Sweet Former-Home Chicago

Tessa, 

I'm all growed up.  I know this because I was sent to a conference, with business cards.  I think the idea is that I'm to hand them out to other grown ups.  The thing is, it's the Covenant Church; having business cards at that convention was like having oars in desert.  It's cool you've got them, but you certainly don't need them.  Everyone's related, or you graduated with them, or their parents went to North Park and made a sacred pact to get pregnant at the same time and then send their children to North Park, where they would fall in love and continue the cycle.  Business cards?  Please.  

 The staircase at the Chicago Cultural Center.  Marble mosaics on everything.  It's easy to see why they don't make 'em like this anymore, but I kind of wonder how they made them like this in the first place.  I remember coming to this place on our class trip in the eighth grade.  A trillion chips of stone and tile, spelling out all the great authors and thinkers.  I recognized some of them.  Defoe, he wrote Robinson Crusoe.  Kipling wrote the Jungle Book, which was remarkably free of talking animals.  Disney lied to me.  But maybe that's why Kipling was up there and Walt Disney wasn't. 

It always impressed me that even the places people couldn't see with the naked eye were gilded little masterpieces.  Pretty sure this place predates the zoom lens, so why go out of the way to make the mural reach to the ceiling?  Must have been an excess of Tiffany's glass laying around.  "Might as well use it all, Lou."

Ah, the hotdish-laden feast of Sällskapet.  Everyone said "Hi."  You were missed.  All the kids are so big.  It's only been six months, but they keep growing like we can just move the ceiling or something.  Jackie hugged me, Christopher punched me.  People were glad to hear we're doing well, which is what I told them. I suppose we'll have to make sure and do well now, or I'll be a liar.  I don't think doing well is out of the realm of possibility.  Doing adequately makes me happy enough most days, but adequate never changed the world.  

Harriette sends her greetings.  She hasn't grown at all since we left; still the same canon-ball-with-legs.  Our friends are great.  Some of them fed me, others let me sleep on their floor.  It was good to see them all, but it made me realize how great it was to have all of us in the same place for those years.  It was a hard stretch; everyone poor, carving next month's rent out of bad jobs.  But we won't look back on it like that.  We'll look back at all of us, younger and healthy and able to stay up till all hours of the night eating and drinking wine and cracking jokes.  No mortgage or kids or out-of-town conferences.  Just a bright flash of unburdened revelry that came before all of the things that will come after this. 

I Heart You.

An Argument in Favor of Health Insurance

Tessa, 

Do they give out Oscars for videos that are only 43 seconds long?  They will this year.  My back still hurts from this, which shouldn't surprise you, since I haven't stopped whining about it since I finished skidding. I'm definitely getting older.  I don't have the whole "wisdom" thing that's supposed to come with that, but I do have the aches and pains bit.  

Hung out with Peter last night.  He's still fighting the reality of his newly-acquired singleness, and its tough to watch him feel so beat up.  He wants so badly to take care of someone who doesn't want the help, and that's a biting feeling.  Everyone goes through it; its a right of passage.  But you still want to wrap the people you love in bubble wrap some days.  

Other days, you want to move all your earthly possessions into a new home.  Maybe "want" is not what I meant.  Maybe "have to because your landlord hasn't paid his mortgage since Reagan was in office" was what I meant to say.  Sure, we're bracing for a new opportunity: somewhere out there is an empty house that's going to be our first home.  But it sort of feels like we're always bracing for something, and I am growing weary of setting up camp again, only to find out train tracks have been laid straight through the middle of the tent.

An upside is inevitable, for Peter and for new home buyers, but there is work to be done in reaching it.  Thanks for sticking it out with me.  Ahead lies an era of quietude, when we'll sit on a porch swing and ask ourselves whether we put the hostas in the right place.  I'm looking forward to that.

I Heart You.

Frozen Solid Weekend, 2010

 You didn't give me a camera; you gave the gift of hours wasted in happy editing while I ought to be doing something else.  And that's what loving wives do.  This is Frozen Solid, 2011.

Tessa, 

Got a call from my Jr. High principal yesterday.  His assistant, actually.  "Hi, David.  This is Steve Groen's assistant calling."  Whoooosh.  I heard nothing more she said.  Suddenly I was 13 years old, sitting in a chair strategically designed to give Steve Groen a height advantage over whichever student had earned their way into his office this time.

Today, I was that kid.  I was that kid most of the time.  3 tardies earned you detention.  That rule alone was enough to award me the lion's share of the available detentions, but today I was in for trying to start a club.  It was a club that, for a small admission fee ($20) allowed you into the group.  We had a dozen members.  Once in, you had the chance to guess who'd win all the NFL games for the upcoming season.  The member with the most correct guesses won a bunch of the admission money.  Me and my buddy Matt pocketed a healthy share for coming up with the idea.  Everyone was happy.  Especially the younger kids, who would have paid $20 just to sit with the older kids at lunch.

