Beyond Small Talk

"What are you up to now?" a friend recently asked me one morning, when a group of us were hanging out, brought together by his re-emergence in America after a while away. I answered about my full-time job at the university, where I've been for just over twelve months now. I probably gave the shorthand answer about why it's a good job for now. I think that line of conversation ended about two minutes later, max. It's always an easy transition to where Cooper is going to go next, what sorts of jobs he's thinking about and whether or not we want to stay in Michigan.

Afterward, I realized that it wasn't the answer I wanted to give, and it wasn't the answer I had to give. No, a year later, I still haven't come up with a concrete plan for my next step, an end-goal or a career path I'm excited about. (I am excited about my first real raise a couple months ago,  and thrilled with how much money I've been able to save this past year.) But there's no reason talking about my job needs to be a fun conversation; it's a job. Going to an office and making money forty hours a week isn't the only thing I'm up to. It's not the only thing I do.

I reread Outlander books 4-6 this winter, then finally read 7 and 8 in the early spring. It was a glorious, intoxicating pursuit and I loved every minute of it. I read the third of Elena Ferrante's Neopolitan Novels in June, after long holding back, and was sucked into the anguish of being a woman in 1970s Italy, of being a poor worker anywhere in the world. Life is hard, guys.

I spent a few days reorganizing my Pinterest, and many more hours dreaming up new layouts for my apartment (although the quarters are too tight for any of them to really work), plotting new combinations of colors to give a new perspective and a brighter view. Cooper and I put together a garden of pots on our fire escape, and now every couple weeks we pluck a batch of basil and make pesto for dinner—just like that, pasta and chicken sandwiches and decadent egg sandwiches for breakfast. I spread out a mat between the plant pots sometimes and eat my dinner al fresco on the floor out there. Summer is glorious.

It's been some weeks on, other weeks off, but I've been running outdoors many mornings, as well as going to the Y. My goal is to feel the ache of exercise every time I get up from my desk at work—a vivid sense of satisfaction at my commitment to my health and my goals. It doesn't happen every day, but I think it's getting easier.

I've gotten so frustrated about the injustices so many people face in this country, even as the Supreme Court upheld the Affordable Care Act and legalized gay marriage across the country. The plight of the people and the planet is so serious; mass incarceration and violence and de facto segregation of neighborhoods and therefore schools and therefore life; and not enough money allocated to any of it, even if we really knew how to fix it. I've been reading articles about poverty and homelessness and student loans and money money money and the lack thereof, for years of course, but everything feels like it's coming to a head. I started to follow Bernie Sanders (and then Hillary Clinton) on Facebook; he was showing up on my feed every day because my friends kept liking his posts, and I read along, thinking, "Yes, yes, yes," so many of his succinct and successful messages on social media are things I agree with, but then I just don't even know. There are so many things that we should do as a community, a state, and a country, but in Michigan, the cards are stacked against us, and anyway, how could we ever do all these things?

So I've been up to reading, and attempting to write but never finishing anything. I've turned my creativity to my tiny garden and my home, and itched to do the same for my parents and my friends (alas that everyone has more important things to do and money doesn’t grow on trees). I've amassed my small fortune, increasing my savings with every raise, big or small, that comes my way, and I've despaired, again and again, over the state of our world.

But I've done my small part in my family circle. Ali and I reunited with Rachel in Florida; Cooper and I with Emma in New York. I drove my mom out to see her sister in Rochester, New York, the first time we'd made that trip in about four years. I helped my brother with a scholarship application, and then with the planning of the trip to Germany and the coordination with the host bakeries there, when everything seemed too big and too hard for him (I write emails for a living, although not usually auf Deutsch). The biggest victory in bettering someone's life is that I got my parents to sit down at the table with me, and put together a budget based on all of the past year's expenses, and then dig out the details on their separate retirement accounts and my dad’s small pension. Finally, my mom could see that the money was there, that they wouldn't have a lot, but it wasn't worth her working 'til she was eighty, or even until sixty-six. And so she's retiring in two weeks, at which point we'll all have to do our parts to get her working toward a healthier, more mobile life again. I hope, I insist, I decree, I demand.

