I just found out that the lead singer of Quiet Riot passed away today. Considering my interminable love for eighties glam metal, I am saddened.
And I'm not even kidding.
Random post, I know, but I had to give my ups.
As the holiday rush begins, my road rage increases.
I know a lot of you are damn near religious about public transportation.
Not me, my friends. I LOVE traffic. I love sitting in my car for two to three hours to go eleven miles. I enjoy swerving every five and a half seconds to avoid tragically sideswiping every biker in the city who thinks he is Kevin Bacon in Quicksilver. My heart fills with joy when Kennedy on-ramp traffic backs up all the way to Wrigley Field.
And drivers in Chicago seem to be getting worse and worse with every passing year on the roads. Last night I found myself calling the driver in the car in front of me a "Fucking Ass Face" because he wasn't going 85 in a 65 like me.
There is a stretch of road where Lake Shore Drive and the Stevenson meet that makes my morning commute a particular joy. Though this patch of highway is only about .8 miles long, it is the most treacherous eighth of a mile in what I believe could be all of Illinois.
There are people going 80 mph alongside people going 20. There are trucks trying to get from the far left lane to the State Street off ramp by taking it three lanes at a time. No one uses their turn signals. It's like fucking Nascar at 8:30 a.m. The Autobahn at 8:45. Someone is ALWAYS pulled over on the shoulder with their hazards on, waving traffic to the other side of the road causing everyone in the right lane to slow down to 15 mph.
Every day moves me closer to an inevitable cardiac arrest, high blood pressure, tension headaches. I am one grandma in a Buick away from staring down from a clock tower with a sniper rifle and panty hose over my head.
I can't even keep writing about this because I am utterly disgusted.
I'm like a different person everyday. I wake up in a new skin each morning, feeling my way around in it until I hit my normal stride and my movements become less unfamiliar.
Unfamiliar.
Almost daily this vague mist of unfamiliarity settles onto my skin like Chicago humidity. Except something about it is always ironically recognizable. It's the feeling like I've been here before. In this very moment.
I find myself again in the same situations. Always. Like the seasons, these situations come and go methodically, inevitably. Old situations, new skin. Same outcomes.
Only this time I really want to save myself from the same mistakes.
I feel them coming, but like a car crash in slow motion, I can't stop it. Won't stop it. Instead of bad habits, I've started to warmly refer to them as "my traditions". It makes me feel better about blatantly ignoring the past.
I find myself more and more frequently with the phone in my hand, paused over the dial button, but something won't let me press it. Something instinctual. Something stronger than my curiosity.
I find myself hanging over your words, deconstructing them, playing them back in my head to a set of mistrusting ears.
I go through the same damn motions of falling for you. Again. Harder than ever. And if I convince myself I'm a different person each morning when my alarm buzzes, it's easier to ignore it.
This happened a while ago, but I thought it would make for a funny story.
So I was making dinner. Rigatoni with broccoli and turkey sausage and homemade garlic bread. Mmm. When I cook, I take myself way too seriously, wearing an apron and everything. (That's for you, Peter.) I'm like a little girl with her Easy Bake Oven on Christmas Day. Anyways, you get the point. In my head, I'm fucking Julia Child.
Okay, so I'm opening this package of turkey sausage and it's frozen, so I use a knife to pry the packaging off. I think to myself fairly clearly, "I'm going to cut the shit out of my hand if I do this." And not five seconds later do I stare at the package of sausage with my knife sticking straight through it into, you guessed it, my hand.
For a minute I just stared at it in disbelief, even though I told myself this was going to happen. Not until I saw the bright crimson of my own blood did I actually manage to do the one thing I'm good at.
"MOTHERFUCKER! God damn it, $%^**&@!#^&*!OhshitOhshitOhshitOhshit. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck."
Blood in the sink, blood on the floor, blood on my fancy shabby chic apron.
After calming down enough to actually remember what to do in a situation like this, I grab a towel and press down hard, thrusting my hand over my head and grabbing the phone with my other.
