming down from the loft that serves as the office, after checking my email, I slipped so quickly on the marbles steps in my socks and went boom boom boom the rest of the way down. It was high up, and it was so slippery and fast, and I was badly shaken. My aunt poured me a taste of the Calvados—had already poured it before I fell, really—and her wife rushed to get some little tube of something for me to smell ("Petra and her homeopathic remedies"). I held the railing tightly, scared, every time I went down stairs for probably two years.

This year, they came the second half of August, so as not to miss the family reunion. My boyfriend and I were busy packing, and working, and moving, and seeing friends who were only in-state a little while. I only saw them that one afternoon in the park, with all the rest of my aunts and uncles.

And now this Allerheiligen, I'm remembering my aunt. Not my father's sister, but my aunt, Petra, who I never thought to label—she was always just Petra—until after she was gone, when I began to recite to myself, over and over, in case someone at work asked me why I looked unhappy, trying to figure out what would be best to say. My aunt in Germany died. The funeral was today. The funeral was yesterday. I couldn't be there. Most of our family couldn't be there for my aunt, who so suddenly was left alone.

I always thought of Petra with a smile on her face.

Soft Open

2011-10-19T22:50:00.000-04:00

In the office, the rain on the roof sounded exactly like someone was faking it with a rainstick. The drops were small, precise, hitting the metal roof like needles, extraordinarily consistent. Though there was a sort of ebb and flow to the storm, at no point did it stop. Bad news for my bike and me.

The rain sound was definitely coming from the clouds, not from someone with a stalk of dried cactus trying to bring on a storm. I left the bike outside the building, made the trek to my apartment and then the restaurant on foot. Halfway to the Diag, I realized my left rain boot had split down the heel. Now I have to go back and get my bike, again on foot, because there's no other way to get from one job to the next on time tomorrow. It will be raining then, too.

This morning, it was peaceful, dark, cozy in my apartment. When I finally committed to waking up, I spread open the curtains to these pretty little drops of rain. I used my camera with deliberation for what felt like the first time in forever. Then I stretched as far as I could.

This will someday, hopefully, be a lemon tree. Even though the window climate's getting cold and the sun harder to find, in the last few days, it's sprouted another baby leaf on top. If I were my darling Rachel (Rachel! Rachel! Are you out there, Rachel?) I would probably name it, but being myself, I haven't, even though it's arguably the closest thing I've got to a pet right now. It's too dainty, delicate, and I think it would be offended to be treated like anything from the kingdom Animalia.

Here's the first glimpse into my new home for you, the internet. There's a game we could play, and it would be about identifying where every item in this picture was purchased, but let's not play and say we didn't. Name no names. Though the guinea pig would argue she's the closest thing to a pet in this home, she's really closer to a pillow.

I desperately miss the lover-cats. And another cat, but we'll talk about him later, because he deserves a lot more words. I do appreciate my "ice cube" walls, and my shiny spotless new white desk, and the warmth of candlelight before bed.

Can't Escape This Monday Feeling

2011-08-01T09:20:00.000-04:00

Every week. I wake up on Monday morning with that feeling in the pit of my stomach. It's the feeling that goes with my alarm waking me up earlier than normal because there is an Important Reason to be awake, like the first day of school, or catching a 6-a.m. train to a ten o'clock plane across the Atlantic. It's the way I woke up every day for a month one summer when I was paying over $500 a month for rent to live in this city but I couldn't find a job. It's the reverberating anxiety you feel all day, for a week, or a month, that goes with a bad breakup. It nullifies your hunger.

But my alarm didn't go off. It's not an important day. I'm not that guilty about my expenses versus income. No breakup. I should be hungry, I had crackers for dinner.

Sometimes, it used to start Sunday night. An aversion to starting another empty week of work. A failure to readjust to being home after being gone Friday-Saturday-most-of-Sunday. Transitioning between one city and another, real boyfriend to phone-boyfriend, leisure to labor—I've often had a hard time with that. It's one of the problems with long-distance relationships. But last time, I had plans with a friend, and I was eager to be home. The train being late makes you want to be home even more, and knowing that I have only a few more weeks in this spacious, breezy, but also cozy apartment makes me want to enjoy every moment of it.

I spent last night on the armchair in the little living room, feet up on the footrest, apple juice within reach, a good book on my lap. After I got ready for bed, I turned off the overhead light and moved to the couch, so I could read in the glow of the floor lamp, surrounded by darkness, perfectly supported by three pillows. I got sleepy and went to bed, somewhat early, and the cats joined me, one at the foot of the bed, one in the window over my head. It was a good night.

And now it's Monday morning, and I can't get that feeling back. All I ever know to do is suffer through it until I leave for work, work 'til five in the office, move on to the restaurant. Somewhere between the two, I forget all about Monday. But I'd rather not just wait for it to disappear; I'd rather not have this feeling at all. How do you beat Monday?

Procrastination Techniques for the Modern, Internet-Savvy* Landlord: A Page-A-Day Calendar

2011-07-18T22:11:00.004-04:00

*Don't worry, sir or madam, all we mean is that you claim to use email.

My most recent tenant-landlord interaction went something like this:

Subject line: "[Address] windows, again," which was supposed to simply be a factual statement, not a whiny complaint implying the landlord ignored the last window request, but a title that reflected the fact that I have new issues with my windows.

Politely and clearly worded, lengthier than this: dear landlord, would you please put my screen that fell out by itself back in, and look at the window that is now cracked, and remove the one storm window that didn't get pulled out of the way. Also, you should know that a faucet is dripping and costing you money, ditto the fridge door that doesn't seal all the way.

Three days later (ah, the convenience of instant, electronic mail), I learned that my landlord's computer had been down the last few days, but he'd come in the next two. Those days have come and gone, and my screen's still rattling around in my window.

In April, I emailed about having the storm windows removed, and over a week later learned that he'd "missed my email a week ago" but had recently "caught it." The email before that, I waited over two weeks (admittedly far too long) for a reply, before sending it again with the suggestion that he hadn't received the first one. Oh no, he hadn't! He'd send someone right over (didn't) to remove the old mattress and box frame that had been completely blocking the stairs of our fire escape.

Today, I started to think about this. Maybe he has a stack of ready-made excuses, and he keeps using the same one on everyone until one tenant contacts him/complains more than once, at which point he moves on to the next excuse in the stack for their benefit. Or when enough time has passed, say a week, a week and a half, he moves on to a new one regardless.

I admit, this may overestimate his organizational aptitude. And it's not like the explanations are totally random—many are season-appropriate. There was the time his workers couldn't get to measuring our windows for storms in December, because they were busy shoveling snow at all the properties. All day. (Our driveway remained completely iced-over for most of the winter, complete with a two- or three-inch thick slide of ice down cement steps to a basement door.) Or there's the time the entire first floor of his giant, old, mansion of a house flooded, destroying much of what he owned. That connected to actual weather conditions.

Okay, I believe that one. I probably believe them all. Or most of them. But I like the idea of a weekly calendar, with one or two suggestions per week for why you couldn't get to that email. Or why your team can't make it out to this property promptly. They're seasonal, they're varied, they're hard to argue with. A great way for the busy landlord to buy time in this ever-more-hectic world.

Death to the Unannounced Hiatus!

2011-06-15T20:46:00.001-04:00

Some truths about blogging, or not blogging:

Mainly it's a combination of procrastination and laziness. Either you procrastinate something more important (homework and the like) by writing a satisfying blog post, or you are too lazy and/or too lacking in things that really merit procrastination, so you procrastinate the blog post, until it's too old to be relevant to anyone, until the flow of thoughts in your mind has gone stale, until you don't remember you used to be a blogger of sorts, even though it was, at times, one of your proudest accomplishments.
Working instead of going to school is actually way more exhausting. Who has time to think? Who needs to spend all their time on the computer when they're not not-doing homework?
Blogs these days require photos. My life needs photos. Hooking up my camera to my computer is a pain. My computer is too old and wants to go die. Everything is slow. No photos, no good blog posts, no blog.
It is embarrassing, or at least difficult and somewhat humbling, to return to something—a friendship, a hobby, a blog—after a lapse of months or years. Going from nothing to something is the biggest jump.
Lists are a great way to deal with awkwardness.
Blog blog blog this word has been written too many times in this blog post and is thereby unmasked as being completely ridiculous.

Some truths about what I have just written:

"Truths" as opposed to "facts" or "thoughts" is kind of horrible. Truth as a plural is a problem.
Number three of list one is a terrible excuse.
This is me, committing to being back.
That (number three of list two) is me refusing to declare that I am back in the blogosphere. Oh hey, Firefox's spellcheck refuses to condone my saying that. It also tells me it's "spellchecker." Whatever, spellcheck.

So here's to this blog! Existing!

xoxo, the Lover-Cats

2011-02-14T10:21:00.001-05:00

Emma just walked into my room to tell me, "If my cats weren't already in love, they'd be falling in love right now." They were staring into each other's eyes from across the room. Last night, the kitties decided to symbolize their love with a live sculpture.

Happy Valentine's Day!

While they slept on my bed curled up in a heart (huge Haroun making up well over half of it), the sky decided to end the delightfully over-thirty-degrees day with a splendid sunset. And after six o'clock!

It was the end of my Valentine's Day weekend—my valentine had already taken the train home and was watching the sun set over the rooftops of Detroit. Saturday was our six month anniversary, so we combined it with Valentine's Day and enjoyed a burger (me)/ribs (him) at Grizzly Peak, followed by The Illusionist at the State Theater. It was a good day, reflecting a good six months, even if I spent "five hours" "getting dressed"—the graduation/housewarming/New Year's dress I've been sewing didn't make the deadline for Valentine's Day either, so I had to go through all my old, boring clothes to find something acceptable to wear.

This morning, Emma and I are celebrating with donuts, and I bought some sunflowers to brighten up our wonderfully clean apartment. I had a productive Sunday evening, though I made no progress on my current translation project. Maybe I'll make some now. Or cuddle with the lover-cats.

Read Selam Berlin auf Englisch in Canon Translation Review

2011-02-08T11:43:00.000-05:00

January 28th was a momentous day in my life: it was the first time something I translated was published! Lucky for you, ever-so-wide blog-audience, the publication is online and waiting for your excited eyes to peruse it.

Parked in Kreuzberg, Berlin, August 2009; featured on Canon's homepage with my translation.

It's the first issue of a new translation review, Canon, which is put out by the Undergraduate Comparative Literature Association at the University of Michigan. My final academic year, 2009-2010, was designated the "Year of Translation" by the comparative literature department. (Hilariously, this year is the "Year of Comparison." Shouldn't that be every year? I mean, that goes for both, but what's comp lit without the comp-ing? I always make jokes about comp-ing, and I always laugh inside.) Anyway, to go along with the Year of Translation and to take a step closer to having an actual translation curriculum, the comp lit department started a translation workshop course for undergraduate students to be offered each semester. And I took it. And I translated part of a novel. And then I was one of the undergraduates invited to apply (thanks, Editor-in-Chief Megan!) to U of M's 4th Biannual Graduate Student Translation Conference, and so my translation benefited from further workshopping. (And because I'm someone who answers her emails, and likes to be righteous about standardized American spelling practices and comma placement, sometime during the summer I became an editor of Canon Translation Review.)

It's full of great things. You can read a little about them all here, in the letter from the editors, but then you need to read the translations. There's modern and there's old. French, Spanish, Ancient Greek, Czech. But now, conveniently just for you, all in English!

There's German, of course. Yadé Kara's Selam Berlin, translated by moi. You should read it. I don't know if this is more convincing but I'll try:

Selam Berlin is a novel about being Turkish and German. It's a novel about the Wende—the turning point—when the Berlin Wall fell, two halves of a city and a country came back together, and one half of a family learns another half exists. It's about a nineteen-year-old who feels himself very much a Turkish-German and not a Turk living in Germany. It's about becoming an adult as the Wall is reduced to a remembered shadow, as secrets and realizations come to light in the aftermath of the Peaceful Revolution. This bildungsroman by the Turkish-German author Yadé Kara was published in 2003 and won the German Book Prize for best debut in 2004. No complete English translation has been published, although the first chapter was published in English in the November 2009 issue of Words Without Borders in commemoration of the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall on November 9th of the same year. Although Selam Berlin takes place after the Wall has been opened, the novel shows how dramatically the division of the city affected its residents’ lives—in particular, the lives of Hasan and his family. There are not many long passages that represent the book by themselves. The first chapter is one, but it had already been translated, and the last chapter is powerful, but not standing alone, so I tried to include a series of scenes that wouldn’t be too confusing out of context. They survey Hasan’s reactions to life in post-Wall Berlin and carry the reader through the city streets.

So there you go. You want to read it. Do it.

I made this to go along with the translation—I didn't want footnotes to interrupt the enjoyment of the story, but I wanted to provide some supplemental information. So, here you go.

1994 Honda Accord

2011-02-07T23:38:00.003-05:00

Last night I took the train home. It was the first time I’d been on a train in over a year; I’ve only traveled by rail twice since I came home from Europe two Augusts ago. Last time, it was to avoid driving. This time, it’s because I can’t drive.

I’d grown used to commuting between Ann Arbor and Metro Detroit. The first summer I lived away from home, when I had just turned twenty, I had my dad’s old car, which was my mom’s old car, and which they really didn’t need because there were three cars in the driveway, and three licensed drivers at home, and no jobs to drive to. So I took one car, and as my year in Germany came closer, I drove home from school almost every weekend. I memorized the order of the landmarks on I-94, had my litany of sights to fight the boredom.

At the end of sophomore year, I moved myself out of my dorm room. I assured my parents I didn’t need their help—the couch and the bike and the mini-fridge went to the house we took occupancy of on the first of May, and everything else I crammed into the car. There was only room for one person, me.

When I returned to Ann Arbor after a year of Straßenbahnen and train stations, I had the car again. Six people in our house, three guys, three girls who had cars. My brother used the car too, when he could be bothered to walk down the hill to our house.

This summer, last summer, the summer I broke my vow to never return home to my parents—it’s probably when the car became mine. I’d always been careful to refer to it as “the car,” “the Accord” to my parents, because it belonged to them. They paid the insurance, I shared it with my brother. But last summer, he stayed in Ann Arbor, and I took the car home, and then I drove the car to Ann Arbor most weekends. I moved away and so did my friends. Those who were staying on another year made escape plans for the summer; those who had been in and around Detroit moved away again.

The car, my car, the poor thing had been noisy, embarrassing-noisy, since I got back from Germany. The CD player rebelled for the last time and fell silent. The air conditioning hadn’t worked in years. But the car and I braved the hot sun of Friday afternoons on the expressway so we could be in town by the time someone was getting out of work. My driving code of summer 2008—set cruise at sixty-five, save gas, save the environment—did not hold. Gas prices were no longer above four dollars. I wasn’t going home to my parents and my pets, who are always there and never really seem to change. I was sweating, and I was impatient for the weekend, eager to say hello again after the week away.

The trunk accumulated a collection of things: my snow boots had been stored in the very back, with the jumper cables and some rags, since winter had finally left us sometime in March. That summer we played tennis once, and after that I kept the rackets and tube of tennis balls there, always prepared to submit to further embarrassment. Later, there were backup champagne flutes from my apartment in case the New Year’s party grew larger than anticipated, my black figure skates so I wouldn’t have to rent strange skates if we ever made it to the ice rink downtown.

