Light Head, Heavy Heart

What do you do when you lose something? Shouldn't there be some sort of code of humanity written saying, "Ok it happens to everyone, here is the right way to handle it." Someone I love, who has been a constant in my life is passing away right now and i wish more than anything that this, the truest and most sour part of life could just stop, just go away for a bit and give me time to get home and say my goodbyes. Loss is hard - it sets off a chain reaction of memories and feelings and I want more than anything to hobbit myself underground until it all passes. Glibness and cleverness do not live in this part of my life so this might be a bit of a downer of a blog....

I was sorting through my stuff last night (stuff is the only term I can think of that encompasses a billion journals and mix tapes and books and paintings and letters and oh, god you know stuff) and I came across a cd I made a long time ago for someone who, at the time, meant the world to me in the sense that he was the world to me and wow was I a youngie or what - that at one time that was enough - that my world could begin and end with one person and that person wasn't me - and I popped it on my stereo (iRa the iPod is still only playing in mono and I'm sorry but this girl needs a bit of stereo now and then which is why cd's were unearthed). It took me back like only music really can, it can capture a time better than a picture or words or my own memories. And suddenly I was back there, back a few years ago - living in a crappy, falling apart apartment with two of my besties living a life that seemed so complicated at the time and in retrospect was so easy...I needed that moment, that crystalline moment of memory to realize that I have gotten off the path of my life and want more than anything to be back where I was (minus the terrible boy situation, I'm so lucky not to be there anymore, I mean he's great but I'm waaay better than that situation let me be). I've decided this Fall is the Fall of Heather getting back on track, creating again whether it's taking pics with the hello kitty camera or finishing that paint by number I started three years ago (yipes!), or making collages and mix cd's again; taking time to appreciate what I have and to grow it into more...

I can hear you yawning (or maybe it was just Sasha the dog yawning, which would make more sense since she is sleeping next to me on the couch). So I will end with this tale of "Heather's Redonkulous Life." I was biking home this week (yes, biking is back - thank god or I would have no funny tales to tell) and let me tell you Blue Steel (my bikest of bikes) and I have been duking it out lately, he does not want to ride in 7th gear and let me tell you Chicago is flat and 7th gear is the only way to go (well, 8th is probably the only way to go but I am too out of shape to really test the limits of physics that way). So, I'm stopped at a stop light, gearing up for yet another gear grinding moment when I say (in a physical way, not in a verbal "look that crazy girl is talking to her bike" way) to Blue Steel "kick it into gear bitch, let's go!" and another biker pulled up near me. And I hate it, always have. I hate having to be physically active in front of anyone else, I mean it's one thing when you're at a gym b/c everyone is doing the same sort of thing, but otherwise I get all flustered and embarassed and end up falling or tripping, OR walking so quickly home from the bus stop to prove that I am as fit as everyone else that my dress gets caught up in my backpack and everyone sees my underoos (true story, happened when I was in high school, didn't realize until I got home, wanted to die)...SO, another biker pulls up and I'm gearing up to fight with Blue Steel because we are going to pull out from the light quick and prove that we are physically fit and just before the light changes I look back and the other biker is a reeeeeallly old lady who smiles sweetly at me and says hello and I said hi back, and took off down the street laughing that this is how life is, it fools us everytime....

P.S. Another example of how redonkulous my life is. I almost choked on a chocolate Dunkin Donut munchkin this week at work, and as I was gasping for air a loud firm voice said in my head "We are not dying like this! We are not dying like a punchline for a Mama Cass joke" and that my friends, that voice, saved my life...Because really?! Choking on a donut, is just one of the worse ways to go...

Things that are Yay!:

It's a pig, a pig who hates mud so they made it little green booties and god bless Jonathan for telling me about it because this makes me smile everytime I see it!



The Olympics - STILL making me nerd out and stay up waaaaay too late...

"The Last Summer of the World" by Emily Mitchell - A great book about WWI and Edward Steichen and it's historical fiction and full of moody artists and war and love and secrets and Oh! just read it because it is super good!

My Man Friend Who lets me cry when I need to and makes me smile whenever he can...the good stuff...

Things that are Boo
Wishing I could just get home already - So frustrating...

Sweet Dreams and Flying Machines

Is anyone else losing sleep, walking around work bleary eyed because of the Olympics? I'm telling you, you know you are officially Oldsy Oldson when you are nodding off during gymnastics, thinking "Just have to see one more floor routine..". I remember during high school when the Olympics were like a summer gift - a chance to spend all the time that normally would be spent lying around listening to ani difranco reading Blake Nelson's "Girl" (and other productive stuff like that, I mean one summer I learned how to drive..on a standard car, you can't front on that) and to stay up into the wee hours watching girls my age with about 1% of my body fat perform crazy tricks. It's funny I always forget about the Olympics until the fever strikes every four years and I learn all sorts of redonkulous facts (have you heard what Michael Phelps eats everyday?!) and then promptly forget them. Hoorah Olympics! Although Boo to China for making those six year old girls put on pounds of glitter make up and tumble around for medals..

