self portrait tuesday

i think this is such a great idea, so i'm going to try to participate as much as i can. my sister gave me a little tiny digital camera for christmas (hooray! thank you!), so as soon as i get the software loaded on my work computer i can upload my own pictures. for now, this was taken with mom's camera in the bathroom mirror.

christmas photos

thanks to mom's new digital camera, i can post some pictures from our christmas in minneapolis. my niece was in the christmas pageant at her church, and here she is in her "star child" costume.


here is me with a sister and a niece, about to devour the beautiful gingerbread house and "garden of eatin'" we had just decorated. (hey, remember to save those pretzels for me!)
it was a great trip, and mom and i were sad to leave. alas, we had pressing duties at home, such as braving the west beltline traffic to find that CD that no one in the whole city seems to carry, and running over fellow shoppers to make sure we get the right size in that skirt we will never wear but simply must buy because it's SO DAMN CHEAP.
ah christmas, how i love thee.

a very special christmas present

anyone who knows me knows that i am the biggest bob dylan fan to ever walk the earth, and i have the books, cds, posters, etc. to prove it to anyone who doubts me.
on monday my mom and sister and i stopped by saint vincent to check out the used books and dig through the "vintage" clothes (why do thrift stores label anything that looks even remotely retro as "vintage," even if it came from forever 21?) and score some deals. i was picking through the stacks of romance novels in search of some real literature when my eye spyed a familiar album cover over in the vinyl section: ah! i said, that's bob dylan's "planet waves" album, which came out in 1974 and was recorded with the band and features such classics as "forever young" and "you angel you." i snatched the record and headed over toward my mom to show off my find. suddenly i heard my sister saying my name. i looked back and she was pointing to a cute boy standing by the records (who i had, of course, noticed earlier because he had great curly hair and nice man scruff). apparently the cute boy had picked up the record earlier and was planning on buying it.
oops. i was thoroughly embarassed.
i apologized and handed the record back to him.
"you know," he said, "i already have this album, but this one is in much better shape. why don't you take it?"
"are you sure?" i stammered as his beautiful dark eyes sent lightening bolts through my heart.
"yeah," he smiled.
"heh, thanks. heh, heh...heh." what an idiot.
so, in an even more idiotic move, i walked away from this very very cute boy with great musical taste and went to find my mom to ask if she would loan me a dollar for this most amazing piece of plastic that will certainly change my life.
as we walked out of the store my sister asked why i didn't stay to talk to the cute boy. i know, i know, i said. i'm kicking myself now. but you know what, that's what you get when you are as painfully shy as i am.
and so, if you are out there, cute bob dylan-loving boy with amazing hair and gorgeous eyes, please call me. i promise that this time i'll hold up my end of the conversation and not just laugh like a stupid idiot.
at least i hope so.

more and more pictures!

here are some pictures of my littlest niece. she is ten months old and very smiley (and of course that's me with the puffy red hair).

i hope she doesn't mind that i took some nudie pictures of her in the tub...

sunday afternoon pictures

here is a picture of my nephew by his beautifully decorated gingerbread "church." according to him the chimney is a belltower and it's raining, which explains the overflowing licorice strands, of course.
looks tasty!

all i pray for is sanity

this morning started off like any other morning: i woke up, showered, got dressed, etc. before heading to work i started to make my bed. i was smoothing back the quilt and SWEET MERCIFUL HEAVENS WHAT THE HELL IS THAT - there was cat vomit ON MY BED THAT I HAD BEEN SLEEPING WITH FOR WHO KNOWS HOW LONG. by the time i got to it, it had begun to seep into the quilt, creating a large, wet brown spot. and of course, it being 8:30 on a thursday morning, there was not time for me to strip the bed and throw everything in the wash. so now i sit at my desk wondering just how bad that stain will be by the time i get home. that cat will be the death of me, i swear.

