Internet Grapes

Geometry (November 8th)

Geometry (November 8th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I have been trying to look at this photograph in a sort of abstract, detached way, as if it's not a photo of me in my bathroom. As if, in the photo, I'm not standing there with what could be called a goofy somewhat self-conscious smile on my face, with wet hair, with what I can't help but see as chubby forearms and an awkward grip on the camera.

I've been trying, instead, to look at it in a couple of different ways. I've been focusing on the shapes, which I think is one reason I like the picture. I like the rectangular mirror with the rectangular shelves (big rectangle on the outside, smaller rectangles on the inside) reflected in it. I like the square tiles below the rectangular mirror, the corner of the rectangular door reflected in the left side of the mirror, the rectangular camera reflected in the rectangular mirror. The rectangles make me appreciate the softer shapes, too. The edge of a hand towel on the left, hanging from a silver ring. A little bit of the circular capiz shells attached to the candle sconce in the upper right.

And me, of course. I have almost no sharp angles.

I'm not sure why I feel a sudden surge of emotion when I write that, but I think it has something to do with how much this lack of sharp angles (inner, outer) might say about me. I am not hard edges. I am not sharp angles.

It's not just me, though, is it? We humans, we are all pretty non-geometrical. We are all pretty soft. We are pretty resilient, in so many ways, but still. You know. Handle with care.

Oh, and I said I was trying to look at in a couple of different ways, didn't I? I am trying, also, to see it as I might see it twenty years from now. As a record of who I was then (who I am now). I am almost never nearly as critical of my past selves as I am of my present one.

"(E)ver(y) (D)ay of the (Y)ear" (November 7th)

"(E)ver(y) (D)ay of the (Y)ear" (November 7th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I got there a little bit early, I thought, so I took a few pictures before I went in. It was a little bit before 9. It turned out that she was already there, at the bar, drinking wine and reading a magazine, looking pretty and happy. I don't have any idea when the last time was that I started my day before 5:47, got to work a little after 6:30, and still went out for drinks until after 11:30. I was tired, but it was good. The presentation went well - I felt prepared for it, and everyone seemed on an even keel - and once that was over, I felt so relaxed that I realized how much of my anxiety was related only to the presentation. A whole lot of it.

So I had a long but productive work day, and then I came home to my family. I talked to Geoff before he left, played with Katie and put her to bed after he left, and went to see Wendy when he returned.

I'm feeling much better.

Stop (November 6th)

Stop (November 6th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

And then there are those days when you just feel like sitting down and feeling sorry for yourself.

You know that the toddler is tired and still a little bit sick, and you know you are, too, but even when you remind yourself of these things, it doesn't really hurt any less when she fights you at every turn, won't stop crying, pushes you away, tells you she'd rather have you wait outside the car than inside the car with her. And frankly, since all she does when you're in the car is cry loudly at you, you'd rather be outside the car, too.

You know that certain people at work are moody and inconsistent, and that it doesn't have anything to do with you, but it doesn't help you feel any less anxious about the stupid presentation that you are supposed to give tomorrow.

You know that nothing is really that bad, that a good night's sleep (which you may not get tonight, since you need to get up extra early tomorrow to finish getting ready for your presentation) will make things better. You know that tomorrow is another day.

Still, you can't say you'll be sorry about the end of this one.

House of Sick (November 4th/5th)

House of Sick (November 4th/5th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Hello. Welcome to the House of Sick. Katie started with a cough and cold, and Geoff followed. Last Sunday I felt weak and achy and feverish all day, and Monday evening I started coughing. By Thursday the stuff coming out of my sinuses had blood in it, so I saw my doctor on Friday morning - she gave me an antibiotic, which seems to have had a near-immediate effect. I'm no longer in horrible pain when I swallow.

Meanwhile, Katie spent all day last Monday throwing up and feeling bad, but by Tuesday morning she was raring to go. She went back to school and was ok for Halloween (about the time my throat was really starting to hurt).

Meanwhile, my mom, who recently got over bronchitis and walking pneumonia, came up to visit us on Friday, her birthday. It was late when she got here, so we decided to save the cake until Saturday, so that Katie could share in the cake festivities.

Around that same time, Geoff started feeling bad. On Friday night he came to bed and told me he felt sick to his stomach, and then early Saturday morning he started throwing up. He figured he had food poisoning, but when my stomach started getting queasy at around 6 that night, we weren't so sure. I went to bed before 9.

I finally threw up around 11 at night, and the diarrhea lasted all through the night. This morning, not too long after we got up, Mom succumbed.

