Which End is Up!?

Unexpected Valentines

2012-02-13T22:21:00.000-06:00

At 33.5 years of age, I have lived long enough to know that both tragedy and spiritual uplift often come from the most unlikely places. One of the supremely terrible and wonderful features of human life is that we can plan all we want, but never quite know what to expect. But awareness of this fact doesn't always lead to preparedness, a ready script that one can summon in response to these little surprises.

Thus I was left on the street this evening, wordlessly clutching a three-foot tall white teddy bear named Shawn.

As part of my normal routine, I switched from one commuter train to the next, en route to the gym after a long day spent at the office. Upon alighting from the second train, a walk of roughly 6 blocks stood between me and the fitness center I patronize. Typically, I traverse the distance on autopilot, thinking over the day, what needs to be done when I get home, dread of the coming sweat session - the usual.

On this night, roughly halfway through my walk, I was interrupted from a reverie by the honk of a car horn. I looked to my left and it seemed that a rather well-dressed man driving a Mercedes-Benz was trying to grab my attention. Part of city living means coping with unwanted attention from various miscreants, but if Mr. Mercedes was a lunatic or a deadbeat, I had to admire the presentation.

I waved him off naturally, but he persisted. With an angry look on his face, he finally spoke: "Look I know this is weird, but can you just walk over here for a second?"

With that the gentleman thrust the aforementioned giant teddy bear from his driver side window, packaged adorably with a stand, fake roses and a balloon. "Here. Happy Valentine's Day," he said rather unenthusiastically.

By now I was running down a mental list of former friends and lovers. Had my memory lapsed completely? No other explanation made the scene logical. But failing to locate even a spark of recognition, I finally summoned the brain power to utter a single word, "Why?"

He sighed deeply before replying, "Because. You are a lot prettier and probably a lot nicer than the woman I just broke up with."

I wasn't ready for that at all. "But why me? Don't you want to give this to your mother, sister or at least a female friend?" [Presumably one that you have known for longer than 15 seconds?]

The man answered, "I really just want it out of my sight."

Why is that against every inclination I believed I had (I am SO not the teddy bear type), I suddenly wanted this stuffed animal more than anything? This bear represented something to the man - a loss, a broken promise, frustrated hopes. I will never really know the full story but all at once, I saw myself walking away from so many unsatisfying entanglements with nothing more than a box of tsotchkes. Here was someone in pain that I understood, literally asking me to lighten his load by taking a distressing Valentine's Day gift home. It seemed the least I could do.

By way of acceptance, I asked "May I at least have your name? So I know what to call the bear?"

"Shawn," was all he said. We made brief eye contact, and I like to believe, exchanged knowing looks. Yes, Shawn, this too shall pass. I was you last year.

Then Shawn peeled off into the night, into a world I never believed existed - where handsome men with nice cars and giant gifts still go home alone.

And I continued my walk to the gym, laden with a symbol of someone's disappointment. In the same moment that he gifted me the largest stuffed animal I will ever own, (and I WILL keep it because no one's pain belongs in a landfill), I hope I provided a service in return.

Super Rituals

2012-02-07T20:59:00.003-06:00

As I get older, I am starting to realize that social and cultural rituals for which I used to think I was too evolved are beginning to adopt personal meaning.

I am not speaking of the big markers of the annual societal calendar, like the November/December holiday season. I simply have too many family and failed romance issues to get down with that period. Besides I hate the cold and the push to spend money I don't have.

The touchstones to which I am referring are of the more mundane variety: St. Patrick's Day, the annual Oscars telecast and the Super Bowl. I want to BE somewhere on these days, feel a sudden urge that I don't experience at more obvious times to participate and belong. What is it about a community of strangers that can make one feel so at home?

I experienced the now familiar lure this past Sunday. As a huge sports fan generally, and an NFL devotee more specifically, I have always enjoyed the Super Bowl. Once you take into account the commercials, National Anthem suspense (will the chosen singer forget the lyrics?) and Halftime Show (Madonna!!), the whole glittery spectacle is almost too much to resist. And with any luck, the game will be dramatic too, as the latest Giants/Patriots faceoff certainly was.

I met a couple friends at a popular Wrigleyville bar, a place I had never been, but on this day it didn't matter. Every inebriated Chicagoan was an instant pal trying to assess team allegiance, looking for potential kinship and maybe an excuse to buy a shot. It's like all the eye contact avoiding, brisk walks and dehumanization that can often serve as the hallmarks of urban life take a time out upon which everyone has silently agreed.

I used to think that those drawn to participate in the corporate-enhanced mass market rituals that comprise American culture just so didn't get it. Couldn't these lemmings see they were being preyed upon under the guise of collective enjoyment?

Yet paradoxically as I gain life experience and heartbreak, become more used to disappointment, these ceremonies inspire a childlike suspension of disbelief in which I am wholeheartedly willing to engage. Perhaps that is the point of rituals in the end. Everyone needs a break from isolation and introspection. Sometimes we just need something to celebrate.

The Lighhouse

2012-01-31T00:05:00.000-06:00

On a quiet side street terminating in one of many far North Side Chicago beaches, lies a hidden gem of a dive bar that, if I have anything to say about it, will be a secret no more. In a way I hate to violate the establishment's privacy, but this is the type of place I assumed no longer existed: a humble watering hole where everybody knows your name, or at least your face. No logo adorns a garish awning (in fact the tavern bears no signage at all), no Groupon deals drive hipster masses to the front door in search of the latest special on PBR. In fact, the Lighthouse Tavern, which opened for business in 1923 as a hotel bar inside of of the neighborhood's then-fashionable resorts, doesn't even have a website.

It is more than likely that the bar's owners won't appreciate this modest bit of publicity, but in a City I love that has become, in many ways, gentrified and chain-business occupied to oblivion, I am utterly giddy to discover a little piece of something authentic.

Yelp reviewers can identify with this paradoxical dilemma: to protect or share? David L. writes, "This bar is so cool you almost don't want to tell anyone about it." Denise P. waxes, "No pretenses here.You get eye contact. The best kind. Tracy behind the bar really wants to know if you want water with your libation, sugarmuffin. Billy remembers you have a cat, too. And he knows you like your wine in a rocks glass, not a wine glass. The beauty of The Lighthouse is that everybody pretty much leaves their weekday personas at home."

The Lighthouse had me at its authentic nautical ambiance. I am not talking Red Lobster kitschy flair here folks. I mean antique seafaring tools, photos, maps - remnants of another century in the Windy City's port of the Midwest past. It secured its grip with the well-preserved 1950s-era twin bowler arcade game. And I was completely gone after two hours spent enjoying the most satisfying people-watching exercise in which I have indulged in recent memory.

The Lighthouse answers the question: where did the front line members of Chicago's counterculture movement end up? Turns out, their coordinates can be pinpointed to barstools within the Lighthouse. The scene was Easy Rider meets Hair: tresses were long, unruly and streaked with gray; leather and denim everywhere mixed with the intoxicating aroma of patchouli and whiskey. At approximately 8:00 PM on a Friday night, the nondescript bar of which I had hitherto remained ignorant was crawling with people drunk on shots and nostalgia.

As one of the youngest patrons by far that evening, I enjoyed an outsider's perspective that simultaneously included me in a sustained toast to the good old days, whatever that meant to these people who survived free love, the Civil Rights movement and the administration of Richard J. Daley. I greedily grabbed snatches of conversation that alternated between lucid and soused, nostalgic and bitter. While gulping down cheap wine, I wanted to drink in the collective memory that coursed through the well-kept space.

I have already mentioned that the Lighthouse boasts very little PR infrastructure. I learned of the place like almost everyone who walks through the doors becomes initiated - word of mouth. I have lived in my neighborhood for over two years, consider myself informed and have passed by its door countless times. But I guess I was invited in when I was finally ready to appreciate its special anachronisms. As I come to value my own quirky, anti-establishment character, it seems I have found a new place to unwind.

Republicans: IB Program's Global Citizenship is Irritating

2012-01-15T17:24:00.004-06:00

Earlier today I enjoyed Sunday brunch with two high school classmates, Faith and Gary. Gary and I have been inseparable for the better part of 20 years, while Faith and I always kept in touch as we went off to college, started careers, married, reared children (her case), divorced (mine) and reinvented those careers (both). The three of us were all part of the prestigious International Baccalaureate (IB) program as secondary school chums. The IB curriculum’s Swiss founders, presciently foretelling the coming of a flat, borderless economic, technical and social planet, engineered the program in 1968 with a goal of helping young people “develop the intellectual, personal, emotional and social skills to live, learn and work in a rapidly globalizing world.” There are 3,318 IB schools in 141 countries.

IB, quite literally, prepares one for the multicultural complexities and rigors of life. There are no lazy U.S.-based educational standards to provide students with a free pass to college. I never worked so hard, with such a sense of reward. On graduation day in June of 1996, I held two diplomas in my hands: one from the Chicago Public School system and one from the IB Program. I knew I had earned both and had the skills to compete with any 18 year-old student from any nation. When I walked onto campus as a freshman at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, no slouch an institution of higher learning by any means, I was floored by the freedom and comparatively undemanding workload I enjoyed.

The goal of the IB Program, per its website, is to put young scholars through a “demanding two-year curriculum leading to final examinations and a qualification that is welcomed by leading universities around the world.” Indeed. I took no less than seven, three-hour long IB exams in subjects ranging from French composition to advanced biology to trigonometry, theory of knowledge and psychology. I completed a 4,000 word extended essay in the subject area of my choosing with the help of a faculty advisor, and satisfied the 100-hour requirements of CAS activities (community service, arts and sports). It was a full and diverse life, in addition to the AP exams, SATs and other milestones of the American high school career.

It’s quite true that with all my extracurriculars, scholastic demands and a steady boyfriend, I didn’t have an abundance of free time. But I lived smack in the middle of the City of Chicago and I didn’t have occasion to fall into any of the Windy City’s urban traps for wayward students either. Between the years of 1992 and 1996 when Gary, Faith and I were enrollees, Lincoln Park High School was the only institution within city limits to sponsor the program. Grade school students from all corners of Chicago prepped for the entrance exams, with immense peer competition for the roughly 120 spots. The program was expected to have a 50 percent attrition rate by the time all IB exams were completed. In other words, half of us were expected to fail.

The Lincoln Park High School of the early 1990s isn’t quite what it is today. Low-income students from nearby Cabrini Green outnumbered WASPy, middle-class types. Gang activity was a daily event and Chicago Police were no strangers to the hallways. Yet as a student of the IB program, there was no time or energy, not even the temptation really, to indulge in drugs, alcohol or violent pursuits. I simply had too much riding on my day-to-day effort. I came from a broken home and the IB program, quite frankly, was my ticket out. If my resolve should wobble, I need only remind myself the dropout halflife experienced by my non-IB counterparts.

All things considered and precociously exacting as my teen years were, it was the best situation in which I could have found myself, especially when set in relief against the structure-free, violently unpredictable, toxic environment of my family life. Academics and the other requirements of the IB program were an escape, one that required me to think broadly and forwardly with a clear-head.

Within this general and personal context, who on the planet could view the IB program through the prism of sinister anarchy and unpatriotic indoctrination? Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), the Tea Party’s poster crackpot.

Back to brunch with Faith and Gary. Faith mentioned in passing that Ms. Bachmann had publicly decried the program this past summer as a force undermining American unity. I took the Internet upon my return home and found the following explanation from Mother Jones magazine: [Bachmann and other] “right-wing critics argued that IBO was quietly weaning kids off the antiquated notion of national sovereignty and American ideals and pushing them to become world citizens. (This, among other reasons, is why conservatives were so irked by Obama's statement that he considers himself a ‘citizen of the world’). IBO students would be taught to revere the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights and embrace a doctrine of moral relativism that values gay rights, redistribution of wealth, and the notion that the earth itself is a living organism.”

Well we can’t have that now, can we? If American students are to continue their competitive decline and complete their transformation into the ignorant, distracted sheep so valued by Big Business, Big Banks, Big Oil and a corrupt U.S. government, better to keep them away from lofty, radical notions that we’ve only got one race and one planet to protect.

American Community Onlooker

2012-01-07T14:46:00.003-06:00

For my first blog post of 2012, I would like to share the story of a woman who nurtured a late-2011 resolve to feel more even keel about life as a mid-30s divorcee. A wizened chick who had directed much of her considerable energy to achieving independence and a thriving media career, despite tremendous emotional and other personal costs. A gal who had finally started to come to terms with her circumstances and comprehend that though we don’t always live the existence we imagined, there is a way to learn to love the universe you have created.

That is until the American Community Survey showed up in the mailbox to remind her just how footloose and unattached life really is, and how frayed from the nation’s social fabric this renders her. Leave it to the Census Bureau to create revulsion and anxiety even in a year that doesn’t end in “0.”

Though the Bureau states on its website that the ACS is issued annually, I had never been selected as a respondent. Being a curious individual and a journalist by trade, I went looking for information. This is what I found:

“[The ACS is oriented around] giving communities the current information they need to plan investments and services. Information from the survey generates data that help determine how more than $400 billion in federal and state funds are distributed each year…All this detail is combined into statistics that are used to help decide everything from school lunch programs to new hospitals.”

Well that all sounds good and I am nothing if not a civic-minded person. I love my community (the Chicago neighborhood of Rogers Park) and will do gladly do anything I can to better it. Naturally however, I wondered how I came to be selected to complete the survey. I learned I was chosen “as a part of a sample and represents thousands of other households like yours. We randomly select about 3 million addresses each year to participate in the survey.”

I have only lived in my studio apartment for eight months. I happen to know from mail forwarding mishaps that the previous occupants were a married couple. As I sat down to provide the requested survey information, I realized with irony that the Census Bureau may have been coveting the information of the stable ones who came before me.

The survey began benignly enough: questions about birthdate, hometown, occupation, race and income. Standard stuff. But since the well-meaning folks at the ACS plan to use the cumulative data to plan educational resources and other bedrock elements of society, naturally the queries began to get more personal and for me, uncomfortable.

17b. “Is this person blind or does he/she have serious difficulty seeing even when wearing glasses.”

Ok, well I am pretty damned near-sighted (20/1100 vision), but I am not ready for a service dog yet. Let’s continue.

34. “How many minutes did it usually take this person to get from home to work LAST WEEK.”

Please don’t ask me why the last two words are in caps. I am not omniscient. Maybe corporate headquarters move around sometimes like magic? Anyway, I leave my apartment at 6:05 AM and arrive at the office at 8:20. Thanks ACS, I love my work but after seeing the numbers in such stark terms, I am officially depressed about my commute. What’s next?

20. “What is this person’s marital status?”

Fine, it stings, but this is an easy one: divorced.

22. “How many times has this person been married?”

Um, I think I need to open a bottle of wine while I finish this.

23. “In what year did this person last get married?”

How in the world is this important information? Obviously I am divorced. How does it help the community to know when the long process of failure began?

24a. “Has this person given birth to children in the past 12 months?”

No.

24b. “Ever?”

Xanax please. Am I on Candid Camera? Again how does my barren womb aid the neighborhood? Does this open more early childcare spots for families in need if the federal government is reasonably certain that no offspring of mine will ever require one? Just tell me what the endgame is here so I feel slightly better about recording my solitude and loneliness for posterity.

I think you get the picture right? As a dyed in the wool social liberal I want to do everything possible to benefit my fellow citizens. But come on Census Bureau, have a heart. It’s a new year and some of us are trying to convince ourselves that a life without attachments is uplifting and full of promise, rather than empty and simply a matter of counting the days until we become society’s burden.

Come to think of it, maybe those rascals at the ACS are attempting to ascertain when single “households like” mine will be in need of Social Security benefits and a public retirement home. Or perhaps this survey was placed in my hands a true test of my ability to accept myself and my life choices.

Survey says?

Dating Discoveries

2011-12-16T15:21:00.003-06:00

Clearly when I wrote this post on October 18^th, I was a little premature in declaring myself “back” to the blogosphere. Trying to manage a full-time job, part-time position and a seat on a woman’s journalism board has wreaked a little havoc on the intervals and desire for pursuing personal writing projects. This is not a complaint. A year ago, I was an unemployed author wondering if I would ever be able to provide for myself. I have been blessed this year with a number of opportunities to do just that.

At the same time, finalizing a divorce and attempting to figure out my new, unanchored place in the world has borrowed a significant amount of emotional bandwidth. As all of us creative types can attest, writing is a physically and spiritually exhausting activity. If you come to the table drained already, your finished product will reflect it. With that disclaimer in mind, consider yourself warned. I am one rusty blogger.

Anyway, that accounts for my intermittent presence, but I am here today to talk about the life of the singleton. As strange as it sounds, at the age of 33, I am experiencing the world of casual dating for the first time. Historically, I have been what they call a serial monogamist. Since the age of 16, with only sporadic periods of solitude, I have been in one committed relationship after another. Until April of this year, I never lived alone.

The impact of facing the world without a reliable mate and someone to come home to has been jarring and uncomfortable in some ways, refreshing and enlightening in others. The bottom line is that by keeping myself aligned with another for most of my life, I failed in my due diligence to get to know Becky. For better or worse, I’m forcing the issue now. I’m going through a delayed adolescence at warp speed.

Since the middle of this past summer, I have been on some dates and experienced a couple of short term relationships. Some of these situations ended with unpleasant resolutions, but not one of them has been a wasted experience. Here are a few takeways thus far:

I am more traditional in my approach than I believed.

I am a capable, independent woman who enjoys her freedom but that doesn’t mean I don’t get all warm inside if a man inflates the tires of my bike, fixes my loose shower head (no, that is not a euphemism – get your minds out of the gutter) or opens doors for me. Initially, I took my attraction to these behaviors as an appalling sign of weakness. I have since come to recognize that after a lifetime spent putting my own needs last, there’s nothing wrong with indulging a little TLC.

If a man over 40 only communicates with you via text message and makes no effort to invite you over, or introduce you to his friends and family, something is probably rotten in Denmark.

At this point, a number of you are probably snorting at my naivete, but I have always been a late bloomer and in keeping with my personal history, I had to learn this one the hard way.

If a date embarrasses you in front of your friends or makes demeaning jokes without any attempt to apologize, run like hell.

Once again, I figured this one out through trial and error. People are traditionally at their best at the outset of a relationship and if you encounter this level of disrespect before you’ve opened the closet to have a look at the rest of the skeletons, there’s probably no need to do so.

A disappointing number of single men like you to be attractive OR smart, but certainly not both. And don’t dare have a past.

