Eye-mazing...

It's amazing the things you don't think of thinking about. I never thought about how anyone can hail a cab.

Today I saw the most amazing thing as I was riding the bus home. This woman stood on an island during rush hour traffic in downtown Chicago and at first it looked like she was a drum majorette holding a baton in her hand punching it up and down in the air... but the longer I stared the more my eyes became accustomed to her antics. She wasn't just standing there with a stick in her hand conducting the traffic as her marching unit, she was using her cane to hail a cab. This was a blind woman standing and doing what anyone with their vision would do (sans cane... or not, who's to say, eh?). For some unknown reason it just never entered my mind that a blind person would or even could hail a cab. HOW is she going to know if the cabby is or will be honest? How will she know if she is delivered to her desired location? HOW did she even know to stand where she did to hail that cab?

It's a good thing she couldn't see me staring at her. I was fascinated, amazed and couldn't take my eyes off this transaction I have taken for granted so many times because of my fully functioning eyes.

Choose me...

Once upon a Friday night I was sitting on a stoop-ish thing in front of a building on Chicago Ave., in Chicago with a girlfriend who was so wounded in the heart that she couldn't even get tears to cry! I felt her pain. I have been there many times. I almost cried for, or with, her on a few occasions during our time on the stoop... but I didn't shed any tears either.

What she was going through brought up so many memories of me and men I have "loved" before... I wrote "loved" because I am discovering I don't love men... I lust after them and when the luster has worn off I'm on to the next shiny object of my lustful desires. Sometimes I feel man-ish in this regard. Men seem to be like that - perhaps it's stereotypical, but it's typical just the same for a lot of men... they rove, their eyes wander and therefore so do their hearts.

Sometimes I question God. "God, what is wrong with me that men don't seem to like me for more than a buddy? What am I doing wrong?" But then I'm reminded that I don't give them a chance because I am struggling with liking them for longer than a mental-fantasy-boyfriend-in-my-head-okay-the-fifteen-minutes-of-fame-in-our-relationship-is-over NEXT!! dealio... and I wonder why and question God like He's the problem I can't keep a man around longer than a fling and a stroll in the park/roll in the hay...

So here we were, two beautiful women sitting on a cement curb that was protruding from a storefront on a busy street in Chicago and many good looking men, and dating couples were walking by. Some looked at us, most looked at her... she's stunning. I'm cute... She was not able to cry and I was on the verge... Then I remembered a quote from a television show, Grey's Anatomy, I think, where, I believe Meredith Grey says to Dr. McDreamy, "...choose me... pick me..." and I felt kicked in the gut and heart because here's my beautiful friend trying to figure out why God has dealt her another painful blow in her love life, and I am thinking, "if she can't get a man to want to commit to her for the long haul and she's a stunner with so many other redeeming qualities besides beauty," what's gonna happen to me?" It seems the pattern keeps repeating itself: I meet a guy. I like him, he doesn't like me or he likes one of my many friends. I meet another guy. He likes me, I don't like him. I meet another guy... we like each other... for a short time... and one of us stops the liking and moves on.

I sat there and someone I have had a secret crush on said something to me I feel will only result in me being crushed by him because I believe he likes the stunner and I had to suck it up because I was there for my friend, the stunner,  who was dealing with a broken heart... and I feel my broken heart is
(im)pending with this new guy I have a crush on... but like a house on the market, even though it's a horrid market, and everything is about "location location location", I still feel like I'm prime real estate in a great location and would really like a man to "choose me... pick me..." so we can sit on a stoop together and I can cry over things on his shoulder while people walk past admiring us... ya know, curb appeal.

I want a relationship with a man because I don't want to spend another Friday night in the city with a person of the same sex on a stoop almost crying over someone of the opposite sex!

God please send someone to "CHOOSE ME... PICK ME... " sooner than later!! I'm tired of the heart break and ache.

DISCLAIMER: Equal Opportunity Employer of Dateable Dudes. Men must be confident, financially stable, educated, well-traveled (and would like to travel more), potty trained, taller than me (not hard to do), fun, forgiving, humble, and a Christian. All others need not apply.

Free and reduced lunch...