Geoff is feeling better, and has gone off to work at the church. I was feeling like I'd gotten relatively lucky with this flu thing, whatever it is, because although I'm still achy and weak, I feel well enough to take care of Katie, to laugh weakly and how pitiful we all are, to get us snacks or drinks. Geoff spent all day yesterday in bed, and Mom is in bed now.

And then I threw out something in my upper back/lower neck. I took some ibuprofen, and it's a little better (I don't feel like I have to remain prone), but FOR PETE'S SAKE. No more!

There was a brief moment last night when we did all feel well enough to sing happy birthday and sit at the table. Geoff wasn't well enough to actually eat any cake, but maybe today. As far as I know, Mom and Katie were both feeling fine when this picture was taken, so it made me laugh. Still, the picture does a good job of summing up the weekend.

So far, with regard to the flu, Katie seems ok. Please, please let her stay that way. (She is, it's true, the only one of us who had a flu shot this season.)

something completely different (November 3rd)

something completely different (November 3rd)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

When I woke up and saw that the sky was a bright shade of fuschia and the streetlights had turned into circular rainbows, I knew that things were going to start happening to me now.

The blue sky of the following day did nothing for me. "Oh, how very quaint," I said.

Randolph Street (November 2nd)

Randolph Street (November 2nd)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Some people hate to drive in Chicago, but I've never really been one of them. I don't drive to work very often these days, but if I could park for $5 a day, I'd drive to work every single day. I love driving down Lake Shore Drive - watching the sun come up or go down, seeing what color the water in the lake is today, glancing at joggers or bicyclists on the lakefront, even going past the familiar exits. Lawrence is at 4800 (one of two exits for our apartment when we got married), and Wilson at 4600 (the other of the two exits), and Montrose at 4400, and Irving Park at 4000. There's no exit at Addison (3600), so usually traffic for Cubs games backs up at the Belmont exit (3200). Fullerton at 2400 (Lincoln Park Zoo), LaSalle/North Avenue at 1600, Michigan at 1000, Chicago at 800 (where I used to exit to pick up friends at the law school dorm).

When I drive to work now, I exit at Wacker, and I take Wacker to Clark, which is the street my building is on.  Unless I'm running late, and unless traffic is really, really terrible, I pretty much enjoy the whole thing. (I don't feel the same way about the interstate expressways.)

When I was a little girl, maybe 5 or so years old, I wanted to be a bus driver. A lady bus driver, since that's what I would be - a lady. I thought it would be great to drive around all day, in charge of that huge vehicle, taking people where they needed to go.

I don't hold any illusions about driving a bus anymore, but I do still like to drive. I still like the feeling of being in charge of the big machine I'm in, taking me where I need to go. I wouldn't have to take the Wacker exit to Clark to get to work. I could keep going down Lake Shore Drive to Randolph, and then head east on Randolph, instead. Or, if I was really going to shake things up, I could not even head to work at all. If I wanted to, I could just keep driving. I could go down past Buckingham Fountain and the Field Museum and McCormick Place. I could drive around in circles. I could stop, or go, whenever, and wherever, I decided to turn the wheel and hit the gas.

Just knowing that I could do that makes me feel a little bit powerful. Never mind the fact that so far, if I drive south on a weekday morning, I end up taking that Wacker exit and driving myself to work. If there comes a day when I just absolutely can't take the thought of doing that? Well, then. Who knows where I might end up?

November (NaBloPoMo)

I decided a week or so ago that I'd like to keep trying to do this one-post-a-day thing through the month of November.  (One month at a time.)

Then I fell off the post-a-day wagon a little bit - we went out of town last Thursday (we went to Indianapolis to go to the Children's Museum with our friends Tracy & Tim & their son Xander, then we went to visit my dad & stepmom & brother in Kokomo) and got back Saturday night.  Promptly upon our arrival back home, I started to get sick.  Sunday I was in my pajamas all day.  Monday I felt better.  Tuesday I started losing my voice, but we went trick or treating anyway.  Today was the worst day so far, even though by the end of the day I started to feel like maybe I am getting better again.  Still, through all of that, I did manage to go back and post a photo on Flickr from each of the days I'd missed, even though I didn't always manage a post here. 

You can see the final version of photos from the October Photo Project here, if you're interested.   And here is something interesting - as I watch the slideshow of those photos, I realize a couple of things.  First, that almost every day was a struggle.  Almost every day, I had to force myself to take photos even when I didn't feel inspired to take them.  Almost every day, I forced myself to pick a photo even though there was not one about which I thought, "I love this!"  And second, now that I look back at the set, I think, "Huh.  I am proud of these.  I am proud of that work." 