Ok, I confess: I am engaging in gross generalization here, but it’s my personal experience of recent months. I have been out with men who professed to be floored by my intelligence and wit, but balked at the idea of dating a woman who attracts physical attention from other quarters. It made them paranoid and insecure. At the same time, I have had dates who thought I was pretty but wished I would talk far less.

Without fail, the dudes with whom I have stepped out have had some objection or another to one or more of the following: a rough childhood that was certainly not my choice, my conversion of religion away from Christianity, a divorce, a career and life’s work that asks me to expose myself, an aversion to moving to the suburbs and having babies, the number of exes with whom I remain friends. Here’s a newsflash: I am 33. I am not a virgin, nor have I lived in a bubble. You thought it was cool that I was a writer until you realized that was a semi-public profession? Your problem buddy, not mine.

After a very recent breakup and with the approach of the New Year, I am taking a breather from dating. It is, in a word, exhausting. It certainly creates a lot of material for farce and melodrama, but I don’t have the wherewithal for the time being. I suppose for the moment, it’s gratifying enough to realize the opportunities will be there when I want them again.

While I’ve Been Away

2011-10-18T15:26:00.001-05:00

I haven’t written or posted a word on this blog in nearly two months. Gratifyingly (however recently), there has been a mini-groundswell amongst my friends and small readership for a return. I find myself with a few spare moments today so I thought I would share, not what I’ve been up to, but why I have been silent so long.

Anyone familiar with the story of my 2011, whether personally or casually, knows it has been an uneven year. I greeted January as an unemployed insomniac, separated from my cherished husband Eddie in March (because you can still love and cherish somebody with your full soul while knowing at the same time that you’re on the wrong path – one of 2011’s cruelest lessons), moved out on my own for the first time in April, underwent surgery for cervical cancer in June, and that’s basically when I left the scene.

A lot has changed since that time, not all of it for the worse. I have my health again. I am scheduled for a six-month checkup in early December, but all signs point to a near-term ability to put that ordeal behind me.

My career, diametrically opposed to my personal life, is thriving. In July I was recruited away from my position as a web writer and project manager at a boutique publishing firm in the North Chicago suburbs – better title, more money and benefits I haven’t enjoyed since leaving the non-profit world in 2009. Yet for all that, happy to be where I was, I initially said “no thank you.” To my great surprise (and eventual gratitude), neither the company nor the hiring manager took my rejection for a finality. So here I am, six weeks on the job as the Senior Manager, Social Media Marketing/Head Writer for a successful home products company. Better yet, my former employer asked me to stay on part-time, so for an additional income, I get to continue doing the real estate and personal finance writing and blogging that I grew to love.

I am expanding my involvement and leadership in the professional organization for which I sit on the board. I have connected with numerous new friends and mentors and am grateful for all I have learned, especially from the positive female presences I have allowed in. In a variety of ways I am forcing myself to branch out and conquer the fear of public speaking that threatens to hold me back.

All of this is good. I am blessed. It wasn’t long ago that I was one of the panicked unemployed, the cuckolded trophy wife who saw her best years slipping away helplessly.

And yet right as my professional fortunes began to turn, as I reclaimed my physical health and learned to live independently of the whims and needs of others, my personal creativity all but dried up. Simply put, I hadn’t the energy or the will to follow politics anymore, chart my personal growth or explore the pop cultural evolution of society. I was busy – certainly a great excuse to punt.

I enjoyed summer, did some traveling, dabbled in dating and actually met someone who taught me a great deal about how I want and deserve to be treated. The relationship didn’t last, as rebounds are typically wont to do, but I am forever grateful to this man. I sort of entered this period where I no longer wanted to think about my actions. I just wanted to act, to live in the moments I had over-planned for too long.

But now it’s mid-fall. I have settled into my new routine and as the end of the year approaches, a pensive mood steals over me again. I am mere weeks from watching the ink dry on my divorce papers, and wonder where I go from there.

Have I made the right decisions?

All along I have followed my socio-political touchstones (the New York Times’ Columnist page, CNN, the work of my fellow writers) and see that the world is continuing to go mad (or perhaps is simply in a cycle of self-correction). What do the holidays bode? What does 2012 portend for our nation, the Western Hemisphere and the world at large?

I can no longer afford to indulge an intellectual sabbatical. So I’m back.

Vacation Becky: The Return of the Honey Badger

2011-08-22T17:56:00.005-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r7wHMg5Yjg

Vacation Becky is a hell of a lot more fun than Real Life Becky. Ask anyone. Real Life Becky is a bundle of nerves and self-consciousness, confined by typically artificial bonds of to-do lists, worries, overzealous exercising, dietary constraints and fears of aging. Vacation Becky is the absolute antithesis of all that. She is a honey badger (see NFSW video clip above) who does what she wants, worries about no consequence and is the type of bon vivant that typically adds to the entertainment of any group gathering.

I was reminded of how much I enjoy my vacation self, so unlike the real me, this past weekend on a friendly group camping trip to scenic Shelbyville, Illinois – population 5,000. What can a group of citified gal pals and gay men get up to in the still, unmolested country? Quite a lot as it turns out. And as the normally-reticent-come-yes-girl ringleader, I left a certain CoCo Chanel/Anna Nicole Smith imprint of white trash glamour that South Central Illinois will not soon forget.

It all began with breadsticks drowning in a lake of butter and covered in rock salt, not unlike the kind you might find on a Midwestern highway in the depths of January. This was the conclusion of a late Friday afternoon dinner with my traveling companion Laura. As she marveled at the delicious grotesqueness of my wish for more carbs to soak up the excess butter pond, she remarked that this sort of culinary abandon seemed outside of character. This is the moment when I acquainted her with Vacation Becky, and warned her that there was a lot more to follow.

We arrived late Friday evening at our cabin in the woods (for neither Vacation nor Real Life Becky do roughing it very well), to a raucous chorus of already inebriated whoops from the homosexual peanut gallery. We came ready to party with a trunk full of booze and chips (Ah Chili Cheese Fritos! How I love thee!). Picture bonfires, cocktails and inappropriate loud laughing well past the campground’s “quiet hour.”

Over the course of the weekend, Vacation Becky, as also known as CoCo/Anna, put boring Monday-Friday Becky in a headlock and engaged in the following:

Wildly shameful flirting with brawny local teen boys.

The purchase of a thrift store string bikini (Original tags on of course. Even Vacation Becky is a borderline germaphobe).

The eating of newly procured pork rinds right there at the counter of Shelbyville’s local Family Dollar store.

Jumping off a pontoon into lake water for the express purposes of peeing.

Drinking a bottle and a half of wine on aforementioned pontoon, then passing out for a solid 30 minutes before reviving to finish the rest.

Eating thinly vetted fried shrimp and coconut cake at a Sunday breakfast buffet.

Looking eminently confident and sexy while engaging in all of the above.

Just who is this wild, adventurous minx who cares nothing for public opinion and how do I incorporate her into my weekday life? Or perhaps it’s better than she is only released from her cage for long weekends and holidays? Maybe Vacation Becky is most safely enjoyed in small doses.

Sucking Air

2011-08-10T15:48:00.002-05:00

American Airlines is the nation’s largest carrier, having gobbled up competitors such as TWA in the Aughts, and despite flirting unsuccessfully with the acquisition of US Airways in late 2009. According to Wikipedia, American “is the world's third-largest airline in passenger miles transported, passenger fleet size, and operating revenue.”

As a child growing up in the 1980s, I could sing the airline’s commercial jingle in my sleep, “We’re American Airlines, something special in the air!” A ticket to board an American Airlines flight must have been something magical! When I was a grown-up, I would find out by God!

The company now uses the tagline, “We know why you fly.” However, if my experience of this past weekend is any indication, the carrier must think the purpose of my travels is to experience a frustrating lack of communication and a desire to sleep on the floor of Boston Logan Airport on the eve of my 33^rd birthday.

In other words, to put it academically, American Airlines sucks.

Sunday morning I awoke in my high school chum Euridice’s apartment in Medford, Massachusetts to the soothing sounds of light rain. Though the showers intensified somewhat as we enjoyed a leisurely brunch downtown, followed by some mall walking (insert old fart joke here), I was only minimally concerned about flight delay. There was no accompanying lightening or thunder and though, like Pavlov’s dog, I have been trained to have my time wasted by airport security and airline personnel at the slightest provocation, I expected I would be on my way back home at some hour close to the 6:50 PM scheduled departure.

I arrived at Logan’s Terminal B in plenty of time to check my bag and wade through security procedures, only to discover as I started the self-check-in process that my flight had been cancelled. Five hours earlier. And in a surprise twist, the cancellation was due to equipment failure, rather than Mother Nature.

Let’s get over the fact that I am an American AAdvantage member and the bureaucratic apparatus of the carrier sent me neither email nor phone call nor text to make me aware of this schedule change. Let’s try and sidestep the disheartening news that American had no other flights from Boston to Chicago that evening and that they swore the best they could do was put me on a 2 PM plane the following day.

What really irked me was the mass confusion, poor customer service and utter lack of willingness to issue refunds or assist with accommodations for the night. At 6 PM I was staring down the barrel of having to ring in a birthday, which I already bore a humbug attitude toward, drunk (because really, what else could I do?) and alone on the cold, industrial floor of an East Coast air travel hub. Can you imagine anything more pathetic? No, then how about the scene of weeping mothers and fathers, forced to call their scattered homes to inform children, spouses and parents that they were unable to return, in some cases, before two days following? I haven’t witnessed so much misery first person since my sister Jen finally realized at the age of 10 that there was no Easter Bunny.

As a former corporate travel agent, I was aware that there is but one carrier that does not share its booking system with any of the other major airlines. That is of course Southwest, the only operation that has yet to institute charges for checked bags, the sole provider of air travel who issues comfy leather seats to all passengers without some other bullshit upcharge, and the only company who appears to conduct customer service training for its call center and onsite personnel. It is not by accident that the carrier is one of few that regularly turns a profit. In May 2011, Southwest Airlines was ranked as one of the top ten companies in MSN Money's 2011 Customer Service Hall of Fame, and its flight completion record is currently 98.8 percent as of first quarter 2011.

Why do I highlight all of these distinctions? Because unlike at the American counter, where I and my fellow strandees were treated like gum on the bottom of a shoe and provided zero resources in our time of hardship, after running three terminals over to the Southwest vestibule, I encountered something like human compassion. I had the forethought to book another flight by phone (where I was pointedly wished a “happy birthday” by the friendly rep who assisted me), but was advised to go to the counter afterward to try and get standby on a yet earlier flight. The customer service representative was unable to grab me a seat herself as it was too close to flight time.

Did I mention that this last minute one-way ticket cost me a mere $330? That’s not chump change to a struggling writer, but more than worth it in the long run to get home to my cat Jordan, my work and my life before an additional 24-hours elapsed. Compare this to a figure of $618 for a comparable ticket on American.

Southwest’s flights were delayed that evening, but they did take off. Icing on the cake: the fees for alcoholic beverages were waived once my plane finally taxied off the runway. The flight crew knew we had all suffered enough, were feeling quite cranky and a little liquid calm was bound to make everyone’s experience just a bit less stressful.

At the risk of sounding like Andy Rooney, I am forced to bemoan the perceptible and lengthy decline of airline service. It’s not just the endless delays, lack of food and nickel and dime surcharges for EVERYTHING. It’s not the increasing invasiveness and dehumanizing effects of airport security, for which the carriers issue yet another fee. It’s that we pay so much, and are hassled so incessantly, for the privilege of being treated like shit and shoehorned into a seat we would deem capital punishment in any other environment.

If I must fly, and at this point, I would prefer Amtrak, or even dare I say it, Greyhound, it won’t be as an American Airlines passenger. Think I am alone in my aversion to the carrier? Check out these links:

1. http://bigfatmarketingblog.com/2009/03/24/american-airlines-sucks-and-im-not-the-only-one-who-says-that/

2. My personal favorite: http://www.dougboude.com/blog/1/2007/06/American-Airlines-YOU-SUCK.cfm

3. http://www.travelblog.org/Topics/22463-1.html

4. http://sobeale.blogspot.com/2008/11/american-airlines-sucks.html

Southwest, thank you for making a pretty terrible night just a tiny bit easier to swallow – with a red wine chaser.

Another Year

2011-08-02T16:13:00.002-05:00

I am weary, bone weary and sad from thinking and writing about politics. I need a break so it’s time to move onto my second favorite subject, which is of course….me.

I am having a birthday in less than six days.

No, save your good wishes. I do not feel like celebrating this year. This sounds implausible to the ears of anyone who knows me. After all, this is the same woman who wore a tiara all day every day, between the ages of 22 and 28: to the office, on public transportation. The venue and its appropriateness hardly mattered because the goal was to get attention, and this shameless pandering certainly did. I initiated a “birthday countdown” that began no less than a full month before the big day. If asked, I could produce a gift registry with lightning speed.

Adorable? An egomaniac? You be the judge. In my defense, I was never one for family holidays given that my immediate clan had a dependable way of serving dread, misery and tears with each Thanksgiving turkey, Christmas ham or Independence Day barbecue. Up until this summer, had I been queried about my favorite holiday, I would have answered “Halloween and my birthday” with utmost conviction. Halloween remains at the top of my list for its promise of allowing you to inhabit the look and persona of another without being arrested for identity theft. And my birthday was a source of pleasure because it was a day devoted to celebrating my entrance into this crazy world, no matter how imperfect my mark upon it.

Key word there: “was.” Let’s leave aside my almost pathological fear of aging and the encroaching sense that my best years and my fullest potential are already behind me. That’s still there of course, but the aversion to mon anniversaire in 2011 stems from taking stock of where I am: personally, professionally and as a human being, and not liking much of what I see.

I am estranged from a man that I still love very much. I don’t know that I’ll ever be over him and yet this changes nothing about our circumstances. I am thriving in my day job at a small publishing firm, but my freelance career is wobbly. Even worse, I seem to have no will or energy seek out new platforms. I am confronting a level of inertia and apathy that is completely unfamiliar.

Most bothersome of all, I am troubled by recent evidence that my moral compass needs new batteries. My separation and illness earlier this year seems to have left a bitter sense of entitlement in its wake. I have done and said things in recent months that would have caused blushing a mere nine months ago.

I need a plan. Hedonistic, self-involved indulgence is an ill-fitting costume I no longer care to wear.

So my birthday gift to myself this year is a healthy dose of measured silence and reflection.

The Maverick Returns

2011-07-28T09:59:00.000-05:00

Had I been a Republican during the 2000 Presidential primaries, there is no doubt I would have voted McCain instead of Bush. At the time, the man came off as relatively uncompromised. As a decorated Vietnam veteran and a legislator who had a record (at the time) for rejecting pandering in order to reach across the aisle and get things done, he had my respect. Had he made it to the general election, I might have even considered casting a ballot in his favor instead of Al Gore.

By the time the 2008 campaign rolled around and McCain had morphed into a man who suddenly wanted nothing to do with immigration reform, labeled Barack Obama “that guy,” and selected Sarah Palin as a running mate, effectively putting an idiot one heartbeat away from the Oval Office, I was glad I was never faced with a real opportunity to punch a hanging chad in his favor. Turned out McCain was just like all the rest. He would say or do anything to get elected.

But all it once it appears that the removal of the Holy Grail chase, the end of his POTUS dreams, have freed John McCain to take a real stand where certain issues are concerned. Or it could be that at nearly 75 years of age, he just doesn’t give a shit anymore what anyone thinks.

And so yesterday, I read this report from Yahoo News’ The Ticket: “John McCain Unloads on the Tea Party,” and my stunned heart sang. Not so much because I care about McCain’s rediscovery of his backbone, but I was enthralled because finally SOMEBODY is pointing out the Tea Party Emperors are not wearing any clothes.

I could care less about his pity for John Boehner’s attempts to cobble together a last minute deficit reduction/debt ceiling compromise, but seriously, what’s not to love about quotes like this:

"The idea seems to be that if the House GOP refuses to raise the debt ceiling, a default crisis or gradual government shutdown will ensue, and the public will turn en masse against . . . . Barack Obama," McCain said, quoting [a Wall Street] Journal article. "The Republican House that failed to raise the debt ceiling would somehow escape all blame. Then Democrats would have no choice but to pass a balanced-budget amendment and reform entitlements, and the tea-party Hobbits could return to Middle Earth having defeated Mordor."

"This is the kind of crack political thinking that turned Sharron Angle and Christine O'Donnell into GOP Senate nominees," McCain added, still reading from the article.

Squee!!!! I know he’s basically regurgitating the work of another writer, but the fact that he does so on the Senate floor, with C-Span cameras rolling, provides a tacit blessing to the Journal’s indictment. Like it or not, McCain remains a standard bearer of the GOP and though it is unlikely, this should give pause to intolerant right extremists.

Allow me to quote another Open Salon blogger I greatly admire, a gentleman by the name of Cranky Cuss. I published a post this past Tuesday entitled, “The Party is Over,” where I detailed my general disgust with the current “work” and comprehensive ineptitude of both political factions. That said, Crank offered a fairly prescient indictment of the Republican caucus in particular:

“The Republicans would rather have the nation default, with all the devastation it would cause our already teetering economy not to mention the world economy, than allow Obama to be re-elected. I consider that treason.”

Thank you Mr. Cuss for calling a spade a spade, and grazi Senator McCain, however belatedly, for trying to lead your party by example.

The Show is Over

2011-07-26T16:05:00.000-05:00

I have been a politico, a policy wonk, a fervent follower of Washington gamesmanship for as long as I can remember. I believe my love for the inner workings of our nation’s Capitol began with a first grade classroom straw poll in which I participated in 1984. My parents, young moderate Republicans, were huge fans of Reagan, whereas I already began to sense my liberal stirrings and wanted to like Walter Mondale more, but just couldn’t. In truth, I would have been happiest to vote for Geraldine Ferraro, but that wasn't an option and in the end bit my lip and cast my childhood lot with the Gipper. Though my vote counted for nothing, I have yet to forgive my lack of foresight.

I have always been a fan of the Sunday morning talk shows, the arm chair quarterbacking about bills, social initiatives and policy speeches. As long as America’s basic common sense and global leadership was intact, I took it mostly in good fun. Of course there are real world implications for any nation’s decisions, but I felt safe in my admiration of the endless game of chess that keeps networks like CNN and Fox News in business.

I have been blogging for about two years and until recent months, a good percentage of my posts have been politically motivated. In my freelance journalism life, I kept up a column for a magazine based in Denver for the better part of a year.