Come fall, I moved back to Ann Arbor, but he moved back to Detroit. The commute couldn’t end. I had to work at least one weekend shift, so I worked Fridays, late, getting home from work and showering and packing and getting in the car around 12:30, sometimes 1 am. I’d head home again late on Sundays, early on Mondays. Sometimes earlier on Sundays, because I’d picked up an extra shift. A few times, overcome by stress or uncertainty or hormones, I cried in that car half the way home. And over the weeks, the months, my old list of the sights along the way had faded away. Now I played an estimating game, especially on those tense Friday night drives when all I wanted was to be in bed.

On the road to the expressway: forty-five minutes. Maybe fifty. Maybe fifty-five. Took the last of the stressful bends near Ypsilanti; heading straight, soon to pass 275. Five minutes to the airport. No, less. Airport. Twenty minutes left. City limits. Ten, fifteen? Less.

Turning the last corner onto his street. Yup, forty-five minutes. It took forty-five minutes almost every time. I’d joke that I was so tired, that it might not be safe, that I might fall asleep. I had a seven-hour shift, all standing, before the drive on Friday nights. He didn’t think that was funny. It wasn’t.

Every time we left his apartment, I’d check to see that the car was still parked there on his street. Without the car, how would we continue? But it never disappeared. The windows never got broken. It was fine, my old crappy car with the escalating rust but still only 153,000 miles. Forty-seven thousand to go, I thought. Two hundred thousand until a Japanese engine should meet its end. Still, my parents hesitated every time it needed something fixed. We didn’t want to throw money at a lost cause. There hadn’t been collision insurance on it in years, and still my dad spent more on it than I approved of. We even fixed the slow oil leak. Got the leaking tires fixed. One of them had had a nail in it, but it never leaked enough to give it away, never endangered me.

I felt safer in that car than in any other car. It had such a solid steering wheel, it was comfortable to drive unlike my parents’ newer Honda Fit with the super-sensitive steering and the bump bump bump on the highway, and it wasn’t a monster like the minivan. I had come to like the “champagne” goldy color that I found bland and ugly when my parents bought the car from my aunt about ten years ago. But it was old, built before antilock brakes had become a standard feature. If only she’d splurged on ABS instead of the CD player. In the back of my mind, I worried about this. When I braked at stop signs between home and campus last year, the car would swerve in the unplowed snow. But nothing worse.

Then last week, there was some stupid ice in Ypsilanti just before exit 183—six miles, I had six miles more to drive on that expressway before I was safe and home and on my way to work—and I lost control, and the car was crippled, and we zoomed across three lanes of traffic and down the ditch and into a tree, but thankfully not into the water beyond the tree. The car, that trusty car I drove to Kalamazoo and Muskegon and Port Austin and Athens, OH, and back and forth between my various homes; that carried my mother on her forty-five-minute commute four days a week for years; that was an unspoken gift freely given without constraints, that had become a part of who I was—it got my dad eighty dollars for scrap.

I know that the important thing is that I’m safe, and I didn’t hit anyone, and all five cars that skid on that ice and went off the road kept their passengers intact as well, but it’s too scary to think about what could have happened during that terrifying moment that brought to life almost every nightmare I can remember, that horrible blur where the steering wheel didn’t work and I was speeding across all the lanes. Instead I think about how much more broke I am now. I’m broke, without the freedom of movement I’d grown used to. If I had any money to shop with, places to go besides visiting friends in far-off places, I’d feel this more acutely. It would be like a phantom pain, an itch to go downstairs and turn the key in the lock, unlock the steering wheel, start the car, back out the treacherous driveway and turn right on Liberty.

Instead, I have to try to take the train to Detroit some weekends. The 11:30 pm train that comes from Chicago, and two nights in a row this week arrived over three hours late. I didn’t take that train. But I took the other one home last night, and my roommate picked me up at the station. Life continues.

Trip to the beach, August 2006.

Reasons My Roommate Needs a Serious Boyfriend

2011-01-18T15:04:00.003-05:00

For one, she wants a good excuse to skip Thanksgiving and/or Christmas with her family this year.

Two.

What's going on here?

Why is there the lid to an IKEA 365+ pan duct-taped to our kitchen wall? (Besides that it actually looks kind of cool.)

Oh, right. It's Michigan, it's mid-January, there are huge beetle-things in our apartment. Why not. (That's a wooden kitchen match next to its delicately-patterned body.)

Anyway. The point is, taping kitchen instruments to the wall isn't the normal way to deal with unwelcome creatures, and that's why Emma needs a live-in boyfriend.

(At least in the Krankenhaus it was summer and all the bugs made sense.)

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now

2011-01-14T01:05:00.000-05:00

(...in August of 2010.)*

Internet, I know I suck. I'll talk to you soon. But until then—one of my life lessons from 2010:

Always note the room-to-heat-vent/radiator ratio before committing to move in anywhere. In Michigan, it should really be one-to-one.

*To tell the truth, maybe I don't. Then I might live in an ugly little 1960s apartment with no window in the kitchen and only one parking space. Would that really be better, for potentially more constant but still uncontrollable-by-me heating? Probably not.

Sundays In November When the Weather Bothers Me

2010-11-21T17:23:00.005-05:00

I don't like Mondays, but this bright grey skylight Sunday has got to end. Unfortunately, it's going to end slowly with sweeping and scrubbing and mopping. Wanting money is a horrible motivator that gets you into bad situations, like working closing shifts four nights a week three weeks in a row.

The sky is glowing the worst glow it could, an oppressively bright grey, almost white but in no way reminiscent of snow. From my room, it feels like our attic is floating in a vacuum, just us and these ugly, naked weed trees. There isn't a break in the clouds in any direction, which is all too clear thanks to my three skylights. It's smothering, how the heavens are ceaselessly reminding us of mediocrity right now. I feel horrible about life, and it's not my fault. Sundays like this are the worst.

Emma just walked into my room: "The sky's so big. There's like nothing that would make me happy right now." If I didn't have to go to work in a few minutes, I could maybe have escaped this feeling today. There are cheerier places to work on your computer or read a book. It will get dark, and the Christmas lights that have been on the trees for three days will turn on. But I'll be in a kitchen, or at a cash register, and I'll miss it.

On certain Sundays in November when the weather bothers me, I empty drawers of other summers where my shadows used to be...

Thinking about the summer won't help. Nothing will help besides maybe a shower and getting lost in a good book and some candles to lighten the atmosphere. But here's a cheerier Sunday, two weeks ago, that I forgot I took pictures of. I was in Detroit, and an apartment-warming party took place that Saturday, and I baked caramelized apple upside-down cake, which I have baked so many times in the past five years, in a cute little old oven.

It doesn't normally look exactly like this—here it's capturing the afternoon sun. That weekend's Sunday sky was less bleak than this one's, even if the steam in coming out of this street in Midtown is a little ominous:

Here, now, in Ann Arbor, the clouds broke a little, but then everything just got darker.

Emma: Whatever you do, don't look up the weather for the next ten days. It gets worse. So much worse.

On to Phase Three

2010-10-31T23:07:00.000-04:00

September

October

Starting tomorrow, we face November's fall. I can't say I'm pleased. November has a bad track record, the colors will all fade away, and though the heat in this building is finally on, I'm still shivering.

Best and Worst (Warning: My Life Is Mundane)

2010-10-28T02:08:00.002-04:00

Last week, I finally finished sewing the curtains for my bedroom windows. It took a while because I had to cut the fabric—a nice, white, vintage cotton (bedspread? it was reeeeally long, but not symmetrical in all four directions like you'd expect a tablecloth to be) originally from Italy, hand-stitched together, with a handmade lace border on one end that's a great detail for curtains, that my aunt had had in her attic in Rochester, NY since an old Italian woman gave it to her—and that requires a clear table. I had to iron and pin the seams and hems, and I hate ironing and pinning. Then I had to sew it. But I finished, although I don't have thread in the right red to hem the grosgrain ribbon I'm using for the curtain tiebacks, and this was exciting, because I made something! Something pretty. And I could stop potentially flashing the pedestrians on the street three stories below. The streetlights still filter in, but at least there's that.

During the sewing process, I came across this little packet in the sewing machine's kit:

As it dawned on me that "3 STK" stood for "drei Stück" (3 pieces) because it said "einfache Nadel" (basic needle), I thought to myself, "This is the best thing I've seen today!"* Sometimes, it's just a nice feeling to know that some things aren't made in Asia. And the design of the little needle packet is simple but pleasing, and it's cool that it wasn't translated into English.

Now, the reason I was looking for extra sewing machine needles is that my theoretically higher-quality German needle did not withstand its meeting with a pin:

Oops. I hate pins.

This broken needle unfortunately foreshadowed events that evening. I was biking to work, canvas bag hanging from the handlebar because the handles on the bag are too small to stay on a shoulder, and suddenly there was this loud horrible noise and my bike wasn't moving and RRRRIP and my bag was caught in the wheel. Okay. I took out the small things that could get lost, put them in my pockets, and hoped I wouldn't lose my glasses case through the gaping hole at the bottom of the bag.

I stopped at the bike racks by the restaurant and pulled out my bike lock, expecting the usual sight and sound of all my keys coming out with it because I never pull the bike lock key out when I unlock it. Nope.

Instead, there was just a little stub of key sticking out. The head of the key was still attached to the errant keychain. Worst sight of the day. Look at how stretched out my (previously perfectly round, two circles thick) keyring got from getting caught in the bike wheel! Thank goodness my brother was walking down the street at just that moment, because he was able to lock my bike up in his building, and I rushed to work. The worst part was that my extra bike lock key met its death while loose in my pocket one day this spring. It folded just enough to crack. I had known the keys were low quality and had been meaning to get a copy made for months, but hadn't gotten around to it.

It turned out that the locksmith I went to the next day (Vogel! Another German word! Since 1913!) could make copies from the stub of key that had been stuck in the lock, so I didn't have to waste money on a new one. But seriously. That picture. My keyring is hilarious now. (No, it didn't occur to me to buy a new keyring while I was at a locksmith.)

The worst sight of today undoubtedly occurred while I was preparing broccoli to go with my lunch. I had three little pieces in the pan already and then accidentally lopped off a huge chunk. I picked up the chunk, preparing to cut it into smaller pieces, when I saw something wriggle.

I don't have a problem with caterpillars, but I do have a problem with bugs in my food. I shrieked. The cats were perturbed. Upon closer inspection, I noticed there was a nasty, webby material in between the stems. I threw it all back in the bag and back into the fridge. (The fridge! Where it had been for a few days! Why were they alive?) When I got it out tonight to show Emma, I discovered there was a second caterpillar, half out of a cocoon-like structure. Don't they know they're supposed to come out as butterflies? And not in my broccoli. And not in the fridge. Ew.

Eeeeeeeeeeew. (Also, Blogger has captions now? This is great. Except for the apparent double spacing.)

This was nothing like Sunday's caterpillar experience. So cute, so fuzzy, so happily (until I used the flash to get his stripes) and appropriately on the ground on Belle Isle. He wasn't so safe either, being in the middle of the path, but I think he was doing all right.

To round this out, let's end with the best sight of today. Emma and I made an expedition to IKEA and had a delightful lunch/dinner. I guess the scary broccoli was (meant to be) part of my lunch, and IKEA followed that and the FREE cupcake at the Cupcake Station, so IKEA was probably dinner.
Look at that. Meatballs, mashed potatoes, apple cake—wait, didn't mean to give away that we got dessert after cupcakes, but there was a misleading buy one dessert, get one free deal so we couldn't help it also let's not talk about the 1 a.m. donuts in Ypsi last night—and beautiful sunlight through the huge windows. Sure, the view out of IKEA is never great, because it's bound to be a huge parking lot, but the clouds and the sun were pretty enough to temporarily make up for the commercial sprawl.

Freiburg's IKEA does have a better view than Canton's, parking lot and all, because there are the hills of the Black Forest
with wind turbines atop. But Canton's was good today.

I think dinner might not have been the best sight. I think it might have been this:

Stuffed animal mountain, yes. Customary giant hot dog ad, always funny (in a lame way). I love the elephants. Giant sharks, hilarious. But wait. Wait. Is that—? Could that be—?
Weasels. Maybe ferrets. We considered stoats. But weasels is funniest. There's nothing not funny about a weasel. Just say it. Weasel.

I didn't buy one, no matter how funny, or how cheap stuffed animals at IKEA are. (The huge sharks are surprisingly affordable.) I do own an IKEA rat, because who buys a stuffed animal rat? My mom owns one too. We love them. But I didn't buy a weasel. I'm broke, remember?

Weasels.

*You might think the paycheck I received that evening was better, but I'm not sure. Paying the bills isn't that exciting. It's just one of the basic things I require.

Windy Tidings

2010-10-26T10:07:00.001-04:00

I got up half an hour ago, but the feeling of dread from the dream I was having right before I woke up is still gusting within my chest—I stayed at college for an extra semester but for unclear reasons never went to art history lecture, which was taught by my sixth grade science teacher (??), and then I accidentally skipped the final exam, and was hanging out with my ex-boyfriend (let's double the stress), and there was severe weather outside so we couldn't go to the beach...mhm, U of M was somehow on a beach—well anyway, this pointless anxiety is holding steady, making me not want to go to work.

I can hear the wind outside. Through my skylights, I can watch the trees directly above my attic apartment shake in said wind. I think about how most of my most treasured belongings are in this room. The Midwest is looking at a wind storm of epic proportions. Like, maybe 60 mph winds? I'm walking to work today instead of biking.

*SOUTH TO SOUTHWESTERLY WINDS OF 30 TO 40 MPH ARE EXPECTED TO DEVELOP BEHIND A COLD FRONT THAT WILL MOVE THROUGH SOUTHEAST MICHIGAN THIS AFTERNOON.

* THE POTENTIAL EXISTS FOR SOUTHWESTERLY WIND GUSTS IN EXCESS OF 60 MPH IMMEDIATELY ALONG AND BEHIND THE COLD FRONT.

* WINDS OF THIS MAGNITUDE MAY CAUSE DAMAGE TO TREES AND TREE LIMBS. TRAVEL MAY BECOME DIFFICULT TO HIGH PROFILE VEHICLES. –weather.com

Did I mention that Emma and I live in an attic? We don't have access to the basement, as far as I know Good thing I'll be at work until four o'clock. We've got a basement there. I just hope I don't have to hide in the walk-in freezer. Emma says if it comes down to it, she'll come to the restaurant and hide in the basement with me, since we don't really have one. She'd even hide in the freezer with me. Thank god I can't think of a reason to be in the freezer, 'cause I definitely don't want to be in it. That thing is COLD. If full of cheesecake.

La Vida Es Dura

2010-10-18T16:45:00.000-04:00

Everything is hard. I know, I know. It's not true. We're all just whiny, spoiled (in one way or another), lazy college students/grads/whatever else we are. Crappy adults, I guess. Anything that requires us to tear ourselves away from the internet—even if it's just to write an email, which is on the internet for god's sake—is hard.

My assertion that everything is hard probably shouldn't come as a shock, considering I routinely refer to the following things as "the hardest thing":

Lunch.
Brushing my teeth, washing my face, and going to bed.
Getting out of bed.