To Mr. Groen, this club was less of a club, and more of combination gambling/swindling outfit.  I was not so much Co-Chair of the Football Appreciation Club, as I was "totally out of line, young man."  It sounded so much worse when he said it.  It always sounded worse coming out of his mouth than it did inside my head.  And so that was detention #1 in a limited collectible series of 47; all signed by me, and Mr. Groen, and my parents.  My mom instituted a 1 Detention = 1 Hour of Vacuuming rule, and we had the cleanest house that year.

"Mr. Groen heard you had taken a job with Bethlehem Covenant, and was hoping you could speak to the kids at chapel next month."  I told her that I was responsible for most of Mr. Groen's grey hairs, and that I seriously doubted he wanted me back in the building.  She laughed, and I realized she thought I was joking.  Sure, I can speak at chapel; I probably owe the guy that much.  47 hours of detention, absolved by 20 minutes of every man's worst fear.  Sigh.  He told me once that I'd look back and wish I'd behaved myself more often.  I just didn't think this would be the reason.

Northern Exposure

Tessa, 

It's cold outside, and I have been cold all day.

In bed I was at the soft, comfortable center of the universe.  Then morning spit me out into the icy blue day and I have been cold ever since.

Writing about the weather usually signals that the author has nothing big going on in his or her life, much as talking about the weather with a stranger in the elevator means you have nothing else to offer them but awkward silence.  But other times it's just bleeping cold outside.  Cold enough that Katy Perry put a whole shirt on.  Cold enough that the weather report in the paper just shows a picture of an Eskimo holding a gun to his head.

I can do this.  In an age of remote car starters, heated boots, and North Face fleece, I stand a decent chance of seeing next spring.  What I might never understand, is how people settled these parts before Thinsulate-lined boxers.  Why Minnesota, unless you have no knowledge of Florida?  My only thought is that they came in the Summer, and then the snow trapped them in.  I know that's what happened to us.

I Heart You.

What A Long, Strange, House-On-Fire Trip It's Been

Tessa, 

Actually, the title of this post should be "Thanksgiving fire damages Bartlett home".  That's the headline the Daily Herald went with, and who am I to ague with the nation's 75th largest newspaper?  Here's the article text:

Bartlett firefighters stopped a Thanksgiving Day fire at a single-family home Thursday before it rendered the home uninhabitable.

The fire department was called to the home on the 500 block of Harbor Terrace at 3:58 p.m. in regards to a possible chimney fire.

After discovering light smoke on the residence's second floor and in the attic, firefighters determined fire had extended from the fireplace flue into the exterior wall.

The first crews to arrive got into the attic to extinguish the blaze there, while additional crews went to the roof to assist with ventilation and bring the remaining fire under control.

Firefighters are continuing their investigation into the exact cause of the blaze, which caused an estimated $30,000 in damage to the house and another $5,000 to its contents.

Hanover Park firefighters assisted Bartlett at the scene, while crews from Algonquin, Bloomingdale and Carpentersville moved to standby at Bartlett's fire stations.

Why didn't the paper mention the part about you smelling the fire before even the dog noticed?  Or the part about me noticing the smoke in the attic, and then crawling into that smoke-filled attic, like a perfect example of the idiot, what-not-to-do kid in a fire safety video.  Plus, they originally spelled it "Alquonquin".  (Really, there's a whole essay here somewhere about the demise modern print media, the kicker being that none of us ever even read the printed version of this story.)

What a helpless feeling, to stand outside the house, wrapped in a coat, watching smoke lisp out of the attic.  You can't leave and you can't go help.  You can only pray the flames lose and lose quickly.  There are sirens and a ladder truck, and you think about how closely the scene around you resembles an insurance commercial.  But we all made it out safely, reminded again of what we're truly thankful for.  And that is the lesson sitcoms have taught us to learn.

In any event, I wouldn't want to stand outside a burning house with anyone else.  Unless that other person had the ability to instantly put the fire out.  In that case it just makes sense to go with the superhero.

I Heart You.

No-Shave November

Tessa,

Just in case you were wondering what you missed by deciding not to attend opening weekend of the 2010 deer hunting season:

Oh, you weren't wondering?  Then these will really bore you.

Ok, that last one is boring to everyone.  I don't really know if it warranted photographing in the first place, but it's on the internet now, so, oh well.  How about my beard in that first shot though?  Not bad, huh?  Between that and the plaid, I'm really channeling the ancestors.  And I suspect you're probably wishing my ancestors had been bankers or bakers or something more clean-shaven and less hands-in-the-pants-ish.  That's fair, but there's a fat lot we can do about that at this point, so flannel it is.

Also, what's the difference between plaid and flannel?  I really have no clue.  I think it's one of those square-rectangle relationships.  Like flannel is always plaid, but plaid doesn't have to be flannel.  Either way, I use them interchangeably.   Never had anyone say, "Actually, that's not a flannel shirt, it's plaid."  Then again, I suspect that people who wear flannel/plaid are less likely to be quibble about fabric than most.  They've got wrenches to turn, nails to hammer.

Okay, well if these photos whet your appetite for the frozen Northwoods, you're more than welcome to join.  I'm sure Anthropologie has something in blaze orange.

I Heart You.