But suddenly, beginning in December 2010 when Obama capitulated to the extreme right wing on the extension of the fiscally irresponsible Bush tax cuts, or if I’m being honest, slightly before that, the wind was sucked right out of my political sails. As the middle class and lower classes sank under the crushing weight of high unemployment, a credit crunch and the disappearance of home equity that are the hallmarks of this Great Recession; as lawmakers from both sides fell out of touch with the real world needs of real people as they became entrenched in partisan squabbles that had little or nothing to do what it takes to get the nation back on track; to quote President Obama, when “compromise became a four-letter word” as the rest of the world looks on in horror while we careen toward the inevitable toppling of our dynasty, there’s nothing to appreciate. It is, in a bipartisan word, revolting.

As it is, a lack of engagement with current affairs has been a casualty of the increasing digitization of our culture. The truly engaged and informed are a diminishing minority, and anyone else who flips on the TV to witness the latest round of partisan posturing from the President or the Speaker of the House is bound to reach for their Kindle or Nintendo DS in short order. Politics is serious business, but let’s face it, also entertainment. And of the many sins of which our lawmakers are in the business of committing, a failure to captivate may be one of the lesser, but it’s clearly a factor in Congress’ 77 percent negative approval rating.

To state the totally obvious: we have major problems in this country, problems that even a vote to raise the debt ceiling, or a last minute Hail Mary that manages to cut spending AND raise revenue, may not solve. The United States is the laughing stock of the First World (and even Third World nations like India are having a chuckle at our paralysis). But no one living here outside of the upper two percent of wealth holders, has a thing to smile about.

Jumping the Shark

2011-07-15T12:23:00.002-05:00

Living in Chicago, some form of sexual harassment, however mild, tends to be a typical facet of the average woman’s day. I was inaugurated into this confusing and often humiliating world of gender politics at the age of 13, when I began to receive car horn honks and wolf whistles from older teenage boys and grown men as I navigated the streets solo, or with a girlfriend. For many reasons, I could not begin to comprehend the behavior of these gentlemen. I was cognizant of the fact that I was still a child, and not a very attractive one at that (then as now, I was a frustrating mix of social awareness and shallow insecurity).

As with any minor annoyance, it began to recede into the background over the years, one of those tradeoffs you have to accept as a devotee to urban life. Boys will be boys and all that.

As I entered my 30s, and paradoxically gained more confidence in my overall appearance (Botox injections, adult braces and a brilliant hair stylist and personal trainer were undeniable assets), I noticed, with a surprising degree of disappointment, that the incidence of wolf whistling began to decrease markedly. Where I should have been grateful for the opportunity to traverse the streets in peace, I was instead petulantly annoyed that the Neanderthals of the Windy City had ignored my realization of true pulchritude capabilities in favor of younger, fresher targets.

My temporary salvation from increasing awareness that I am growing older, and thus less attractive to immature fellows seeking temporary diversion, arrived at a rather unlikely hour. Last night I left the gym after a strenuous group Russian kettlebell class, and took to the streets sweaty and unkempt. I was wearing a damp t-shirt, yoga pants and an exhausted look as I waited for the Northbound Red Line train that would take me back to my studio in Rogers Park.

I was engrossed in a copy of Jonathan Franzen’s marvelous Freedom, when out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a rakish, extremely drunken young man approaching me. He could not have been 25 years old, yet with his confident smirk and Max Headroom sunglasses, he instantly reminded me of Tom Cruises’ character Brian Flanagan from Cocktail. The boy was a staggering, inebriated wild card and I was mostly concerned that I was about to witness someone die via third rail electrocution.

However, Mr. Flanagan had other plans in mind for a sweaty and irritated yours truly. “Whatcha reading beautiful?” he slurred over my shoulder.

Since I have already exposed myself as a shameless, compliment-seeking source of vapidity, does it surprise you to know this brought a smile to my face? I quickly displayed the cover of my book and figured that would be the end of the over served fella’s attentions. Not so.

“You’re pretty,” came next. Clearly, in the condition which I have described, I was as far from gorgeous as my new friend was from sobriety, but he really was adorable. In another decade, this story may have had a different ending.

I thanked my suitor politely and turned my attention back to the book as the train approached. Mr. Flanagan went quiet as well as he weaved perilously close to the tracks. However, he was apparently just saving his strength for his next attempt to engage me. This was executed via a comical attempt to pretend as though he was opening the train car doors with superhuman strength, just for me, as he loudly shouted “Move aside people, pretty girl coming through!”

The train was packed, as was the platform of would-be passengers, and by now, for a multitude of reasons, people were staring at us. They leered at Mr. Flanagan, curious as to how a young kid commuting alone could be so dead drunk at the early hour of 8pm. They were staring at me too, wondering what this disheveled aunty had done to arouse such attention.

And where I ought to have been embarrassed and revolted, I was instead pleased by this display. Clearly, this says nothing attractive about me whatsoever, but there it is.

The battle to achieve and maintain some sort of consistent self-esteem has been one of the prominent features of my time on this planet. My ego is a fragile as gossamer and subject to others’ approbation to a completely unhealthy degree. This state of affairs extends not only to my personal appearance, but my work, my social standing and family relations as well. I am introverted and standoffish by nature until I am teased out with some sort of approval. It is one of the parts of my character that I view with the most disdain, but I am actively working to resolve it.

Clearly however, my personal growth arrives in peaks and valleys. I had gleaned the wrong kind of attention from the wrong person for all the wrong reasons, yet I slept soundly knowing that I hadn’t yet jumped the catcall shark.

Forgetting to Remember Her

2011-07-02T10:41:00.001-05:00

It’s hard to believe that it’s been almost two and a half years since Jesika died, and yet in some ways it feels like so much longer. Almost nothing in my life is the same as it was then. When I lost my closest female friend in April of 2009 to the briefest, cruelest battle with ovarian cancer, I was a part of corporate America, happily married (at least as far as the rest of the world was concerned), and just coming out of the fog that had previously prevented me from chasing a writer’s dream.

The world stopped for a long while after I returned from an ill-timed trip to Israel to discover that I had missed Jesika’s final days. She looked me in the eyes before I left and assured me that she’d be there when I returned, but that oxygen tank she was lugging around as she carefully spoke should have convinced me otherwise. The ensuing weeks were full of grief, funerals, eulogies and painful regret. I left my job not long afterward and pursued writing headlong. Jesika always supported me and trusted that I would find my voice. I owed it to her, who would never have the chance to fulfill her earthly dreams, to get serious sooner rather than later.

There’s not a lot of sense to be made when a 30 year-old bright, beautiful and hilarious woman is struck down so swiftly and in such a destructive way. Jesika’s life partner Kevin has since told me that one of the most demoralizing parts of watching her go downhill was the way the cancer started to affect her brain, causing her to speak periodic gibberish. I can only imagine how hard that was for him to watch, because it killed me just to hear it.

One of the few positive outcomes to a tragic wrongdoing has been my growing friendship with Kevin. I will not go into much detail because it is his story to tell, but he was prevented from attending Jesika’s funeral due to a family’s misguided need to find someone to blame for the incomprehensible. I am by no means a religious person but I felt strongly that Jesika was communicating with me, telling me to look after Kevin as best I could, since he was being denied so much, and she wasn’t here to make it right.

We were each other’s lifelines to the woman we missed terribly. I had known Jesika since the age of 14 so I could share the crazy stories of our adolescent misadventures with him. He in turn knew the Jesika of college and law school that I had missed. Between the two of us, we could form a nearly complete narrative of her life, her love and her humor. We visited her gravesite, cried together and through our shared grief and experiences, eventually formed an independent friendship of our own.

On Thursday night, we had dinner at Leona’s Italian restaurant, part of a local Chicago chain and one of Jesika’s favorites. Kevin and I hadn’t seen each other in four months, right after I decided to leave my husband and before I had my own, minor-by-comparison cervical cancer procedure. On Wednesday night, I had something close to a panic attack. I realized that I was beginning to separate our friendship from the original context from whence it sprung, and I felt a one-two punch of guilt and fear that stopped me cold. I was ashamed to recognize that I hadn’t thought about Jesika, at all, in about that same four months which had lapsed since I last met Kevin.

I am aware that human survival depends on healing. The heart cannot remain an open wound forever after tragedy, and yet that same ability to rebound can be painful in its own right. I know that I have not forgotten Jesika. She is an integral part of who I am. But since her passing, I have had so many new experiences and made so many memories that by virtue of her absence, she can never share. The memory, with its bias toward primacy and recency, tends to expend its energy on the here and now. And so it was that in a state of saddened remorse, I was suddenly assaulted with a highlight reel of my relationship with Jesika that left me crying on my bathroom floor.

Was I forgetting to remember her? As one of few people who knew her intimately, one of two souls who knew the whole truth about her death and the circumstances around it, and the only one with the bully pulpit and freedom to counteract the alternate version of the story that exists, I am invested with a huge responsibility. And yet preoccupation with my own complicated life and the damned human need to compartmentalize had led me away from the promise I made to Jesika, myself and even if he didn’t know it, Kevin in 2009. What did that mean? What did that say about my capabilities as a friend? Had I let Jesika down?

Kevin and I spent two hours over our meal at one of our girl’s favorite venues and in that time, she came back to life. I realized that the true Jesika, the full and complete bougie, sarcastic, and reality TV-loving woman, the girl who terrorized fast food restaurant owners and snuck into R-rated movies with me, is only actualized when Kevin and I conjure her together. When we meet, she is sitting with us, and probably wearing a huge smile over the fact that her two favorite people in the world have bonded.

That’s when it hit me that my close friendship with Kevin IS remembering her. It is honoring her and her life. In fact it might be arrogant of Kevin and I to assume we had any control in forming this link, initially connected by grief but continued through genuine regard and appreciation for one another. When Jesika first returned to Chicago and moved in with the love of her life, she wanted us to be friends. It may not have happened the way any of us planned, but we have fulfilled one of her greatest wishes. That’s a more effective and positive way of respecting her legacy than self-indulgent guilt.

Missing the Point of the Anemic Housing Market

2011-06-29T10:00:00.000-05:00

Until four months ago, I had very little interest in real estate and personal finance news. I do not own a property, nor do I wish to, exist mostly off the credit economy grid and don’t have much of a head for financial statistics. That all changed in February when I was hired as a senior writer for a respected housing market and stock analyst. By day, I research, write and report on the numbers, which I don’t have to tell you folks, have been seriously depressing in recent years.

Typically, I try to keep my two writing worlds separate. In the evening and on weekends, I am preoccupied with theater, politics, urban agriculture and of course, myself.

Recently, because of immersion in the topics, I have come to understand that my disinterest in banking and housing limits my understanding of the full political scope. What could be more important, from a public policy perspective, than sustained, long-term unemployment and a pullback in available credit absolutely decimating middle class American families and their home values? Yet tragically, both political parties have chosen to ignore these truly pressing concerns in favor of epically immature posturing regarding gay marriage (Rick Santorum), Executive branch limousine rides (Michelle Bachmann) and pushing disgraced congressman Anthony Weiner out of office (Nancy Pelosi). While our elected officials play chicken with a vote on the debt ceiling, Middle America has been placed on the sidelines.

It has been nearly three years since the world learned that irresponsible, and in most cases criminal activity on the part of large Wall Street financial firms had brought the economy to its knees. To date the banks and their financial partners have had to pay the piper very little. But periodically, a wrist slap is handed out so that lawmakers and legal eagles can tout the appearance of justice to the voting public.

This morning, on the front page of the New York Times and other media outlets, we learned that Bank of America, the largest U.S. bank in terms of asset holdings, plans to set aside $14 billion to repay a group of critical investors as a resort of its malfeasance in bundling and selling high-risk mortgages.

Who are these critical investors, you may ask? According to reports, the claimants are “a group of heavyweight holders of the securities, including Pimco, BlackRock and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that have been pressing for a settlement since last fall.”

Does anyone suppose that this group has been the real victim of Wall Street’s shell game? While it’s wonderful to hear that the bank is going to have to make some restitution, it is with the wrong folks. None of this $14 billion will ever reach the hundreds of thousands of American families who have lost everything because of the risks taken by a small group of arrogant charlatans.

Meanwhile, hopes for a housing market recovery, or even confirmation that we have finally reached the bottom, continue to be dashed. This week, CBS MoneyWatch reported that home prices in six cities fell to new all-time lows, and nationwide, home values are averaging 2000 levels. For those keeping score, that is 11 years of lost equity.

Who will finally decide that it is beneficial to the nation, and politically advantageous enough, to throw American homeowners a lifeline? Voluntary loan modification programs have proven to be a sick joke marked by millions of reams in lost paperwork. No one on Capitol Hill seems to want to touch the development of a plan to create jobs (which is the real key to getting the housing market back on its feet), and around we go.

It’s utterly disgraceful to have to endure the chronic bellyaching of Big Business, whining about the hostile corporate attitude of the Obama administration, while stories like this one go unheard.

Bank of America can spare the $14 billion. The nation’s middle class can no longer afford the loss of dignity, combined with collective callousness, bought on by the risks of elite cads who fail to connect with the real repercussions of their actions. And our public servants need to stop enabling this disconnect.

Chicago Pride

2011-06-26T13:56:00.004-05:00

For members of the LGBT community, their friends, partners and loved ones (so basically, everyone in America), this is a great weekend. Not only did the nation’s most populous state, New York, pass 11^th hour legislation on Friday night that certified equal marriage rights for all of its citizens, but throughout the country, there was some serious partying already planned in the form of various Pride parades and festivals.

This morning Chicagoans awoke to the second day of a two-day reprieve from cool temperatures and consistent storms, and took to the streets for the City’s annual gay Pride parade. Even without a high of nearly 80 degrees, half-naked, beautiful, intoxicated bodies would have filled the roads and alleyways of Boys’ Town, but tolerable conditions promised to take the revelry up a notch. Locals and out of town visitors felt the enhanced giddiness in the air. Pride festivities in the town with the second highest concentration of gays by density, coming in third place in overall population, are never a dour affair. But New York’s bipartisan acknowledgement of the community’s civil rights, coupled with the waffling President’s “evolvement” make clear that momentum is finally on the right side.

As I booted up my laptop this morning and accessed the New York Times online, I was reduced to a puddle by a columnist with whom I was hitherto unfamiliar, a writer by the name of Frank Bruni. He wrote this touching piece, which cogently expresses the collective intuition that New York’s law might be on its way to becoming the national paradigm sooner than we might anticipate. Hell, even a right-wing ideologue like Rick Santorum has had to go easy on the gay bashing. It’s increasingly socially unacceptable for one thing, and for another, proponents of discrimination are becoming aware that they have a hard time publicly articulating a rational viewpoint. Homophobia is falling out of favor in the mainstream in supremely rapid fashion, and even those who sit on the fence share a discomfort with speaking about it while the cameras roll.

In 2011, the marketing acronym WIFM (What’s in It For Me?) fails the litmus test when politicians adopt an intolerant social stance. People want jobs, they want an end to staggering, endless defense spending overseas while things fall apart at home, they want to pay less at the pump. They don’t want to see their sister (like hockey player Sean Avery), daughter (I am looking at YOU Dick Cheney) or best friend (me) hamstrung from enjoying everything citizenship has to offer because of who they love. Where is the need to protect the “sanctity” of marriage while Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani walk down the aisle three times?

Yep, change is in the air. When you have professional athletes, a stereotypically homophobic bunch, publicly defending the right of gays and lesbians to marry, pay joint taxes and raise healthy families, I have to tell you Intolerance, your days are numbered.

Earlier this month, the state of Illinois took its own imperfect step forward by passing legislation that permits civil unions for same-sex couples. There’s more work to be done, locally and elsewhere. But we can do it after running wild through the streets today. We’ve earned it.

Feminine Revolution

2011-06-24T17:47:00.001-05:00

As much as I hated the small town where I completed my undergrad degree, I stopped going home to Chicago after the first summer break. The reasons were many and diverse but chief among them was the inability of my mother and I to stand each other for more than a day or two. It took many years and a lot of therapy to be able to verbalize the internal strife and emptiness in our relationship, that I would later come to understand as my mother’s consistent distrust and competitive spirit where I was concerned.

It was always that way. At the same time that she pushed me to live out her own frustrated academic and musical dreams, I couldn’t do so too successfully or she would weep and insist that I believed I was better than her. If I was finally popular in high school, enjoyed a string of boyfriends and my father preferred to talk sports with me, the son he never had, my mother could be seen glowering not far behind.

For most of my life Gloria was this impenetrable figure, often actively undermining her eldest child’s attempts to grow and locate happiness. During one of the last phone calls we shared before I graduated college and moved back to the Chicago to begin my first job, she came right out and admitted that she found me impossible to love. A year later, she had committed identity fraud against me to the tune of $17,000, and when confronted, took off for parts unknown with little more than a carton of cigarettes and the clothes on her back. I haven’t seen her for 10 years.

There’s much more to say on this topic and a lot of other heartbreaking details to share, but the point of this essay is that the complicated relationship I acted out with my mom affected the way I related to women in general for many, many years. I always had my sister and a couple of very solid female buddies, but by and large, I just didn’t trust members of my own sex. These were the same people who bullied me in junior high because I came from a “weird” family – enough so that I had to change schools. It was a group of women in my freshman dormitory who pranked me with unsolicited subscriptions to Ebony and Jett magazines and wrote “Wigger” on my dry erase board – for the crime of dating a Jamaican man.

Most of my friends, from kindergarten up until 2010 were men – for better or worse. My estranged husband has often accused me of “acting like a man,” which is his mind typically means ambitious, opinionated, invested with a sense of freedom and agency that has kept me from “settling down” well into my 30s. We can certainly debate the merits of questioning my womanhood based on a hard won assertion of individuality, but it is nonetheless true that female friendships and I have often been at odds.

A lot of tough things have happened this year. But one thing that has altered, undeniably for the better, has been the way I relate to my feminine peers. I suppose the transformation began a couple of years ago, when I fled the safety of the corporate world to strike out as a writer. The first mentor I found, the first person to give me a real writing job and connect me with an all-female journalism group, was a talented, gracious middle-aged woman. My current boss at the small publishing firm where I am employed is a woman of fairly high repute, yet you wouldn’t have any idea based on her down-to-earth respect for my talent and genuine concern for my well-being.

I am presently surrounded by all-female co-workers, an idea which would have horrified me not five years ago. But these women, of a diverse age range and experience level, have been behind me 100 percent as I endured the trials of marital dissolution with concurrent health problems.