No, seriously. Getting out of bed is my number one hardest thing ten months out of twelve, at least if you're analyzing the frequency with which I say things. To be fair, term papers only come twice a year on average, whereas the morning comes without fail every single day, and it's discouragingly cold outside of my covers probably seven months a year in Michigan. It was still September when I started writing this post (maybe blogging belongs on the list of hardest things), but if I made twice as much money as I do (read: enough to pay my rent, eat, and pay back college loans), I would have been out buying flannel sheets that very day. And come to think of it, sometimes even in May you need two comforters if the heat's no longer on.

The first two years of college, I wasn't really ever cold. The dorms are heated more than anyone really wants, and my mom was concerned that walking was my only mode of transportation, so I owned snow boots for the first time in at least five years. Also an umbrella, even though I tried to resist. (Why?) The rain boot population on campus was starting to rise, and I got these great pink and orange polka-dotted ones that were at least a half size too big but made me look forward to rainy days. Braving the elements to make it to lecture in the MLB, or class in the USB—buildings on the opposite side of campus, how trying!—and arriving still warm and dry was a pleasantly tangible accomplishment. That I could do this in under ten minutes made it better. My reward at the end of the brisk walk was that I got to sit in a warm auditorium in a nest of my coat and scarf and hat and gloves, full Nalgene on the floor next to me, and relax. Lectures are easy, at least when they're literature or anthropology. They were usually anthropology. All I had to do was pay attention and write down everything important the professor said. I'm good at notes. Even if I struggled to stay awake in some lectures, the topics were interesting in general, if sometimes poorly executed.

Wait, what happened to life being hard? Where has my complaining gone? The key here is that I'm remembering freshman and sophomore years. (The good old days? Not exactly, but okay.) Senior year, back from Germany, I lived ten minutes off campus and down a hill. The solution was my bike—but even with a rain jacket, that was awful in the rain. And then the snow. And the lack of decent plowing in this town. I didn't touch my bike for at least two months. One day this September, I walked to work because it was raining. It turned out that it was barely raining, and I might as well have biked, but oh well. Walking gave me more time to think about how I didn't want to go to work and interact with my coworkers. It was my first full day working at the restaurant I now spend about twenty-five hours at per week. (Newsflash! I have a job!) I walked across the Diag, through the throngs of students on their way to class, something I usually avoid when on a bike. As I walked under the Engineering Arch—such a familiar sight my first two years of college—I thought of it resplendent in its October ivy, and how I used to walk the opposite direction under it in the morning, and oh how I wished I was on my way to learn about kinship structures, or human evolution, or even that silly class on Scandinavian civilization. Instead, an unfamiliar industrial kitchen. Customers.

Here is the arch in the beautiful colors of fall 2006.

Now I live practically on campus again, but on the other side. I'm close to everything. But unlike the dorms, there's no heat so far. Someday (soon? please?) the landlord will turn it on, and maybe getting out of bed will be hard only because of the weight of my legs pulling me down, and not because my hands will freeze if I get out from under the covers. But, to add to my life-is-hard list, a disturbing discovery I made last week: there are only two heat vents in our entire attic apartment. One in each bedroom. In addition to two bedrooms, we have a bathroom, a big area containing the kitchen and a random couch and the staircase, and then a nook coming off the kitchen which we call the living room. And only two heat vents. Heat rises, so the attic should be warm, right? Or, maybe not. The roof and the old windows and the skylights may just invite the heat out into the big, cold world around us.

This is pretty much the post I wanted to write originally. Then life got even harder. It was almost one a.m., and I was about to get ready for bed, but first I wanted to get the last few pieces of the pizza Emma had made me off the cookie sheet and into the fridge. It wouldn't budge. I did as Emma had done, prying the pieces off with a knife. Alas, she used a butter knife, whereas I used the sharp knife I had used to cut the slices. You see where this is going. I pretty much stabbed myself in the left palm right under my pointer finger, because I am an idiot. We were at the ER until four a.m. I have two stitches, I'm not supposed to do dishes, and I work in a restaurant where everyone does dishes. I went back to get my stitches out after the seven to ten days were up, but no luck; instead, one more week of stitches for me. I'm allowed to do dishes now, but I'm still not supposed to keep it wet for very long, so that's a problem. Life is hard.

Almost Out-of-Season Nostalgia

2010-09-13T10:44:00.000-04:00

Summer always used to be about water. The centerpiece of the summer would be a week on Lake Huron, supplemented by the constant pull of the city pool from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The importance of Up North was cemented by the time I was in first grade—I remember making a book entitled "Summer," in which I described each vacation from the time I was two, which in my understanding was the first summer my family had headed north with me. The previous summer had been the best, because my family had rented a mustardy yellow house directly on the lake, where we were joined first by one set of grandparents, then the other, and my oldest, silliest uncle. I can only remember the photographs now, and that I didn't understand why I needed sunscreen on my ears and neck when my brother, who had shorter hair (but darker skin), didn't, and that I think the water there tasted sort of funny, unless that was the summer before. I remember that my grandpa put a penny on the train track behind the cottage and then showed us how a train had flattened it, and we had dinner at a nearby German restaurant—I ate spätzle with just butter. I guess I do kind of remember that trip.

The summer before second grade, we spent a week in an Oscoda condo with my cousins and their son, two years younger than my brother, and probably my aunt and uncle. Over the years, they invited more cousins and their children, and our grandparents, and sometimes my parents, and we moved up in the world, to a private house (bigger than a cottage) with its own beach, and then both of the houses that shared that beach. The last two years, I had my own room in the "kids' house," where I read book after book in peace away from the boys, especially around noon when we weren't allowed to be outside.

I don't think I could really even approximate swimming until I was six or seven. When my parents subjected me to swimming lessons at our pool, I didn't pass level one, although I did learn to put my head under water and kick myself around, which was good enough for me until middle school made swimming a more public event. The summer after sixth grade, my cousins made their first blunder—they tried to switch us to Lake Michigan and Petoskey from the Au Sable River area. Instead of a private beach, we would have a bluff, and a drive to the beach. Worse than that, we'd been the victims of false advertising and broken promises, and the morning after we got there, we left the house with a farm on the bluff. We stopped at an aunt's and uncle's in Traverse City and tried to enjoy their smooth, rocky beach, but that was all the Great Lake we got that summer. It all fell apart after that. My cousins thought the Great Lakes were too big and cold for the little kids. We went to water parks and Lake Lansing, and I turned twelve and always got my period during vacation, and everything sucked. The last summer my brother and I were invited on the family vacation, I was fourteen, and we went to Higgins Lake. We had a dock, not a beach. You can see across Higgins Lake. I like depth. I like waves. I ran out of Robert Jordan books halfway through and the used bookstore there didn't have even one of his books.

There was one more idyllic summer. I was sixteen, Ali fifteen. Summer had begun to be about summer concerts and road trips with friends and my mom (we weren't the sort of kids to get our drivers' licenses or anything) and that summer's trip far up into Wisconsin had been great. Chelsea, Ali and I saw the week in Bayfield with their family as part two of our summer tour. We biked to get ice cream in town, and all around, and snuck down to the beach after everyone else was in bed. The next year, life got harder, and we had to head back to Michigan after a few days. Since then, I've only been on day trips to the Great Lakes.

The state park beach in Muskegon (pictured above) was really nice, even if Ali and I were only there for a few hours at the end of July. However briefly, I did reach Lake Michigan, the number one destination on my list of places to go this year (which admittedly could have been more thoughtfully written to allow for greater successs—oh well). But I miss the way I used to enjoy the beach on vacation with my cousins: pancakes for breakfast, slather on the sunscreen, wait 20 minutes, run down to the water, hang out as far out in the lake as possible until I turned blue, dig "baby pools" with masterful irrigation systems with the help of my engineer uncle, swim, swim, swim, eat Bugles and Cheez-its, make s'mores on the beach. For a whole week. I think those weeks on Lake Huron were the best thing about my childhood, but they are no more.

Too Late for Titles

2010-09-10T00:15:00.000-04:00

I love fall more than any other season, but this year, it's too cold, too fast. Summer was important, but summer still feels incomplete, and I was counting on the heat lingering into September. I don't know why, exactly. I have one or two summer dresses that didn't get their fair share of use, there are lakes I haven't swum in, and with the empty, boring spaces of a laid-back summer came a refreshing, carefree feeling I don't have that often, even if those empty, boring spaces were surrounded by obligations and the pressure of the future. And now it's cold, and I do have to plan for the future, but I want warm weather to continue the illusion of freedom.

I've got several mostly-finished posts about summer that are nearing their expiration dates, and maybe I'll get them up soon. Lately I can't bring myself to care about this. Everything I write wants to be too introspective and boring for the internet, but I try to steer myself toward entertainment and in the process, prevent myself from really thinking. So, we'll see. I like writing in this blog, but I've lost momentum. I have an almost crippling need for things to be in order and complete, so I don't want to just surrender August up to unchronicled oblivion, but at the same time, August is done. I write this blog in the present.

The present involves a lot of this:

And a lot of this:

We just can't stop ourselves from calling it anything besides making out.

Im Juli = In July

2010-08-15T21:24:00.001-04:00

If any of you out there are students of German—which some of you are—then you recognize this title. Im Juli is a film by prominent Turkish-German director Fatih Akın, probably the most positive of his that I've seen, though I've only seen four. I think the other three (Gegen die Wand, Auf der Anderen Seite, Soul Kitchen) are more powerful or just plain better, but a lot of people really like this movie, and, well, I'm writing about July. Im Juli is a road movie with a love story. The two main characters travel from Hamburg in northern Germany all the way to Istanbul. They travel by borrowed car, hitchhiking, stolen car, more hitchhiking. In July, I traveled by plane, and car, and boat. I didn't hitchhike. I didn't even get on a train.

I started the month celebrating the Fourth of July in West Michigan with Ali and Drew and Cooper, spent twelve days in Rhode Island with dear old Rachel and co, then ended the month with Ali and Drew again—first Ali came to Detroit (she got to take the train), and we went to a concert, then we drove back to Gobles and Mattawan with a puppy in tow who was on her way to a new home, which she reached via the ferry in Muskegon that crosses Lake Michigan to Wisconsin. In between these trips, I was in Ann Arbor off and on. I spent twenty of July's thirty-one days as a guest.

This backpack and I have gotten real close this summer. (And, the boots from this post.)

Rhode Island was a big commitment. There was no way I'd drive that far, by myself, in a car without air conditioning, so I had to buy a plane ticket. Once you're spending that kind of money, you want to stay a while, but not too long because you set the dates and generally stick by them. Her family had told me, again and again, that I could stay as long as I wanted. Since college started, we had only caught Rachel for days at a time except at Christmastime; then, last August, her family finally made the long-postponed move for her mother's job, so she doesn't even come back for the holidays anymore. I hadn't seen the whole family the way I used to—going over after school, staying for dinner, spending the night on weekends—in a while. I hadn't really seen them like that since sometime in high school, but even though they're in a new house in a different state, and Rachel's a college graduate while her little sister has accumulated many more sisters through her sorority, a lot was the same. We did touristy trips, went to the beach a couple times, but also just existed together.

Ali, Rachel, Maddie, and me, with Emma above us. This is actually in Ohio, in May, but it includes three of the people I stayed with in July.

The weirdest thing to think about while in Rhode Island was that I didn't actually know when I would see the whole family again after that. Rachel, I would probably see in the not-too-distant future—about a week from now, it turns out, coinciding with Emma's return from Poland—but she won't live in the woods of Rhode Island with her parents for too long. Rhode Island's not that far from Michigan, and definitely not from the rest of New England, but it's not somewhere I'm likely to go with any regularity. Staying with Ali and Drew was completely different.

On the Fourth of July, hurtling along the country roads at sixty or so trying to follow Ali from her grandparents' to Drew's place was challenging. After a couple days going back and forth during my visit at the end of the month, I knew exactly where to go, although I would forget to watch out for Drew's driveway. And even though Drew, like the rest of us, won't be where he is now for too long, I had this pleasant feeling that driving under the arching trees past the ranch houses and the fields was going to stick, because Ali and Drew intend to stay in the area. As the years go by, they'd like to move up from the five golden chickens Drew keeps at the house he lives in now to land of their own where they can grow their food and raise the children they might one day have.

I can picture the next year of my life, sort of. I've got the setting and a lot of the characters picked, at least, if not the plot. You could even say I know some of the conflicts. After next summer, though, it becomes much hazier. I live places. I make money, I hope. I have a life, eventually, but maybe not in close proximity to the people I have willed to stay close to me. Ali and I sat one evening on the raft, dangling our feet in the little lake, talking about her future, the jobs she'll have, the dinner parties she'll invite me to. Her mom and her five siblings, who have always been of utmost importance, will probably spread farther apart than she would have once liked. "But they'll visit," she said. She always insists I'll stay, or end up, in Michigan. I don't know. I hope that I'll end up living close enough to visit often. I realized that evening that this vision she's been forming of her future gives me a glimpse into mine, because I will be part of it. I don't know where I'll be getting my mail and paying my taxes, or who with, or when, but at some point, if everything works out to the bare skeleton of our dreams, Ali's home will be a fixture in my life and my children's lives. Even if they're a decade younger than her kids. Hopefully not all of them—it would be inconvenient.

By the time I finally said goodbye to Ali and headed home, it was August 2nd. The month of travel was over. Back at home with my parents, I missed living with my friends. I had tried my best for a month to be homeless, but now I want a home of my own again. And so I found one: I'm moving back to Ann Arbor mit meiner lieben Emma and those silly cats come September. Come, September! No, you can wait. I might be impatient during the next two weeks of limbo, but they're full of guests, which will be nice. And despite the stickiness and the sometimes isolation, I don't really want this summer to end.

Also, watch Im Juli. I think I'm going to for a second time.

Dusk on Lake St. Clair

2010-07-27T00:51:00.000-04:00

The color changes gently and was hard to photograph, but I like it. There was also a freighter, a nice red one, but I wanted to keep riding my bike so I didn't stop again when the angle was right.

I promise I'll write about Rhode Island, or something, anything, soon. Once so much time passes, there are so many things I could say, but no convincing way to decide which I should say, and then I think about the things I won't say and fall asleep. Good night, world.

Last Week, I Was in Michigan

2010-07-12T01:13:00.003-04:00

On Monday, my primary goal was to not fall asleep until bedtime. My secondary goal was to fill the time until then. I wanted to clear enough space on my desk to use it, or tune my harp, or, you know, eat dinner. But all my energy was directed toward goal number one, leaving nothing with which to fuel actual activity.
The night before, I was at a house on a small lake with some of my favorite people, and it was the Fourth of July, and we ate burgers and swam and got squirted with water guns and watched fireworks set off up close and personal on the lawn. We got bug bites. Exhausted but unwilling to end the party, we ate delicious popcorn and stared at boxing people on TV and I tried to fall asleep against the side of the couch. And then, finally, finally, we retired to our beds or makeshift beds and cursed the heat that kept us up for much of the night. Monday, I drove all the way home, yawning and scratching and yawning. In Wayne County, where I wrote this part of the post, we had a heat advisory. It was so hot, and I was so tired.

I hoped that if my parents fed me, which could realistically happen within two hours, I would wake up. Food did happen to me eventually, but first I fell asleep twice. So much for goal number one.

But, several triumphs!