Life has been jam packed lately...I mean really can someone slow this summer down because this is vaguely ridiculous. Last week my bestie came to town and it was so good to see him! There are friends who you like to drink wine with and see once in a while and then there are friends that all of that is true and then some. Friends who are part of your family, brothers from another mother and Mikey is one of those. He was in town for a wedding, a wedding that was impeccable and both the brides were shining with happiness and looked gorgeous and featured fireworks (meep! yay wedding!). Then I began my first week as a full employee at the job and let me tell you, it's good to be officially official. I mean it's a bit anti-climatic because I've been doing the job for three months now but, after months of job interviews and worrying it's nice to have a steady position, especially with such nice folks.

And so it goes, huh? Today I biked around all of Chicago, doing 2nd Story sound stuff (we are organized now, watch out world, we are going to blow your mind with sound!), and having yummy dinner with a friend who always amazes me with what a stellar friend she is and just one of those people who makes me wish I had half the spark that they did. Now I am sitting on the couch with Ziggy (dave's cat) curled up next to me making weird kitty sleepy noises. Women are running sprints on the television (in the "birds nest" which, pardon me Olympics I know you're going for literalism here but really?! It just makes me think of this terrible tangle my hair got into one summer that only a professional hairstylist could get out while she lectured me the whole time about proper hair brushing, it was awful)...all is right with the world!

Things that are Yay!
1. Bookstores - The boy I heart and I were biking yesterday and I got kerfuffled because we were on Halsted and there were all of these SUVs and the Air and Water Show jets were breaking my eardrums and we stopped and I was cranky and Dave said, "Do you just want to bike down the block to the Borders?" (this is why we heart him) and it was exactly what I needed, bookstores are magical places.
2. The Olympics - Awesome! Commentators, not so awesome, actual events are the awesome part!
3. Good Friendies - Always a Yay!

Things that are Boo
1iPod still broken - makes me want to implode

Le Sigh

What a weekend! Packed with theatre - yes, that's right I did what I never do and actually saw theatre that other people make (people who I know and heart but, I mean, all the same..). I wonder if it's painful for musicians to go to concerts or for artists to visit the MCA or if it's particular to theatre folk that the last thing we want to do (or Disclaimer: I speak for only myself lots of folks are in love with the theatre and see it all the time) is to sit in a dark space watching actors emote. Particularly as a stage manager - it's so hard for me not to count the lighting instruments in the air or think, "wow that scene shift was f'ing EPIC". Long story short I saw three great shows this weekend and it was awesome! Of course all of them closed this weekend or I would pimp them out (to you, all three readers of this long defunct now suddenly viable again blog). Speaking of pimping out - check out www.storiesandwine.com and come to The Spot this Thursday for some dirty 2nd Story action...it's going to blow your mind!

The boy I heart left town this morning - which P.S. I heart him so much that I got up at bleep o'clock to drive him to Midway and then navigated the Stevenson on the way back to the city - which yeepers meepers highway driving in someone else's car makes me such a nervous Nelly that I had to put Bon Iver on my iPod and think happy thoughts just to get through it.. It's so strange when someone you share a life with is gone for a bit - it's even stranger that he is visiting the Homeland (also known as beautiful Connecticut - ah, CT in the summer, the ocean and frozen Charleston Chews and Friendly's watermelon roll...how I miss you!) which is something we usually do together but due to vacation timing (or lack of vacation for me, yay temping!) it just didn't work out that way.

It looks like I am going perm at my temp job (benefits and sick days and 401K Oh My!) and I am pretty excited to make it officially official. This is the first job I've ever worked (that wasn't stage managing) where it was actually work, like honest to god, every minute I'm doing something work. Plus the folks I work with work just as hard AND are some of the nicest people I've met in a long time. So, yay! Not taking a vacation pays off some times...

I fell on the way to work a week ago, like a clumsy doozer that I am, and scraped my right knee up pretty badly (P.S. I just had to make the L and non-L with my hands to figure out which knee I scraped...ah, lack of sleep, how well you make me function)..I haven't had serious ooky, gross wound-age like this in a while. Let me tell you knees bend and scabs don't and that's about as detailed as I'm going to get. It's healing and I hope it gets better by the time my friends Jo and Nicole's Yay! Lesbian Wedding gets here next week. Let me tell you my Bestie Mikey is coming in town for this extravaganza and I really, honestly cannot wait to see him and have some good old fashion best friend talks with him, it's going to be awesome..