No matter where I look these days, I am adding some fabulous new lady to my tribe: former classmates from my graduate program, a fellow redhead and fun-loving girl from the gym, an unlikely friendship with the gal who did my makeup before a charity fashion event last year.

Positive female relationships are suddenly everywhere I turn, and I am well aware that this is every bit as much about my readiness to embrace them as it is the quality of sisters I am encountering.

Work/Life Balance

2011-06-21T10:53:00.000-05:00

I have been throwing around this terminology and thinking about this dynamic in my life quite a bit in recent days. I have let the spectrum get out of whack. With the physical and emotional turmoil I have been experiencing this year, time was I was very grateful to have my work to occupy my hours. That’s still true to a large degree. I am challenged, and experiencing growth as a person and as a professional in my day job as well as the diverse freelance projects I have undertaken.

As a working writer, I am never able to shake this fear, and I imagine artists, dancers, actors and other creative types can relate. The fear is that if I say “no” to a particular job, I may be daring karma to turn against me. I will never be offered a gig again. The freelance world is very feast or famine by nature and all I need is to conjure memories of those 4-6 weeks stretches where I can boast nary a byline. The periodic blackouts are scary enough that when multiple editors approach with projects, I am almost too grateful to consider whether or not I can deliver in a healthy manner.

Very recently I have resumed my post as theater critic in the Chicago market. The website for which I submit reviews had dropped Chi-town as an outpost in April of last year, but there’s just too much good stuff onstage in the Windy City for any arts and entertainment outlet worth its salt to ignore. So I’m back on, in a big way. I have four shows to cover between last weekend and July 19. Since it’s summer, ‘tis the season for urban agriculture stories, one of my bread and butter journalist beats. I sit on the board of a women’s press collective and edit the group’s quarterly newsletter, so that has taken a lot of my time and labor. I could continue to delineate specific commitments but you get the idea.

I am living my dream. I never asked for the riches and fame of a J.K. Rowling or Stephen King, and as I am neither a novelist nor seek media attention, I don’t think there was much risk of that happening anyway. I long to be Gail Collins of the New York Times when I grow up, but that may never occur. Honestly, I can live with that. My ambition was to be a writer. That’s all. I never attached any imaginary barometers for success to my goal. Could I write full time and pay my bills? Yes? Cool.

But I am having some trouble leaving enough space in my new world for myself. I am not allowing the time required for rest, strategic planning, friends and family. In my quest to keep myself honestly occupied, this was never my intention. I have a couple of aunts in Wisconsin who are going to be really disappointed in me this weekend. They understand my deadlines, but I used to complain vociferously when my estranged consultant husband would continually prioritize work over family. I have unwittingly become that of which I always disapproved.

I know a lot of smart people out there in the writer’s community. How do you folks achieve and maintain a work/life balance? How do you do it all without depleting yourself or failing the most important people in your life?

Red

2011-06-18T13:45:00.001-05:00

The summer I turned 13 years old, I made a bold move, as far as junior high attempts at self-expression are concerned. Having been born with otherworldly pale skin, green eyes and freckles, I decided that my naturally golden brown hair was a mistake of nature. I corrected this error by walking to the neighborhood Osco Drug store, selecting a box of Ms. Clairol in the brightest shade I could find, and dyeing my hair red for the very first time.

My father was not amused. My mother, an imperfect figure to be sure, but bred with a little hippie in her, was reasonably supportive of my attempt to individualize. The outcome of that first DIY dye job was more purple, at least initially, than the Angie Everhart deep red that I coveted, but when I looked in the mirror, I felt more like me, even if I lacked the vocabulary to articulate the sensation.

Except for a brief Kurt Cobain-era foray into black (a horrendous choice) and a 2007 flirtation with blonde highlights (the things we do for love), I have been known for my ginger locks ever since. Though my chosen color (see picture above) is not exactly natural looking, the complementary physical attributes I enumerate in the first paragraph conspire to fool more folks than you might suspect. Though I am a German-Italian mix by cultural heritage, I have a great time high-fiving drunken well-wishers every St. Patty’s Day. I don’t have it in me to break their little inebriated hearts with the truth, and besides, who doesn’t enjoy free beer and kisses?

Much of my life is built around trying to overcome spiritual insecurity and meekness. Nothing says “I am a force to be reckoned with,” even if in reality, I am nearly paralyzed by my own second guessing, like a shock of big red hair. When your locks draws this much attention, it allows for a lot of other physical imperfections and subtle mood deficiencies to slip by unnoticed. It’s aesthetics and convenience rolled into one colorful package.

As I rode my bike (red, naturally) home from the hair salon early this afternoon, I caught myself wondering if there is a way to dye my soul red, so to speak. Like the head of hair I saw in the looking glass as a teenager, my spirit is a little deflated. Unemployment, divorce and cancer in quick succession tend to take the wind out of one’s sails. But I am in good health once again, having beaten the “Big C” into remission. I have been happily ensconced in a satisfying day job as a ghost writer for four months, and for half of that time, I’ve had the opportunity to start getting accustomed to living alone. There are days I actually enjoy it.

I am taking small trips, accepting new physical challenges and learning to be kinder to myself in every sense of the word. But nothing yet has felt like the sort of clean break from my confused past, an assertion of a bold and adventurous individual, which a box of hair dye provided in 1991.

So this summer, I am searching for red.

The Weiner Fades Away

2011-06-16T11:20:00.002-05:00

And so the sometimes funny, mostly pathetic and certainly odd spectacle of the Anthony Weiner social media scandal will takes its rightful place as a pop cultural footnote later today, if reports are to be believed. The beleaguered congressman wins major points for stubborn tenacity, but ultimately the growing list of icky online encounters with women proved politically impossible to surmount.

Weiner was able to weather his odd series of lies, before Andrew Breitbart literally caught the man with his pants down. He survived growing Democratic establishment calls to step down after it was reported that he exchanged messages with a Delaware teen. But as Charlie Sheen and Tiger Woods can attest, those porn stars will get you every time.

Earlier this week, ex-adult film “actress” Ginger Lee held a press conference with lawyer Gloria Allred by her side, where she asserted her moral fortitude in refusing Weiner’s technological overtures. Thus, “I did not sext Anthony Weiner,” assumes its natural position as the summer’s most popular t-shirt slogan.

Lee articulated the “nightmare” of being asked by Weiner to lie about the nature of their exchanges. I am sure being asked to keep mum about messages from a man you’ve never personally met is far more harrowing than a life spent on the pole having dollars shoved down your g-string by drunken, dirty and potentially murderous “clients.” And Gloria Allred – is there any person of ill repute you WON’T represent? This lady should have her legal license sprayed with Valtrex.

But I digress. In a weird way I was sort of pulling for Weiner to get through this crisis. I maintain, as I asserted last week, that there’s nothing illegal about being a bad husband and lying to the media. I insist that it should have been the decision of his constituents whether or not he continued in his elected capacity. But at a certain point, conventional wisdom must intervene in order for life to go on. The glut of images, “victims” and gossip showed no signs of slowing, and Democrats, who were enjoying a comeback of sorts after the upstate New York special election, were set to strip the congressmen of his committee posts.

I do believe that Mr. Weiner has bigger problems in life than retaining his job. The “therapy” thing is bullshit but I can’t even begin to imagine the amount of damage control that is required in his personal life, and at the end of the day, home and family is what matters most. I don’t walk in wife Huma Abedin’s shoes, but with a baby on the way, she has some complicated decisions to face. I truly hope that the Weiners are able to find a way to move forward in a healthy way – whatever that might entail.

I will not join the “good riddance” chorus here. This is a sad cautionary tale with an unhappy ending, an answer to the question what can happen when power, hubris, human appetites and the stalkerish capabilities of the Internet converge to cause a promising public servant to publicly self-destruct.

CNN, I Can’t Quit You

2011-06-15T12:22:00.003-05:00

God help me, but I adore Elliot Spitzer.

When I separated from my husband in April and moved into my own apartment, a serious decrease in income necessitated a downgrade of my cable services. Goodbye HBO, so long Showtime, and even the basic package I agreed to was a step down from the hundreds of HD channels at my disposal in a former life. No worries. I am a busy and resourceful girl and besides, the network TV stations were in the throes of wrapping up their episodic seasons.

Now that it’s June and my serials are on summer break, options for amusing myself while I eat dinner, clean the house and work out my Power Hoop, have become limited. My go-to for years has been CNN when all else fails. However with the gearing up of the 2012 U.S. Presidential election (particularly the GOP primaries), the continued unrest in the Middle East, the trial of Casey Anthony and the antics of Anthony Weiner, my always more than passing interest has taken on a life of its own.

I need help. I can’t enough of Fareed Zakaria. He may be the wisest man in the world and whether it’s his regular program GPS, or one of his illuminating specials, such as “Restoring the American Dream,” I wish I could empty his brain into mine.

The gay community scored a real coup back in May when adorable and charming weekend anchor Don Lemon came out of the closet. I think a number of my single sisters will join me in finding it terribly unfair that the two most gorgeous members of the CNN news team, including the venerable blue-eyed stallion, otherwise known as Anderson Cooper, are out of our reach. What’s left for us? Wolf Blitzer? Bah!

My love for all things CNN does not extend to John King, who for whatever reason never fails to remind of John Tesh (maybe it’s the whole “Blonde Frankenstein” thing – thank you Howard Stern), and is furthermore, a crushing bore. Ditto Soledad O’Brien, who I have noticed has become increasingly marginalized by the network since her April test in the weekly 7PM slot was deemed “unwatchable” by CNN Worldwide president Jim Walton. So why is she still there?

Wolf Blitzer and Jack Cafferty quench my thirst for curmudgeonly old men who have seen it all. Commentators and panelists David Gergen and Jeffrey Toobin never fail to elicit my interest. Ditto Roland Martin, who is always as excitable as he is intelligent.

Sanjay Gupta, you make me want to contract an unusual disease just so you’ll drop into my living room to do a special report.

And I can’t leave out my favorite CNN ladies. Dana Bash, Candy Crowley and Kiran Chetry – I heart you all.

I started and will end with an explanation of my most controversial CNN crush – Elliot Spitzer. When Parker/Spitzer debuted early this year, I didn’t give it a snowball’s chance in hell. Elliot, the former Governor of New York, remains a political punch line in many circles, and Kathleen Spitzer may be a hell of a writer, but she doesn’t give good TV. At all. The partnership had all the chemistry of a flat Diet Coke.

Mercifully, the brass at CNN realized that their true star is Spitzer. I may receive hate mail for saying so, but he fills the void in my heart left by the death of NBC’s Tim Russert. Spitzer will ask the tough questions. He knows he has nothing to lose and seems grateful enough for this career second act to leave it all on the court every evening. He will ask anybody anything and seems immune to squirming. He truly does not give a shit, and I love it! I am surprised the show is still able to book guests. That’s what I call keeping them honest.

Alright enough because clearly I could go on all day. For variety’s sake, I tried to give MSNBC a whirl last night, but the fit just wasn’t there. If watching CNN until my eyes cross is wrong, then I just don’t care to be right.

I Can't Write About Syria

2011-06-11T16:26:00.000-05:00

Because then I would be forced to acknowledge that I can’t even locate the Middle Eastern country on a map, that my 1980s, Cold War ideology-laced, primary school geography education didn’t go a lot farther than the United States, Europe and enemy nation Russia. I would have to confront that educators and students of the Me Decade ignored “irrelevant” areas like India, the Middle East and Africa as little more than impoverished, Third World also-rans. I would have to admit that I am still playing catch-up to overcome my early curriculum limitations.

I can’t write about Syria because then I would have to face the shameful truth that I have been spoiled by maturing in a liberal democracy, one that is certainly imperfect, and seems to be slightly more broken with each passing year. But my nation is also one where it’s impossible to bind an old man in the street while soldiers kick him for sport as the cameras roll, and nobody makes a move.

I would have to digest that I will never witness thousands of my fellow Americans fleeing for the border of another sovereign nation, simply protecting their right to live. I can comfortably sit in my kitchen and hurl words bombs from behind a laptop and no secret police, no agents of a totalitarian regime, are going to break down my door and drag me off, perhaps never to be seen again.

I would have to be grateful that I live in a land where there is nothing more abhorrent to the common palate than the murder of children. My nieces, KK and Raina, go to bed every night never considering food, shelter, safety or security. Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, the 13 year-old boy taken by soldiers in Jiza, and returned to his family in pieces, suffered so much at the end of his young life, simply for following the example of his freedom loving parents. My sister will never be forced to go on state television and praise the very regime that murdered her child. We will simply never be subject to that level of sanctioned terror.

I cannot write about what’s happening in Syria because then I would have to confess that I look away from the images of civil war, even as Anderson Cooper urges me to see and digest the human atrocity, as though I were watching a particularly graphic episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I would admit to being sickened by own pampered discomfort.

I would have to admit that my democratically elected government appears to be very selective about which holocausts it will engage, and that many of decisions seem to stem, not from human rights or security issues, but from more mercenary economic and political concerns. Libya, sure we’ll join the fight. We never liked Gadhafi much anyway. But Egypt or the truly sickening situation in Syria, no thank you sir.

If I wrote about Syria, I would have to admit that I feel useless, paralyzed and frustrated. I would have to admit that I don’t know how to help, and so instead, I turn off the TV and drink a glass of wine to calm my nerves. I would have to own that I know absolutely nothing about real human suffering.

Post-Op Political Musings

2011-06-10T16:40:00.002-05:00

A little over two years ago, I began my life on this blog as "Becky Boop," anonymous, citified political commentator known for her thoughts on the peaks and valleys of the Obama agenda and slice of life pieces on day to day existence in a big metropolis.

I came out from behind my pen name in an effort to be as real a writer as I am a person. The death of a close friend, a long bout with unemployment, an impending divorce and surgery this past Tuesday for Stage 2 cervical cancer left me with a sudden desire to stop hiding behind a pseudonym. All in all, I feel I am better for it. Becky Boop may have been a lot of fun, but she was certainly no reflection of “me.”

However as I go over some of my posts from the last six months or so, I have a hankering for some of Becky Boop’s former silliness, the journalistic joie de vivre that seemed to come so naturally to my alter ego. I have gotten pretty far away from aiming my torpedo at the cultural and political movers and shakers who depend on bloggers and the media to state the obvious, to shout with definitive clarity that the Emperor, is in fact, walking around naked.

I spent a large part of the week in post-op convalescence, and since it is the summer and most of the network’s regularly scheduled programming is on break, I made CNN my constant companion. Even in a haze of discomfort and drugs, it was hard not to notice that this was a pretty fucking strange week, politically speaking.

Rep. Anthony Weiner – It is my privilege to report that today, June 10, 2011 is the first in many that Mr. Weiner’s name has been absent from the front page of The New York Times. While I find the congressman to be an epic, tasteless pig and a truly unworthy husband, folks, there’s nothing illegal about lying to your wife and the press. I am hoping that his absence from the headlines and Weiner’s refusal to resign means we are reaching the end of this sad, if titillating spectacle. I do not think Rep. Weiner should heed panicked Democratic calls to vacate his post, any more than I believed it wise when Governor Eliot Spitzer called it quits after the Ashley Dupre scandal. Is there anyone living in the State of New York who believes David Paterson was an upgrade? Weiner was voted in to do a job, and only his constituents have the right to decide his ultimate political fate.
Hillary Clinton – Former First Lady, Presidential candidate, Secretary of State, and future head of the World Bank? Yes! The fact that this story materialized so fast, and was just as quickly quashed by the State Department, leads me to believe that it’s probably true. Nobody expected Clinton to stay on for two terms as the nation’s top ambassador, and since she can’t launch another Presidential bid until the 2016 elections, why the hell not?
Newt Gingrinch – Yesterday was certainly a busy news day. Blink and you may have missed Gingrinch’s nascent presidential campaign imploding in a huge way, losing his campaign manager, spokesman and senior strategist before disembarking from an ill-timed Greek cruise taken with third wife Callista. From the outset, The Ging struggled to stay on message with the official Republican party platform (frankly, one of the few good qualities he had going for him), labeling Paul Ryan’s Medicare voucher plan a piece of “right wing social engineering.” Rather than play the game and work the media rounds until he had done successful establishment penance, Gingrinch said “eff it” and jetted off to work on his tan. John McCain, take note of a real maverick. While Newt technically remains in the hunt, it’s going to be tough to mount a credible campaign with no donors or staff. I for one will miss him.
Sarah Palin – Will we EVER be rid of this woman? For those who believe she is going to give up her various soap box perches and millions in speaker fees to re-enter the icky world of public service, a place where people tend to be held accountable for their ignorance (though certainly not always), I have a bridge to sell you. However, this week the focus was not on Candidate Sarah, but former Alaskan Governor Palin. After a nearly three year delay that no one has adequately explained, thousands of pages of emails sent in the first two years of her term were made public. There doesn’t seem to be anything as exciting as Palin’s version of Paul Revere’s ride in there. The story is in what’s missing. According to a report from Yahoo, the emails “have been heavily redacted, while 2,275 pages are being withheld for reasons including executive privilege.” Whatcha hiding Sarah?

Pseudo Cancer

2011-06-05T13:40:00.000-05:00

Is it possible to experience survivor’s guilt before even going under the knife? If so, that’s what I’m dealing with at the moment. I tried explaining this feeling to my friend Diane on Friday evening. A few years ago, Diane developed a tumor in her chest that began to push on her lungs. Months of surgery, chemotherapy and hair loss ensued, and I am proud to say that my pal is awhile past the coveted five-year remission milestone. Diane is a singer/songwriter, artist, writer, and all around beautiful and fabulous woman. The world needs her.

Two years ago, I lost one of my best friends, Jesika, to a lightening quick 17-day battle with Stage 4 ovarian cancer, At the time, 30 year-old Jes was a lawyer, recent Chicago transplant, and impending bride-to-be. She was just beginning the best parts of her life, and her fast demise remains an epic tragedy for many who loved her.

I have Stage 2 cervical cancer. But big deal. I am having surgery this coming Tuesday morning, and there is every reason to believe that I will be absolutely fine afterward – no additional radiation, procedures or body-wracking chemo required. I will immediately move from patient to recovery in the span of two hours.

Except for the occasional bouts of depression which are only tangentially related to living with the disease, and far more associated with feelings of confusion and loss stemming from my impending divorce, I feel absolutely fine. And somehow, for lack of a better word, that just seems….wrong.