This is something I wrote last year (almost exactly one year ago today ) and in light of today being the FIRST day of school for CPS I thought it would be good to re-post and be re-reminded:

Today as I was leaving the school I currently am employed at in South Chicago, a band of 3 little cutey patooties were skipping by. They were so tiny and bouncy so much so that the little girl of the 3, the other 2 you've probably deduced were boys, could be heard via her clear blue and white beads smacking in to one another.

I looked down at the munchkins and proclaimed, "oh my you're adorable!"

She, the midget, I mean-little person, I mean-under tall young person, looked up at me and said, "Lunch?" as she tried to push pass myself and another taller, larger woman who was exiting the building with me to get at the "lunch."

I responded with, "huh?" for I could not understand her through her lost-from-decay front tooth, and quipped, "you're kinda small for a high school student!" She just looked at me blankly and like I had a decayed front tooth and responded vehemently with, "Food! Lunch!"

Mind you it was WAY past after school and closer to dinner time. The woman I was walking with told her, "no, honey we don't have lunch anymore today." The little angel with the missing tooth merely grunted and kept steppin...

She stomped on my heart though... here is a child that has equated school with free food. We do hope that our students are getting the educational nourishment we sometimes feel we, as educators, are force feeding them - and here is a beautiful little urchin knowing that behind the door that we were not exiting through quick enough, back onto the street in to one of the most economically depressed areas of Chicago, to get in to our comfy, clean cars where we can drive off out of this area to a drive-thru for crap we CHOOSE to eat! She just wanted some kind of nourishment - not questioning what she would get, but with a hope that she would receive something... anything... free... or reduced, and we had nothing to give or offer.

Was it another door shut on a promising young mind? Hopefully it was just shut on her appetite and not her hunger and thirst to one day learn from the educators behind those doors she was unable to go through and find some, "Lunch! Food!"

Obsessive Compulsive...

I am not sure WHY I did this today, but I went into Walgreen's to buy some cleaning supplies to KILL the lingering stench in my refrigerator's freezer and I got distracted by the cheap movie tower display. I saw a DVD I considered buying and then I saw a bunch of kung fu DVDs. The whole display was in utter disarray (hey, that rhymed.)! So I stood there for an hour, no lie, and organized it.... BUT I only organized the kung fu films. I gave them ALL top and second shelf honors. I felt compelled to do it. I didn't care if I was in the way of other people trying to walk down the aisle I was occupying... I actually got quite perturbed on a number of occasions when folks asked to pass... couldn't they see I was busy arranging the horridly acted, badly directed and filmed kung fu movies that only my big brother and I would consider Oscar worthy?? Of course not.

I just couldn't stop until ALL the DVDs were in, what I believed, place!! I kept going until it was done to my liking (minus alphabetizing) and my fingertips were dirty from the film of dust that had collected on these classic beauties security taped and plastic wrapped cases that no one has stopped to admire, buy and take home.

When I finally made it to the check out counter, I oddly felt a sense of relief for accomplishing something that I didn't really need to do... must be a reflection of the need to get that stinking thesis paper completed... the 2nd first draft that is!!!

OH and on my walk home I noticed a bunch of cars whose owners' had parked them without consideration for the other owners' of the cars in the neighborhood who may need a parking space sooner or later, and I wanted to go around to every car with too much room at their front and rear bumpers, the THREE EXTRA FEET these selfish peasants were hoarding for their crappy rice rockets, and either become Wonder Woman and push the cars forward, or create a note on a Post-It type sticky that reads, "Be kind; move your car forward. The space you save could be your own some day or night... DOOSHbag!"  Then go around to all the cars hogging space and stick it to their driver's side window HOPING that when the owners of these cars see it it would strike fear in their hearts, because I would make sure it would resemble the parking ticket citations that are issued so frequently (because these incompetent car parkers make it impossible to find a space - resulting in REAL parking citations), and they would thus move their cars quickly because they would be afraid it was an actual citation. Maybe I need to include on the fake citation, "This is your first warning; the next time this happens expect a fee or other severe consequences. Have a blessed day!"

Obviously, I haven't taken such extreme measures... yet!

I'll take an order of salmonella after 1 a.m., please!

When you smell something funny when you get off the elevator and the smell turns to a stench that greets you at your "luxury" apartment door like a loving significant other - it's not a good sign!

