Day 2

There’s a poster up in my supervisor’s cubicle that reads “what am I doing here?” For a second I thought maybe it was some kind of office humor, but then read the smaller print – it’s about church, and god - the bigger “here” in “what am I doing here?” 

I started this temp job yesterday. Before I was allowed to walk past the reception desk I had to read ten pages regarding nondisclosure of information, appropriate working behavior, and signed three different papers saying I wouldn’t give away company secrets.

The office looks brand new, it’s on the 17^th floor of a high-rise downtown, and it takes two elevators to get there from the ground floor.  The furniture is mod 60’s style, and reminds me a little of Mad Men after they move into their new offices. There is a huge flat screen TV installed at reception, and three more on the walls of a circular break room area that looks like Diane Keaton’s house in Sleeper. All of the TVs are muted, not even with subtitles to read, just silent home and garden shows and CNN stories, all day long.  The kitchen area has an enormous silver double door refrigerator, and there’s free coffee – some in big containers, some in those little pod things that make you one cup at a time in different flavors. 

It is a remarkably quiet office. The only sounds I hear from my cubicle are of people typing, filling their cups with water and coffee in the corner behind me, and talking on the phone. It’s like being on a spaceship, a really quiet spaceship, like the one in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There was nothing in my cubicle when I arrived except for a brand new ergonomically designed chair and a computer. I asked the receptionist for a stapler, and some staples to go with it.  She unlocked a clean, brightly lit, organized supply closet, handed me a stapler, reached into a box of staples, and removed one thin row. When I asked for thumbtacks the next day she opened the same supply closet, pointed to an open container of thumbtacks and said “be very, very careful,” in a voice generally reserved for three year-olds. 

This is an end-of-the-line job for me. I’ve interviewed for so many jobs I’ve stopped counting. At one point this spring I was up for six different positions at once; none of them were offered to me. This is the third temp agency I’ve signed up with, and the first that has found me work, so I accepted the assignment when it was offered to me. 

At home, the letters Y E S are strung across the kitchen wall. They are old movie house marquee letters. Each one is dark red, 12 inches high, weather-beaten, with a groove on the side that hangs onto the marquee. With so much rejection, it’s nice to see YES sometimes. 

My husband asked me how my first day on the assignment went.  “Okay,” I replied, “I almost cried a couple times.” I can’t help it - I know I’m not the only one going through this right now, and I know it could be worse, but sometimes it’s hard to get excited about it could be worse. It feels ridiculous that I can’t pay my half of the mortgage, or that I haven’t paid one cent of our credit card for months. This stage of my life was supposed to be over decades ago, and as humiliating as it is to be doing temp work, it makes me feel better to have an income – a tiny income, but at least something to defray the cost of my existence. “The office is really, really quiet,” I continued, “it’s circular like a spaceship so it’s hard to find my cube, but I guess that’s better than rows and rows of cubicles. The person I’m replacing has the same last name as me so everyone thinks we’re related. I met her. There was a cake thing for her in the afternoon - she got promoted. She said she’s worked there for 8 years, and to consider this a way to get a full time position because they’re looking to replace her, and that it’s a good place to work, so… that’s nice.”  

Today was my second day, it was better than the first. I can find my cubicle, and I have an ID badge so I don’t have to sign in at the security desk every time I walk in and out of the building. When I came home the red marquee letters were strewn across the kitchen floor, one of the screws holding up the wire they were resting on had come loose from the wall.  They lay scattered around a pile of cat puke that I had discovered that morning and covered with a paper towel because I didn’t have time to clean it up before leaving the house. Later, one of the cats took a crap on the bathmat. My husband cleaned up the crap, and I cleaned the puke and put the letters back on the kitchen wall, hanging them on thumbtacks instead of wire. They’re off center and misaligned, but it’s nice to see YES sometimes, even if it’s a little off-kilter.

Rhinestone

So it’s come to this: I’m preparing to interview for a temp job; when I used to do temp work, not that long ago, I met with someone from a temp agency, and was placed at assignments sight unseen.  Now, more than three years after getting laid off and looking for work, I’m submitting to the possibility of being rejected for temporary work. My contact at the agency sends me a humiliating email telling me what to do: Please wear a suit, it says, as if I’m new to this, as if I’m a high school senior going on her first interview, as if I’ve never seen the inside of an office before. 