Last Sunday I rode 30 miles in Chicago’s annual Bike the Drive event along Lake Shore Drive. My conception of people battling cancer doesn’t allow for that picture of vitality. I have lost a few pounds recently, but again, that is to be blamed on poor eating habits and grief, rather than debilitating sickness. I am able to work, to write, to meet friends for drinks and attend family events. I am not flat on my back, shrunken and surrounded by pill bottles, as I recall of my grandmother June when she succumbed to ovarian cancer herself back in 1991.

Today happens to be National Cancer Survivor’s Day, a time of reflection and deserved celebration for those who have conquered the disease in its myriad forms. It is also a day to recognize the family, friends and partners who stood by each of these brave people and ushered them out the other side. I cannot count myself as one of the survivors yet, but even after I am released from the hospital on Tuesday, I’m not sure I have the right to join the party.

There are those in my corner who bolster me with accolades about my strength and fortitude. But I don’t feel either of those things. In fact I have been rather, weak, scared and anti-social, far more wounded and fear-stricken by the idea of spending the rest of my life alone, rather than afraid of not having a life at all. Does this sound like the average cancer patient?

Like so many other social groups: wives, mothers, workers and now battlers of the Big C, I feel oddly anachronistic. It’s another area of our cultural fabric where I feel somewhat alienated, meeting the criteria and yet not quite what is expected. Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that I wish I were sicker. I have enough other problems to wrestle. I just don’t know my place.

Last Memorial Day

2011-05-30T08:51:00.001-05:00

Last year this holiday weekend, I was riding a jet ski around Lake Geneva, arms around my husband Eddie, squealing with laughter as we got sprayed with cool water.

This year, I have avoided emails, phone calls and spent the last three days nursing lonely wounds that have gone beyond the possibility of tearful, sweet release.

On Memorial Day last year, I visited my aunt in Wisconsin and drank beers on her patio.

This year my mother-in-law is visiting from India, eating and sleeping a mere three clocks away, and I am not part of her world anymore.

Last year at this time, I was celebrating the Chicago Blackhawks' blessed run to Stanley Cup glory.

This year, the Hawks are out, and the Bulls too. The Cubs don't seem primed to lift anyone's spirits.

In 2010, the spring was unnaturally warm, with 80 degree, sunny days that stretched back into April.

In 2011, I wore my winter coat until May 27, and the rain won't stop.

Last year I had my health, and my health insurance, and both seemed invincible.

This year I am counting down the days until surgery will relieve my body of a cervical cancer invasion.

A lot of things are different since 365 days ago. Not many of them are upgrades.

Smelling the Roses

2011-05-24T15:11:00.002-05:00

I am highly self-critical. I am not known to give myself a break very often, whether it's a browbeating for past mistakes and poor decision making, pushing myself to do “more” (exercise, work, writing, cleaning) even when my body and spirit have clearly had enough, or simply honing in repetitively on perceived flaws.

The last seven months have been hellish by any standards: extended unemployment that caused me to question my place (like, if there was one) in the working world, fissure in a marriage to the man I still (and may always) consider the love of my life, and most recently, a battle with stage 2A cervical cancer. So clearly, if one is judgmentally introspective by nature, life has handed me a veritable buffet of reasons to feel like a loser.

I have written about the need to develop new pathways for myself, because at nearly 33 years of age, one thing is clear: the grief I give myself hasn't amounted to to any sort of spiritual epiphany or life fulfillment. If anything I'm beginning to consider that my own unforgiving navel gazing (this blog bears the title with good reason), has not been a tool for healthy ruminating and moving myself forward, but rather an overly self-conscious roadblock that has led me to make “safe” decisions that instead blow up into explosive peccadilloes. I have been too afraid to follow my “inner voice,” which I am learning a lot about from an unusual authority – star publicist to the fashion world Kelly Cutrone.

In recent discussions with my therapist, I have shared that the one thing I have done right in the last few years was to take a gamble on myself, finally heed the inner voice that screamed at me all throughout my 20s that I was a corporate fraud. I didn't want to climb the ladder, grab the brass ring or sit in the corner office fending off sniping barracudas. I wanted (nay, needed) to be a writer. That admission was not an acknowledgement of talent by any means. I was completely unsure I had anything to offer, or even knew where to start.

I am not going to rehash the two year-journey spent hustling down unpaid freelance lane, the strain I put on my marriage by asking Eddie to comprehend what must have seemed like a midlife crisis of sorts, where I remained unwilling to birth babies, yet brought no income into the home. It was one of the first truly selfish things I have ever done – and it came with a high price.

As someone in the business of self-flagellation, I often succumb to the inviting temptation to second guess the decisions that brought me to where I sit today: sick, alone, and financially shaky.

But on another level, I am covertly and tacitly aware that I am doing it. I am living my dream, however small and unintentionally isolating it may be.

This past Saturday, and for the second year in a row, I was awarded writing prizes from the Illinois Woman's Press Association. Last year, I went on to take first place from the National Federation of Press Women in one of their “Special Article” journalism categories. This year, proving that I am more diverse in my skillset than I have otherwise been willing to admit, I received two second place certificates for work on this very blog, “So This is What Fat Looks Like?,” and “A Generation X Bedtime Story.” Additionally, I received a first place award in the state category, “Column Written Specifically for the Web.” That honor was received pursuant to a piece I wrote on education for RootSpeak magazine.

The latter distinction means that I will be able to try my fortunes at the national level in August.

As a struggling writer, I feel very blessed. I have a lot to say, an abundance of avenues in which to be read, and best of all, the occasional validation of my peers to tell me I haven't turned my life inside out for naught.

It's important to take a moment now and then to acknowledge that.

Mommy, Can I Be a Brown Baby?

2011-05-22T09:22:00.000-05:00

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.psychologytoday.com%2Fblog%2Fthe-scientific-fundamentalist%2F201105%2Fwhy-are-black-women-less-physically-attractive-other-women&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&client=firefox-a

On May 16, Psychology Today ran a “piece” on its The Scientific Fundamentalist - A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature blog, entitled “Why Are Black Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?” The “writer,” Satoshi Kanazawa, purports to offer a scientifically–based argument that proves that African-American women are less aesthetically pleasing than women of other races.

Let’s skip the obvious part where I call this author’s methodology into question, or where I might ask why Psychology Today would choose to run such an incendiary column in the first place.

Instead we’ll harken back to a five year-old Becky Sarwate, who in the throes of uncorrupted maturation, apparently never got the memo that black people were supposed to be physically inferior. For that was the age where, having spent a day wandering about the streets of Chicago, running errands with my mother, I asked her the following question: “Mommy, can I be a brown baby?”

My mom was used to these types of questions, having had to explain to me where babies come from – long before she might have been ready – after I drew a penis on a human figure in my kindergarten class. My patient teacher figured I might be a little ahead of my time and encouraged my mother, an RN nurse, to break out the medical books.

But the question about whether or not I could be a “brown baby” stemmed, not from scientific curiosity, but from envy and appreciation. I thought the brown babies were cuter – plain and simple. I didn’t see much to love about my own pasty white, nearly see-through skin, wild, tangly hair and frankly, I found the brown babies’ parents more attractive than my own too. I wanted a piece of that.

Mom once again exhibited limitless patience as we had a long talk about Genetics 101: that people had no say in the color of their own skin, eyes or hair. It was the luck of the genetic draw, based on the dominants and recessives that parents brought to the table. While that didn’t seem right, it appeared this truth was mine to accept and I went about the rest of my childhood, understanding that I would never be a brown baby but secretly wishing that I could reverse my racial fortunes.

I offer this anecdote because I wonder is Kanazawa ever considered the possibility that attraction to a race or set of features might be a nurture issue, as opposed to nature. I don’t believe there’s anything congenital about an aversion to color. Without reviewing hundreds of years of black American subjugation, isn’t it more than possible that these responses, which seem to “validate” the physical inferiority of the African-American woman, are socialized?

Newt Gingrinch Gains a Little of My Respect…Before Promptly Losing It

2011-05-18T14:16:00.002-05:00

I have taken a detour the last couple months from my regular obsession with the political arena to talk all things divorce and cancer. But as I am enjoying a relative “good” period, filled with some degree of life satisfaction and emotional equilibrium, I am inspired to join the endless sport of Capitol Hill navel gazing once again.

I am a huge fan of NBC’s Meet the Press, the Sunday morning political chat stalwart now hosted by David Gregory. While Gregory with his whiny, waffley interview style is no match for the “just the facts” tenacity of the otherwise cherubic Tim Russert (may he rest in peace), MTP is a habit I just can’t break. In years past, I would enjoy the show while indulging in the traditional Sunday hangover remedy of carbs and Gatorade, but now I am in my 30s and am usually well rested and alert. There are things to like about aging.

Anyway, this past weekend I queued up my Tivo to watch the show commercial-free and nearly deleted it altogether when I saw that the featured guest was former Speaker of the House, and current Republican Presidential candidate, Newt Gingrinch. I will NEVER forgive Newtie for the 90s – from the ridiculous government shutdown of 1995, to his laughably hypocritical pursuit of President Bill Clinton on the “family values” front. This from a man on his third marriage, the second which began under the auspicious influences of infidelity.

For a number of years, Newtie sort of fell off the political radar, only emerging as the occasional commentator on really important issues like President Obama’s African, colonial worldview (I was under the impression that Hawaii ceased to be a colony in the late 1950s). Rhetorically, he was swatted away like the pop cultural gnat he became (though he prefers the term “gadfly,” thank you very much).

But Newt got my attention on Sunday’s Meet the Press when he addressed rising GOP star Paul Ryan’s irresponsible, top two percent-friendly budget proposal. Specifically commenting on the plan’s goal of dismantling Medicare as we know it, converting it to a voucher program, his Newtness said: "I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering."

Well ok! Newt never stood a chance of getting my vote, but such refreshing honesty, such lack of pandering! Maybe we have a new Maverick on the right.

But of course my praise and excitement was premature. Once the Tea Party establishment (who seem to accrue power in inverse proportion to their distance from the mainstream) got wind of Newtie’s comments, Gingrich began backpedaling faster than a honey badger.

Paul Ryan had this to say to Reuters: "I think he now understands the magnitude of his comments -- how wrong they were. And I think he's going to have more to say about that. And he's working on that. He basically called and apologized. And I accepted his apology." Newt – you just got served by a man with a freakishly big head.

Last time I checked, Ryan is a lowly House member from the minority party, but we currently live in an upside down political universe, where less is apparently more. As the brilliant Paul Krugman put it: “Normally, a party controlling neither the White House nor the Senate would acknowledge that it isn’t in a position to impose its agenda on the nation. But the modern G.O.P. doesn’t believe in following normal rules.”

And an article in the “Caucus” section of today’s New York Times asks, “Can Newt Gingrich Control Newt Gingrich?”

I may be wholly biased and partisan but I happen to believe that running afoul of an increasingly wingnut right establishment, which has essentially declared war on the middle class, is the FIRST positive thing Newt has done in awhile. Alas, no more. He has been cowed and has summarily returned to placating the ultra-conservative. I would have hoped he’d take a lesson from 2008 also-ran John McCain (another formerly bold player who relinquished any and all respect I ever held for him). Winning over your party’s base almost necessarily means alienating the mainstream in this century. In short, the already debatably electable Gingrich just become untouchable.

America's Health Care System is Still Broken

2011-05-12T15:09:00.000-05:00

Right about now, you may be saying to yourself, “Thanks, Captain Obvious! And this just in, water is wet!” But this week, the truth of my post title hit way too close to home.

As many of you know, I am going through a rather acrimonious split from my husband of three and a half years, Eddie. As part of the rules of separation, I will be losing my current health insurance, which I was able to take advantage of through my husband's employer. Prior to moving into a studio apartment last month, I made the rounds: gynecologist, dentist, etc. Smoke 'em if you got 'em and all that. I had my IUD removed at the former appointment, not really the funnest 10 minutes I have ever spent, but I wasn't expecting any other developments.

I am learning as I grow older that life has a funny way of really piling it on. Because anyone who has been through it knows that getting a divorce affects everything you say, think, do and feel – for a much longer period than you may wish. It permeates every nook and cranny of your selfhood, throwing the formerly stable and assured into tremendous upheaval, and rendering the impossible suddenly all too real. As you go about daily life, the experience is disorienting, the sensation that the world should stop for just a moment and acknowledge that it has run you over. But maddeningly, it doesn't and you learn to cope with a new reality that you never imagined.

And just when you think it can't get any worse, it does. Remember that visit to the gynecologist I mentioned? About a week after the “routine” pap smear that was part of the exam, I received the dreaded call: my doctor (not a nurse or a junior physician) explained to me in a very calm and soothing voice that I needed to have a biopsy (also known as a colposcopy when we're talking about the cervix) as soon as possible.

This I did on Tuesday morning, and for other women out there who have endured a colpo, you will join me in declaring it a humiliating and uncomfortable procedure in every sense. I went in hoping for the best but fearing the worst and it seems that in this case, my fatalistic outlook served me well. Because when the doctor informed me that I appeared to have Stage 2 cervical cancer (final results will be in next week, but she felt confident enough to put a surgery on the books immediately), I took it fairly well.

The prognosis is very good. I learned this week that the traditional five stages of cancer (0-4) have a number of subclassifications. I am “lucky” enough to be classified under Stage 2A, which means that the surgery, scheduled for Tuesday, June 7, ought to be enough to eliminate the disease in my body once and for all.

While I am experiencing an epic case of conflicting emotions over the tumult of 2011 thus far: alternating between the joy of finally securing gainful employment as a professional writer, only to find myself suddenly alone, and now, ill, - that is not the drive behind writing this post. In fact my intent was never to address my battle with cancer publicly at all. In the first place, I have only begun to process my feelings, and in the second, it just seemed way too personal for now (yes, even I have my limits). However yesterday I realized that there is a cause to champion through my experience that is much bigger than a little laser surgery.

My employer is set to offer health insurance for the first time. When I learned this, I was overjoyed. How fortunate was I, just as I was about to lose coverage through my spouse? However, as I entered the small office where my boss had setup the insurance rep for the day, it dawned on me that telling the man I was in active treatment for the “Big C” could create some complications.

As soon as I informed the nice gentleman about my June 7 procedure, he pleasantly pulled a business card from his wallet, wished me well and told me to call him in 2014. That is the year when the part of Obamacare that forbids insurance carriers from rejecting “clients” (because we're certainly not fucking patients anymore), on the basis of pre-existing conditions takes effect. Until that time, I was politely told there was nothing that could be done for me, and it was further suggested that I ask my spouse very sweetly to stay legally married for as long as possible.

The agent shared with me that the only health insurance provider that will even take a look at cancer “victims” (his word, not mine) is Aetna, and then only if you've been in remission for five years. Well I haven't been in remission for five minutes.

I am 32 years old, and except for a spot of cancer, am in otherwise excellent health. I am afflicted with a temporary condition which, with a little luck and medical expertise, I will be free from after June 7. But for the next 3-5 years, I have the choice of no health coverage at all, or depending on the humanity and kindness of someone who no longer wants to be part of my life. It is a lot to ask of Eddie. It is a lot to ask of my personal pride. And it is way too much to ask of human decency. I feel like I am being punished - for what exactly, I don't know, but the sense of shame remains.

The ironic part is that I feel physically fine. I can work, write, exercise and take full advantage of what the world has to offer. Yet I am shut out from the ability to inoculate myself against the expense of unplanned accident or illness for half a decade. I can speak out about this travesty, and more than that, I must. Because what about those far sicker than me, with far less support, who suffer in unnamed silence?

I appreciate what President Obama has done to begin to correct our backward, inefficient and illogical health care delivery system, but it's still not enough. Not by a long shot.

Men Under 40: J'accuse!

2011-05-08T21:30:00.001-05:00

While talking with my good friend who works in the fitness industry this week (a male, it must be noted), we found ourselves concluding that in the everlasting Battle of the Sexes, the female quotient of Generation X and ensuing batches of young people, appears to be winning - and winning handily.

Now I am know I am courting controversy with this post, and I can already read the outraged comments that I will receive, but let me make a couple points before you unleash the hounds:

I am not a hard core feminist. I love men. The world needs them and for the most part, they are still the dominant producers of the world’s ideology and power structure. Whether I like that or not (usually not), I have to respect the facts.
See Paragraph 1 – my indictment of the male character, in this case, is limited to men age 40 and under. I don’t pretend to understand the stolid, silent mien of my grandfather and his generation, or the blue collar gruffness of my uncles, but I’ll never accuse them of being sissies.

For the purposes of this essay, I am referencing with broad strokes (and there are of course many exceptions) the daily evidence I see of physical laziness, avoidance and lying as relationship strategies and a general inability to cope with discomfort of any kind. Don’t believe me? Here are some real world examples offered from my wanderings of the last couple of weeks:

My friend in the fitness industry runs a regular Thursday night strength training class at a popular Chicago gym. On this particular evening, his pupils were all men under the age of 30. As he tried to put the group through its paces, he reported that it was the “saddest, whiniest spectacle of ‘can’t-do’” he had ever witnessed. When he repeated the same program with an all-female class at 6:30 the next morning, hardly the finest hour for most of us, each and every warrior lady made it to the end with no complaint.
Any Amazing Race fans out there? If you want evidence of exactly the kind of shit I am talking about, watch this episode where “Goth” team Kent and Vyxsin continue a season’s worth of self-destruction, driven by Kent’s inability to comprehend that racing is a physical and emotional game requiring endurance and nerves of steel. After enduring his whiny, useless performance for eight weeks, I cannot help but hope that Vyxsin dumps his ass for a more robust Boy George wannabe (Boy George, who been through some adventures, would label Kent a “petulant cow”).
Another man I know, age 37, is about to unleash a storybook marriage proposal on his girlfriend of two years. The moment will be fairytale in every way. The only problem is that the entire relationship is based on lies. The man is a closet smoker, drug user and womanizer, and though the couple cohabitates, he has managed to keep his true self under wraps for their entire courtship. As a woman just exiting her own committed relationship that was built on a foundation of quicksand, I see this bride-to-be’s future and it isn’t pretty.

Now of course women of my generation and beyond, myself included, are not perfect. We tend to suffer from the same type of extended adolescent wish fulfillment that appears to be the hallmark of those born after 1975. BUT (and it’s a big but) we have managed to cultivate a kind of independent cultural savviness that endows ample internal resources in the event that traditional marriage and motherhood elude. We have careers, knitting classes, bike races, girl’s night out, networking, you name it and some woman is doing it. We must deal with pain, of the internal and external variety as we endure men who don’t call, work environments where we continue to make 77 cents on the man’s dollar, and diseases that are specific to our gender (cervical, ovarian and breast cancer among others).