winter parking

having grown up in a relatively suburban area where everyone has a driveway and a garage, moving to the city has been somewhat of an adjustment for me (whaddya mean i don't get my own 10-acre lawn? not even a front lawn? not even a little porch or a rooftop garden?). in my neighborhood no one has a garage, and you're lucky to get a parking spot behind your building for less than $75 a month. of course midwesterners are always reluctant to part with their vehicles, so i have found a suprising number of people in chicago who drive everywhere. this of course adds to the hassle of finding street parking, especially in an increasingly gentrifying neighborhood of six-flats and condos (hello, ukrainian village).
street parking is a hassle at any time of year (not that i would know because i JUST ADORE THE CTA), but it becomes about 73 times worse when it snows. last week chicago got dumped with about six inches of snow in the course of one evening, which meant the commencement of official "parking spot saving season." for those of you who have not witnessed this phenomenon, parking spot saving is the practice of setting out chairs, buckets, left-over bits of wood, small children, anything that will keep someone from parking in that space of street that you have so carefully shoveled and salted, which has now become "your spot." generally one looks for a spot directly in front of one's building, because god forbid you walk more than 20 feet to get to your car. and if you take someone else's spot, watch out, because you might WILL get in trouble.
i have mixed feelings about this parking space saving. on the one hand it is amusing to see what people use to hold their spaces; i have seen boxes, brooms, broken furniture, pretty much everything under the sun, which makes for some highly entertaining moments on my daily walks to work. on the other hand, though, i feel a bit like people are cheating when they decide to stake out a certain spot on public property and claim it as their own. really, people, would it kill you to walk a block? i know it's cold out there, but come on. i walk two miles to work every day in this cold weather, and yes, it's miserable sometimes, but it's worth to keep my legs looking smokin' hot (that's right, i said it. smokin'. too bad it's so cold out there that no one can see them.).

update, dec. 19: i guess the city read enough nasty blog postings to realize that they really should do something about this.

enough already!

okay, this time i'm serious. i'm going to quit reading those memoirs about kids growing up in broken homes with crack addict mothers and drunken fathers. i just couldn't help myself when i saw that "the glass castle" was on the list of top books for 2005. a few months ago i noticed that it was in the library, so i went to look at it and decided that i could not handle it. after reading "oh the glory of it all" and "the tender bar," i was DONE. no more memoirs. but my last trip to the library was a bit disappointing (nothing i wanted was available!), so i ended up getting jeannette walls' memoir of her life in rural west virginia.
yikes, what a crazy life. this family was messed up, man. the dad was a drunk who couldn't hold a steady job and was convinced that the IRS was always after him; the mom didn't give a crap about raising her kids so she let them starve; they lived in a cabin on top of a mountain without heat or coal for the stove; they slept in cardboard boxes and bathed once a month; it was bad. i felt so sorry for these kids who were just aching to get away as soon as possible.
and the ending wasn't even particularly happy, either. the entire family ended up moving to new york (separately), and the kids all established themselves (the author now lives on park avenue and works for MSNBC), but the parents remain homeless. the kids have tried to help, but they have simply had to give up because the parents do not want to change their lifestyle.
the book was fascinating and it definitely held my interest, but good grief, i can't read any more of these memoirs! i need a nice happy book to balance out the drama in my own life; something warm and fuzzy, like...uhh...like...more "terms of endearment," anyone?

the stockings are hung by the chimney with care

it's that time of year again - the wind starts howling around the corners and slapping you in the face with its icy cold fingers; the snow starts piling up on the corners so high that you sink up to your hip; and of course the stores on chicago avenue start playing hip hop christmas music on their outdoor speakers as bundled up shoppers paw through the tables of sweaters and jackets on the sidewalk.
yes folks, the holiday season is upon us, which means one thing: decorations (and of course lots of chocolate, but that's another story entirely). this morning i ran across a picture from the charlie brown christmas movie, and it made me think of the decorations we used to put up at our house. my favorite decoration to put up has always been the stockings.
i am the youngest of five girls, and when i was growing up we always had framed pictures of each of us hanging on the living room wall. the pictures were arranged by age - liesl, the eldest, at the top, all the way down to me. come december, the photos would be taken down, dusted, and set in the basement to await the new year, and in their place would be hung the stockings that my mother made for each of us. the bright, beautiful stockings hung on the dark wood wall like a little piece of christmas in the family room. each one was embroidered with a name in fancy lettering, and, like snowflakes, each stocking had it's own pattern. i used to sit for hours looking at the stockings and noting the differences between each. for instance, only one had a white strip of fabric on the top while most of the others had a yellow flowered strip; mine was a bit smaller than everyone else's, presumably because i was the smallest; the toes of the first two were blue while the other three were yellow; etc. i could probably tell you everything about those stockings.
but no family stays the same forever, certainly not ours. in the past 15 years my immediate family has grown from seven to fourteen, double the people, double the fun, double the stockings! mom has faithfully and patiently created new stockings, one for each new member of our family, and now, instead of hanging them on the wall of our old house, they hang above the fireplace in my parents' new house.
they say that change is inevitable, and i believe them. if you had told me even five years ago that i would have 13 other people to share my life with, i would not have believed you. five years ago i was absolutely convinced that i would only have one niece and that i wouldn't get to spoil any other of my sisters' babies. but now, five years, two miscarriages, lots of heartache, even more joy, and 3 kids later, our family has grown and i wouldn't want it any other way. sometimes it's overwhelming to know that 13 people are watching you and waiting for you, but it's also comforting to know that i have 13 people to call when i'm sad or 13 people to vent to when i'm angry or 13 people to cheer with me when i'm happy. but that also means that i often have to tell the same story 13 times ("and then i said this and he said this and blah blah blah...").
i wouldn't ask for it any other way though.