The definition of insanity, in a quote attributed to Albert Einstein, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. I’ve been doing the same thing since June of 2009; I look at job postings, send a cover letter and resume to ones that look promising, go on interviews, sometimes get called back for a second interview, sometimes make it to the final two candidates, and never get offered the job.

I sleep poorly the night before; I wake up tired, bleary, and depressed.  I go through the morning ablutions of any regular working woman, and make my way to the brown line at 7:30am. As the train makes its way toward the loop, it gets crowded. It’s been so long since I’ve had a regular commute that it’s strange to see all the working stiffs on the train engaged in behavior that has become alien to me: people from around the city have gotten up early, showered, fixed their hair, put on a suit – maybe a tie, and gotten on the train where they sit or stand in a mute, deadened state, interacting only with their iPhones, iPads, and the odd newspaper. They get off downtown, walk into air-conditioned buildings and spend the day pretending that they don’t know any curse words.  I get off at Adams and Wabash and join the streams of people walking down the stairs moving urgently towards their destination. It looks like a carefully choreographed piece of performance art, or a salmon spawn. 

I find the building, and make my way to the security desk, where I get a temporary ID and pass through the corral that separates the public from a bank of elevators, and make my way to the 14^th floor.  Halfway through the second interview (there will be three in total) I’ve heard enough to I know I won’t get this job. As it turns out, I’ve been interviewing for a personal assistant position, but the description was for a development assistant position, and in retrospect it’s clear that I’ve answered some key questions incorrectly. I make my descent to the first floor and call the agency, as per my emailed instructions.  “Do you think you’d accept if they offered you the job?” they ask.  “Yes, I would,” I say, even though I know this won’t happen.

I go to Einstein’s Bagels to get coffee and something to eat, and as I walk in the door the theme to “Sanford and Son” plays on the audio system, like some kind of cosmic commentary on my life. I order a bagel and a small coffee, and the woman at the register recommends that I get the bagel and medium coffee combo because it’s cheaper.  It saves me about a dollar and a half, and it makes me feel protected somehow that this woman I’ve never met is looking after my financial well-being.  I sit at a table and pull out my Hallmark thank you notes from my purse, the cheapest kind available, $4 for a pack of 10, and my book of stamps.  I’ve been on roughly 30 in-person interviews and 10 phone interviews since I was laid off in 2009, and I like to think that my contribution to the greeting card industry and the US Postal Service has made a dent in the economic viability of both entities. I used to pore over every word in a thank you note and keep a copy of the text for future reference; now it comes out like so many prepackaged Hallmark messages: “Dear [name], thank you for taking the time to meet with me today regarding the open [job] position.  I enjoyed our conversation, and hope to have the opportunity to discuss this opportunity further. Sincerely…”

I’m downtown so rarely these days, and it’s usually for some humiliating interview, so I make sure to build in other, more practical reasons to be there so it doesn’t feel like a total waste of train fare and effort when I ultimately get rejected, and I’d noticed a couple days earlier that one of the rhinestones in my eyeglasses had fallen out.  They’re LaFont frames; an extravagant purchase, they are by far the most expensive thing that I wear, excluding my engagement ring.  It took me a year to convince myself to buy them. They sit perfectly on the bridge of my nose, making my face appear neither too large nor too small, they are feather light, and I’ve owned them for about four years. My last trip downtown was for a farewell lunch for a former coworker who’s relocating to San Francisco, and I sat silent as my former colleagues caught up on their work lives. Dan talked about his upcoming job change, and spoke in disparaging terms about his current supervisor, who didn’t make a counteroffer when he told her that he’d been offered a job elsewhere, securing his opinion of her and of his current workplace.  It was like listening to aliens talk about alien things dressed in alien clothes; I had nothing to add to the conversation. My built-in practical reason for being downtown that day was to visit the optician who’d filled the prescription for me.  He couldn’t help with my missing rhinestone, but gave me the business card of someone who works in the Jewelers Building at 5 South Wabash, and recommended that I try there. 