Meanwhile, nearly 50% of single men under 25 live rent-free and 5% percent of bachelors of all ages still call Mom to clean their house. What gives with the enfeebling of the male sex?

Thoughts? Angry missiles you want to throw at me? Let’s discuss.

Bicycle Bumper Cars Part II

2011-05-05T13:22:00.003-05:00

Some of you who have been reading my posts for awhile may recall this one from last October, Bicycle Bumper Cars, which recounted the experience of being knocked off my bike by a heartless hit and run driver.

Since that time I have upgraded bicycles (see photo above) and to say that I am having a love affair with my 2011 Schwinn Madison is possibly the understatement of the year. My Facebook friends are absolutely weary of endless bragging about my mode of transit's speed, attention grabbing proclivities and general adorableness. Tough for them. I won't stop.

I used part of the cash settlement I received as an outcome of my separation from Eddie to invest in the cycle. I no longer have a car (one of many things I have had to relinquish post-marriage) and my bicycle is now my primary form of transportation. I needed something light (so I can carry it to my third floor walkup), fast and naturally, aesthetically pleasing. The Madison satisfies all of those requirements.

But apparently, it can't do much to protect you from other people. Shame.

Yesterday after work, I took advantage of a rare sunny, and somewhat warm Chicago spring day to enjoy a leisurely ride around my neighborhood. I live on a side street in the Rogers Park community and the road is fairly narrow. At one point there was a large SUV that wished to pass me, so I scooted slightly to the right, nearish but not adjacent to a row of parked cars.

I was humming along, enjoying the feeling of warm rays on my face, eyes firmly engaged on the pavement ahead when it happened....

BOOM! Car door! Had I ridden by one second later, it would have missed me altogether. Had I arrived a second earlier, I would have swerved around the careless parkers. Just one of those perfect timing things.

The impact sent me flying over my handlebars. My front right thigh bears a blackened imprint that bears a perfect resemblance to the bar. I landed on the backs of my hands and slightly to the left of my keister, so there are swollen bruises in both of those general areas. But seriously, apparent bad bike karma aside, I must have a guradian angel watching over me. It could and should have been much worse.

My assailants clearly knew they were guilty of attention deficit, because you never saw men so solicitous for my well-being. The real tragedy only became apparent after I stood up and realized that I had not broken any limbs. My beautiful, beautiful bike suffered some scratches, a loosened handlebar grip and – horrors! - a realigned front end. The men held the bike in place and readjusted the forefront of the cycle to a point where I could adequately finish my ride. However I will have to stop at a Schwinn shop for a full workup. Yes, I helicopter parent my bike. What of it?

The gentlemen did have the integrity to ask if I wanted to call the police, but given that I was alive, if shaken, and my baby (Lil' Red) was operational, I thought it best to put the incident behind me.

I think this narrative provides an accessible metaphor for my life at the moment – a journey into the unknown equally fraught with danger, excitement, and the occasional fall. The bruises adorning my body reflect interior contusions that I often struggle to articulate. I can achieve moments of assured self-confidence yet turn into an insecure sobbing mess just as quickly. There are many things that are exhausting and painful in a divorce, but the sudden removal of a stable identity is among the worst. It presents a tabula rasa on the one hand, yet a sense of failure and isolation on the other.

I mean who are we really as individuals, independent of others? Is such a question even answerable? I am slowly becoming aware, through ample self-reflection and quality therapy, that so much of the construction of “I” is based upon relationships: personal, professional and otherwise. Is there a consistent “Becky” that I could identify, had I been a feral child raised alone in the wilderness, a woman who never met parents, sister, husband or colleagues? Would she have any traits that I would recognize, that would remain after 32 years of being smacked by the car doors of culture and society?

I admit that I am a little more fearful and cautious in my heretofore bat-out-of-hell riding style after yesterday's dethronement, so perhaps that answers my question.

In Memory of Jesika

2011-04-25T06:52:00.002-05:00

Two years ago today, I lost my partner in crime, Jesika Brooke Thompson, to an almost ludricrously brief battle with ovarian cancer, the "silent killer" of too many amazing women. Her 17-day struggle with the disease, and the effort to accept life without her, has been a huge factor in my personal transformation since April 25, 2009.

I am reprinting the eulogy I read at Jesika's memorial service, as a small way of spreading the word about this fantastic friend, wonderful daughter, partner and professional.

In less than two weeks, I will be walking with Team June/Jesika as part of the Chicago Chapter of the National Ovarian Cancer Coalition (NOCC). If you would like to make a donation to this important cause (and any amount is appreciated), click here to be taken to my personal page.

I first met Jesika Brooke Thompson in September of 1992 when we were both freshman at Lincoln Park High School on the North Side of Chicago. Jesika had come over to Lincoln Park with a crew of her fellow graduates from Hawthorne Elementary school, some of whom are with us today. As for me, I was the lonely, 100 pound, 5' 4' refugee of a tiny place called Pilgrim Lutheran Grade School. My graduating class had 12 students, so I was both overwhelmed and excited to start my new life as the member of a freshman class of nearly 1,000.

Luckily enough, I knew a few people from a summer school program I had participated in only a few months before. Some of the students I met were from Hawthorne, so when the inaugural at Lincoln Park rolled around, I stuck close to them. That first day of classes, a bunch of the Hawthorne crowd, including Jesika, decided to grab lunch at Robinson's Ribs across the street from campus. As I walked across the quad to meet my pals, I got a look at Jesika, and, more importantly, she had a chance to size me up. I will never forget her first words to me: "What is that thing on your head?"

Yes, I, the skinny 14 year-old white fish swimming for the first time in a huge, multi-cultural pond, had dared to wear a bandanna to class. I had some misguided notion that it made me look tough or cool. Of course Jesika called me right out, not for the last time in what would turn into a beautiful 16-year friendship. You see that was Jesika's way. The more she loved you, the more she enjoyed poking you in the ribs, reminding you never to take yourself too seriously, or get too big for your britches.

The last time I saw and spoke to Jesika in person was April 10th of this year. It's so hard to believe that was just six weeks ago. Though we had grown and changed so much in the last decade and a half, Jesika's final words to me were as memorable as the first. By the this time, Jesika was aware that she was ill and carted around an oxygen tank and mask to help her breathe better. One would have thought this challenge might subdue her sarcastic side. Not so.

For a few years now, and much to the embarrassment of my husband Eddie, I have been illogically attached to this puffy, long black winter jacket I bought at H&M. The thing may be ugly as sin, but it's warm and that's all that matters to me when it's 30 degrees below outside. Am I right? Jesika had taken a few swipes at this coat over time, but I forgot all about this as I spent time with her at the apartment she shared with her partner, Kevin Smith. It wasn't until I put my jacket on to go home that I was reminded I ought to have had the presence of mind to wear something else. Because out came Jesika's quiet and serious voice with an important question: "Becky, why do you always have to wear that? When you gonna buy a new coat?"

I told this story of our first meeting, and shared this piece of the final conversation I had with Jesika, because they are two beautiful and funny bookends to a friendship that spanned half my life. I couldn't do anything remotely foolish or uppity if I wanted to escape Jesika's notice. She kept me, and so many of us nodding our heads right now, honest. I wouldn't have had it any other way. I loved her for it.

Now that doesn't mean that Jesika lived to giggle at the ones she loved, even if it sometimes felt that way. Jesika also had a way of letting you know when she believed in you, that she was 100% behind you, your biggest fan.

I had so many stupid ideas when I was a teenager: trying out for the high school dance team for instance, when I don't have a lick of rhythm. Going to the homecoming party freshman year, though I was warned by someone we all know well that it would be "ghetto and stupid." But you know what? I followed through with those plans, and guess who stood right by me as I made a fool of myself? Of course Jesika. She might tell me once I would be sorry if I made up my mind to do something I'd later regret, but that never, ever stopped her from supporting me. She was even willing to endure the same embarrassments if it meant I didn't have to stand alone. What an amazing gift.

Recently, and in a sorry economic state such as the one we're facing right now, I made the decision to leave the stable comfort of my 9-5 job and strike out as a freelance writer. I had 6 years of undergrad and grad school to prepare me for this moment, in addition to the simmering will of a dreamer. But I feared what others might say. Did I have enough talent? Was I crazy to give up my solid income at the age of 30 for such a potentially risky endeavor? Would I live to regret taking a chance, and have to endure the ego check of crawling back to the corporate world? For as many doubts as I had in myself, Jesika made it clear that she didn't have any. She was a registered follower of the blog I manage with my sister. Her only teasing complaint when I published my first piece in StreetWise newspaper last month, was that she'd have to hit the street to get what she called "her daily Becky fix." Again for a moment, I have to stop and marvel that conversation took place only a month and a half ago. But that was the Jesika way: tickle you with one hand and hug you with the other. For everytime she kidded me for leaving my Facebook profile picture up too long, she would end her message by throwing in a reminder of how proud of me she was.

Maybe the reason I find it so hard to believe she's gone, even a month later, is because I still feel Jesika behind me in so much that I do. When I walk through the mall and see a kiosk selling the latest model of pink Blackberries, Jesika is there. A week ago, as Kevin and I stumbled around the Lemont cemetery in the pouring rain, looking for Jesika's burial plot as my worthless high heels sank in the mud, I could almost hear the heckle of Jesika's generous laugh.

It doesn't seem real, right or fair that a person so young, intelligent and hilarious be taken from us in such a sudden and terrible way. Sometimes I still have to sit quietly and repeat the words, "Jesika is gone." Otherwise, I might let myself believe she is just out of town, catching a Janet Jackson concert with one of her many friends scattered across the nation. At a number of points in the last month, as I spoke to Kevin, or my husband, about my great friend Jesika Thompson, I felt as if I were choking on my own selfish desire to bring her back. I was Jesika's side kick, not the other way around, and I wondered how I could keep moving forward without her love and support.

But that's just it. I don't have to. Jesika is right behind me, as she always has been. She will always be young, fresh and healthy. I don't remember an old or sick version of my friend, just the bright light that she was. If there is any comfort to be found in the gaping wounds of her loss, perhaps that indelible image of Jesika's teasing laugh, her unyielding support, is what will get me, and maybe some of you, through this difficult time.

Hurts So Good

2011-04-23T08:21:00.000-05:00

This Easter weekend, an auspicious period of rebirth and renewal in the Christian culture, yours truly is feeling very much like a 92 year-old woman. My whole body hurts, from the roots of my hair to the recurring tendonitis in my right toes.

I have pushed myself to the physical limits this week, in a not-so-subconscious effort to try to outrun my psyche, to strong arm the emotional pain and confusion I feel about my new life. I strained my right bicep tendon doing repeated G.I. Jane-style pull-ups on Tuesday. My thighs and glutes are painfully sore from squats, lunges and miles and miles of bike riding. My shins are bruised and scraped from a late-Wednesday night tumble off that same bike. And my corpus as a whole feels the kind of chilly fatigue that is hard to shake after traversing the City by cycle for hours in the pouring rain, wearing the armor of soggy jeans, wet socks and cotton clothes clinging to my frame.

I did wonder as I made my way back to my apartment last night if I didn’t have some sort of warrior-style death wish. I have always been a tomboy, and functioning as the son my father never had, I learned a lot from him about silently sweating out the pain, the gym as therapy. I do see a psychologist, and a brilliant one at that, but I recognize that I can only talk about my feelings so much. The story, for the foreseeable future, won’t change, and I hate wallowing. So I try to expel the negative energy through brute force, and even if that doesn’t work, I think as I sweat. There’s not a long of time between grunts for extraneous thoughts. One can’t help but focus.

But I forget sometimes that though the human body is capable of amazing things, it is still a human body, fallible, often frail and requiring proper care to continue running at peak performance. I haven’t been eating well, and at least this week, neglecting to sleep as much as I should. Combine that with self-induced samurai training, and I am in a world of hurt today, even after hibernating for 11 hours and consuming more victuals than I believed my stomach could accommodate.

My body has officially revolted: basta, fini, enough. I have to respect that. But that means that for the next two days at least, I can no longer leave my thoughts in the wake.

The Cat Lady

2011-04-19T13:41:00.005-05:00

I was engaged in a text message conversation with my oldest friend in the world last night. Bob has known me since I was four years old, the year my family moved back to Chicago after my father's stint in the Army. Bob and his clan lived down the block from my maternal grandparents and we attended the same grade school. There is very little he doesn't know about me and vice versa. That idea could be scary, the inability to hide anything from another, but for me, it's always been a source of comfort. In a world where I feel woefully misunderstood more often than not, the fact that I don't have to say anything at all for Bob to know exactly where I am coming from is a wonderful perk.

So we bantered about his return to Chicago in mid-May for the occasion of his eldest brother's wedding. Bob asked in one message if he had told me this information previously and I rejoined that he had clearly gone old and senile, because yes, I had heard this before. Ha ha. Until.....

I read his reply: “You are almost 33 and maybe I should get you a kitten since you're turning into a cat lady.”

Ouch.

Yes it's true, I live on my own now, in a studio apartment after my official separation last weekend from estranged husband Eddie. It has been a process and I am struggling to overcome waking up each morning with the distinct impression that I am missing a limb. My only companion for the time being is one very spoiled, very fat seven year-old cat by the name of Jordan. He has picked up with the same sense of loud entitlement where my ex left off. I have considered a little brother or sister for Jordan, but he's never been good at sharing: space, attention, food. We'll see how things go.

Bob meant nothing by his off the cuff text. He was only giving as good as I did with my senility dig, but something about what he typed cut straight to the heart of all my worst fears and insecurities.

Years ago, I remember watching an episode from Season 4 of Sex and the City. It's the one where Miranda's mother dies and the girls attend her funeral. Although I was in my 20s at the time, an astute observation from Miranda struck fear into my singleton heart:

“I'm fine. But everybody else is very concerned about me because I'm here alone. I didn't realize I needed a date for my mother's funeral. My sister and her husband want me to thirdwheel with them down the aisle ‘cause God forbid that I should walk it alone, because that would be the real tragedy, right? lgnore the coffin. There's a single 35 year old woman walking behind it.”

I am approaching 35, and though I am satisfied with many aspects of my existence, I am well aware that a twice-divorced single woman has diminishing prospects of uncovering her soulmate at this stage of the game. I am not a fatalist, just a realist, and further complicating those odds is the “touch me not" state that my mind and body currently occupy.

At the same time, I recognize the looks of “concern,” the subtle vocal suggestions that I have become an object of pity amongst a section of my social circle: the invitations from happy couples to “thirdwheel” it when they go out for drinks, the suggestions from well-meaning girlfriends that I should meet their mate's best friend's-brother's-cousin-who-went-to-Yale-law-and-oh-yes-he-reads-books-too.

It's a question as old as the women's liberation movement of the 1960s, but why is it that a single man of the same age, who may also be a couple of times divorced, just doesn't engender the same sort of worry? I might as well ask that question of myself because my thin-skinned reaction to Bob's playful barb exposed just how ingrained into my subconscious the backward rules of sexual politics actually are.

As I meditated on the subject while performing my bedtime rituals (an insanely long process that may have done more to drive away my partners than any love of felines could), I asked myself what's so wrong with being a cat lady anyway? Jordan's love, adoration and body warmth require very spare emotional bandwidth. They are unconditional. All he needs me to do is love him back.

IUD: A Love Story

2011-04-14T13:23:00.003-05:00

12 years ago, at the age of 20, I experienced some mild problems with the birth control pills I was taking. The doctor in charge of my care at that time suggested taking a break from hormones. I was presented with two options: condoms or the insertion of an Intrauterine Device, more common known as an IUD. Well I know far too many children walking the earth today because of a condom-related malfunction, and since I could barely count to ten at that time, I figured I should go for the super-protection that only the IUD could offer.

The copper IUD, the version I selected, works in two different ways, which explains the contraceptive's 99.9% effective rate. First, the t-shaped device negatively affects the mobility of sperm, preventing it from fertilizing an egg. Additionally, the IUD, by nature of its placement, safely distorts the shape of the uterus, rendering it nearly impossible for a fertilized egg, should it reach that stage, to implant.

Typically, it is best to go with the IUD as a method of birth control if you have already procreated, as the body is in a better position to endure the patently awful insertion process. I have never been pregnant and I certainly had no idea how hellacious the procedure would be, but I had the self-awareness to know that I was not destined for motherhood for a long time, if ever. So I went for it.

For 12 calendar years and a few mongamous relationships, my IUD and I were sympatico. Except for some increased cramping during the PMS phase, this thing was a true blessing. I have been married for 10 of the last 12 years, and there's so much to be said for never having to think about birth control: ready at any moment for loving, no pills to take, no frantic trips to the 7-11. Life was good.

But like all good things, my time with the IUD had to end. The copper device is typically recommended for a 10-year period, but as it was agreeing so damn well with me, my new doctor thought it would be fine to ride it out for another two. He received no argument. I cannot overstate the horrendousness of the insertion (when I spoke about this with Eddie, I likened it to a wire hanger up the prostate – men are often unable to sympathize without a relatable equivalent).

This week ushered in the 12-year deadline and ready or not, the IUD had to be removed. I am pleased to report that after a solid decade of working myself up, taking it out was in no way comparable to the experience of having it placed.

It is ironic walking around, able to be impregnated for the first time in 12 years, at precisely the moment when I have no one with whom to copulate. One of life's many little pokes (pun intended - I'm here all week!). I received a prescription for a new kind of very-low hormone birth control pill, but I can't start taking it until the completion of my latest menstrual cycle. Like so many other things in my life right now, it's a new era.

I almost feel like a teenager again in terms of my inexperience. Clearly, as the pill does not protect against STDs (nor did the IUD for the record), I will also have to learn about the seemingly endless brands and incarnations of the “Jimmy Hat” (a term I first heard from the mouth of my trainer Rob). I haven't had to think about this variable in ages, being immersed in comfortable, mongamous routine. What are the kids today using? What do they recommend?

As I thought about my beautiful time with the IUD, a long stretch of my adult life when I could focus on relationships, career and personal growth without the threat of an unplanned mouth to feed crashing in, I considered last week's fight over funding for Planned Parenthood, which according to the Republican Party, was a big enough ideological deal to warrant a near-shutdown of the Federal government. If many on the right had their way, I would have never have had access to the device in the first place. Nor would I be on the pill in the near future. I am kind of tired of this conversation. I am tired of the conflation of abortion and contraception as if they are one and the same. Loving my IUD, and thus my reproductive freedom, does not make me a slut or a bad person. Stop telling me it does.

Have You Seen Me?