unbelievable

oh.

my.

god.

the sun times had a breakthrough this morning. they realized that single women are actually happy. the secret is out; we unmarried women no longer have to live with the fear that someone might realize that we don't need husbands to make us happy. it's not that we don't need anyone of the male species, because i do really really like boys (especially ones with dark eyes and curly hair). it's just that i don't feel pressured to find that one perfect man who will put up with my craziness, at least not for a while.
so not a terribly enlightening article, but i like how they have a link for the red streak personals right next to an article about being single.

yippee-ki-yi-ay

saturday nights are usually the time when my friends and i go out and try something new: a new bar, a new play, a new event, etc. so this past saturday my roommate and i headed to the great state of indiana to try our hand (foot?) at line dancin'.
we met up with a friend just outside of gary; the snow was falling and we had been driving for nearly an hour listening to love FM (lots of barry white and madonna).
yee-haw! we said. giddy-up! let's get out on the dance floor and pick up some cute cowboys! we piled into the car and drove for another half hour IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. there was nothing there. except for some corn and maybe a house or two.
we finally pulled up to a big barn that said "line dancing and petting zoo." huh? petting zoo? petting what? or maybe i don't want to know...
anyway, we traipsed through the snow-covered, pickup truck-filled parking lot and opened the barn door. we were greeted by a man in overalls with no front teeth (i almost expected "dueling banjos" to begin playing at that point). we paid our $5, got our wristbands to prove that we are indeed old enough to purchase and gag on the big keg of bud light in the corner, and ponied up to the dance floor. as we got farther in, we noticed that there really wasn't much of a floor, but it was all dirt. there were picnic tables scattered around and haybales stacked around what i assumed were supposed to be tables. over near the bar they had set up an open fire pit where you could grill your own burger (no veggie burgers in sight, of course).
oh man, i thought, where am i? it felt like we had stepped into the twilight zone. everyone was wearing their cowboy hats and big ol' boots with spurs and they were all stompin' and twirlin' around on the floor like they'd been doin' it their entire lives. but the wierdest thing of all was that no one was yelling or clapping or laughing or anything. they were just dancing. my friend and i decided that they needed to lighten up a bit, so we went out on the floor and made up our own dances (i don't think they liked that) and started hootin' and hollerin' (which i don't think they liked either). but i'll tell you one thing, it sure brought the men over to our table! at one point a middle-aged man sent his 10 year old daughter over to talk to me to see if i was available (yikes!). and then of course there was the guy with the red beard who kept trying to wisk dana off her feet and onto the dance floor.
all in all a throughly entertaining night. good clean family fun and it was cheap to boot! (get it, to boot?! ha!)

hottness in the morning

okay, it has been booty-ass-frickin-freezing around here, so no more walking to work for me unless i want to stagger into the office with icicles in my frozen hair and snot dripping down the front of my coat all the way to the floor. not hot. so i have been taking the bus lately, which never fails to provide some entertainment at 8:30 on a friday morning.
this morning i was looking around at the other passengers sitting around me and i realized, my god, there are a lot of attractive people on this bus. of course, i am sitting here, so that ups the hottness factor by AT LEAST 23%, but man, look at that guy. he must have spent an hour making sure that his man scruff is perfectly coiffed (man scruff, for those of you who aren't in the know, is what is commonly called a "five o'clock shadow," but all the cool kids are saying "man scruff"). and check out that woman - her hair is shining and her makeup matches her pink coat and off-white scarf (of course why in the world anyone would want to wear white in the city is beyond me). and then there was curly-haired flaming lips guy who i often see in the mornings. i call him this because he looks exactly like wayne coyne, the lead singer for the band the flaming lips (wayne has GREAT man scruff, by the way, even though his hair is graying).
now, i don't mean this to be bragging about the #66 bus, because there are usually not very many attractive people on my bus. like that woman with the huge white sweatpants (what are you THINKING?!) or the smelly guy who eats cheetos and wipes his hands on his pants (eew, orange cheese stains). i don't have anything against these not-hott people; in fact, i like them. i like having them on my bus because they keep me down to earth.
yes virginia, there are a lot of attractive people in chicago, but it wouldn't be any fun to be constantly surrounded by supermodels. the woman in the white sweatpants is the one who makes my commute interesting - she provides hours of entertainment for me, thinking about where in the world she found those pants, how much she paid for them, and the fact that she put them on this morning, looked in the mirror, and thought, "damn, i look FINE!"
thank you, sweat pants woman. you ARE fine.

more bedbugs

oh no! they're taking over the world!! THIS is what i've been sleeping with - yuck.