Here's the sad part: I could NOT find the stench and wondered where it could be coming from when I surveyed all 650 sq. ft. of my humble abode... but I naively attempted to remedy the odor by spraying some room deodorizer and went about my unwinding-from-many-hours-of-driving routine.

I went on a much needed vacation to Ohio. Ohio, I know, who knew... but the stories about that are for another time. I need to blog about salmonella after 1 a.m.

After the olfactory assault upon entering my miniscule (but swank) domicile, I decided to take a break from thinking by turning on the T.V. and getting a little opposable thumb exercise via channel surfing... but then I started to feel sick to my stomach and headachey... so I got up and got myself some extra-strength pain reliever. The bottle of said pain aid was in a cupboard above my dishwasher, which I thought was harboring the stinky/stench felon. Then I took a swig of water from a bottled water bottle I had bought a few days earlier... BUT the bottle of water stank (so I thought) so I dumped it out... and since I don't like to drink un-Brita-cized Chicago tap water I thought I would just grab a bottle of my favorite iced tea... so I did what any normal person would and I opened the door to the refrigerator: holder of many things thirst quenching and hunger reducing - NOT exactly the place you expect to be greeted by the warm, fetid air of four days worth of unplugged refrigerated food - which had morphed into the smell of a decaying corpse! And that was just the  refrigerator section...

Upon fearfully peeling the freezer door open, I was immediately accosted and MORE sickened from the kick in the gut/face/nostrils I received by the rude, overly boisterous, attention hungry smell of rotten chicken and fish, AKA: salmonella! I have never felt more nauseous from an odor, except once when changing a baby's diaper at too young an age with overly excitable gag-reflexes... I know what you're thinking, "why was the chicken and fish rotten if it was in the freezer??" Now, come on, would I leave you hanging like that? I might IF I thought it would teach you a lesson... I digress...

If you missed the sentence with the words, "UNPLUGGED REFRIGERATED FOOD," here it is again in all it's glory... that being retyped means if the refrigerator was unplugged, the freezer atop the refrigerator section was TOO! This is where I housed my organic boneless, skinless, chicken breast and fish from well-known organic and specialty food retailer. The frozen vegetables, breakfast food and frozen confections shared this cold abode with the salmonella drippers' also... EVERY THING WAS DEFROSTED, MELTED AND PACKAGING BLOATED  from sitting neglected by the circuit breaker that went on vacation shortly after I did. It was quite a sad crime scene.

So, at around 1:30 IN THE MORNING I was up to my yellow-latex-gloved-eaten-by-previous-cleaning- supplies elbows with paper towels and disinfecting wipes in hand to sop up all that was sacrificed to the electrical system's absence. I gagged. I winced. I did what I had to do: clean it up and throw it all away. Hundreds of dollars worth of food... it made me furious and sad at the same time!! Poor innocent food. Poor innocent budget of mine.

This all came to pass because I had lodged an order for repairs to an area of the plaster ceiling that was hanging down from water damage due to water leaking in the apartment above mine. This damage was found in the living room and bathroom. There were also some electrical problems with the light switches in the bathroom. SOOOOOO while they (the apartment maintenance people) were doing their job, they thoughtlessly forgot to complete the assignment. Whilst "fixing" the light switch in the bathroom they used the circuit breaker box and turned off most of the electricity to my apartment. I didn't discover this until an hour after I had returned to my little home... I found my alarm clock flashing how many hours it had been off, silently shrieking to me to reset it and give it a semblance of its former time kept routine. I did what it quietly requested... and I continued with my headache... and then I approached the kitchen and that's when the rest of this entry unfolded!!!

This morning upon sluggishly evacuating the premises of my ravaged by destructive smells of salmonella apartment I ran into one of the people who work in the leasing department. We are "friends." I told her of the events of my return to my apartment and the loss I have experienced and asked her what I should do and if I would be reimbursed for all my lost groceries and she offered her condolences, shrugged her shoulders and said, "Do you have renter's insurance? If not, a whole lotta nothing is probably going to happen in your favor."

Why thank you for those pleasantries. I look forward to more harrowing experiences in the windy city... the city of big shoulders that get shrugged at me frequently!