2011-04-12T10:45:00.002-05:00

I hardly recognize myself these days. Ruminating and paroxysms of despair are my norm, so is it strange, when going through a painful divorce, to work through the stages of grief this quickly? It has been six weeks since Eddie and I made the gutwrenching decision to move on with our lives alone, and once the words were uttered, I was on top of denial right away.

The part where I had to leave was definitely real, but I kept the naive, delusional hope alive that separation didn't necessarily have to mean divorce. Because once I vanished, Eddie would begin to beat his breast, realize that he was lost without me, and somehow morph into the kind, supportive and attentive spouse I had been missing. Yes in the long run this temporarily split could even be good for us. We'd laugh over our impetuousness in the years to come, regaling our embarrassed children with tales of stubborn passion leading to mature contrition.

This phase lasted about a week until endless screaming, defiance and open disrespect made it clear that I could not stay in Fantasyland for an unlimited time. There would be no opportunity for reconciling, and even if we found an opening, the will is simply not there.

Then I spent about three solid weeks in anger. I am a hot-blooded Italian and was raised in a family of explosive emotion of all varieties. Anger has never been tough. I was mad that I am the one who has to leave the family home because my income will not allow me to stay. I have to let go of car, family, furniture, pretty much everything I have spent the last five years helping my partner build. It's not about the money. It's about disposability, loneliness and the struggle to start over that should have been avoided. Hell, I feel an anger flashback right now just pondering it. But I have laid my hair trigger reactions to rest. They will not change anything and will comfort no one.

Bargaining came next: time to utilize the health insurance coverage I enjoyed through Eddie's job before divorce cuts me off. A short window to use the car that's no longer mine to pick up new apartment essentials, run errands and visit friends and family I may not be able to get to for some time. In this stage of grief, the power imbalance in my marriage was never more clear. Out of a need to placate and survive, I became the pleading sycophant, dependent on the whims and good humor of my estranged husband to take care of business. At this stage of grief, I never hated myself, or him, more.

Two more weeks of solid depression followed, although truth be told, I had been languishing at this stage of grief for nearly a year. The stages are not necessarily linear. I lost weight, sleep, and more tears than I believed it possible to shed. I haven't exactly cleared this phase yet and know that I may not for some time. Sadness and loss go together and I am not going to rush this one.

So what's been left for the last week is a tentative form of acceptance. Acceptance is a tricky phase because knowing something can never be fixed is not quite the same as being OK with it. But awareness that my energies will be completely wasted in hoping for a happy ending has allowed me to start considering and planning for the future, a future of self-reliance and hard work. I am not a great fan of the dense, needlessly complex writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I have always ascribed to his philosophy that the self-made (wo)man is she who enjoys the most satisfaction. So I am all set to go with my move, every logistical detail planned to perfection. My career, the paid day job and the freelance endeavors, are starting to take off in ways I never imagined. Dating is a long way off, but I am reconnecting with friends, old and new, and feel a wider range of emotions suddenly available to me.

I feel better about myself and my prospects than I have in months, but there is a voice of doubt residing in my gray matter, hinting that I might be fooling myself. Is it possible to be somewhat ok already? Can I trust the endorphins that seem to be telling me life will actually go on?

Fake It 'Til You Make It

2011-04-06T16:06:00.000-05:00

The thing about divorce is, it's good for the waistline. On the whole, given that I am a week away from embarking on a life of complete solitude, I have been coping well. I show up to work everyday and give it my full effort, despite a disorienting case of physical and emotional exhaustion. I stay engaged with friends and colleagues. I bathe. I sleep. I breathe. For those of you who have gone through a marital dissolution, just accomplishing everyday taks is a triumph.

The one thing that has completely fallen by the wayside is the ability to eat and drink. The glass of wine I wolf down to calm my nerves before Eddie and I confront each other for the first time every evening doesn't count. We have nothing left to say, but the sight of his person walking through the door each night, casually humming as if the world isn't ending, gives me the vapors. But the concept of actual nourishment is beyond me. I experience fleeting pangs that tell me it's time to fuel up, but more often than not, I end up staring blankly at my plate and glass of water, like I do most other stimuli.

So the result is that I weigh 12 pounds less today than I did at my senior prom, and I was not heavy in high school by any means. Under different circumstances, the vain parts of my character (which are embarassingly abundant) would be turning cartwheels. But I can't experience pride in results that stem from being hollowed.

The unintentional weight loss is a fairly apt metaphor for the shrinkage I feel as an individual. In very quick succession I find myself without husband, family, but even more than that, I have lost my guiding purpose. For five straight years, Eddie was my drug of choice, the center of my chaotic universe, the hard emotional rock against which I continually broke my body and spirit. I realize this isn't the most positive of images but a purpose of any kind can be more comforting than gazing out into the unknown abyss. At least I knew the rules. Now, I am going through the motions but hardly know what to do with myself at a station that has stopped playing “all Eddie, all the time.”

Intuitively, I understand that I will figure it out. Somehow. One of the reasons I ended up in this predicament is a lifelong failure to learn how to live for myself. Now there's nowhere to hide. I have always had someone to take care of. It's kind of what I do. Growing up, I was the adult in my home, the one trusted with secrets, sought out for counsel, the cleaner of messes my parents couldn't or wouldn't address. This precocious level of responsibility didn't leave a lot of time for figuring out what it is I wanted and needed, and if I'm being completely honest, I was fine with that.

As a young adult, I punted and focused on my my sister and her first daughter until I saw her safely married to a wonderful, responsible man. From there I jumped into a “starter marriage” that encompassed all the drama you would expect from two people barely old enough to drink, trying to play at adulthood. Not long after the ink dried on those 2006 divorce papers, I threw myself headlong into an all-consuming fascination with Eddie, the handsome, exotic, powerful man I was certain I needed. It made perfect sense. By aligning myself with people who had definitive ideas and opinions of the way things should work, I could defer having to draw a map for myself.

I can't say I ever felt fulfilled but for a grown woman in complete denial, pretending at a self-assuredness she never actually possessed, the arrangement suited its purpose. Until I began to chafe. Until little voices I never knew existed started to scream that I had it all wrong: a career in corporate operations that asked nothing of my creative capacity, a union in which my voice was the fourth most important (after that of Eddie and his folks), an upper-middle class lifestyle as foreign as walking into the men's room by accident.

A part of me would love another human project to throw myself into. I am a creature of habit, of schedule, and am not really sure how to pencil “find myself” into the weekly calendar. But I am nothing if not stubborn, and I admantly refuse to let myself duck a responsibility that has led to so much poor decision making.

So I go through my day making swift calculations, taking actions to establish the next phase of my life with a certainty that I don't yet feel. It's all about forming new pathways to replace the destructive ones.

Losing My Religion?

2011-04-01T15:42:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week, I was able to open up about my impending divorce for the first time. I understand very broadly that I have only begun to process the millions of conflicting emotions and feelings that overtake one, often at the oddest times, when going through a separation from a spouse, even under the best of circumstances. So far, our schism has been the opposite of cordial, which rather reflects the general combative tenor of our five-year relationship. I do not lay the blame for this on Eddie. For whatever reason, we always seem to bring out the worst in each other, and hammering out the financial and logistical details of our split has been no exception.

The last four weeks have been marked by attempts to discuss business like adults, inevitably devolving into a flaring of tempers, finger pointing and tremendously wounded feelings. With two weeks left before I officially relocate, we have worked out most of the details, and while sidestepping each other in our still-shared space, there is little conversation left. We both carry the mien of two PTSD-afflicted soldiers who want to patch ourselves up and go back out to the field, but no longer have the tools or the emotional bandwidth. We've lost the ability to comfort each other, because how can the person killing you be the one who saves your life?

In one strained and measured discussion held this week however, Eddie raised a point that I had yet to consider. Born into Lutheranism, I had pretty much rejected all organized religion by the time I reached high school. I flirted with Buddhism in my 20s before finally converting to Hinduism at age 29 as part of the package deal of marriage to my Indian-born mate. I will not go so far as to say I've been a devotee, but there is really a lot to appreciate. Though there are rigid, right-wing practitioners (as there are in all religions), at its core, the Hindu religion is quite flexible. If one so chooses, they don't have to move much farther than two core tenets: do no harm to the living (humans, plants, animals), liberally thank the god(s) and seek their blessings.

In a fit of pique, Eddie suggested that the breach of our partnership invalidates my Hindu “membership,” the argument being that since I converted simply for expediency's sake (his family would never have accepted the marriage if I hadn't), deciding to invalidate the union did so with my adopted beliefs by extension.

I mention that this was said during one of many tense discussions, but emotions aside, I had the sense that my estranged husband was fairly serious. But do things work like this? I have a friend, a converted Jew, who made the switch after marrying early in his 20s. The religion stuck even when the wife didn't, and now in his early 50s, he is one of the most dedicated members of the Jewish faith I have ever encountered. His rights were not “revoked,” so to speak.

But branding and permissions aside, I find myself wondering what my admiration of the Hindu faith means without Eddie and the rest of his family. His mother has spent a lot of time over the years educating me about mythology, the holiday calendar and the auspicious meanings behind it, rituals, etc. I have gone to mandir (temple) on my own numerous times, a practice that often bring me a lot of peace, but I realize that in the past, a lot of that peace stemmed from a sense of belonging – not just to the faith, but to a family that pays more than lip service to the teachings.

So what do I do with all of this knowledge and experience now? Why do I feel like I am not wanted and no longer have the right to practice, though I stood up in front of literally thousands of people in a foreign country to swear my allegiance? And mind you, I don't go around doing that sort of thing regularly. I realize that my religious quandry is part of a larger and troubling question of trying to figure out where (if anywhere) I actually belong, odd and broken bird that I am.

Black and Blue Part II

2011-03-29T12:31:00.001-05:00

The last time I posted on these pages, almost a month ago, I wrote about the physical pain I felt after a freak, but still kind of humorous ski accident. An unplanned collision between myself and a block of ice in Galena, IL relegated my left hindquarter to several weeks of existence as a piece of abstract, performance art.

Once a prolific blogger, I haven't been able to write since that time. I wish I could lay blame for my creative coma on an exciting new publishing job. I am now in my seventh week at work ghost writing for a widely respected real estate and financial expert. After a fortnight spent as a deer in headlights, waiting for my boss to uncover my secret lack of talent and send me packing, I am adjusting remarkably well. Turns out I have a much greater mind for writing about personal finance and the housing market than I ever suspected. This is ironic because I am eight years past a personal bankruptcy, my runaway mother's final gift, and I own neither property nor dare to approach a credit card. Go figure.

The story of my life the last two years has been the struggle to obtain a writing career in a decimated job market, which feels even more depressed for purveyors of the pen. I temped, I freelanced, I danced, I interviewed until my eyes crossed, but that mission is finally accomplished.

Now my story takes a different shape: the tale of finding myself and losing a marriage in the process.

I have written, often opaquely, about my complicated, crazy love story with husband Eddie. Two people born continents apart (he: India, me: US), from completely differing family backgrounds (his: traditional and close knit, mine: erratic, unorthodox and unstable) who had very little in common on paper. But opposites attract don't they? And once Eddie and I came together in February of 2006, the proverbial sparks flew. Some might say the flames burned a little too brightly. Even before “I do,” there were the kind of third degree injuries that should have given us both pause.

But we would have none of it, united by stubborness if nothing else. Eddie and I were soulmates, so ignoring warnings from friends, family and co-workers, who saw where our volatility and lack of common ground must lead, we married in a lavish ceremony in India in December of 2007. Pop rock artist Pink released a song right around that time. The track, called “Who Knew?” contains the following lyrics:

“If someone said three years from now, you'd be long gone, I'd stand up and punch them in the mouth, 'cuz they're all wrong.”

That sums up the feelings of a lonely bride in Raipur, a small Indian city, on 12/5/07. I missed receiving my Master's degree in person to marry the man of my dreams. I flew thousands of miles without so much as a friend or family member by my side to watch me walk down the aisle (or around the fire, as the case may be). I agreed to face-saving schemes (for my new family) that required lies about my age and parentage, and worst of all, I pretended not to notice that my groom was a little bit more reluctant than could be explained by the phenomenon of “cold feet.” All this I did because I KNEW Eddie was my destiny. It didn't matter how we got there, just that we did and oh! The stories we'd have for our children.

But there are no children, and now there is no longer a marriage. Almost four weeks ago, we made the mutual and terrible decision to separate. I will move out of our rented condo on the 16^th of April. A chain of events that began almost two years ago with infidelity (his), therapy (mine), and a divergence of career and family goals has culminated in two very sad, very tired, very estranged broken hearts.

In the coming weeks, months and years, I will need to learn to live a life I never anticipated but probably should have. There is much more to do, to think and to say before I can begin to make sense of where I stand at the age of 32.5: at long last professionally satisfied, but personally annihilated.

Black and Blue

2011-03-03T06:55:00.001-06:00

Last weekend, I went away for a ski trip with my sister, niece KK and some other friends, old and new. As a young teenager, I had partaken in the sport a number of times and developed a certain proficiency, even without the aid of formal instruction. To this day I am not a fan of organized lessons where sports are concerned. Trusting in what I have learned in the past and my usual aptitude for the physical, I prefer to wing it.

The important detail to this story is that my last trip down the slopes was a full 18 years ago. You would think I might find this time lag, more than half as long as my life, to be some sort of deterrent when making decisions about which equipment I should choose. But here we encounter another Becky Sarwate enigma. In many instances, a crippling uncertainty all but shuts me down. However when it comes to physical activity, I am absurdly overconfident.

Last Saturday was one such occasion. As our group emerged from the Chevy Suburban that ferried us to the lodge outside Galena, IL and ran for the equipment rental, I was given a series of decisions to make. My first mistake (of many) on this day was the absolutely unshakable belief that I needed the mid-grade speed skis. The low speed skis were for beginners and I felt absolutely confident shoving aside the ensuing two decades after my last time out that could potentially impact my performance today. Skiing is just like riding a bike, I told myself.

And as our group started cruising down Rookie Lane (one step above the bunny hill), it seemed I made the right call. I was tearing it up - weaving in and out of my group as they struggled to find their footing, taking a couple cracks at the slalom course, and rather arrogantly adopting the tough trainer tone with KK, who was quite nervous her first time out.

In fact things were going so well in Rookie Lane that I started to feel bored. I needed a new challenge. Just to the right of where the rest of my group was practicing, there was a mid-level hill called the Moser. The initial dropoff looked daunting but between the mastery I recalled of 18 years ago, when I was able to ski black diamond hills, and the 30 minutes I had spent getting my groove back that day, I was ready, right?

This part of the story turns into an extended metaphor. You have been warned. Picture me as the Titanic, look glorious in my ski cap, pants and jacket. I'm in the best shape of my life (so I think), and brimming with confidence that I am going to get down this hill without so much as a stumble.

I make it down the first steep launch and my sense of invincibility only grows. I confidently pick up speed with each swoosh of my mid-grade speed skis. I enter the second section of the tougher course, careening just under the speed of sound and then it happens: iceberg! I see the ice rock in front of me before I collide with it.

I elected to pass on wearing a helmet (another great choice!) and have a split second to make a decision. Believing that crashing into a rock with my face might not be a lot of fun, I did the alternative. I forced myself into a backward fall. In doing so, it was "only" the left side of my thigh and glute that took the impact. For those of you who have seen me in person, there's a lot of padding back there and for once I pay tribute to the fat for sparing me a broken leg or hip.

I felt rather proud of my disaster aversion skills until I pulled my pants down in the ladies' room. Not only did I feel a tremendous pain, but I saw something that looked a lot like this (image above). I tried gamely to return to the slopes with my group after lunch. The skiing was fine. It was the chairlift repeatedly crashing into my tender backside that finally did me in.

For two days I could neither sit nor lay on my left side, which resulted in minor back strain. The lesson I have learned is that, fit though I might be, I am not Picabo Street and will opt next time for the beginner skis. There's no shame in it. The second lesson I have learned is to appreciate the protective qualities of my jiggly bits. They may have saved my life.

Spinning Plates

2011-02-25T17:17:00.001-06:00

Ever since I started a full-time job a couple of weeks ago, I have been forced to do something I loathe: admit that sometimes, as much as I want to, it's impossible do it all. More specifically, I am referring to maintaining this blog, reading the work of other writers I admire and staying up on current events. Sure I have been able to grab some of the headlines: Libya's Qaddafi the next dictator on his way out, Charlie's Sheen's bizarre war with his long-enabling network, Christine O'Donnell's possible appearance on Dancing with the Stars, and the fulfillment of my secret wish that Eliot Spitzer be allowed to host his CNN hour without the dull as can be Kathleen Parker. Be that as it may, I haven't been able to engage in the media deep dive I had ample time to enjoy as a member of the mass unemployed community.

I am not complaining. I am enjoying a career fulfillment this year which seemed so remote just eight weeks ago. I love my new position and am enjoying the challenges and opportunities to develop my skill set as a multi-media professional.

But there is that Catch-22. While enjoying financial security through ghost writing for another, I must give shorter shrift to my personal ambitions as an author, ambitions that to this point, have done absolutely nothing to pay the bills or provide a life direction. I get so frustrated with myself sometimes. Why can't I let things be enough? I was a miserable, depressed insomniac before I found myself in this place. Being solvent again has rectified most of that turmoil, but in it's stead is a lesser, but still persistent guilt, a voice in my head that not-so-gently goes to sleep and wakes up with me. It whispers that I have TWO jobs - the one that pays the rent and the fiscally thankless one of trying to build my own brand (whatever that means) and hone my craft.

I have written before that I am the ultimate late bloomer. I didn't stop growing until I was 21, finally put on my first big girl bra at age 25, figured out that I wanted (needed) to write at age 30 and removed my braces (and finally gained some self-esteem) at age 31. It is terribly frustrating to realize sometimes that as I round the corner toward 33, I am far from done maturing. I am, in a very real way, still trying to figure it all out. I realize I am not alone in my extended adolescence but when I recall that Jane Austen wrote Pride and Prejudice in her early 20s, I feel so....embarrassed I think is the word for which I'm looking. I can't even imagine being someone's mother and I remain in awe of all the career women who do it, and do it well.

What's my point? Besides articulating the thoughts that have taken up residency in my consciousness the last fortnight, I am wondering if other writers, of both sexes, struggle with this tension between being a part of the literal working world, while still nurturing and cherishing the dream. It's exhausting, it can be exhilarating, but is it sustainable, or does one eventually have to make a decision about which plate they will take off the stick and eat from eternally?