I know it's not always the best topic of conversation for people who don't know everyone I do, but it turns out that the thing that matters most to me in life is my family and my friends (felines included). I thought all I wanted was to move away for college, and then when that didn’t happen, at least to move away after college, but despite the occasional regret, this is good. These people are my world. And so next time someone asks what I've been up to, after a year or two of little communication, I hope I say something more like this, and not my latest career update. It's just a little patch of who I am.

Porch Dreams

Right now I’m fixated on the back porch, the balcony—the feature of my apartment that doesn’t really exist. (In the background I’m also shopping for a new rug in the bedroom, obsessing over lighting and decor options for my drab taupe box of a windowless office, and wondering what color scheme would please me for pillows in the living room…and that’s just for spaces that are mine.)

Spring is here in Michigan, and so, like everyone else, I want to be outside. I want to own my desires and bring them to life, I want to bike through the fresh air and nap in the sunshine and read on the porch.

Before we moved to this apartment, our small but sufficient one-bedroom, I was already thinking about the fire escape. I knew a previous tenant had grown herbs on this fire escape, and I have fond memories of the fire escape to the apartment I shared with Emma, which was big enough for a table and chairs, three stories up in the trees. I thought of all the New York City stories that include ducking through the window to catch some air on the steps; hanging a string of lights and claiming a small patch of the sky for oneself. Sure, we have a bathroom with a tub in it, a bedroom separate from the living room, two closets, and a kitchen. We have space for our bikes in the hallway, and windows in three directions. It’s enough, but it also isn’t enough.

I imagined us, having just moved in together, mixing drinks and carrying them through the apartment, one of us locking the cats in the bathroom so they couldn’t escape, and then opening the door at the back of the bedroom and stepping out into the early evening to sit on the steps and savor the last of summer together.

*  *  *

It’s a good vision. Alas that our first September in the apartment came with a wasp infestation, centered on that back wall of the bedroom. I was checking out the fire escape, in the early days after moving in, and when I turned to go inside, I put the full weight of my leg down onto a wasp with my bare foot. That was the last time I went out that door until the following spring—and that wasn’t even the worst of it. After our maintenance guy and then an exterminator had sprayed three or four times, we started to find poisoned wasps languishing, first on our bedroom windowsill, and then all over the bedroom floor. Two, four, six, thirty, until, the final day, Cooper came home to somewhere around seventy-eight dead and dying wasps writhing on the carpet at the back of the room and under the dresser we had under the window, while a sadistic cat looked on. After that, we covered the cold air return in the room, and the rest of the wasps died and were no more.

That horror stunted my fire escape dreams, and although I swept the little landing at the top of the crooked wooden steps a couple times, nothing came of it. Until now! This year, I ‘m ready. I’ve got some copper-wire fairy lights I bought at Christmastitme but don’t really like indoors. I bought Cooper a curly parsley plant this weekend—supposedly it’s one herb that can actually do well inside, so hopefully he can permanently give up buying bunches of parsley that are always too big to use up in time. Soon we’ll add some other plants to enjoy for the summer, although they won’t want to winter with us (basil, thyme, some flowers). We can bring out a stool or two folding chairs, and sit on our miniature deck and look at the leaves in the trees, and into our neighbors’ windows.

It’s not an obvious space for enjoyment. It’s about three feet by ten or twelve feet (nothing like the beautiful 66 square foot original patio of that great blog). You could fit four folding chairs on it, awkwardly in a row, or you can fit two next to each other and have a nice time together. You could probably fit a very small bistro table, or one of those half-moon little balcony tables, and then two simple chairs. We won’t. Maybe one stool with a plant on it, a plant that can move to the ground if we want the stool. Folding chairs in the bedroom, just inside the door, if we don’t want to sit on the steps.

