Travel

I was supposed to travel to Chicago tonight...at 9:55pm. Flights at 9:00am are already delayed over 2 hours, and I just received an alert that they may be canceling my flight. The horrendous ice storm hitting Chicago is supposed to last through Tuesday evening - the time at which I was hoping to fly home. Needless to say, I have just canceled my trip.

And that amazingly annoying hotel is making me pay for a night anyway. I love that. Really do.

SEVEN

Some people call me Dusty.

A few of you that know me VERY well have heard this one, but I find comfort in documenting it anyway – after all, it is funny.

I was away on business with a group of people I often traveled with. We were a fairly close group, having traveled together a bit, meaning not very much embarrassed any of us.

I left my lotion at home, as I tend to do on practically every trip I have ever taken. That along with sweatshirts seem to be a complete mental block when packing. So, I found a bath and body works, bought some lotion, and headed back to the hotel.

I slathered on the lotion, not paying much attention to it, and headed out to meet my colleagues so that we could begin work on a cut-over that evening. About two minutes into our walk over to the office, one of them noticed that I was sparkling. A lot. A bit like, say...oh, A STRIPPER! I had apparently purchased glittery lotion and was COVERED IN IT FROM HEAD TO TOE. I didn’t really understand the whole “stripper dust” thing at this point, but was told in detail exactly what I looked like. This was right before I ended up spending the evening with executives that I am sure wondered what my moonlighting job was.

Because I didn't have time to go shower, change and come back, I had to spend the rest of the night looking like a girl “trying to work her way through law school”

To this day one of the guys still calls me dusty. It suppose is endearing in its own way…

SIX

I had a fake ID, and used it.

When I was 16 a friend of mine and I got fake IDs. I actually used her cousin’s drivers license which was still valid and looked enough like me that I never got questioned about it…not even once.

ID in hand, we took the train to Chicago. We were spending the night at a hotel on Lakeshore Blvd (she was 18 or 19) and we went down to the lounge / bar at the hotel after a day of shopping and goofing around. I didn’t drink, but we sat in there and listened to Dizzy Gillespie and his band play for hours.

After the band finished they came over to our table and sat down with us – talking, asking questions, most likely doubting we were old enough to be there. We ended up hanging out with one of the band members for quite a while just talking. At one point he played the most beautiful song for us – I wish I could remember it now. I wish I could remember his name. I do know that we heard the song released a year or so later. That made me feel great, privileged to have been one of the first to hear that song.

Chance, Tolerance and Fate

Teenage girls want to fall in love. They want to be swept off of their feet and carried away into a life of perfect, surreal happiness. They want someone to be in charge, yet not control them. They want a boy that is sensitive, yet rugged. They want the high school quarterback, but they want him to secretly write poetry professing their undying love. They want someone with high ambitions, but who will be happy hanging out doing nothing, ever.

Teenage girls have such high expectations of teenage boys, that I cannot see any way for a boy between the ages of 15 and 19 to live up to a girl’s expectations. How do any of them end up with a boyfriend…ever?

In reality, we all want to fall in love don’t we? We want to be wanted…we want to feel completely comfortable with someone. We want to share our dreams, fears, feelings with someone else out there. What changes as we grow older? Are we more in touch with reality (I hope so), or do we just decide to settle for what seems to be an ok mate (I hope not)?

I think about this sometimes. Do you think there is one person out there for everyone, or do you think relationships are about learning to be with someone else…no destiny or fate involved? Do you believe that any two people could be together if they just wanted it enough? Or do you think there are good and bad couples?

I don’t believe in destiny. Or fate. I don’t think there is only one person for each person out there. I do think that there are definitely wrong people out there for others – that some people just shouldn’t be together. I am not sure how I find that contradiction in thought valid, but it is really how I feel.

I have had the experience of being married to someone that seemed right at the time. And that marriage…deteriorated and fell apart. I grew up and I guess become tired of being told what to do. I didn’t want to be controlled and didn’t want that father-figure type of husband ruling my life. I also didn’t want to be in a situation where we were both sticking around “for the kids” or because it was easier to ignore the issues rather than deal with them.

I have also had the experience of being married to a wonderful partner…someone who enjoys being with me simply how I am. He doesn’t try to change me, and doesn’t try to mold or shape my dreams. We are both just in this for the pure love and enjoyment of it – and it feels good.

I guess all of this is just to think through how far people seem to come from dating years to finally finding a good relationship. And I wonder how much is up to chance, tolerance, or fate.

FIVE

I was in a car accident the first week I had my drivers license.

I didn’t get my drivers license until I was 17, I think. Maybe even 18. My mother wouldn’t teach me to drive, and couldn’t afford drivers education, so I had to wait. I was quite possibly the LAST person in my grade to be bestowed with the ever-coveted license.

The week after passing the “big test” my mother went out of town with a friend. She left the car with me. And I wrecked it.

There were a few people in the car with me and we were following one of my other friends. The girl in the passenger seat flipped her leg up on the dash, and announced that she had sexy legs. I of course looked over, because, well… god only knows why at this point. We were all laughing and having fun, and I guess the whole paying attention while driving thing seemed too much to handle.

When the girl in front of us stopped, I was looking at Annette’s “sexy legs” and ended up ramming right into her. She didn’t have insurance, and therefore didn’t want to report the accident. I didn’t want it on my record, so I agreed. Her car was pretty much untouched. My car was a mess. I had moved the whole engine back about 6 inches into the car and had smashed up the front quite a bit.

I remember not wanting to tell my mother. I tried to find a way to borrow the money to get the car fixed and have it done before she got back from her trip…however there was no accomplishing that. Even after finding the money, there was no way they could get the parts and fix it in time…so I had to tell my mom what happened. She took it well. Better than I would have expected. But I never forgot that feeling of doom that overcame me when the whole thing happened…

FOUR

I sued my dad.