So for obvious reasons I'd still like to do the post-a-day during November thing, and I've even signed up for NaBloPoMo.  I'm planning do the same thing I did in October - post one photo a day on Flickr (my favorite picture taken that day), then blog the photo here, and write some words to go along with it.  I tell myself that any words, and any number of words, will do.  The goal here is just to keep going, keep producing, keep posting.

Today's problem, though, is that I didn't take a single picture.  I didn't leave the house all day, and I am just bleh.  Awful, in fact.  My throat hurts so badly that I have to wince and hunch my shoulders every time I swallow, to steel myself for how badly it's going to hurt.  I could go take some pictures now, around the house, and post one of them just for posting's sake, but that's what I already did here:

And here:

So this is all just my long-winded way of saying hi.  Thanks for reading in October.  There will be more in November.  And almost all of it will be more interesting than this. 

Snow Princess (October 31st)

Snow Princess (October 31st)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Katie was more excited about ringing people's doorbells than about getting candy. At the first house, the man told her to take some candy. She took a package of sweet tarts or something else small, and he smiled. "Take another one," he said. She looked at him, paused, put the sweet tarts back, and started to reach for something else. "No, you can have both, we told her. "You can have more than one!"

She got pretty good at saying "trick or treat" loud enough so that people could hear her, and some of her "thank you's" were even spontaneous. Person after person complimented her beautiful costume.

By the end of our trick or treating, she was reaching for candy without having to be prompted, and taking more than one piece. It was near the end of the night - everyone was urging her to take more.

She was pleased about the candy, but what she really loved were the doorbells. Whenever someone came to the door before we'd rung the bell, she headed for the bell, anyway. "She'd really love to ring your doorbell," we told them, and they always told her to go ahead. A second or two after putting her candy in her Elmo basket, she was grabbing one of our hands, urging us on toward "another doorbell."

Tonight brings Geoff and I to another rite of passage: first time to filch candy from our child's Halloween loot. And mighty tasty, too.

River (October 25th)

River (October 25th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

I drove to work (again) yesterday so that I could drive home after a post-work meeting with an attorney from Minneapolis. As we walked over to the restauraunt, I could smell steaks in the air. I couldn't stay for dinner; I had to be home around 7. At about 6:30, I walked back to the parking garage and put my ticket in the automated machine. The machine, which speaks in a creepy and obviously computer-generated voice (rather than a recorded one), informed me that my parking fee was "thirty six hundred fifty dollars." Yes, that's right. The screen confirmed it. I would taken a picture of THAT except that I was too terrified to do anything but push the cancel button. I took my ticket out of that machine and put it in the neighboring one, and it told me that my parking fee was twenty dollars. Twenty dollars for ten hours of parking has never seemed like such a bargain.

The Chicago Marathon was last weekend. On Monday morning I was sitting at a red light when a group of pedestrians wearing marathon medallions around their necks crossed in front of me. I guess they noticed that the light was about to change, so they started to hurry. When they tried to pick up the the pace, they moved like stiff senior citizens. With very painful arthritis. I smiled at them, and the one who noticed me smiled back.

Those are my two little Chicago stories from this week. That Chicago River sure is pretty sometimes, isn't it?

Molly (October 24th)

Molly (October 24th)
Originally uploaded by jessamynnorth.

Most people in our neighborhood are afraid of Molly; we're not sure exactly why, except that apparently Molly looks enough like a Rottweiler to some people (and those same people are frightened of Rottweilers) that they will cross the street or pick up their children or stop in an alley to wait until we've gone by, so that they don't have to share the sidewalk with Molly.

Sometimes we go for a walk around the block with Molly and Katie. Katie rides her tricycle, but she also wants to "walk" Molly herself, so Geoff loops Molly's leash around the front bar of Katie's tricycle, and Molly walks while Katie pedals. Mostly, Katie pedals herself, but there are a couple of places where the sidewalk is too steep or too bumpy for Katie to make it past on her own pedal power. When that happens, Molly hunkers down and pulls.

They both seem to love it.

One day, while Molly and Katie did their joint walk around the block, we passed a woman and her child. The woman's eyes got big, and she veered away. "Oooh, boy, that dog looks vicious!" the woman said.

I looked at Molly, slowly pulling our toddler around on her tricycle, wagging her tail.

I didn't see it.