Thank you notes written, coffee and bagel consumed, I got up and made my way to South Wabash.  I rode the ancient, creaking elevator in the Jewelers Building to the eleventh floor and walked into the wrong studio – an expensive looking, brightly lit establishment that specialized in watches.  They weren’t sure they could help me, and I’d have to leave the eyeglasses with them if I wanted their expertise.  I thanked them and left with my eyeglasses in hand.  As I approached the elevator again I saw the place listed on the business card – Danny & Debbie Jewelers, it was tucked behind the elevator bank in a moldering two room studio with a view of an alley.  In the back room, a man in his late 50s or early 60s who must have been Danny worked on a piece of jewelry, in the front room dusty display cases that were mostly empty housed a few pairs of silver earrings, and a plate with the Aztec sun calendar hung on one wall.  I explained to a dark-haired woman who must have been Debbie what I needed, and she went to a shelf stacked with boxes of rhinestones.  She pulled one down and Danny joined her in poring over them.  They spoke to each other in Spanish, and I tried to understand them. Debbie referred to Danny as “Papa,” and I heard him use the word “chiquita,” which I’ve only heard in reference to bananas.  I made a mental note to look it up.  “Esta, papa,” she said, holding a tiny purple rhinestone in a pair of tweezers. Danny affixed the rhinestone into my eyeglass frames, told me not to wear them for a few hours, and retreated into the back room.  I packed the eyeglasses into my bag, and pulled my wallet out, but Debbie made no move to write up an invoice or ask for payment.  “What do I owe you?” I asked.  “Oh, like, a dollar,” she said.  

On the train ride home I reflected on the events of the morning: for less than half of what it cost for me to ride the train downtown for my useless interview, two people worked earnestly to replace a tiny rhinestone that only I knew was missing. A few days later I would get a phone call from the temp agency, which I would let go to voicemail.  I played it back, and missed the first few seconds because I was fumbling for the speakerphone button.  “…great news” the voice on the message said, but the intonation was flat.  I rewound to the beginning and heard the phrase in its entirety: “Unfortunately I’m not calling with great news…”  

I’ve been unsuccessfully trying to find a job for three years, but it only took a minute for Danny and Debbie to find a rhinestone for me.  The color isn’t an exact match, but only I know which rhinestone it is.  I like the fact that it doesn’t match perfectly; it reminds me of the small dignities that still exist in the world.

The Scavenger to Capitalism

My supervisor at the children's museum asked me if I wanted to end the assignment a week early so I could have time off before my full-time job started. I said I'd had plenty of time off, and we decided to take my last week (which is only Monday-Wednesday) on a day-by-day basis and see how much work was left to be done.

Over the weekend I attended CPR training at my new job, and was so taken by the fact that I'll be able to walk to work - in a part of Chicago that's so pretty it doesn't even look like itself, that I was loathe to get out of bed Monday morning to make the shlep down to Navy Pier. I told myself Monday would be my last day, but there was enough work left to bring me back Tuesday, and Wednesday too. I could have just punked out, but they'd been so nice to me there (they even gave me two trays of miniature cupcakes on Administrative Professionals day, can you believe it?), and it's always good to network with people who might be able to help you out down the road, so I came in for the full three days.

Wednesday morning I dragged myself out to Navy Pier one last time, savoring the view from the #82 Kimball-Homan bus as it coughed and farted its way south. This time of year the buds on the trees lining the avenue burst forth in a bright chartreuse, and I felt nostalgic knowing that this would probably be the last time I'd see them from the height of the #82. Just below Addison, the bus driver got into a yelling match with a car that was trying to make a right turn into the parking lot of Home Depot in front of her. Finally she let him go, saying "well, go on, before you tear somethin' up!"

I descended the bus onto the uneven and potholed intersection of Kimball and Belmont, and ventured underground to catch the blue line train. At the Grand Avenue stop I exited the accordion-doored subway car and ascended the stairs to the turnstiles, where a blue uniformed CTA employee stood, as he did every morning, greeting commuters with a wave, a smile and a genuine "good morning". Aboveground again, I waited for the #65 Grand Avenue bus, and rode it one last time as it wound its way east on Grand, then onto Illinois, underneath Michigan Avenue, and finally docked itself at the end of the line at Navy Pier. I wound my way through the maze of the children's museum, using my key card three times to gain access to both service entrance doors, and the door to the office suites above the third floor of the museum. At my desk I set to work on moving some electronic files onto a new server. The computer I was working on was unbelievably slow, I had to restart it several times because it kept freezing up, and I finally went to the food court to get some coffee while it rebooted.