"KATE! I just cut the HOLY HELL out of my hand. What do I do?"
Calmly she replies, "How big is the cut? Is it deep? Is the opening ragged? Has it stopped bleeding?"
"I don't know. I don't want to look at it."
"You have to look at it."
"No."
"Yes."
"Just tell me if I need stitches."
"Well how big is it?"
"I don't know. Ohhhhh Kate, it huuuuurts. Ow ow ow owwwww."
"Can you see bone?"
"Oh Jesus, now I'm really not looking at it."
"Well, I gotta get back to work. Call me if it doesn't stop bleeding."
So much for having a sister who's a nurse.
After about five minutes of pacing my apartment imagining having to get on my hands and knees to find an errant finger or two, I peer under the blood soaked towel to see a tiny incision about a half an inch long.
"That's IT?" I think to myself in amazement as I shuffle to the bathroom to look for a Band-Aid.
After the initial wave of relief washed over me, another wave of embarrassment rolled in.
"Wow, I'm a huge pussy." I would later tell Katie as we sat on my couch post dinner.
The moral of this story is that no, you are not Julia Child. You are an idiot. With a knife.
My thoughts are with one person and one person alone this week.
These are weight bearing shoulders. I'm here to split the burden if you need me.
For whatever reason last night I was dead set on being productive when I got home from work.
I made dinner, sauteed some tilapia with vegetables and brown rice, cleaned up the kitchen, put away my laundry, and then attempted to wrench the ironing board out of hall closet and struggle for fifteen minutes getting it to stand upright.
Once upright, I filled the iron with water, only to realize that our iron is not a steam iron and I'm actually not sure where I just poured that water. *Cut to me wincing and covering my eyes as I stick the plug in the wall socket*
Narrowly escaping electrocution, I grabbed the first pair of pants in a pile of many and started ironing away. Then something happened.
My eyes started to well and I began ironing slower and slower, until finally I stopped altogether.
A clear memory hit me with such force that it pulled all the air from my lungs.
It was the eighties. I was six. My parents had flown to London and left my grandma to take care of us for the week.
Every night, regardless of whether we wanted her to or not, she would iron our clothes for the next day. Setting up the board in the hallway in front of our kitchen, she would stand for an hour, shoulders slumped, vigorously ironing one piece of clothing after another.
She had this distinct way of ironing because the arthritis in her right hand was so terrible. She would use her left hand to prop the elbow of her right arm and with one fluid motion, would sweep the iron across the board. She would never set the iron upright; leaving it face down on the board for the few seconds it took her to adjust a sleeve, a hem, a button. I would watch intently, waiting for her to burn a hole straight through the ironing board.
She never did.
The lucidity of that memory was more real to me at that moment than even the hands of the clock turning on the wall of my apartment behind me.
I stood there silently, motionless for at least a whole minute until I picked up the iron and began pulling it around the ironing board slowly again. Tears fell onto the wrinkled cuff of the pant leg in front of me.
I hope I always remember you this way, Grandma.
Looking back at the evolution of things, of me and where and who I am now, I don't think I've ever been the type of person who has all the answers. As with a lot of things, sureness has always teased my fingertips with its allure, but I've never been able to catch a firm grasp.
And it just seems that I am destined to wear this heavy necklace of uncertainty, always dangling near my heart, whispering fears I can never seem to turn a deaf ear to.
But I'm also not someone who deals well with impossibilities.
"I love yous" that are buried so deeply it takes years of digging to unearth them.
The senseless turn of your attention. The tide of you.
Us.
But I've learned how to be patient. And this stubborn will is learning to bend instead of always finding itself hurled against a wall. I've grown tired of sweeping up that mess.
I long for days when easy words yield easy answers though I know I will always have to fight for them.
For days like that.
Doubt is an insidious thing. It creeps up like smoke under a bedroom door, rolling slowly across the floor, billowing out to all four walls.
You don't see it coming until it chokes you awake, setting off alarms.