To swim happily in the lake, you find someone who can sort of steer the raft with its tiny motor, so that you bypass all the horrifying plant matter by the dock and can jump off into refreshing but warm lake water, weed-free. None of this seems too difficult, although I'm sure I'd be a failure at steering. Anyway, in the end you have to get back on the raft, and there is a "ladder" to aid you in this. A ladder with one metal rung, if that even counts as a ladder, and then a chain hanging off that with a loop. That is the first rung, a rung that moves around in the water as you try to position yourself on rung number two and then haul yourself up onto the raft. The guys struggled. I was worried. But then I did it easily, and Ali's youngest sister followed me up, also no problem. And I don't even exercise anymore! (This is where I'm not going to go on a thing about how I miss the CCRB at U of M, but where I will stop to tell you that my bedroom floor—and my desk—are now essentially clear, so when I return to Michigan, I can unroll my yoga mat for the first time in months!)

To tell the truth, I had only one triumph in mind (not the previous one) when I started this list, but felt it could only be noteworthy if there was a succession. So here's another one, one with more lasting benefits:

Over the past few weeks, I've discovered that some of my favorite clothes from pre-Germany times fit again, which means I can wear more things! Without shopping! This is especially good because shopping trips are becoming increasingly frustrating. Dresses that fit my bottom half are too big for my top half. Jeans that fit me are ultra low-rise and I don't approve. Even good t-shirts are hard to find. But a miracle has occurred: a pair of jeans that I have owned since fall 2006, fairly skinny jeans purchased before the label "skinny jeans" had stuck, jeans that I realized were too big at the waist after I bought them, which were then too tight when I tried them on this spring—now, mysteriously, fit me almost perfectly. Okay, they're not perfect. But after wearing them for three days, they still hadn't even tried to fall off. This is unheard of. After a taste of jeans-wearing-security, I'm thinking I might have to renew the quest for jeans that actually fit me. But it's so hard.

And finally: my denim miniskirt (possibly my favorite clothing item of 2006-2007) fits again, which enabled me to build the perfect outfit to head west to Ali and Drew on the Fourth of July: the miniskirt, a black scoop-neck t-shirt, and my ten-dollar, not-leather, red cowboy boots. (If Emma had had her way, I'd have been wearing a black leotard for my top, but American Apparel is too far away and expensive, and Emma's already starting trends in Pittsburgh. I think she's doing okay without me following along. Plus, how do you explain to someone why you are wearing a leotard?) The outfit seemed right, and I've been dying to wear my cowboy boots because it's been months since it was coldish. And the miniskirt had been out of my life for well over a year. I usually feel that it plus not winter (read: bare legs) is sort of questionable, and I have this idea that sometime soon after college you have to start dressing somewhat more modestly or elegantly, but I'm not sure when that happens. Ali and Ali's mom approved of the outfit—as did some guy at the gas station in Detroit.

This is unrelated to the gas station. This is the bonfire from Sunday night. Those flames are much taller than a tall man.

I'd pulled to the pump ahead of him because it's the one I always use and I didn't think they were ready to leave yet, but then felt bad when I realized he wasn't pumping gas anymore, so I'd inconvenienced him. As I was starting to pay for my gas, I heard him yell out that he liked my boots, and asked where I got them. The answer was some random secondhand place. Then he asked me where I was going. Was it to church? Uh, right. Right, friendly gas station man. I'm headed to church at 12:45 in a short skirt and cowboy boots. On the Fourth of July. He kept talking but I had a hard time hearing him, especially while trying to get my gas and not do something wrong and embarrass myself. I had to insert my card three times before I pulled off my zip code—you see, I tend to get flustered when people talk to me at the gas station. People being strangers, always. But he won for most friendly.

Anyway, I would love to grace you, the internet, with a photo of my beloved inferior red cowboy boots (my real leather ones are nicer, but less interesting), if not the outfit which I have attempted to describe, but because I am the photographer of my life, I have no photos of myself, and my boots are in Michigan whereas I am in Rhode Island, the Ocean State, or as my friend Rachel's dad told me, "the Kentucky of New England. And we live in the sticks." On Friday, I reacquainted myself with the Atlantic after eight years away, but that is clearly a story for another time. Since my photos are not plentiful, I will leave you with another picture relating to the Fourth of July celebrations:

This honey-whiskey liqueur was my birthday present from Ali. I like the pretty goldy color (accentuated by my bedroom window) and the mysterious turkey silhouette. Yes. Such a mysterious turkey. Now laugh.

It must be summer 'cause [I'm] never around*

2010-06-30T23:59:00.008-04:00

It's July. Cop-out post. I'm backdating it to June, though. It's not July until I go to sleep and wake up.

Pittsburgh was almost four weeks ago. So long since I've seen Emma. Summer is half gone—if my summer ever ends. The future is still uncertain, but July should be a busy succession of fun fun fun and gone gone gone*(**).

West Michigan, Lansing, Ann Arbor?, Rhode Island (and hopefully Boston!), Lansing, probably Ann Arbor, West Michigan (I like to visit the same people, obviously)...and then on to August, but let's try to let July take its time. Let's not rush on to August. Let's try to hold onto the present and make it count.

Also, if you find yourself in Ann Arbor without a place that you live in and several hours to kill and you want fresh air but enough shade to see your computer screen and have a table but you don't need a power source, the tables outside the art museum are great. Yes. I'm blogging about how great it is to sit around on campus, again. But it's so pleasant. If only I had been drinking Eisschokolade while I skyped with Maraia. Lucky Maraia in Berlin! Skype is great, so is sitting outside the museum, here's a photo the end:

*It's a song.
**Or it could be "fun fun fun and gone so gone." Choose your own adventure.

Dreiunddreißig Red Balloons

2010-06-29T18:07:00.002-04:00

Usually, when I take photos of things, I like the way the world actually looks and want to capture it. (Or the way it looks through my sunglasses, which can result in disappointment in my camera.) This late April day, I was documenting my bedroom during its window of perfect sunlight, but that doesn't last long and soon I was in Emma's room, with its longer-lasting light and thirty-three red balloons left over from the Book Co-op's poorly-attended but enjoyable sock hop. Emma was already on her "99 Red Balloons" kick at that point. The balloons were all the same color, but the light hit in different ways and so in the photos, they range from pale yellow to deep red. This is a time when the real world, and crispness, and accuracy weren't so important. I love the way the light hit the collage of her belongings across the room. These pictures remind me of something, a movie or several or something, but I'm not sure exactly what. Something magical.

I love this view, even if it is just Packard.

ÖÖÖsterreich Is a Great Name

2010-06-25T13:45:00.001-04:00

So, this time last year I was 21. And instead of just getting back from Pittsburgh a few days before my birthday—which was weeks ago, but this post took me forever to write—my brother and I returned from Austria. Yes, lovely Austria. Three days later, we went to Paris, and as those links suggest, I actually wrote about Paris at the time. Austria only got one post, in which I did not even mention that the dogs who had inspired it were frolicking in front of the Hofburg, the palace that served as the Habsburgs' primary winter residence and now houses the President of Austria, let alone that they were Viennese.

Here are but a few of our favorite Wiener. Yes. People from Wien. Vienna. Sorry. I'm talking about the dogs. Dogs are people too!

Sidenote: Emma, who is, like me, actually a cat person, also wrote about dogs recently. If 'recently' means in her last post, which was posted weeks ago, that is.

Anyway, I'm trying to remember what I liked so much about Vienna, because it was certainly a good time. Part of it was the weather. Blue skies do a lot when it's been rainy for days, even if the clouds move at a rapid pace and it gets a little chilly when they're blocking the sun. The food was good.

John and I had Sachertorte with Melange, pictured above, because that's so typically Viennese. And Melange is a certain kind of coffee, not the drug also known as "spice" in Dune. In case you were confused? No, I know, this is stupid. Sachertorte is two layers of chocolate cake with some apricot jam in the middle and then a yummy, dark chocolate icing. It comes with cream. The cream is so good. Coffee, meh. Still not a fan. But with enough chocolate, it almost starts to make sense.

This cake was better, though. It was John's best cake of Europe. And he was there for five weeks, eating cake with me, our friends in Munich, and my aunt. Especially my aunt. She suggested or produced Kaffee und Kuchen like every afternoon I was with her in Europe. Kaffee und Kuchen is high on the list of Best Things About Europe. If I had more photos of Kuchen, I would have made a Kaffee-und-Kuchen post long ago. Anyway, this cake. It's called Pandatorte, I guess because it's dark and light, and as you can see, it was mainly creamy chocolately deliciousness. I think we may have had this, and not the Sachertorte, at the Hotel Sacher or whatever, but I'm not really sure anymore. We were definitely underdressed, wherever we were.

You know what, I just want to let that piece of cake tell you everything about Vienna. Vienna is great. Vienna is tasty. We had Schnitzel. Oh man, Schnitzel. I love meat that is breaded and fried.
Other things that are good about Vienna: I like the Hofburg. We hung out in the gardens and read books—John, something for fun, me, the Aeneid auf Deutsch for this Language and Culture of the Ancient World II course I took for some reason (oh right, because there was almost no work and I was compensating for usually only studying the Greeks, because fuck the Romans). I also read Dorothy Dunnett, of course.

We went to the Schmetterlinghaus ( = butterfly house) and saw the biggest butterfly species in the world. It's scary. Ugly and scary. And right below this paragraph.

We saw Gustav Klimt's The Kiss at the Belvedere museum, and other paintings by him, and other things that I don't remember, but Klimt was cool. Then, I think I got to have Grießnockerlsuppe at the Belvedere café!! Grieß is wheat semolina, and Grießnockerl are basically dumplings made of Grieß, and then you put them in a Suppe, or really a broth, and then you are eating this tasty but rather plain soup of broth and starch and I love it, even though there are little green things floating in it. Every time I try to type 'broth' I type 'brother.' Or maybe I had Frittatensuppe or whatever that's called, which is broth with shreds of pancake in it, but I think that this was a time I got to have Grießnockerl. John wasn't impressed by it, but that's okay with me.

If this is just going to devolve into inane discussions of food that display my unsophisticated palate, I guess I'll post the following photo.

Above is Karlskirche, which is at the U-Bahn stop (Karlsplatz) John and I took, or at least switched lines at, every day as we came into the city from the hostel. It's obviously baroque and somewhat silly-looking, but unlike the Berliner Dom, which I find incredibly stupid, I kind of like it. The last evening we were in Vienna, John and I—here's the lame part—got McDonald's to go and ate along the reflecting pool. We weren't the only ones doing so, either. There were a ton of people there, and those chicken nuggets were good. Sometimes, you are tired, and hungry, and just want something easy. McDonald's is so easy.

Another thing I liked about Vienna was our hostel. We stayed at Hostel Hütteldorf, which I remember as being a Hostelling International hostel, but the website doesn't seem to say that. Either way, it was the cheapest I found, and for that, we were farther out from the city than Schloss Schönbrunn, which is the old summer palace, but not too far, and it was kind of nice to ride the U-Bahn into the city every morning. (Weirdly, the Untergrund-bahn is above ground for a while outside the city, which continues to confuse me.) The biggest downside about the hostel is that it's on a hill. That hill is horrible when you have luggage on your back, especially when you can't find the hostel, and it's still bad after long days of walking. But it is really nice to see all the green hills and the open sky when you get out of the U-Bahn station. And the view from our window was pretty. Sunset-light on churches is great.

Two more things, I think. One. Schloss Schönbrunn, Empress Maria Theresia's answer to Versailles, is lovely "Bavarian" yellow (that's how my mom identified her ideal color for our living room) and much cheerier than Versailles. The gardens are nice. The zoo is great. It's the oldest zoo in the world (having begun as the imperial menagerie!), and they have great polar bears and an awesome Rainforest House to boot. There's a lot more about the zoo in my Vienna Picasa album. And more photos in general.

Two. This is what I've been trying to verbalize for weeks, but I've failed to figure it out and so have babbled about food and nonsense for who knows how many paragraphs. I certainly can't be bothered to count them. I really liked how it felt to be in Wien—in my head, Vienna's almost always Wien. I can't quite explain how it felt anymore, but I liked it. I liked the avenues, and the smaller streets, and the sky. The buildings, of course. At the city center, there are horrible crowds sometimes, but there's still space. That's part of what I like about Berlin—after a lot of time spent in smaller places, it's nice to have a change—but the space in Wien isn't like Berlin's at all. But I like how it feels both places. When I applied to being an English teaching assistant in Austria for a year, I was excited that I would be in the vicinity of Vienna—oh, bad alliteration—and would be able to visit more than once. Alas, it was not to be.

Golden night city! It just feels so good. Yes, John's wearing a Michigan sweatshirt, but I blurred it...artfully.

After Vienna, John and I went to Salzburg, but let's just leave that story to my photo captions.

This is the last straw, as Rebecca Dew* would say

2010-06-22T13:22:00.010-04:00

The last straw is that my throat is sore. My throat is making me feel miserable. This happened just two weeks ago—I woke up on my birthday, realized I was far too aware of when I swallowed, ingested far more vitamin C in the form of sugary little tablets than necessary, and crawled back under the covers seeking a healing oblivion. I refused to be sick for birthday, part two, which was to take place the next day in Ann Arbor. Anyway, today my throat hurts like it did that time, and I've decided to blame it on my stuffy, dusty, cluttered bedroom.

There are people who would say that I place too much weight on the tidiness of my bedroom, especially considering that this bedroom, the one I've had since we moved here when I was five and half years old, probably hasn't met anyone's qualifications for tidy since I started college just about four years ago. Because, you see, my dad stole my closet from me around then, and nothing has been the same since.

When we picked bedrooms, I got to choose before my brother because I am the eldest, and at five years old, I guess large built-in desk trumps much bigger room with closet large enough to turn into a bathroom if you wanted, a fact which I often regret today, although the afternoon light I get and the fact that my room is on the first vent-thing from the furnace makes up for it. What this means, though, is that the closet I have been deprived of for so long is not that big, but it still makes a difference. Dresses and skirts and jackets need to hang somewhere, and it's really annoying to have to search through everyone else's closets to find what you're looking for. Plus, the other closets get blocked by piles of stuff because no one really needs to access what's normally in there. And then there are the boxes. Closets are a great place to put boxes of things you probably don't need anymore but would rather keep, although I've made progress in reducing the number of boxes.

The reason I have no closet is because my closet contains the portal to the attic, and the attic is the site of my father's painstaking campaign to decrease our energy bills. It was great when he took out the old insulation, and then it was winter, and everything was cold. But, eventually, he filled it. He built walkways to access the huge fan in our attic. The huge fan in our attic, whose motor is broken. That's the reason that he almost didn't give me back my closet two weeks ago, when I realized it was summer and demanded it back. He wasn't going to finish that last bit of insulating until the fall, when it cooled down again. But the fan! The fan! The fan is broken! Oh well. I'll empty out my closet again if you ever get around to getting it fixed. It's a gamble I'm willing to take.

I banished the ladder from my closet, and then hours later he returned, reluctantly, to help me put the shelves back in—I'm not tall enough for that to be easy. "The closet won't solve your problems!" he told me, in a last attempt to keep his way to the attic clear. "No, it will," I told him. "I'll wager a large sum that it won't," he replied. I laughed forever in my head, but for some reason, I didn't take him up on this, even though it will definitely solve my problems. He was just referring to the clutter sprawl all over our house, not my problems in general—whatever they are—and having a closet definitely makes my room being clear easier. That is my biggest concern. It will improve my quality of life drastically when I can walk from my bed to the door without stepping over things and then swinging my hip in to the doorknob. Okay, that's impossible to avoid. I will always walk into doorknobs.