I got in line at Starbucks (the only place to get coffee at Navy Pier, unless you count McDonalds) behind a group of students who looked like they were in the 8th or 9th grade. The kid in front of me, a doughy boy whose head bore an asterisk of hair circling the spot where his head had, until recently, been resting on his pillow, ordered an iced venti machiato. This struck me as the most ridiculous thing a 13 year-old had ever ordered - an opinion I firmly held onto until the kid behind me ordered a double chocolate mochachino. "I am not going to miss the atmosphere of Navy Pier" I thought, and mumbled something to that effect out loud as I added cream and two packets of turbinado sugar to my perfectly sensible 12 oz. coffee while the young machiato addict waited for his confection.

It was a gorgeous day, my computer kept freezing, and by noon I could restrain the urge to goof off no longer. I got my timesheet signed, faxed it over to the temp agency, and headed to Michigan Avenue to do some shopping.

After a year of self-restraint, I anticipated a full-blown shopping spree, but my habit of not spending turned out to be one that I couldn't shake. I browsed the shoes at Nordstrom, but just couldn't bring myself to spend $70 on something I could probably get online for half the price. I tried on a pair of dark-wash blue jeans, but couldn't justify the expense. In the end I bought things for M, since he hasn't gotten many gifts from me over the past year, and if anyone should be shopping on Michigan Avenue on a Wednesday afternoon jut for the hell of it, it's him. I bought him some fancy shaving products and some very expensive chocolate, and then, longing for a familiar anchor keep me from floating away in a vast sea of consumption, I headed to the Chicago Cultural Center.

A calmness came over me as I walked through the familiar doors of the mighty edifice, which was once the original home of the Chicago Public Library, and features - among other things, the world's largest stained glass Tiffany dome. The building has served as a resting point for me when appointments and interviews draw me downtown, and I'm so familiar with it at this point that I know where the best bathrooms are (2nd floor), I have a favorite table in the reading room (against the western wall, next to the display of Chicago Publisher's Gallery books), and I know the view of Millennium Park from the second floor gallery windows by heart.

You really can't beat the Chicago Cultural Center; they have free film screenings, free wifi, free art exhibits, and the only bust of a city planner I've ever seen - that of Ira J. Bach, 1906-1985, with the inscription "In developing a general plan, we must look at the city as if it were going to be entirely rebuilt, because a healthy city naturally rebuilds itself in the long run." You'd be hard pressed to find a more sensible, down-to-earth inscription on a bust. Mr. Bach's pinched face and stern molded haircut is not one that will ever be recognized by school children, or appear in profile on treasury-issued coins, but it makes me happy to know that his years of service (noted as 1940-1985) will forever be on display in this enclave, this quiet space on a sprawling avenue in the middle of America's 3rd most populous city.

I walked through the reading room, noting the admonishing word "Silence" that hangs on a wood panel one wall, and the anagram "License" that hangs on a wood panel directly across from it. I had some time to kill before meeting some former colleagues, so I walked up the double staircase to the second floor to see the current art exhibit: Christine Tarkowski's Last Things Will Be First and First Things Will Be Last. Her work included a dome inspired by Buckminster Fuller, and a room covered in broadsides made to look as though they had been printed long ago in obsolete fonts. "Thirsty woman," one began, "If you drink this water you'll never be thirsty again!" "Magic bullet faith cafeteria style 'service' I wanna eat from your buffet," decried another. "Praise the scavenger to capitalism bio/wind/hydro/solar the garbage man is the rational hero," said a third.

My mind settled on the message of the scavenger broadside - was this what I had become? Over the past year I've learned to make do with less, and have developed money saving habits: I get my hair cut for $16 by students at the Aveda Institute; I go bowling on Mondays, when it costs $1 per game at Diversey Rock 'n Bowl; and I'm a card carrying member of the Kerasotes five buck movie club. Shopping on Michigan Avenue made me anxious, it's basically against my religion at this point. I'd found my way back to a space where the only things for sale are a few trinkets in the gift shop, and the goods in the cafe on the first floor. In the corner of the room a 45rpm record spun on a turntable playing the same song over and over, a recording of people singing the words to the thirsty woman broadside. I stayed in the room for a few minutes reading posters, listening to music, and thinking about my near future.