The structure is made of wood, nailed together well enough to work, but with no thought to craftsmanship. It was painted a bland bluish-grey a few times, and the paint is forever peeling off, every time you sweep the leaves and branches off the porch. Straight ahead from the bedroom, you see three wooden bars, and between the bars (if you’re seated low) or above them (if you’re standing), you can see a bedroom through a neighbor’s window, the curtain for which she never fully closes. She could certainly see us if she looked out. To the right, south, there’s the brightest sun and a nice apartment building across the street. To the left, north, another building. There’s also a door to the other upstairs apartment, making this space less private, a little less welcoming to a takeover. Oh well.

I’m not sure how nice we can make it. It doesn’t really matter—there are so many parks nearby, bike paths and the river and picnic tables. There are patios and decks and beer gardens downtown, a short walk away. After almost two years in this space, though, it’s a fun challenge to try to add another room, another dimension, to our lives here. An easy little escape—all I have to do is open that door that is usually just a window.

So I’ll see if I can grow any plants to block the house next door. I’ll see if the herbs will do okay back there, at the southern end of the little platform. Maybe with a little outdoor rug, and the fairy lights, it will become a porch instead of a crumbling afterthought. 

Master of Contingencies

Today I worked three jobs, which isn’t unusual. My plan: three hours at one office, three hours at the next office, then half an hour to get to the restaurant, where I would be the opening host out on the rooftop deck.

I wore my red, lightweight cropped pants with a long, lightweight, pink blouse and a belt. My fake woven-leather flats (my favorite). A navy blazer, a bike helmet. It was supposed to be hot today, hitting 80 in the afternoon, but I’m always cold in the first office, and often in the second, and the chance of rain in the evening hours was variable, hovering around 30 or 40 percent. A blazer is better than a sweater for rain, and better than a jacket for the office (and my jackets aren’t waterproof anyway). 

I stuffed my little red backpack to the brim. At the bottom, my planner and my small notebook, along with a novel to read in case I found myself stranded, unwilling to make my way home, and needed to hide in a café until a storm passed. Then my makeup bag, so at the tail end of job two I could do my face for job three. My workout clothes, in case I made it downtown and was told to go home right away, or close to it—in which case I could go to the Y, and a soggy walk wouldn’t have been completely for nothing. I tied my sneakers by the laces and hung them on the outside of the bag, from one of the straps, because they wouldn’t fit. I also had a little tupperware of apples inside my tupperware of rice and chicken for lunch, which I put off eating until after two so it would tide me over through dinnertime, or as much as it could. I wasn't going to have time for dinner, not with a 3:45 start time on the deck. My water bottle, of course. A pair of cheap Old Navy flip flops I’ve had for six years, shoved down one side in a plastic bag—they’re the most compact and least destructible change of shoes, a slippery but convenient backup in order to keep my real shoes dry in a rainy commute. In the other corner, I had slid my umbrella. On top, cell phone and sunglasses case and extra plastic bag, in case my bike seat got wet and I still wanted to ride.

The deck was closed tonight. It stormed; it threatened tornadoes. I made it to work, mostly dry, although I had to abandon my bike halfway there. I clocked three and a half hours working inside, and I am very tired. 

In the Rain

When I woke up this morning, the apartment was dark and moody, cozily and quietly separate from the rain pouring down outside. It was such a morning for staying in (says the girl who wishes she could stay home every day, I know, I know), and I would have loved to light a candle on my desk, let my fingers plod through the day on my laptop in a little sphere of candlelight, alone in the dim bedroom.

Instead, I picked a comfy dress and leggings, pulled on my tall, red galoshes and my trench coat, and walked to work in the storm. It was fairly warm out, and kind of nice.

When I turned the corner of the Modern Languages Building, I saw that the fountain, which was uncovered last week, was full of water and fully functional, sending streams of water up even as so much rain was coming down.