Although I don't think he was talking about problems in general, there is a pretty big part of me that thinks a clean room will improve most aspects of my life. It's easier to think when there are clear surfaces. It's nice to not always sit in the same place. The internet works better at the other end of my room. I can't do yoga on top of five boxes. This room is driving me crazy, and to return to the start of this post, I think it's also making me sick. I don't usually get sick with the same sore throat twice in one month. But when I was little, I would have an irritating cold for the entire winter, and my mom came to the conclusion that it was because my room was too dusty. I don't even know that this makes sense, but I'm going to run with it, because I need to finish this. I was reading on the Diag the other day in the late afternoon, and it was beautiful—

look at it be beautiful—

and I was happy, and it hit me, as keeps happening lately: THIS IS MY LIFE. And it can be like that, reading intelligent books in fresh air and thinking constructively about things—which is easy to do, it turns out—or it can be like this. Now. Pajamas at one in the afternoon, I haven't had breakfast yet because nothing sounds remotely appealing, and the only thing I can actually fathom doing is playing the Sims. This is my life. And no matter how insane it sounds, I can't get anywhere with it until my room is clean, and so I have to clean it.

It's not even that hard. Two weeks ago, I thought I was one day of hard work away from a presentable room. Not organized, because there are so many books to deal with, but satisfactory. And it's not that hard. Things aren't hard. Building momentum is what is hard. Being pretty much alone all day is hard. Cleaning my room is not. I will do this. Sore throat and all.

*Rebecca Dew is a character in Anne of Windy Poplars. She says this all the time, often complaining about "That Cat." You may have thought my renewed obsession with the Anne books was short-lived, but you were wrong. It's lying in wait. I just can't bring myself to start Anne's House of Dreams because I have issues with growing up right now and I don't want her to stop being understandable. I don't want her to become distant and secondary. Soon, though. Soon I will probably make the leap. Or else I'll just reread the Emily books. They stop before children start swarming. I'm actually back to Dorothy Dunnett's The House of Niccolò right now, though. I think I might devour the last two books as soon as my room is clean.

Time Is Scary: A Valuable Life Lesson, Brought to You By Moi

2010-06-15T02:41:00.004-04:00

Do you ever have those moments where you go, "Wait, what.* What was I thinking?" Of course you do. You're human, right? Even my cat Isabel has these moments. I can see it on her face sometimes after she has bit me ferociously on the wrist, when my only crime was catering to her lovey-whims. There's this look of shame, although it passes quickly, and then she often clomps away. Yes. This is also a cat who clomps. How did we manage that?

I have these moments a lot, living in my parents' house again after three years away. Regularly, I wonder what I was thinking to move back to what my father actually referred to last month as "the Napping House," this house where we eat our pathetic dinners amid piles of mail, and our good dinners often next to the growing mail mountain, which, if I am lazy about the table-"clearing" process, threatens to avalanche upon me and my well-buttered mashed potatoes. Then Isabel jumps up to attack the aloe plant through its space-age protection pod and line the rim of my water glass with her fur. No, that last bit's a lie. We don't put up with that shit, not while we're eating.

I wonder what I was thinking coming back here, knowing that the last time I lived here was so close to unbearable that I sometimes don't know how that May ever actually became August. August was okay, though, I think. The light at the end of the tunnel and all. I do know why I'm at home this time, when I stop to think, but knowing doesn't always help.

Another thing that brings this on is seriously cleaning my room—a task I avoided for at least as many years as I've been living elsewhere, but which feels essential considering I hope to make a clean break for my future one of these days, and I shouldn't leave a horrible path of fourth-tier half-rejected socks and unopened bank statements I never wanted my parents to give me anyway because that is what the internet is for, guys across my floor when I leave. Cleaning your room, at least when it is as densely packed as mine, reintroduces you to so many parts of your life you'd forgotten about. Or tried to forget about. Why did I used to wear this bizarre stripey no-button button-up-shirt (it had invisible hooks and eyes)? How come I kept so many ugly fabric scraps in a box in my closet since middle school? How could I allow myself to sing along to the Corrs playing on my long-ago abandoned stereo when other people could probably hear me? The Corrs. What was I thinking?

Everything I do reminds me that things were years ago and now I'm old. I know that I'm not actually old. But even looking back just three years, I see this girl. This girl is so much younger than I am. And I feel sorry for her, but I have this feeling that I can only barely understand her. There are wisps of things she said, and thought, and meant, and I remember them. But I couldn't say them or think them or mean them now.

It's like this photo I come across almost every time I interact with my bookshelves. Yes, interaction. These are some sentient bookshelves. (Lies.) It's sitting on a pile of classics my dad brought up from the basement for me one year, to this day still unread by me. It's in a frame. Today, I even picked it up when I was standing at that end of the shelf, and I noticed the glass was covered in dust. I took it apart and cleaned it off. I thought about taking the picture out of the frame, so I could put something else in it. But I noticed that the photo seemed to be sticking to the glass. And I don't really want to take that frame with me. It's not quite my style. I put the frame back together. And then I looked at myself, seventeen, standing at the edge of Lake Huron and smiling. The smile is so real. There are two of us, with the sunset behind, so our faces are shadowy. I think that's one of the reasons it's such a good picture. He wasn't very good at photos, or smiles.

I remember that this evening on the beach happened. There are photos. One of them is even on Facebook, so I click by it a few times a year. I remember that it happened. But I don't remember this photo. I can remember a month earlier, a little. I can remember what followed it, though I'd rather not. I can remember vague stretches of neurotic, stupid misery and also surges of happiness. I couldn't tell you why they happened, besides that I was young. And I was dumb. But this moment, this photo? I have no idea what I was thinking.

*I am not referring to the tumblr of the same name, of which I read more of the archives than I care to admit for days at a time.

A Wonderful Waste of Time?

2010-06-08T19:00:00.008-04:00

I'm eating brownies and ice cream for (late) lunch because I couldn't come up with anything better, listening to the Verve Pipe on my brother's dusty old boombox in an attempt to fill the quiet with something somewhat novel, and gearing up to clear a walkway through my bedroom. My life is great.

Little-known fact: the Verve Pipe at Freedom Hill was the first concert Emma and I went to, for some reason. With Rubyhorse opening. I don't know why no one ever remembers "Sparkle."

Anyway. I was in Pittsburgh over the weekend. Here are some things I learned there:

1. Mountains + cities = getting lost frequently.
On a related note, cities + no actual map = getting lost frequently.
Also, there are roads, like Bigelow, that turn multiple times. You have to take rights and lefts to stay on the one street. Sort of stressful, right?

2. It is very, very easy to end up on an expressway by accident in Pittsburgh.
And to look at your crappy maps and plan how to get where you want and then end up outside the city and off your crappy map somehow.

3. Mountains + expressways = scary tunnels.

4. Pittsburgh is a pretty cool-looking city.
Lots of nice, old buildings. Lots and lots. Unfortunately, I mainly only have car photos Emma took as we entered the city.

5. Mountains + college campuses = Carnegie Mellon's campus is crazy.
There's like a train going underneath a bunch of buildings above other things. I would prove this if my camera battery didn't die really early on.

Here, Emma is looking for food. And finding none. Okay, she's looking down at the parking lot one level below. But in a larger sense, she is looking for food.

6. As I so eloquently summed up in a text message:

I only meant this in a specific sense. Wine and liquor can only be purchased at state stores. Alcohol can only be purchased until 10 pm. We were at the second-cheapest motel we could find. Drunk was in order. But we drove and drove down PA-60, and no alcohol. Beer Express was closed. It was 12:30. So, if you want drunken motel time, plan ahead in Pennsylvania.

7. The Cathedral of Learning is hilarious in person, as well as on the internet.
Emma rushed in as soon as we got there. Cooper and I thought that eating our sandwiches was more important at that specific moment, but she set us straight:

Because it's called the Cathedral of Learning. And is really tall, and Gothic, and, well, the Cathedral of Learning. Full of Nationality Rooms. There was also a "crazy Russian woman" in the Slavic department upstairs who told Emma "everything [she] needed to do." So that was good.

Here it is, the tallest educational building in the western hemisphere.

8. The Heinz Memorial Chapel is entertaining.
It was designed by the Cathedral of Learning guy, and it has the likes of Isaac Newton, Abraham Lincoln, Abigail Adams, Emily Dickinson, and Benjamin Franklin on the stained glass. The last two got quotes—Ben Franklin's was "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." In a church. It's funny. Farther up the windows, things get more religious, but up that high, you can't really tell what's going on and it hurts your neck.

9. Peace, Love, and Little Donuts—these donuts are really good.
We didn't try anything complicated or crazy, though. No bacon on donuts for us.

10. Hanging out on bridges is fun. And Pittsburgh has so many, several of which are yellow.

Okay, I already knew this. Whatever. It's worth mentioning. Also, from the bridge we were on—the one going from the Strip district across to all that Heinz stuff—we could see four to five old churches poking up around us in the distance. It was so nice. Then we stared at these people in swimsuits with a boat who were, according to Emma, trying to show off how attractive they were.

11. The Pennsylvania Turnpike claims to be America's Superhighway.
I'm skeptical. My dad said that this was maybe true historically at some point.

Cooper, Emma, and I were in Pittsburgh because Emma is spending six weeks there taking second-year Polish. Because she's amazing and plowed through year one in a few days on her own in preparation. She practiced with the cats. Speaking both parts, clearly. That was months ago. Then she took an exam and went back to studying Greek all the time.

So we were helping her move in, except, to where? Housing plans fell through. We slept in motels. We got lost a lot. We had to find parking all the time when we wanted to be not in the car. Which we wanted to a lot, because we spent so much time in it, getting lost or taking indirect routes to our destinations. In the end, we got an extremely thorough impression of downtown Pittsburgh through the windows of a car, and of several other neighborhoods and areas outside the city, too. We spent a while parked downtown because the rain was so extreme on Saturday that you just couldn't really see. When that rain started, we were on an accidental expressway. I was thrilled. The weather did get nicer after my camera battery died.

The rain was even worse than it looks here.

But it was fun, even if it was often frustrating and sometimes monotonous. I would go back to Pittsburgh—but with a real map, plans, and a place to stay.

Oh, and:
12. Driven is a horrible movie.
Thank you, slightly-nicer-second-motel's TV for teaching us this. Except really, I could've done without the lesson. I just tried to read the plot on Wikipedia, but failed to follow it. I think they're lying, and it didn't have a plot, just a lot of race cars and people's eyes and Wilson from House and Til Schweiger as "Beau Brandenburg" and three-second-long shots. It was written by Sylvester Stallone. Do not watch it.

13.

We turn used clothing into new kids.

Here are the rest of the photos, if you're interested in grey skies and the Cathedral of Learning.

Let's End the Month on a Somber Note

2010-05-31T23:46:00.076-04:00

But not a sombre one. For some reason I really wanted to type it like that.

So I keep thinking about the Anne books, which I am rereading after more than a decade (aaahhh, time), and how a certain storyline and accompanying lesson recurs throughout: don't be too stubborn, don't let a quarrel get in the way of your happiness, don't become estranged from your lover and doom yourself to some degree of loneliness (being an old maid) or at least years of unhappy separation before eventual reconciliation. There are so many people that do this in these books. Many of them are too proud to admit they were wrong. Some are too scared to admit the other is right, and they are in love. All situations are stressful, and in such concentration, alarming.

Then you read about L.M. Montgomery's life and realize she was probably thinking about one or two of her beaus* who she didn't marry. And how she married a preacher and moved to rural Ontario with him. As my dad put it, "That's a real downgrade, even, or especially, then." She seems to have had an unsatisfactory life, although it was successful book-wise. L.M. Montgomery was probably trying to help her gentle readers avoid making themselves what she felt had been a dreadful mistake. The intensity of this theme in her writing combined with the reality of her life makes me sad.

Today I went to see The Secret in Their Eyes (El secreto de sus ojos), the Argentinian film that won this year's Oscar for best foreign language film, while I was in Ann Arbor. (I refuse to capitalize the award's title like Wikipedia/the world does, sorry.) It's a crime drama about a man who tried to put a murderer/rapist behind bars even after the case was closed, and about how he writes a novel about it as a retiree twenty-five years later, because he's still haunted by the case. It's a compelling film, often upsetting, but not unbearably so. There were twists and turns I half-anticipated, and others that were unexpected. It's some sort of love story, too—the main character is also haunted by the memories of moments where his life could have taken a different turn. He loved his boss, but twenty-five years later, she's married to the man she was engaged to at the time of the case and has two children. They never managed to talk about it, about 'us,' but, as the New York Times hilariously says, their not "especially secretive" eyes "appealingly convey the...heat of regret."

When the movie ended, we were all a little uncertain. I liked it. Cooper read the movie poster outside the theater and said that he disagreed with the quote on it: "It doesn't leave me wanting more." The story definitely ended. But it left me thinking about all the love stories put on hold, some indefinitely. Even if they work out in the end, think of all the empty years between. I dropped Cooper off at his house and drove to my next, lonely stop—I was to sit in my car by myself and wait for my brother to get back with the other car, so I could drive it home. I came to a stop at a red light, and sat and watched the rain all over my windshield.

The car was quiet, so I pushed the cassette into its slot. Sting came on, singing the Police's "So Lonely." I'm pretty sure it came on around 1:53 into the song—all the verses were done, and all that was left was over a minute of "Lonely, so lonely, so lonely, I feel so lonely." In the rain. Alone in my car with the specters of all those stilted romances. So lonely. So lonely. So lonely-lonely-lonely-lo, lonely-lo, I feel so lonely.

Thanks, Sting.

*I bet that, knowing my proclivity for accurate foreign spellings and that silly coda to this post where I go on about accent marks, you didn't expect me to go with the anglicized spelling. Sometimes, I'm surprising. 'Beaux' is too weird for English.

Escapism, I Know You Too Well; or, How My Dad Killed the Internet

2010-05-28T13:26:00.005-04:00

Over the last few days, I was going to write a number of blog posts, but I just couldn't focus. So, resolutions made over the weekend in Ohio aside, I went back to doing what I seem to do best: sacrificing my days, my evenings, my brain cells and my vision to the Sims (2, if you wondered). The habit has been degrading, though. I promise. You can only watch so many Sims have the same wants and fears and lifetime goals (and noses—their parents' genes don't meld well) before you get a little bored. You can try to give each one a different career, her own style of dress and decorating, her own approach to life. But in the end, they're just Sims, and the progression of their lives and the stories you've built for them in your head are not reflected in the game, let alone in the real world. If you look at ancient matriarch Brianna Conaghy now, there's nothing to tell you she was once a redhead in a cute denim pencil skirt who struggled to make a living in politics so she could move to a house that was proper for raising children. No one knows that her daughter Fiona used to have lavender hair that looked absolutely perfect on her, or that her mother, sick of these brown-haired kids, found a lover to father Fiona, her third child. I won't go on. I realize these details are boring when I try to relate them.

The point is that the Sims is losing its charm, but it's still an easy diversion. I sit there, my fingers darting between speeds one, three, and pause. When it's on three, I hold the key down, willing my people to go faster, faster, faster. When I stop playing and leave the PC to check my email on my Mac or wander aimlessly through the house, I realize my heart is racing. It seems I may have become the lamest of adrenaline junkies, although 'junkie' is probably going way too far. I don't jump off of tall things. No, I speed through simulated life.