The post that took almost a year to be able to write

I got a job. A real job. Not a temp job - although I've been doing that for about a month now and it's going well, and not as an enumerator for the U.S. Census, although I was contacted by them recently for work, but an honest-to-goodness nine to five with benefits. I start May 1st for training. In actual calendar time, I've been unemployed since June 1, 2009, although I was notified on May 12 and only came back into the office a couple times after that. Any way you slice it, its been about a year since I've been gainfully employed. I've probably written this list up before, but I'm willing to repeat myself - since May 12th 2009, here's what I've done:

• Participated in a mini-triathlon;
• Worked odd jobs as a babysitter, housecleaner, marketing study participant (I got paid $100 to talk about lotion for 90 minutes), and French language test-taker;
• Served in a volunteer capacity as: a librarian for the Alliance Française de Chicago; info desk staffer for Chicago's Green City Market; concert usher for the Old Town School of Folk Music; tutor for 826 Chicago; and construction worker for Habitat for Humanity;
• Traveled to France, Spain, Portugal and Senegal;
• Traveled to Boston four times, three times to Michigan, twice to New York City, once to Vermont, and once to Cape Cod;
• Became a staff writer at Gapers Block; and
• Interviewed for 11 jobs, 1 internship, and 1 informational interview.

Being unemployed has been so central to my identity over the past year that I almost don't know what to do with myself now that it's coming to an end. Although I'll be taking a pay cut from my last position, my new job is walking distance from my house, something I've always dreamed of, the people seem really nice, and the benefits are great. Since I'd already secured my dates for traveling to the U.P. next month, my boss is letting me take the time off, as well as a short trip to Austin in June that M and I recently planned.

Here comes the mushy part where I thank my wonderful husband for all the support he's given me over the past year - unemployment is generally considered one of the biggest stressors that can happen to a marriage, but over the past 11 months my husband has done nothing but encourage me to pursue all the crazy dreams that I suddenly had the time to follow. While he stayed home and worked, I spent most of my severance pay traveling to distant corners of the world, developed my writing technique, and connected with my community in meaningful ways through volunteering. Aside from one or two poorly timed cracks about not pulling my weight financially, he never made me feel bad about my employment status, or complained about having to cut back in areas like home improvement (which we desperately need) or postponing major purchases like a new car (which we need just as badly as a renovation of our basement). He's really pretty great, that husband of mine. I hope he never loses his job, but if he does I'll think back to my year of unemployment and all the experiences I gained from being able to take advantage of the time off, and I'll remember that none of it would have been possible without his support.

Thanks also to my network of unemployed friends: TS, who introduced me to $1 bowling Mondays at Diversey Rock 'n Bowl, and despite himself gave some of the sagest advice on the subject of unemployment; AP, who came as my plus one to numerous events; GV, whose acerbic sense of humor could pierce through anything; AB, who told me it would be the best thing to happen to me; and CF, who connected me with countless babysitting jobs that helped fill my pockets.

Of course, my employed friends were there for me this past year too: MamaVee, who convinced me to participate in a mini-triathlon; AM, who went to some of the best and some of the worst theater I've ever seen with me, and helped me to think of ways to write about it; HD, who kept in touch the whole time, and never treated me like I should feel sorry for myself; NM, who mailed me a birthday gift she'd bought in Bangladesh which was waiting to be opened when I came home from two weeks in New York and Boston right after I lost my job; DW, who always made time for lunch; and my upstairs neighbors, who included me in countless family dinners when I could easily have eaten alone in front of the TV while M worked.

At the risk of making this sound like a tiresome Oscar speech where the award winner has gone on too long so the music swells, causing the award winner to start talking really fast, thanks also to all of you who've read my blog and followed my adventures over the past year. Its great knowing you're out there, and I hope to keep telling stories that you want to read.

Temp.... sigh.

A couple weeks ago I met with a woman at an agency that specializes in finding temp, temp-to-perm, and permanent job placement opportunities for nonprofit professionals. I had recently been rejected for the fourth time by the same prospective employer, and was running out of ideas. I haven't kept track of how many resumes I've sent out, and I'd have to stop and think about how many interviews I've been on - somewhere in the range of ten to twelve, but I keep not getting hired. Its staggering; twice I haven't been hired for jobs that I had really good networking connections to, with former colleagues submitting glowing recommendations on my behalf, and none of the other jobs I've interviewed for have been offered to me either. I even took the aptitude test to work for the U.S. Census, and haven't heard from them. Aside from a growing number of hours spent babysitting, I seem to be unable to secure employment on my own. Coincidentally, I just received a notice from the Illinois Department of Employment Security stating that my unemployment benefits are almost exhausted, although my case will be reviewed for an extension. If that weren't enough of a sign that its time to change my approach to employment, I've slowly become disinterested in all my volunteer gigs. What used to be fun diversions and a way to connect with the community has over time become inconvenient or boring.