My parents were divorced when I was three years old. I know only one side of the story – my mother’s side. According to my mother, my dad – after getting married and going through the arduous process of adopting two children (my brother and I) – decided he was not ready to be a husband or a father and wanted “out” of everything. My dad, an airline pilot and fairly well off, took his money and his toys and left us on our own. My mom, a nurse, struggled to provide for us.

I believe he sent some support money at first, but that soon stopped coming. I recall my mother looking for him, contacting his parents, trying to get financial assistance, but didn’t have much luck. Instead, she sold our house and we moved into subsidized housing in order to survive. I don’t recall this being very traumatic or horrible, it was actually kind of cool moving to apartments that had a park and a ton of kids. I am sure my mother felt differently.

My mother moved from nursing to real estate to nursing administration, to recruiting, to medical sales, and eventually back to nursing. She worked nights, long hours, crazy shifts – whatever it took to provide for us. I doubt she made ¼ of what I do today at her best, and she definitely worked harder than I ever have.

Immediately after my mom died (and by immediate I mean literally within weeks) my brother and I hired a lawyer and sued my dad for back child support. We won easily and he was forced to pay for all of the past back support he failed to provide when we were growing up. We ended up settling for a cash amount instead of garnishing wages and dragging it out, but as I understand it, the amount was fairly financially devastating to him.

And also, I donated most of my money to the American Cancer Society, just to stick it to him even more. I am mean like that. I cannot say that I am proud of what I did, but I think my dad needed to learn a few things, and maybe, just maybe, this opened his eyes a bit. Perhaps not though – as he really is an ass.

My Solitude

I am out of town this week in Chicago. It is snowing here, and it is cold…very reminiscent of my childhood growing up south-east of Lake Michigan. The cool crisp air feels familiar, like an old friend. And although I prefer the warmth of home, this is nice in its own way.

Walking back from dinner I was thinking about the weather, the trees, the hills, and how I never noticed any of it when I was growing up in this area. I assumed everywhere else was better than here, that there was no beauty in my hometown and surrounding areas. I am beginning to realize how wrong I was.

THREE

I do not remember one single day that my mother was married to my stepfather.

My mother had been dating Joe for quite a while. He had two kids, a girl and a boy around the same age as my brother and I. We all played together well and enjoyed hanging out together. I was in second grade, I think. Maybe third. I can’t remember to be honest. And I guess that is the whole point of this.

I remember many days before they got married. I remember carving pumpkins at Halloween. I remember having dinners and going places together. I remember several activities that we did together – but this was all BEFORE Joe and my mom married.

I don’t remember the wedding, and I was even in it. I don’t remember him and his kids moving in. I don’t remember one single moment that they were in our house, or how long they were there.

I don’t remember my mother getting divorced. I don’t remember them moving out. I simply. Don’t. Remember. My mother told me that they had a very difficult, and short marriage. She said that Joe was an alcoholic and had quite a temper. I look at the old pictures now, and he looked like such a handsome, gentle, genuine man, and yet that is not the picture my mom painted of him. I wish I could remember something about that time of my life. But I cannot. Why is that?

TWO

I was always embarrassed about the house I lived in as a child.

The house where I grew up is now gone. Thank GOD.

I hated that house. Well, not as much the house as the whole neighborhood. My mother purchased it around 1979 for a VERY SMALL amount of money. It needed an incredible amount of work, and probably an alarm system, or a squad of body guards for its inhabitants. Scott Street, the one right behind us, had regular shootings reported on the news (and heard from our home). It was a very, very unsafe neighborhood full of poverty, however it was a home, and that is what we all really wanted.

We had been living in subsidized apartments for a quite a few years, and I wanted more than anything to live in a house. Or someplace that wasn’t known as “where the poor kids lived.” We had tried living in a “household” with another family from our church, but that was a huge disaster, worthy of its own story.

I remember seeing the house for the first time. It was a horrible, terrible, no good, very bad mess. It had been a Notre Dame rental home and was in the worst shape I have yet to this day seen. We purchased the furniture along with the house, and moved right in. Everything was old, broken, and needed to either be fixed or replaced. It was steps away from unlivable.

We moved in with the very few things my mom had kept (piano, her bedroom set, a china cabinet and a dining room table), and began working on the house. Keep in mind that I was around 11 and my brother was 14. We were YOUNG, and yet we were in charge of stripping wallpaper (some rooms had up to 7 layers of this awful stuff), painting, cleaning. We gutted the kitchen and added cabinets, a sink, a refrigerator, dishwasher, stove. I personally knocked down two walls to remove a huge closet in the living room, in order to make room for… well, living I guess.

We spent a few years just getting the house livable if my memory is correct. And we lived there the whole time. My mom helped as much as she could, but was having trouble with her shoulder (which we later found out was cancer eating her body) and couldn’t do as much as she wanted. It was never NICE, but it was much better after we completed all of the improvements. We still had very very old and abused furniture, but it was in better shape after all of our hard work. This made it only slightly less of an embarrassment.

I wonder if I would have dated more, been more outgoing, been a different person if I had not been so wrapped up in what I didn’t have? I know I would have been different if I had grown up as wealthy as the other kids in my school (we were bussed to the ‘rich’ part of town). But I am not sure it would have been for the better.

All of these years later I am sure that the experience gained working on that house has served me well. I am not afraid to undertake a task that appears insurmountable. I am not afraid to get my hands dirty, to do things for myself. I enjoy working on our house when I have the time and I have my past to thank for that I guess.

Buggers, Butts, and Farts

Why is it that my husband and my boys find the most disgusting and annoying things to be the funniest?