When I'm not playing the Sims but am engaged in something and not just staring blankly at nothing, I've been rereading the Anne books. I don't remember what she was talking about, but my mom alluded to them when she brought up Anne's term "scope for imagination," and suddenly, all I wanted to do was reacquaint myself with Avonlea. The second night in Athens, OH visiting Rachel, I had to finish Anne of Green Gables before I could go downstairs to join in the late-birthday Riesling and horrible horrible limited release Woodchuck spring cider—no, seriously, the hint of honey or whatever actually means that this cider smells like perfume and as far as I know, tastes like it too. Avoid it. Brief research has revealed there will be a summer cider too, starting in June, with hints of blueberry. Talk about gross. Although probably not as gross, because blueberries are food and perfume is not.

Anyway, even though I'd read it at least twice before, I needed to see exactly how Anne of Green Gables ended. I was so excited for Anne and Gilbert to finally reconcile and become friends. (It was bound to happen, so this is not a spoiler...for all those people out there who are dying to read L.M. Montgomery but haven't gotten around to it yet.) At the back of my mind the rest of the weekend, I was excited to get home, pull book two off my top shelf, and find out what happened next. I think I had read most of the other books only once. I also think the Anne books are better this time around. I'm older, and more cynical, so it's more likely I would look at their prim sensibilities and Anne's bubbling enthusiasm and laugh a little meanly, then stop reading, but I don't. It's refreshing to be pulled into this sincere, simple, beautiful world. One reason that I appreciate them more now is that I've been paying attention to all the description. As a third grader, I doubt I did that too well. I spent most of my life as a fast reader, something which changed when piles of nonfiction were dumped upon me in college but which I can return to as soon as what I'm reading is both compelling and doesn't have a response paper at the end of it.

The description—flowery it might be, but so good:

The "Avenue," so called by the Newbridge people, was a stretch of road four or five hundred yards long, completely arched over with huge, wide-spreading apple-trees, planted years ago by an eccentric old farmer. Overhead was one long canopy of snowy fragrant bloom. Below the boughs the air was full of purple twilight and far ahead a glimpse of painted sunset sky shone like a great rose window at the end of a cathedral aisle. – Anne of Green Gables, Chapter 2

I didn't even know what a rose window was last time I read this. And the old-fashioned speech, the inverted word order, the words L.M. Montgomery combines: the friendliness and tenderness of 'the Sarah-cat' and 'Anne-girl,' 'fireshine,' and "eyes shining with all the love-rapture of countless generations." 'Love-rapture' is silly, right? I could never write it. But it's perfect in its place. These books have renewed my faith in my ability to be earnest, somehow. At the same time, they've reminded me that descriptive passages can be like this. It's a sort of a downer, because I know I could never write like L.M. Montgomery. Which is okay, probably. It's not like I've spent my life in picturesque, unspoiled Prince Edward Island. I do think I should learn more plant names, however unlikely that may be.

While I tried to savor the first three books, my impatient nature got the better of me, and in three days I was done with Anne of Avonlea and of the Island. I'm a sucker for a love story, even—or especially?—such a subtle one as this. It's just so sweet, without being annoying. So, like the Sims, I raced through all of the Anne books in my house, and now I have to venture to the library to continue.

So now we get to the part where my dad kills the internet. The Sims has lost its luster. I've exhausted the reading options I'm interested in—because all I want to read is the next step in Anne's life, and I can't without making the two-block trek to the library I used to work in. I actually want to get some things done in real life, things that require the internet, like writing blog posts and dealing with my student loans and writing important emails, so I'm not going to allow myself to be sucked into fiction yet. Late Wednesday night, the internet flickers out, as it does rather frequently (apparently only since I've moved home, so it's my fault? do you believe that?). It doesn't flicker back on. I get pissed off—I was in the middle of an AIM conversation, I was writing something in Blogger. I go downstairs in the complete darkness (both parents are in bed) and hit reset on the router.

Oops. Wrong reset-choice. Our network had lost its custom name and reverted to simply 'linksys' and the password was gone. At least I was online again. Come Thursday night, this is a problem. My mom works at home two days a week, and she came home from work needing to finish a project by 10 a.m. the next morning. But she can't access the database if she's not on a secure network. You'd think this wouldn't be that hard to solve, but my dad can't remember how to change the network. He follows the instructions, but it doesn't work. The computer tells him, "Contact the person in charge of your network." "What if that person is me?" he asks, and soon resorts to swearing and yelling and ice cream in the basement with the TV. First he disables the internet entirely. My mom goes to bed, hoping he'll fix it before he goes to bed and she can get back up and work as long as she needs to. He goes to bed.

WHY DID HE KILL MY INTERNET CONNECTION? is all I can think the rest of the night. I don't need a secure network to work. I try to hook up my computer with the ethernet cord, but am unwilling to mess things up further and fail to get online. Every wireless network around our house is protected. I sit out in my car on the street to see if I can get something farther away, but no luck. Just loud, mysterious noises by my house. I rush out of the car and hurry to unlock the front door and get back inside. I seriously consider driving to Ann Arbor, just because I'm so angry. My computer is freezing even though, because it's not online, it's not doing anything. My phone's driving me crazy, too, because the buttons won't stop sticking and I'm trying to text my friends about the situation, and does Emma know if the library's internet is on at night, too? I don't check because I don't think the police would be so into a girl sitting in her car in the middle of the night, glowing conspicuously thanks to the laptop screen. And the police station is right next to the library.

I give up, go to sleep. My parents are up at 5:30 in the morning. I glance at the faint orange glow of dawn out my window and try to sleep. When I get up at 10:30, the internet is back. Without a password. My mom is gone, work incomplete, extension received. We still have to fix the network.

If 2007 Was the Summer of Apathy, Was 2008 the Summer of Bugs?

2010-05-24T09:23:00.006-04:00

I wrote this post in the middle of the night/the early morning of May 24, 2008. I hope it's as funny now as it was then.

WHERE IS LAS PAMPAS,* ANYWAY? HE SHOULD EAT IT.
Current mood: scary bug!!

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I KNEW THERE WAS A GIANT BUG IN MY ROOM BUT NO ONE CARED!!!!

I was lying in bed, thinking about how it was getting nice and cozy even though it was cold and lonely in my room and even the cat was missing, and even though those two reunited lovers were over in that one room talking really loudly to each other because when have they been able to think about anyone besides themselves??—when all of a sudden, rustlerustlerustle SOMETHING WAS MOVING. And I made noises to call the cat to me, but there was no cat coming to me, so I went to turn on the light because sometimes the cat doesn't come, even for me. But there was no cat. And it was creepy.

And then I walked toward the next RUSTLERUSTLERUSTLE and all of a sudden something was flying by my face! But I couldn't see because my glasses weren't on. So I went to tell Emma but she was also trying to sleep and she told me it was probably a moth blahhhhhhh. And I said, NO!! The big creepy dead bug is missing from the side of my bed—because, you see, a couple days ago I noticed a big brown creepy beetle-like thing next to my bed and I poked it and the leg sort of moved which was scary but I thought it was just a weird dead-bug reflex because it seemed very dead. But I hadn't almost stepped on it or squished it with a book in a couple days so that was weird. Emma said the cat probably ate the big creepy dead bug. BUT the flying thing that I saw with my blind blind eyes didn't look mothlike at all! Plus, who wants a moth either??? But she didn't care so I turned on the bathroom light and turned off my light and hoped it would leave.

Thankfully, I was really sleepy and fell asleep, even though it was scary and those two people were still loud. And it was REALLY scary—yesterday I heard rustling noises when I was trying to sleep but they weren't the cat when I turned on the light and I thought someone was somehow trying to break into my room or something even though that doesn't really make sense so I ran downstairs to my awake roommates.

ANYWAY, this is NIGHT NUMBER TWO OF THE CREEPY CREEPY RUSTLING BUG. But I fell asleep anyway, but then at 3:20 I awoke, either because down the tiny hall they are still talking very loudly and male voices carry like whoa, or because of the RUSTLING noise that was BACK. So I turned on the light and AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH it WAS the creepy dead beetle-thing! He flies up and up all rustly and trying to get somewhere along the wall and runs into the wall and then falls on the ground and buzzes some and then haphazardly ends up in a different part of my room and does it again and it was creepy! So I asked Ali to help me with the big scary bug in my room and Alex said "let her do it" and it was SAD so then I went and squealed some more because it's fucking SCARY and then I got a glass and couldn't find it but eventually did and now it is TRAPPED but AAAAAAHHHHHH WHAT A LOUD CREEPY INSECT.

Then I spent 15 minutes trying to steal me some wireless to make this ridiculous post that turned out really fucking long.

Now my foot is asleep, WHY?? I'm not sitting on it or anything, it's just asleep for no reason! Scary.

*'Las Pampas' was one of the names Cooper and I were trying to give Table Cat, to Emma's dismay. Our efforts earned us the names Hegemonic Roommate the Male/the Female. Come on, geographic formations for names are hilarious. "Las Pampas is in the basement." "Las Pampas is attacking my printer." Grasslands don't do these things! Argentina is not in our basement!

Above, the beetle-thing. Later, these were in/on our house. The second-to-last one is especially troubling—at the time, Emma asked, "Is this even from North America?":

Loose Ends (This is the post that never ends)

2010-05-20T01:27:00.097-04:00

So, I graduated from the University of Michigan. With my German B.A. It was not a surprise. That was on the first of May. More of a surprise was that I got up at six in the morning that day, after going to bed around three. Why did I go to bed so late when I knew I had to get up so early, you ask? Well, our house wasn't exactly pristine on May 1st, when the lease was most certainly up. I kept nervously sweeping and facing the piles of rejected food left everywhere and then darting outside and calling out in my embarrassing high-pitched voice, "Here kitty-kitty-kitty. Heeeere kitty-kitty-kitty. Harouuun. Ha-rouuuuun."

My room the night before graduation. Yes, the thing hovering Nazgul-like behind my cute pink dress is the graduation gown.

Yes. The certainly not street-savvy not-quite-kitten escaped the night before we moved out. It had happened the previous night as well, and only housemate Bacchus (let's just leave his name at that) and I were concerned enough to go on a walk around the neighborhood foolishly shaking cat food and calling out to a not visibly present animal in front of the drunk people populating the lawns of Packard and environs. Haroun stuck around the house, we realized, but it was too dark to be sure he was there until he would come up to the door and think about going inside. At the first sight of us, he'd dart away. Eventually we lured him in with food and an open door, but he wouldn't come until we hid ourselves, and he was able to run past and upstairs without facing the shame. What shame? I don't know. He seemed somewhat crazed.

Anyway, that was stressful both times, on top of moving out and junk everywhere and emotional trauma due to leaving a way of life behind, abandoning my home, you know. And then: let's wake up at six a.m. because we need to get in line at the stadium early because maybe security will be awful because THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS GIVING THE COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS. As I said before, this unlikely eventuality was the only reason I was going to the big graduation. So, dark and early, we got up. And the thunder was crashing outside and the lightning was hard to miss. My parents were already on the road—I was impressed because this is unheard of in my family—and they told me the weather forecast was not good. But it worked out. My leather sandals may have been soaked for the zillionth time, and gotten a bit muddier than I'd like, and my hair was awfully frizzy for the photo(s) and really ever since—but even though even camera cases were not allowed, I managed to not break my camera, and Obama didn't get rained out. I was too short to actually see him, unfortunately, but maybe that's a detail I should edit out of my memory.

Wooo, the Big House. Big crowd photos always equal disgruntled strangers in the foreground.

I regret that I was too tired and on zombie-mode by the time we sat in our seats on the field to have realized I should ask someone to take a picture of me at graduation. I have pictures of friends, and strangers. Thousands and thousands of strangers. Graduation, part one did not feel like graduation. It felt like a hassle and a spectacle, albeit one where the president gave a good speech. I'm glad I went. But the real graduation was the Residential College graduation in the afternoon. There were moments where I thought about crying, because ends are sad and there were so many people who matter. I didn't cry until later, though.

The RC is a fun time, as is its graduation.

So the thing with the RC graduation—for all you readers who don't actually super know me, whose existence I doubt—is that, as our Director Charlie Bright said repeatedly, the graduates are the speakers. We each had up to a minute to say or do whatever we wanted in front of our fellow RC graduates, friends, and family. The guidelines were to entertain, and to probably wear clothes. As I alluded to without explaining two posts back, I didn't know what I would say. I did know I wanted to say something, because all too often, I say nothing, and I didn't want to finish the RC off with nothing to say. In the end, I came up with something while sitting in the audience, something that I thought was relevant but also formulated in a funny way. And that was really all I wanted. It turned out that my earlier blog post was something of a spoiler for what I said, although I framed it differently. Normally I have great stage presence, so I hope I pulled that off, but it was kind of a blur so I don't know. Everyone thinks I'm shy, and I am, but I like microphones and stages and speaking loudly. But not impromptu.

I had thought I was going to be teaching English in Austria next year, but this week, I found out that my application never actually made it there. So I have no idea what I'm doing, which reminded me of a quote I liked back in high school, back when I was sort of a crazy fan girl. It's funny for two reasons: the person who said it, and then the way it is said. But I like it. In 2005, John Mayer wrote that "Being lost is sexy."

I thought about explaining the context and making it more meaningful—Garden State is what made him think of this, and life is boring when you're not looking for something, so let's all look for things—but I thought I would rather go with funny. Plus I hadn't had time to practice it out loud at all, so short was better. I also thought about prefacing it with how I love German and the RC German program and things, but that seemed boring. Anyway, I think it went well, and it was fine, but then at the reception after the fun RC parade across campus back to East Quad, one of my German teachers came to talk to me. I hadn't been sure she was there, and before the graduation I hadn't told her or even my parents that I knew the Austria-verdict, but when she came up to me and asked about it, that's when the tears finally came.

The parade—the only photo evidence I have of me. With my brother! What faces.

I really did want to tie up all the loose ends in this post, so in the future I can get on with things, but it's late and I'm heading to southern Ohio bright and early tomorrow morning. So, know this: I did buy the silver-sequined heels I mentioned earlier, but photographic evidence currently does not exist. Follow up is required. I didn't wear them to graduation. Tripping on stage would've been too embarrassing. After a couple extra days, the house did get clean and completely moved out of. Haroun ran away a few days later when Emma was really moving her stuff back to her parents', and we were starting to despair when several days after that, we found him meowing under a back porch a street away from where he'd gone missing.

We even gave away the beloved comfy-maybe-moldy chair. (At least it found a new home before the rain came.) And finally tossed our Christmas tree...

More loose ends, some tied up, some not: late last night I did the eCheck to pay the university the $2.52 I owed them for extra printing. Serious business. Now I think I will actually receive my diploma. But: most of my belongings are still not unpacked.

Notes for Emma, Away in Ann Arbor

2010-05-04T21:06:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting in my bedroom in my parents' house. I've rearranged the furniture to try to get a new start with this room and this house and summers in this pleasant, pretty, but ultimately absolutely boring suburb. But I can't get the furniture right, and most of my things are still packed up. My dad and I just got back from Chinese food in Ferndale and so I don't want to move. I feel like I'm being sucked into the pillow-top mattress that's been on my bed since the last summer I spent in this house, three years ago—the summer yogurt and some pretzels became a valid dinner to me, the summer I gave up the Sims for at least a year because the computer ate my dynasty of four generations, the summer we were lonely late into the night, even when we weren't alone, the summer the last of my grandparents died. After the funeral we went back to my grandpa's apartment at the assisted living place and packed up the photo albums he'd made for my mom, the chairs from the kitchen table, some flannel sheets my mom had bought him. I had loved my grandparents' couch since they bought it when they moved into their trailer years before, but there was no way we could take it. My grandma's mattress, barely used because she'd spent so long in hospital beds, we did take. It's one and a half times as thick as my previous mattress and now my bed towers above the rest of my room. I don't want to think about that summer, but it's hard not to.