The fountain brought a thrill for summer, and a wistfulness for the first summer I spent here, in Ann Arbor. The summer of the Krankenhaus, when I read histories of Europe in the sun on the Diag and spent sixteen hours a week in a Spanish classroom in the MLB, eating lunch outside under the bell tower every day, dreaming of all the countries I would visit once I lived in Germany.

Now, I have three jobs and little time for lounging on the lawn, and I sometimes think that if I could go back, I would have just begged the rest of the rent money from my parents and not borrowed those few thousand dollars for intensive Spanish from the government. I haven't paid them off yet. But I would also love to have that summer schedule again. Learning a new language is a game I love to play, and summer is a time for openness, exploration, and freedom.

When I sought out a window this afternoon, I found blue skies and sun. I'm excited to walk home.

note to self

last week:

it was a good week*
because cooking (frozen pot pies made last week, baked mostaccioli, learning to cook catfish)
because I got sent home from work three hours early Sunday and baked tiny chocolate cakes
because sunshine and increasing temperature
because I saw a movie
because all my laundry is clean
because I decreased my shoebox collection by one
because I remembered to call my mom
because I went to yoga twice, for a grand total of 3.5 hours, and one of those classes was just me
because I went to the Y
because I got to wear my new springy sweater I bought with in January with Christmas money
because I get to wear other clothes I haven't in a while
because I cleaned my stove SO WELL
(but not the oven)
because we went out to brunch and to the farmer's market in the chilly sunshine Saturday
because I went to the Arb after work the following Sunday




*(and it's a good week, and it'll be a month, and then it'll be a year...just take your damn time! -- 0:30)

**I need a new blog design. sans serif. not sure about this collage-nonsense, but in the interest of having a blog, I'm posting it without further consideration.

Porches, Painfully Obvious

I have a summer dream, and that dream is porches.

ALI AND DREW, MARRIED, RELAXING ON A PORCH. This is a really good porch, by the way, at a truly lovely hunting-lodge style home in the woods of Georgia, south of Atlanta. Any of the below would be great on this porch. Photo courtesy of Ali's cousin Katie.

The Hairpin is out for the weekend. The Circuit Court and County Building here in Washtenaw County, Michigan, have a four-day Memorial Day weekend thanks to a furlough day. I'm down to one out of four attorneys and no calls lighting up the switchboard, I've got my sunglasses open on my desk and a stomach clamoring for lunch.

It's almost dinnertime. Remember when I had a porch in the canopy of downtown Ann Arbor? Emma and I ate twenty-four pierogi at our first meal on that porch. We had a graduation cocktail party for Emma in the wind and chill of late April. Later, they passed a bottle of Jim Beam Black around in the dark until it disappeared. We had a welcome-home party for Emma after a summer of Yiddish on the East Coast. Meg and I drank a bottle of vinho verde on that porch after I got home from Detroit via Amtrak, two hours late or more. We sweated and sweated and finally escaped the heat at a nearby bar.

So many breakfasts of scrambled eggs and orange juice, while the bumblebees bumbled into the sliding glass doors, bump bump bump. I never knew a bumblebee could be so loud.

A porch, a table and -cloth, the evening sun. Sunglasses, eventually pushed up onto your head. A pitcher of water, glasses. Bread and cheese, burgers, whatever, I'll take it. Just give me some carbs and some fat and a drink, and some smiles.

It was my birthday on the porch, once, on a Thursday evening almost a year ago. Basil gimlets, uh...attempted Singapore Sling? Blood of Christ? Something red.

When the sun sets, candles. I buy so many candles in my attempts at being a girl, and use them so rarely. I don't have a porch this year, not really. Candles don't really work in the wind, also, but that's what lanterns are for!

It's five, goodbye, office, goodbye, internet.

(I have a lot of summer dreams. Beware.)

Spring Living and All Its Perils

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.