Farewell to the King

2011-02-23T06:35:00.001-06:00

Well, I admit I was hoping for a runoff. I never liked the way Rahm Emanuel's win in yesterday's Chicago's mayoral election was accepted as a foregone conclusion almost from the moment he announced his candidacy. We have spent the last 22 years voting (or not) for a virtually uncontested monarch, Richard M. Daley. To quote myself from the link above, "Mayor Daley may have done great things in terms of beautifying the landscape and attracting new business but anyone who has lived in the city for the last 22 years knows how much damage his interminable term has done: skyrocketing property taxes, unaffordable homes, runway gang crime and terrible fiscal decisions."

Yesterday's trip to the polls presented a chance for residents to take their city back, to peacefully foment a revolution, inspired by the examples that are quickly spreading across the Middle East. "Change" has been a political buzzword for several years now, but I am starting to wonder if the citizenry of Chicago is interested in that all. Because now we have Rahmbo. And no matter how young (relative to Daley), good looking and tough he is, is there anyone out there who really believes Rahmbo will make a clean break from The Machine politics of the Daley dynasty? If so, I have an extensive VHS collection I'd like to sell you (valuable vintage!)

I am willing to give Emanuel a chance. In some ways there is much to celebrate in accordance with his trouncing of the competition, earning 55% of the popular vote. We have our first mayor of Jewish descent. And we are spared the indignity of being led by Carol Mosley Braun, whose meager tax returns indicate a woman incapable of running a business (which, make no mistake this city is), and whose mouth suggest a woman incapable of talking sense. I invite Ms. Mosley Braun to crawl back under the pop cultural rock from whence she came.

And if I have mixed feelings about Rahm Emanuel as Chicago's new mayor (intertwined with my reservations about Bill Daley serving as the President's new Chief of Staff), I am unequivocally thrilled to be rid of the Daley regime. The AP succinctly contextualizes the long running relationship as follows: "It was the city's first mayoral race in more than 60 years without an incumbent on the ballot and the first in more than two decades without Daley among the candidates. Daley and his father have led Chicago for more than 43 out of the last 56 years."

If ever there was an argument for term limits, Daley was it. I was never a fan but I have been forced to stand by idly for two decades as the term "affordable housing" became an oxymoron. Chicago has failing schools, rampant gang activity, and for anyone who raves about all the "beautification" initiatives Daley has undertaken, I invite you to take a trip o the South Side with me. For the most part, the King and his cohorts labored under the misguided impression that the North lakefront was the whole of the city. Coincidently, the North lakefront is where you will find all of Daley's big and rich contributors. I am sure this is merely coincidence.

No matter who was declared the victor last night, I would be happy because today is 24 hours closer to being able to give Daley and his parking meter lease the boot. And not that this has any impact on his eventual ability to govern, but Rahm is certainly an aesthetic improvement over old Dick, with his trained ballet dancer grace and sexiness.

At least Chicago received some national political attention of the positive kind, rather than the interminable corruption charges, trials and imprisonments of our state governors. I know we have wisely placed a moratorium on the death penalty, but couldn't we waive it just this once to rid ourselves of Blago? That clown is like the shame gift that keeps on giving (unasked).

Daley? Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. Rahmbo? You better mean it, unlike your former boss, when you say you're prepared to ask Chicagoans to make the "touch choices" that will bring the city back to fiscal solvency. I'll be watching.

Don't Trust Anyone Over 30

2011-02-20T19:20:00.000-06:00

The adorable little toddler on the right, with the precocious awareness of "serious" camera face that persists to this day, is my husband, Aditya (better known as "Adi" to his Indian mates, and "Eddie" to Western acquaintances who struggle with the unique long "a" sound of the Hindi language). The woman on the left is his fantastically beautiful mother Pratibha, who leaves no doubts as to where my spouse came by his good looks.

This week my chosen life partner turned 30 years old. Yes, this makes me an unashamed cougar (suck it Courtney Cox!). As I experienced several years ago, the switch from 20 to 30-something, which I would argue is the new age in this infantilized world where one typically leaps from child to adult, has been somewhat jarring for my husband. He's still a young man by any definition, but there is now more hair on his back and less on his head, too many little girls call him "uncle" for his liking, and he can't eat anything oily without spending time in the digestive penalty box. At 30, one starts to gain an awareness of their own mortality, to suspect that the peak physical days are in the past after all. Aging is real.

It turns out that Eddie's birthday, February 17th, is also the marker of our years together as a couple. On the same day he hit the big 3-0, we celebrated five years of courtship. I label our relationship as such because even after a half decade together, and three of those as spouses, we are still working out the parameters of our union. We are from opposite sides of the globe figuratively and quite literally, with matching hot headed tempers being one of our common traits. It's tough work but I like that we're doing it together. I don't know anyone else who would even want to try putting it up with me.

I used to think it pretty uncool to get older. All that hippie "don't trust anyone over 30" rhetoric sounded like good, common sense. After age 29, it's like adults become the magically entrenched, the sudden producers of ideology rather than the rebellious anarchists.

But I saw the secure, confident smug worn above by a two year-old, on the face of a 30 year-old man wailing away at a karaoke version of Bon Jovi's "Living on a Prayer" last night as he celebrated his milestone birthday surrounded by friends and family. He may have morphed into a staid software engineer by day, but after five, and his own mind, he's still a rockstar. I think I trust anyone over 30 who still dreams big.

Hunt and Peck

2011-02-15T06:15:00.001-06:00

When I think about it, there's really no good excuse for my condition. I went through primary school in the 1980s, when American culture exploded in its contemplation of the personal computer's applications. There was no concept of the Internet when I entered kindergarten in 1983, but I had a fair amount of exposure to the PC in those years: a glorified word processor at home, archaic computer game play with my friends (Jeopardy! The Oregon Trail!) and lessons in basic DOS as a part of grammar school curriculum.

And yet somehow, I never learned to type. Oh I am typing now, and obviously I get by. What I mean is that I am incapable of doing so the "right" way. After 25 years of loquacious communications, I have a confession to make: I am a hunt and pecker.

Mind you, and I don't like to brag, but I am the quickest draw there is. I may look down at the keyboard whilst I produce words, but my fingers fly over the numbers and letters like a concert pianist. The only real problem to this point has been the noise. I drill the keyboard like I am in the middle of a World War II blitzkrieg, typing out a potentially life saving SOS message, but when you work around me, it quickly becomes common white noise. I have survived 21 years of formal education (including a Master's in English Literature), 11 years in the corporate/nonprofit world and two years as a freelance writer and blogger. I can interview subjects with a phone expertly balanced between my ear and my shoulder while I type furiously.

This never bothered me before. It was one of my charming idiosyncrasies, or so I liked to believe. Anyone can type correctly. How boring.

I was completely unselfconscious about my quirk until yesterday, the first day on the job at a small publishing firm. Anyone who has checked in with me the last four months knows all about my unemployment saga, the self-flagellation I publicly engaged in over fear that I would never work with my words, that I had chosen my life's dream rather poorly, that I was condemned to a life of thankless freelance hustling (emphasis on the "free"). Well through a mixture of networking, patience (?) and highly practiced interviewing, I finally secured a full-time web writer and editor position with a highly respected financial guru. There's so much to learn as I remain a relative newbie to the journalism/publishing worlds, but I have finally have my shot.

I showed up Day 1 determined to impress. There are so many diverse and demanding projects into which I will eventually sink my teeth. The new boss made it clear that a three month learning curve is expected, but I will do all I can to ensure that timeline is shortened. I can't endure feeling out of my element for that long. I was ready to be confused, overwhelmed, possibly even a little panicked. What I was not prepared for was a sharp indictment of my sub-par typing abilities.

The new boss stood over my shoulder while I formatted a press release, an experience inherently designed to create discomfort, and her words took me completely off guard: "We are going to have to do something about your typing. There are plenty of classes and online tutorials."

Slightly stunned and embarrassed, I began to protest that my unorthodox style had served me well to this point, but I was shut down immediately with a challenge: "Well we can do a test. If you can produce 150 words per minute, I'm good."

I politely declined and it seems therefore that I will have to learn the proper method of word processing. I am the proverbial old dog tasked to learn a new trick. I expected many, many deficiencies to show themselves in this training period and usually do a terrific job of cataloguing anticipated flaws before they can be pointed out. I do not want this stupid issue to stand between me and publishing success

No, 'Dancing with the Stars,' Just No!

2011-02-12T09:19:00.001-06:00

Please don't do this to me y'all. I have watched every episode of every season you have ever had. I have stuck with you through Tom Bergeron's multiple co-host changes (and sorry ladies, none of you can ad-lib your way out of a Smart car). I have suffered through Bristol Palin and feared your casting team could go no lower than Evander Holyfield, but now you are thinking of doing this? Does my loyalty purchase no gratitude?

Rumor Mill: Brett Favre to Join 'Dancing with the Stars?'

I knew it. I was finally lulled into the belief that I might be free of seeing this grizzled old drama queen wince his way across my TV screen. I swore that after a highly publicized episode of texting his pee pee to a female employee of the NFL, after leading the Minnesota Vikings to a horrendously disappointing season, promising once and for all to free the league of his divatude, he might take his millions and crawl into a pop cultural cave for a spell. But no, the ultimate media whore has decided instead to give ballroom dancing a whirl.

Though a loyal fan, I have never cast a vote for a contestant of this show before. However, if the rumor pans out and Favre does compete on the 12th season of the program, I will start my own robo dial campaign - for everyone but him.

Go away Brett!

Trending Now on Yahoo (9:30 AM CST)

2011-02-10T10:32:00.003-06:00

I will confess that after purging myself emotionally with the last post, and trying to prepare for the start of a permanent full-time writing and editing job (remember those?) that kicks off Monday morning, I am feeling a little short on creativity. But thank goodness I can always take advantage of the nation’s short attention span to mine material for pop cultural discussion. As my title suggests, I pulled this list from Yahoo a short while ago. When I woke up at 6:00 AM and turned on my computer, the navel gazing night shift was preoccupied with a whole different set of issues. If I want to stay relevant, I had better move quickly, so here goes:

1. Julia Hurley
I confess I did not even know who this woman was, but of course as she sits at #1 on the trend list, I figured it had something to do with sex, drugs or murder. Ding, ding, ding! Give Becky Sarwate a prize. Of course it the former scandal in play. Julia Hurley, a 28 year-old candidate for the 32nd Legislative District, according to an Examiner report, may or may not have been wearing pants in a photo taken back in 2005, when the would-be lawmaker was still a working model.

Clearly her constituents should take part in a real debate over whether an “artistic” picture snapped at 23 have anything at all to do with her fitness for office now (I would argue no). However, I suspect the reason Ms. Hurley sits atop the Yahoo search is because there’s a lot of pervy folks out there trying to locate the since removed pantless shots. They would like to assess her”credentials” for themselves.

2. Britney Spears
Ms. Spears is no stranger to trending high on search engine lists. She’s been doing her thing for well over a decade, a thing I confess I adore. Mercifully, after a serious 2007 case of personal and professional meltdown, Britney is back to getting the right kind of attention for her work. With a new album dropping at the end of March, a will-she-or-won’t debate over a possible Grammy performance and a smash radio single, “Hold It Against Me” on the airwaves, there are plenty of reasons everyone wants Brit.

3. Charlie Sheen
Sigh. Oh Charlie. What could possibly be left for us to know? We have been aware of you and your hard partying, hooker loving ways since the mid-80s. It’s as dependable as death and taxes. I will admit the smiling, toothless photo that circulated on TMZ before you went to rehab (smoke crack much?) was a surprise because I believed you to be vainer than that, but honestly after you have shot a girlfriend, held a knife to you third wife’s throat, and nearly burned down a hotel, nothing is novel anymore. Please go away and get healthy so that the rest of us who are not mystifyingly addicted to Two and a Half Men can love you again.

4. Jennifer Hudson
The extremely talented and resilient Ms. Hudson is garnering all sorts of media attention for her new Weight Watchers-induced sexiness, a pending album, and her participation in an all-star Grammy tribute to the legendary Aretha Franklin. There is talk in Hollywood that Jennifer may also play the Queen of Soul in a developing biopic. Make this happen! This woman has endured tremendous tragedy, but she is back with a new family, an inspirational attitude and a brilliant career. American Idol never knew what it had. 7th place? Bah!

5. iPhone
Wireless carriers Verizon and AT&T are finally going head to head to market and sell the mega-popular smartphone. Conflicting reports abound that Verizon service results in fewer dropped calls while Team AT&T purports to have the superior app functionality. You know what? I still don’t care and I never will. I just want to know if Steve Jobs is going to be ok. We need him – one of the last great rock star innovators of a generation.

6. Julia Roberts
The pretty woman and mother of three is bucking type to portray the “Evil Queen” in a version of Snow White that’s currently in production. Julia has played some morally ambiguous characters before, in movies like Closer, but this might be the first time she will let her unabashed villainess flag fly. Ms. Roberts has not produced a plethora of great movies in recent years (Eat, Pray, Yuck), so I am interested to see how this works out.

7. Elvis Presley Enterprises
The group is suing men in Florida, England, Wales, and elsewhere for infringement of intellectual property rights after the circulation of unauthorized box sets. Are you bored? Me too. Next!

8. Valentine flowers
With everything going on in my personal life, the advent of this Hallmark holiday nearly escaped me - nearly. I was about to write a legion of incredibly snarky comments but it seems American men and woman have taken to the Internet in the quest to find flowers for their loved ones. Only a real cynic could find fault with that part of the ritual.

9. Pepsi can
I am glad I held onto my snark, because I plan to make ample use of it here. The carbonated beverage company recently announced a redesigned Diet Pepsi “skinny can,” to pay ostensible tribute to “beautiful, confident women.” Ah yes – Pepsi gets us, don’t they ladies? The regular can of artificially sweetened syrup just does not allow a full expression of the self. However, skinny cans are only a short tangential walk away from the horror-inducing idea of skinny jeans; you know the ones that 98% percent of woman cannot fit into? I say if you want to pay tribute to yourself as the beautiful, confident woman you are, drink a glass of water instead – good for the skin, waistline, hydration and best of all, it will prohibit Pepsi from further lining their corporate pockets by trading in sexist bullshit.

10. Chipotle
And once you’ve finished that glass of water, celebrate your banging female curves by indulging in a giant Chipotle Burrito.

13 Going On 33

2011-02-08T11:05:00.000-06:00

I felt stretched nerves pushing against my skin as Eddie and I searched for a parking spot on the familiar side street. Covered in a blanket of nearly 30 inches of snow, we had to be careful about where to leave our little Honda Civic if we wanted to depart without getting stuck. And on this Super Bowl Sunday, I required the security of knowing I could make a break for it at any moment.

For the first time in 14 years, and longer since we had substantially interacted, I was about to see Cara. Cara was my closest friend and confidante from kindergarten through fourth grade, the first person I idolized, the first person I allowed to make me feel less by comparison. That is not to say that Cara was a Mean Girl in any sense. In fact the situation was quite opposite. With her diminutive stature, smattering of freckles and unforced smile, my friend was one of the easiest people to get along with that I have ever known. Not only was she cute beyond all reason, but I can’t recall her once mistreating anyone. In a way this pained my bitter heart more than if she were a total bitch. We enjoyed the imbalanced dynamics of all lopsided relationships where one half possesses the perfect combination of beauty, academic excellence and athleticism while the other proceeds to bully herself before anyone else has the opportunity.

I don’t think Cara ever knew how much I envied her, because she exercised a frustrating lack of awareness of her own superiority, which only served to make her more damningly likeable. I was pretty intelligent myself, smart enough to look at Cara’s educated, healthy family and the way that every boy I had a crush on grew besotted with her instead, and experience a painful, burning jealousy.

After we completed our fourth grade year, my parents pulled my sister and I from formal education for a disastrous experiment in home schooling. When I saw Cara again at age 13, we had traveled down different paths: she now best chums with the other two most fabulous girls in our class, while I ran comfortably with the outcast, delinquent crowd.

Somehow the situation had actually gotten worse. I was the last girl to wear a bra, the last to get her period (that really seemed important at the time – oy!). I wore huge glasses and was desperately in need of braces after a first grade radiator collision caused all of my adult teeth to grow in haywire. I was in short, the most awkward looking, embarrassed young teenager to discharge hormones. In the meantime, if it were possible, Cara had grown more charming and attractive. I hated her just as much I wanted to be her.

Flash forward to February 6, 2011, the scene of my handsome husband and I parking our car in a snow drift. Almost poetically, Cara now lived with her brother in an apartment across the street from our grade school. Though I have supposedly matured, long since traded the Harry Caray glasses for contacts, and had my braces removed a year ago, I feel a familiar panic. After two years of missed opportunities, my old friend and I are about to reunite for some Super Bowl tailgating and a long overdue gab session. What should I say? Do I look ok?

Over the course of the next 90 minutes, there are multiple moments when I wish to take myself out to the shed and kick my own ass. It’s like no time has passed. When I laugh, I instinctively cover my mouth, as I used to do before orthodontic intervention, so that no one can see my crooked teeth. I reach up multiple times to push up slipping eyeglasses that haven’t been there in 15 years. Meanwhile Cara is effortlessly vivacious, chatting with Eddie, making genuine inquiries after my family and showing real interest in my career as a writer. It was almost more than I could take.

And that’s when I realized what I am certain I knew all along. I am my own Mean Girl. I am the one who stood in front of the mirror as a primary school student, poking at the various imperfections and mistakes in breeding I saw reflected back. I still do it now. In a quick flash I recall all the efforts at self-improvement I have undertaken that I vowed would make me happier – contacts, braces, Botox, personal training sessions, extensive therapy. Yet there I was, 13 again, feeling like a loser, the last picked for the team, though no one but I enforced the segregation. All along I needed Cara to put a face to my own feelings of inferiority. I required her to be perfect so I could indulge my own petulant worthlessness.

As the hour and a half session progressed, I felt myself relax by increments. It turns out, naturally, that Cara has her own set of adult problems. Once I finally took her off the pedestal and spoke to her like a real person, I was reminded of what drew me to her as a kindergartener in the first place. I began to castigate myself for being such an insecure wingnut, but abruptly ceased when I realized this is how all the trouble began in the first place.

One of the lessons I have learned in life is that in some ways, we never grow up. We may have careers, children and adult responsibilities but “they” don’t warn you that passing through life stages will not produce a corresponding level of maturity unless you do the hard work. I have fixed all of my visible imperfections, the aesthetic weaknesses I always believed held me back. It’s time to get out of own way psychologically. It’s fitting that Cara, long ago the impetus for outward improvement, now serves as the catalyst for a desire to be less petty.