There are sirens to the west of my house, and I can hear traffic over the twilight chirps and calls of the birds. There's a plane somewhere above me. It's still not dark outside, so I don't want to turn on the lights, but what light is left hovers above the treetops and roofs and doesn't really enter my room. The computer screen makes me blind to everything else in my room, as it sort of does to everything, even in full daylight.

My mom wants me to make the brownies I said I'd make for her to take to work tomorrow. I don't want to. I'm supposed to add orange zest and orange juice—the recipe called for Cointreau but my dad concluded it was too old-fashioned for Kroger to carry, although he was so old-fashioned he didn't realize a grocery store would carry liquor, let alone self-serve. The orange juice he buys these days has pulp in it; he's revised his shopping practices to suit just the two of them, because we children don't live here anymore. Except, voilà, here I am again, begging for pulp-less orange juice and rolling my eyes at the skim milk and wondering what on earth these people eat. There's Velveeta in the cheese and meat drawer, which we never used to buy. "Your mother keeps going on these nostalgia-kicks," he told me as we headed to the checkout at the Kroger in St. Clair Shores (ours is undergoing renovations). "She'll never use it, but it's better to buy it so she knows it's there than to listen to her ask for it over and over."

The bells in the church are tolling nine o'clock. When the carillon started up sometime in the afternoon, my dad said, "The torturer's at it again." He can't stand it when they get the music wrong. Or when there are interloper grasses in our lawn. Or when paint is cracking off the house. At least he can happily walk, unlike my mom. It's going to be a long summer.

April 30, 2010

2010-04-30T02:25:00.002-04:00

This...

...has become this.

I feel like I should be sleeping without blinds. No control, light in my eyes when I wake up on a mattress on the floor. But I still have blinds and I am taking full advantage.

I don't want to leave this room for reasons of sheer aesthetics, but I also just don't want to leave. Leaving the Krankenhaus so I could move to Germany was hard enough, and then I knew I was coming back to some approximation in a year. I'm excited to have this blank, open, framework-less future to fill, but considering I rarely turn in papers when they're due, I probably won't have a real idea about my life until I'm dead. I guess that's what life is about, right? (I don't think I agree with this statement completely.) As an estimable man* once said, "Being lost is sexy," so that's good for me at least.

Maybe I should use my minute of speaking time at the RC Graduation to discuss this and other such valuable quotations. What, no? Whyever not?

Actually, I agree. But what will I talk about?

*I can cause debates—or full-fledged fights—with this characterization.

I Do Remember This Exists

2010-04-26T20:07:00.002-04:00

The current soundtrack for finals is Mamma Mia. The light through my somewhat northwest-facing windows has faded as the sun sets, but I finally documented my beloved bedroom. In Emma's wester-facing room, there are still parallelograms of warm light across her floor and Table Cat.

The point I'm trying to make is that I took some magical photos in her room, but I kept doing so until my battery died, so I can't post them right now. So that's something else for you to look forward to when I finish finals. Right up there with posts about the trip to Montreal back in early March.

Two to three days stand between me and the end of my undergraduate career. It all depends on when I finish this last paper, worth only fifty percent of my Literature of the Turks grade. I was at a translation conference here in Ann Arbor this weekend. That is something else that happened. I want to buy silver sequined high heels. Table Cat is a purebred, the vet told us today.

In case you forgot who Table Cat was, here he is sitting on Caitlin's suitcase, symbolizing our current transitional state—on Saturday, none of us live here anymore. It was taken last night, before his pure blood status was determined by the vet. Table Cat has a misplaced heart, a sure sign of a Russian Blue. (But a perfectly healthy heart, don't worry.) And he is apparently the nicest Russian Blue ever. Excuse me, "unusually nice for his breed." Usually, I guess they're pretty resistant to vets, not like our lovable, compliant Table Cat. Who spends half the day moaning and whining and will only succumb to loving in private, on his own terms. I do not want to meet any other Russian Blues if Table Cat is a nice one. (This is not to say that I don't love Table Cat dearly. He's nice to me most of the time.)

A couple weeks ago, Emma and I added a suffix to Table Cat's name: he is now Table Cat Porphyrogenitos, Table Cat Born-in-the-Purple...that is to say, imperial in the Byzantine sense of the word. That's as imperial as it gets. In light of the recent evidence, I guess we were right about his high standing. Also, his Byzantine identity perhaps explains the frequent battles between Table Cat and Haroun, whose namesake is, after all, Harun al-Rashid, caliph in the golden age of Baghdad. A caliphate, like an empire in the Roman/Byzantine sense of the word, is universal. There is only one caliph, as there is or should only be one emperor (tell that to the Fatimids in Egypt and the Ummayads all the way out in al-Andalus, or the Holy Roman Emperor). Anyway, it causes conflicts to have two universal rulers in one moderately-sized house on Packard. To be fair, though, neither of them know about history.

Emma and I have a Byzantine history exam in two short days. If only this sort of essay would get me an A. I would draw parallels to the cats all day if it would get me an A. I also could have written an essay about the melancholy aspects of Table Cat's life for my German test, but even though I could have connected it to Rilke's poem "Der Panther," which is about a panther who no longer sees the outside world through the bars of his cage and has essentially stopped living, I didn't think that would help my grade. Plus I already wrote a short story about a Table Cat-panther combination for that class.

In summary: finals are horrible, Table Cat has better blood but is also probably healthier than you, and I still exist.

Dear Professor

2010-04-12T23:55:00.006-04:00

Dear Professor,
I'm not quite done with my paper yet, and this is the reason why:

I'll turn it in as soon as I can. Thank you for your understanding.
Best,
Marisa

The truth of the matter is that the cats are probably not completely to blame, and my professor is so old he doesn't even use email. But he is understanding and doesn't seem to care at all. The AIM conversation Haroun was having is recorded on Hunting for Ghosts here.

On an unrelated note—well, I guess it's one reason I'm not done yet—the lolcat Waste Land is hilarious.

1. IM IN UR WASTELAND BURYING UR DEAD

april hates u, makes lilacs, u no can has. (1)
april in ur memoriez, making ur desire.
spring rain in ur dull rootzes.

earth in ur winter, covered in snow
can has potato. PO-TA-TO.
INVISIBLE SUMMER! RAININGZES!
im in ur hofgarden, drinking ur coffeez.

I like that they kept the German—Hofgarten, z.B.

Hobbies

2010-04-07T02:11:00.001-04:00

This is not what I should be doing right now. I should be reading that book I have in my backpack, the one that I think should be a reasonable introduction to the history of Byzantine Trebizond (a city on the southern Black Sea coast, which means northern Anatolia, it was a big port city) but by the time I look at the table of contents or get to the end of this sentence, I remember that it's a collection of papers and therefore less comprehensive. Or I could be writing a response to Orhan Pamuk's The White Castle. Or translating. Or...the list goes on! April is trying to live up to its position as the cruellest month, but sorry, T.S. Eliot, I stand by my declaration that November is the worst, with February somewhere in the middle. The temperature curve is way better in April.

Anyway, my dear friend Ali had the foresight to graduate a semester early, and so she has found herself with hours of unoccupied time to fill. She may have a job, and not sleep enough at night, and I'll be the first person to tell you that being sleepy all the time is horrible—but I'd love to have time I wanted, but did not have, to fill. Ali recently texted me that she needed a hobby, but couldn't think of one. I couldn't come up with anything not obvious to tell her, besides jump rope, which isn't a hobby for most people and can't really take up that much time. Maybe if you were doing it with the long jump ropes with a person on each end and the patterns of complicated hopping and stuff. That's too hard.

Instead, here's a list of all the things I can't wait to do when my term papers have all crawled into their graves and my MCard has ceased to open doors for me...literally. Maybe later, when I'm done with all my work, I can think constructively for other people.

1. Read.
Most obvious, most important, most exciting. Well, maybe not most exciting, but reading did essentially define my life from age seven to age fifteen. High school was sort of a drain on my time, as was the novel Ali and I spent six months writing. And all that embarrassing poetry I wrote about passing in the hall and shared glances and all that. Writing got in the way of reading, as did geometry, algebra, calculus, biology, chemistry, French, English, not physics because I hated it and read Virginia Woolf and all sorts of things during the wasted "Anyone have any news?" portions of class that took twenty minutes if I was lucky. Anyway. The fact that I developed an appreciation for Virginia Woolf of all people gives away that I did not, in fact, forsake reading entirely. But living in books ceased to be what I wanted, and I had to study. In Germany, I read a couple German novels and devoured Dorothy Dunnett's Niccoló books, especially during breaks. Other than that, though, the intense longing to read had dissipated. Now it's back, and just in time. I'm increasingly aware of how much there is that I haven't read, and there's a complete lack of obligation coming in...three weeks.

2. Knit.
Even if afterwards, I never knit again—which is probably stretching it–I WILL finish the socks I started in May of 2008. I was on the way to finishing them, having received detailed instructions that I understood from Emma when she was in Slovenia with Maraia and me, but the goddamn Irish security at the goddamn Dublin airport took my goddamn metal knitting needles. Even though they've been allowed on planes again for years. On a side note, this exact time last year minus one day, I was probably in the airport or on the plane to Ireland.

3. Learn to throw a pot well.
That might not work. I've been taught twice. I was worse the second time. (Incidentally, the same was true with calc II.) On the plus side, my mom bought my brother a pottery wheel, so I can practice in the comfort of my own home. Or backyard.

4. Go on walks.
Another thing I miss about home and high school is the long walks I would go on with my friends, the dog, or just me. 'Just me' usually included the dog. But he was up for any distance, as long as he couldn't hear gunshots or firecrackers in the distance. Then it was straight home for him. Anyway, I love walking around my neighborhood and critiquing the houses with friends, or singing to myself as darkness falls and no one is around to hear.

5. Bike.
In a similar vein—wait, is that really something people say? it sounds so gross—I am looking forward to bike rides at home. Bike rides for fun and exercise, not because class starts in five minutes and I didn't leave in time and now I have to pedal pedal pedal up that awful little hill and pant pant pant and my gears don't switch anymore and the back brake is broken and please let's walk tomorrow. I have plans to return to the old seven-mile loop, a good portion of which is biking along Lakeshore Drive. I love the lake. I will miss the awful little hill in Ann Arbor, though. Flying down it on the way home is glorious.

6. You know, I can't remember anymore. I'm going to keep taking pictures, and writing blog posts, and watching films in spite of losing my precious access to the Askwith Media Library. I'm going to travel, at least a little. I'm going to look for jobs. I hate looking for jobs. I'm going to organize my house and become my parents' workhorse and manager. I will strip wallpaper. I will wash walls. I will not be allowed to paint because my father is a perfectionist, but although he doesn't know it yet, we are painting those goddamn mint green rooms. And maybe I'll finish inputting the last wave of revisions to Ali's and my novel. It's only, what, five years later? And putting the photos from my entire childhood and before I was born into photo albums. Scanning my parents' slides of Europe, and the renovations of the Victorian house on Alexandrine, and whatever else is in that huge box of slides. Slides. Who does that? We didn't even have a slide projector until my uncle moved to California and got rid of things he owned, and I've never seen these slides.

P.S. This list is very incomplete, but it's 2 a.m., I still have all that work to do and more. And Ali, I'm aware that most of these things cannot be done while you're at work, but I can't think right now.

Fine Days

2010-03-31T19:13:00.005-04:00

We read this poem for my Literature of the Turks class a few weeks ago, along with many more by Orhan Veli, who is recognized as a central figure in Turkish modern poetry. It's a complete break from the earlier poetry we read along with it, which, although also modern, looks back to classical Ottoman divan poetry and is infused with a sense of nostalgia and loss. Unlike the other poets we read for that day, Orhan Veli is irreverent, sarcastic, and more laid-back.

Fine Days
By Orhan Veli (Kanık), translated by Bernard Lewis*

These fine days have been my ruin.
On this kind of day I resigned
My job in "Pious Foundations"
On this kind of day I started to smoke
On this kind of day I fell in love
On this kind of day I forgot
To bring home bread and salt
On this kind of day I had a relapse
Into my versifying disease.
These fine days have been my ruin.

The day we discussed Orhan Veli's poetry was a beautiful, early spring day. One of my fellow students walked into class and brought this poem up immediately. "I know exactly what kind of day he's talking about," he said. "Like today. 'On this kind of day I forgot...' to write my response paper." And we laughed. Then it turned out that he had remembered in time to write it, but then forgot to print it out.

Anyway, today was even more beautiful. Between classes, I had a pleasant lunch on the lawn with a friend from high school, then headed to Turkish. Not many people seem to care about the literature of the Turks, as I mentioned before—there are only eight students in the class. Today, four had emailed saying they couldn't make it, so our kind professor treated the three of us who were there (another just failed to show up) to coffee (hot chocolate for me) at Espresso Royale. It definitely beat the basement of the MLB. Today we were discussing the novella To Crush the Serpent by Yaşar Kemal, which is about the pressure placed on a boy by the rural society in which he lives to kill his mother—her lover killed his father, and his father's family demands vengeance on the woman, not just the murderer. So the boy grows up in this horrible environment, with his grandmother telling him he must kill his mother or else his father's ghost will never rest. It's really compelling, and seems to be a good translation from the English side of things. I don't speak Turkish.

But this post is about poetry, and I think Orhan Veli is fun, so I'm going to post a few more poems, all from the same book and also translated by Bernard Lewis.

For the Fatherland

What have we not done for this our fatherland!
Some of us have died;
Some of us have made speeches.

Tail-Song

We can't come together, our ways are different
You're a butcher's cat, I'm an alley cat
Your food comes in a tin bowl
Mine is in the lion's mouth
You dream of love, I of a bone.
But your way isn't easy either, brother
It's no easy job
To lick the man's hand every damn day.

Reply

—from the butcher's cat to the alley cat—

You speak of hunger
That means you are a communist
That means you burned down all those buildings
The ones in Istanbul
The ones in Ankara.

What a swine you are!

Cats can't burn things! They're cats! What! Hilarious. Although John pointed out to me that a cow supposedly burned down Chicago. You know the song. "The cow kicked it over/she picked it up and said/there'll be a hot time in this old town tonight. Fire fire fire!" On that note, I'm going to go sit in what's left of the sun. Oh, and the various parts for the song listed here are pretty funny.

Nope, wait, not ending there. Some girl just walked by, and we heard her say, "No, don't jump! You have so much to live for!" The cats are on the roof again. It was probably directed at Table Cat.

*I'm pretty sure this translation is found in Kemal Silay's An Anthology of Turkish Literature (Indiana University Press, 1994), which is out of print, but available used on Amazon, although the publication info is different.

Spring Living and All Its Perils

2010-03-22T18:27:00.047-04:00

How did we end up here? Well, the cats, just like every other person in Ann Arbor and the northern hemisphere, noticed that it was getting warmer out, or at least that there was a lot more going on outside.