The summer is almost over, it seems like it just got here and I have to say although it's been rough it's been full of nice surprises and new friends and I feel like I'm getting there - you know that feeling that happens a lot when you're younger and then tapers off to maybe a twice a year occurrence - it's that great, "I have no idea where I'm going but I'm getting there!" feeling...So yay Summerer 2008! I will eat a watermelon roll from Friendlys in your honor as soon as I get back to the East Coast!

Things that are Yay!:
1) Summer Days with Friendies: I hung out with Heather today and it was just the bestest! I heart friends who you can just spend a lazy summer day with!
2)Good Theatre: A rariety (except for 2nd Story but what can i say? We are just good!) Good theatre makes me happy!

Things that are Boo:
1) Sweating for no reason

The Tide Has Come In...

Do you ever feel like you have a rush of words and stories and thoughts swirling around and sometimes it will all whoosh away and you'll have nothing eloquent or witty or even halfway non-rambely to say? That is a long way of saying that the tide of words has been out and only recently have I wanted to say, well, anything.

This summer has been much more work than any other summer - both actual, real world "wake up at 6am, christ it's early, stay at work until 6:30, god it's late" work and emotionally draining, "what is the deal with my life? why am I so fed up?" work.. Fed up is an apt description of how I feel about the dearth of words, the loss of connection I feel with friends and how unengaged I am with the theatre work I've been doing recently. It has been a bit grueling to be honest. It is "life balance" (a term that I hear more and more in the corporate world and honestly chaps my ass a bit as it aptly describes something that honestly shouldn't exist - like shouldn't work not bite into my free time and shouldn't my free time not be so much work??) It is trying to figure out if being an artist is where my head is, if what free time I do have would better serve me as actual free time. It's hard friends. This struggle between the idealist, collaborator, super excited to be there 22 year old and the exhausted, salty, just want to take a nap 28 year old.

But before this becomes an existential blather about ephemeral shit, my momma did not raise a complainer, I will regale all three of you who check my blog with this sidenote. Dave and I rode in a swan boat at Lincoln Park Zoo last week. Gasp! It was AWESOME! Part One: We biked there, which thank jeebus above because I haven't been biking enough (see paragraph above, work is sucking my time away) and I miss it. Part Two: I heart the zoo! Any zoo, even if it is the Lincoln Park Zoo which makes me a little sad, especially in the summer when all the animals look so hot and miserable. The zoo is magical, you can watch penguins and the monkeys with the weird butts and pet stinky goats...magic I say! Part Three: There are non-swan pedal boats, bypass them, as the swan is the way to pedal boat the Lincoln Park Zoo lake in style. It is romantical and also a good source of cardio exercise with the one you love. Part Four: Beware if it is hot (like it maybe was the day that we did it) because you have to wear lifejackets and you are in a giant swan that traps the heat and shoves it in your face while you madly pedal to try to get to the shade of the little island in the middle of the lake...oh, but once you get to that shade and the mad pedaling ceases, it is so sweet to drift there with the one you love, in a giant plexiglass swan while all of your worries evaporate over the long neck and beak, over the tired, hot animals and the yuppies and into the Chicago sky...Life is sweet and without all of the salt we would never know quite how sweet it was...

Things that are Yay!!:
1) My awesome manfriend and amazing friendies - Who heart me even when I can't heart myself and that is the best hearting of all!
2) Spaced - Dave picked up the dvd set of this awesome BBC comedy by the same guys who did Shawn of the Dead and Hot Fuzz this past week...It is brilliant!
3) Pineapple Express - Saw it sneak preview style and laughed so hard I cried (and no I was not blazed, thankyouverymuch)...I think this might be the comedy of the summer.
4) New Sigur Ros Album - I would write the title but I don't know how I would begin to have the letters on this keyboard to spell it...but listen people this is the best Sigur Ros has ever been, it has all of the great melodies but minus the drone and plus a pop sensibility...AWESOMETOWN!
5) Ms. Kitty - I just realized (literally while typing this, just.this.moment) that when I whistle it drives Ms. Kitty into a fit of crazy cat love and purring, which is redonkulous and also going to be abused to no end.

Things that are Boo:(
1) iRa is deaf in one ear - My poor iPod can only play music in one ear (and yes, I tried different headphones, and no it did not help). This is maddening but what is even more infuriating is that Dave and I dragged ourselves out to the Apple Store, waited an hour to be served by a "Genius" and they don't fix this problem. Instead they suggested I turn over iRa and all 28GB of jams and assorted greatness over to them and pay $150 for a refurbished iPod...and that is when (in my brain) I punched the "Genius" in the face and started screaming...Super Boo!
2) People who Litter - Seriously, this is why we deserve the ice caps to melt. There are trash cans everywhere fucking clean up after yourselves people! P.S. Chances are that whatever you throw out of your car window I'm going to have to bike over so please have some consideration and buy one of those tiny car trashbags for cry-i-sake!