Table Cat took to sitting on our microwave platform (IKEA table, but whatever) on the counter, so he could look out the back door's window if a human would be so kind as to open the curtain for him.

And then he started to explore above the cabinets, which I think was disappointing for him, because it didn't take too long for him to head back down.

Last week was immeasurably lovely. The light was so bright, so complete, and you could smell that it was spring.

It's funny how every time spring comes, I feel like it's completely new, even as memories of previous springs well up in my mind. The light step of feet in canvas shoes brought back April walks to the Arb at the end of sophomore year, and the exhilaration of biking down the street with no backpack and no jacket brought back living in the Krankenhaus. Even being stuck in the Fishbowl scanning notes wasn't so bad when I looked up and remembered the natural lighting.

I spent several pleasant afternoons on the front porch, eating my late lunch and reading modern Turkish poetry in the afternoon sun.

Emma, and then Caitlin and I, took to the roof above the porch in the goldy evenings. Well, everyone pretty much took to the roof.

Only Table Cat was allowed to roam free at first, since he has lots of experience with running away and always coming back.

I learned Haroun was allowed loose when both cats came up to the bathroom window on the side of the house and meowed to be let in. Which is only possible from the front, but sometimes they forget how to get back inside. They love exploring the roof and sniffing at the edges, wishing they could experience the real world on the ground. But they happily scamper in the other direction, too.

The worst part was yesterday evening. Haroun was on the couch, Emma and I were watching Say Anything, and we looked over to the front window to see Table Cat watching us. From the porch. Oops. No photo of that, though. Hopefully Haroun won't learn to jump off the roof. He's just a baby.

In other roof-related news, we were sitting on the roof on Friday night talking, when suddenly something slid down down down the shingles to the gutter. It sounded like a phone. It was Emma's phone. Emma was barely too short to reach it when standing on the porch ledge, and no one we knew who was tall was available to get it out. We knew it was supposed to rain-snow that night, and this was the last thing Emma needed to tell her mom. "You know, you just don't want to know what happened to my phone this time," she would have to say. In the end, Caitlin yelled out to a tall guy walking by our house, "Hey, man! Could you help us? Our phone is in the gutter! We have cookies!" Thank goodness Emma had made cookies, and thank goodness we live on a busy street this year. So there's another peril of the roof.

What Kind of Person Do They Think I Am?

2010-03-20T01:38:00.017-04:00

Last week, Emma walked into my bedroom and told me, "I've said it once and I'll say it again: you should really consider making marriage to a rich person your next career goal." She explained how, if this were my plan, I would have to devote my time to resting, perfecting my complexion, being cultured, etc. I guess I'd have to make time to practice piano and harp? It would be nice to have someone pay for me to watch foreign films. She went on to say that being qualified for jobs didn't seem to help too much in this economy, so I should follow a different path.

1. Question: Who gets married? Answer: An increasing number of people I am aware of, but still, not most almost-22-year-olds. NOT ME. I DO NOT GET MARRIED. And who gets married to rich people? Rich = old, probably, and we don't need to discuss this problem.

2. I don't actually know how to find rich people. If you do, pray tell, except I'm probably (as far as you know) not going to follow this advice, because I refuse to take this plan seriously. I have too much integrity (read: skepticism), and not enough initiative. Oh wait, on the internet. Ew.

3. Why do my friends make this sort of suggestion to me with such frightening regularity? (Any regularity is somewhat problematic.)

The summer before I went to Germany, I lived in a cute little house, albeit with awful tan-ish vinyl siding, with three of my best friends and a younger Table Cat, a Table Cat who took the initiative to curl up between my comforters and sleep on my legs regularly. Yes, plural comforters in May: it was cold. We called it the Krankenhaus ( = hospital, or sick house) because Ali and Cooper are always sick and I'm actually not that great, and...guests will think they're coming to get crunk, but instead they'll get KRANK! It's clearly one of the best jokes ever. Anyway, I was subletting a room in our dear Krankenhaus for the summer, intending to work—work enough to save money for Germany on top of paying rent, but if that wasn't an achievable goal, and it became clear fairly rapidly that it was not, at least to pay the rent and avoid the bottomless pit of despair that is moving back in with my parents. The summer of 2008 was notoriously bad for finding summer work, and I wasn't considered for any long-term jobs due to my imminent departure for Deutschland.

There was a period in my job search where I kind of...stopped. Nothing was working; what more was I supposed to do? I loaded the dishwasher and hung out in the yard with neighbor cats and read about German history. I used scholarship money meant for the year in Freiburg to pay my rent, then turned to my parents. One evening, we were sitting around and talking about how empty my life was. Now, to tell the truth, I wasn't so concerned about it being a little directionless, just about the lack of money (maybe I'm cut out for a life of indolent luxury). But Hegemonic Roommate the Male, to revive an old internet nickname, felt that my life was boring. He and Emma started brainstorming activities to fill my dreary days.

Above: Table Cat looks out the window, quite possibly at Yard Cat, pictured below.

Traditional employment was obviously not working out that well for me—although soon after, I got a job canvassing for a home improvement company, but how I went door-to-door harassing people for $8/hour and no gas money is a story for another time—so I'm pretty sure the obvious "You should be a stripper" proposal was thrown about. My response was probably an annoyed glare, or a sarcastic "Right..." They accepted that this was unthinkable for me, but surely I couldn't just sit in the house with the cat and reflect angstily on my life all summer. Everyone else had a job or was taking classes, but what was I doing to improve my lot in life? Besides checking out fifty percent of the Ann Arbor District Library's travel section and looking at the pictures occasionally. My metal-bodied laptop didn't even get internet in our house, because the hijacked wireless signals were too weak for it.

There are at least two piles of travel guides under that sleeping bag.

To make a long, wavering story short, they started telling me I should hang out in cafés and pick up guys. I was supposed to cultivate a mysterious, alluring persona: nice clothes, sunglasses, sipping my coffee—ew—and reading intriguing books. (I guess the Gossip Girl kick I was on for a brief period that summer probably would have been a secret to the café clientele.) And, you know, my computer would be able to pick up legal internet. This plan was not as innocent as it sounds, though. I'm pretty sure the idea was that these men I would pick up could at least partially fund my summer life. Maybe in a comparatively reasonable, yet still uncomfortable way; maybe in an exploitative, creepy way.

It sounded kind of fun, although Ann Arbor is not really the most exciting place, and it would be nice to read in more scenic locations, even if (or because) that would cut down on the impromptu naps I take in the sun, but I had one clear objection. As I mentioned in my last post, I was extremely stingy with my money for a while in college, especially since I failed to find summer work after freshman year, ditto for sophomore year, and then again the next summer, and that's how we got to this post. I guess. Anyway, the question was: how would I pay for all this coffee? How many days, weeks, months would it take to spark someone's interest, start up a friendship, find someone to pay my bills? To be fair, I might be exaggerating the exploitative part of this plan. Maybe it really was more about how safely bohemian a summer spent in the cafés of...Ann Arbor...would be. And expensive.

Too bad the cafés of Ann Arbor are not like these. (Ljubljana, Slovenia)

Hegemonic Roommate the Male said I could have his quarters to pay for my café-frequenting. He'd finance this new lifestyle with his loose change. For some reason, I didn't take him up on it. And then I quit canvassing and took intensive Spanish so I could pay my rent with university grants and federal loans. How romantic.

P.S. I cannot even attempt to explain to you why these spell-check lines are showing up on this post, or why you can drag around and resize the pictures. Somehow, it happened. On the plus side, you no longer have to read 'expoitative.' 'Angstily,' however, is here to stay. You can also see that Blogger would have me replace Deutschland with Sudetenland, oddly enough. They're basically the same, right?

Only 1.5 Months More of the Michigan Theater For Me

2010-03-15T14:05:00.003-04:00

In spite of my previous post with the imaginary posters for the ideal movie for my weekend, none of the movies I watched starred John Cusack, were narrated or at least directed by Werner Herzog, or took place in Italy. Wait. Is this true? Yes.

Russia, though. No, that's not like Italy at all. I saw The Last Station on Thursday night, because Emma wanted to see it, and I'm always up for a movie with James McAvoy in it—as long as it's not Atonement, because watching that, being strung along and thinking that this insanely unfair situation was going to slowly work out and then realizing that it was all LIES, was probably one of the most upsetting movie experiences of my life. Plus The Last Station looked funny, and was supposed to be so good, and all that. And it didn't disappoint. It was not, of course, all comedy, but Tolstoy was hilarious, Valentin Bulgakov (played by James McAvoy) was awkwardly cute and therefore also hilarious, and Helen Mirren was great as the countess. And nothing gruesome happened to James McAvoy, so that was good. I do wish he'd tried to help the Countess more, but the thing with biopics is that there are some facts.

Then, Nico and I were going to see Ajami—apparently it's the most critically acclaimed Israeli film ever—at the Ann Arbor Palestine Film Festival, but when we got to UMMA, where it was being shown, we learned it had sold out. Having bought Haribo Gummibärchen ( = gummy bears) in advance, we couldn't just not see a movie, so we turned to Nico's quickly filling hard drive and watched the new animated children's film The Secret of Kells, which lost to Up for Best Animated Feature and had the same producers as The Triplets of Belleville. It was fun, and the animation was really cool. And...then we watched Sherlock Holmes as well. It was very long. Entertaining, but, you know, ridiculous. Oh wait, I also watched The Big Lebowski on Friday night with a group of Nico's friends (and Nico, of course). There were a few gallons of White Russians involved, and it was a fun time.

In a different film-vein, Wild Strawberries, a Bergman film, is playing tonight at the Michigan Theater as part of their World Cinema series, and I haven't decided yet if I'm going to go. I saw it over two years ago, and vaguely recall thinking it was good (which is generally what People Who Know would say), but I don't remember much else about it. I'm already going to Kaffeestunde in the RC, then dollar burgers at Sava's with Maraia, and then what time will it be? I still have to read some melancholy German literature and think about studying for an exam on the Inca and their predecessors and god knows what else. I've been seeing (and paying for) a lot of movies lately, but I've got a pretty convincing justification, at least in my mind: I only live in a city with movie theaters in it (let alone one that plays foreign and indie films) for a month and a half more. One of the city parks at home does have a community movie theater, but I remember the extremely tall-backed seats being somehow uncomfortable when I was there (watching Viggo Mortensen in Hidalgo, which was a stupid movie), and they only play one crappy movie at a time, and only a few times a week. To be fair, the Detroit Film Theatre is a short drive from my house, and Royal Oak isn't much farther, but for mainstream, first-run movies we drive all the way out to Clinton Township, because the theater we would go to on Eight Mile when we were being cheap(er) closed years ago. Not that I went to that many movies. Anyway, it's the principal of the thing. There should be a real movie theater in any city that I live in.

(If I wanted to go on a thing about how horrible Grosse Pointe is, I would complain about how there aren't any commerical movie theaters because too many Detroiters would come to see movies and we can't have that, now can we? When Jacobson's closed, one proposal was to put in a movie theater, but no, no, no, let's have Trader Joe's and condos for old people or something. Why make life fun? And while we're at it, let's put some more hedge barriers on the cross streets with Alter because that will surely keep people from crossing the border. And make it a pain for Grosse Pointers who want to take Alter to the expressway.)

I spent a lot of college unwilling to pay for things due to money anxiety, but I've only got a little while left where the temptation is this big and the university is paying for my life, so I think I'll keep forking out my money at the Michigan Theater/hoping that someone will let me in for free. Also, the Michigan and State Theaters in Ann Arbor are the only ones I've been to and remember that use real butter on their popcorn, so I've been spending even more money there. Oh well. I haven't regretted it once.

This Is What I Want to Watch This Weekend

2010-03-11T02:50:00.036-05:00

...although I did originally intend to find each of these elements in a separate movie.

Thanks to Jared for the background for the first poster; I can tell you where it was taken after I talk to him in the daylight hours. The second one's background is taken from the blog My Sardinia. John Cusack and Werner Herzog are all over the internet in these poses, so hopefully it doesn't matter where they came from. Also, the colors were way better in Photoshop. Oh well.

Homecoming

2010-03-04T14:33:00.112-05:00

Disregarding the exhortation of the poem I translated and posted (Let's lead ourselves behind the light of the cold's written proof) and the homework assigned by my archaeology professor (Find someplace warmer than this), Emma, Cooper and I ventured significantly north for the first half of our vacation—to Montréal.

We drove the whole way, which was much cheaper for three people than the train would have been, and let me tell you, Ontario lasts pretty much forever. I don't know if it makes it seem longer or shorter that the majority of the rest stops heading west are closed temporarily, but it is a problem. (Today on the kitchen table I saw that Arizona just closed their rest stops period, which is horrible.) This required us to bring the rotisserie chicken and baguettes we'd purchased at the Marché Jean-Talon in Montréal into a normal McDonald's to eat. We had no other option.

As we neared Toronto on the trip home, we drove into the sunset, which became ever more spectacular until it faded away...in time for Toronto's buildings to sparkle in the darkness. As we left Toronto behind, the blackness settled around us and the highway became much emptier. More than four hours later, the twinkling peaks of the Ambassador Bridge came into view in the distance. Soon we could see Detroit's skyline. Everyone knows Detroit is in trouble, but Emma and Cooper wondered if everyone knows Detroit is better than Windsor. The conclusion reached: most people probably don't know Windsor exists, which is probably a victory, but also probably not true. Then Emma complained again about all the British names in Ontario.

Windsor and the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit's Riverwalk, July 2008.

On I-75, the Lodge, I-94, the roads were so well lit, and I could switch to any lane I wanted in an instant. Leaving Montréal had taken an hour, probably, because of a mishap with lane changes in the crowded tunnel that takes you from downtown and QC-720 to QC-20 (which in turn takes you to the interminable 401 across Ontario). We ended up across a bridge instead of on the way back home and found ourselves turning around in the casino's parking structure. It wasn't the last time we found ourselves at a casino on the journey home, either.

In Detroit, we dropped Cooper off at Wayne State and headed home. Emma stuck the Avett Brothers in the CD player and we sang along as loud as we could, while I enjoyed knowing just how fast would be all right. In the middle lane on 94, there was a van/bus/thing, lights on, attached to a smaller vehicle behind it. The van's back wheels weren't touching the ground—it was not pulling, it was being pushed by the smaller car. How did they see? We laughed, but sped ahead to avoid the accident Emma was sure would happen. Then off the highway and onto Alter and I made all the lights but one, and the inevitable one after you've entered Grosse Pointe. In Grosse Pointe, I worried about the headlights behind me and wished I was going less than four miles above the speed limit. To get a ticket a block from home would be horrendous. But we made it back safely.

Where are the photos of Montréal, you might ask. Or more likely, you would ask it without the accent aigu: where are the photos of Montreal? When are you going to write about Montreal? Why did you put that accent on it even though you are not douchey enough to pronounce it en français while speaking English? The answer, my dear reader, is that I am too busy playing the Sims and worrying about life to go through all my photos right now. And I like to put accents on things, although I'm feeling a little awkward about this one. Most likely, you aren't even asking any of these questions, because you aren't reading my blog. Oh well. But Montreal, and Mont-Royal, and taking a trip were all great. Whoever you are (besides faithful reader, commenter, and kindred spirit Ali!), just wait.

Mit wärmeren Worten = With Warmer Words

2010-02-27T09:00:00.001-05:00

Translated by yours truly for a translation class. It's "spring" break!