The agency called me early last week to discuss a possible placement - 3 days a week in the development department at the Chicago Chidren's Museum, would I be interested? I said sure, send them my resume, secretly hoping that like all the other prospective employers I've come into contact with in the past year, they wouldn't want me. The museum is located on Navy Pier, which is possibly the biggest tourist trap in Chicago, and unless I drive it takes me two buses and a train to get there. My contact at the agency called me the next day as I was finishing a babysitting gig to say that the museum wanted me to start the next day.

I haven't temped in 12 years. The last time I worked as a temp I had very few marketable skills, and as a result got assignments at the very bottom rung of the temp ladder. Some placements were tolerable, but some were just awful. I wrote about the experience in a long-defunct zine called Temp Slave, and one of my stories made it into the book The Best of Temp Slave, which includes a blurb from the king of work stories himself, Studs Terkel, a fact that I will be eternally proud of:

"The temps, in their own words, let us know what it is all about. Let's not kid ourselves. Temp is a euphemism for day laborer. George and Lennie are no longer merely ranch hands. They work in law firms, banks, insurance companies and in your own workplace."
--Studs Terkel

I've always felt a special connection to Studs; we share the same birthday (different years, but still!), and like Studs I was born on the East Coast and then made my way west to the City of the Big Shoulders. As thrilling as it was to have my name included in a book that got a blurb from Chicago's most celebrated storyteller, temping is a world I was eager to leave and never planned on returning to.

I was glad that the job was only 3 days a week, at this point I'm virtually feral where office life is concerned and I wasn't sure if I could handle the transition. Given the right situation I could very well run and hide from my new office mates, spitting and hissing at them if I feel cornered, and scavenging the remains of their lunches when their backs are turned. As it turned out, it wasn't that bad. The offices are one floor above the museum floor in a kind of loft, and all day the sounds of kids running and playing fill the air. At one point on my first day some staff members descended the office stairs with instruments in hand and enticed the kids into participating in a karaoke session; I sorted correspondence into donor files to the sounds of chestnuts like Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Happy Birthday. For temp work, its not bad: my supervisor is really nice, trusts me to do my work without looking over my shoulder, and nobody gets very dressed up for work. If it weren't for the commute and the tourist zone, it would be the ideal temp job.

Until next time,

JP

Monday, Technically Spring, Still Unemployed

This is my fourth post in as many days, I haven't been that productive on this blog since this time last year, when I attended Story Studio's In-Town Writer's Retreat. The best thing to come out of that weekend was connecting with the women who I've met with regularly over the past year for writing dates: Ms. Angelica, and Johanna Stein. This past Friday, in celebration of 365 days of writing (or at least thinking about writing), we had our own version of a write-a-thon, which involved cupcakes, wine, and tapping away on laptops.

A lot has happened over the past year: I lost my job; participated in a mini-triathlon; traveled to France, Spain, Portugal, and Senegal; volunteered with the Green City Market, Alliance Française de Chicago, Old Town School of Folk Music, 826 Chicago, and Habitat for Humanity; and became a staff writer at Gapers Block. I still don't have a flippin' job, but not for a lack of trying. For the most part I've kept busy enough not to let it get me down, but from time to time it's been hard to stave off negative thoughts. I've had my share of days spent oversleeping and lounging on the couch, wondering when the hell I'll be invited back into the grownup society of the working world. January and February were particularly bad months, I'd had several promising interviews, none of which turned into job offers, and the disappointment combined with winter weather really slowed me down. I didn't post much. I kept hoping I'd be able to publish a really optimistic post with a title like "Guess who just got a job?" or something like that, and when it kept not happening, well, it got me down.

It helps to have a project, one that doesn't involve cleaning the house (turns out, I'm a terrible housewife.) Having scratched my itch for international travel, I've started thinking about how much of this country remains unexplored to me. While visiting my sister in Boston last summer, I happened to see a flier at R.E.I. for an organization called the American Hiking Society. They have something called volunteer vacations, where for a nominal fee you can spend a week or two at a national park clearing brush and readying trails for the tourist season. The trips are assigned various levels of ruggedness, ranging from "easy" to "very strenuous" and you can decide how hard core you want to go. I managed to convince Ms. Angelica to join me on a volunteer vacation in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, which gets a "moderate to difficult" rating on the work level scale. It wasn't hard to convince her, she's from Michigan and loves the outdoors. I tried getting Johanna in on the fun too, but she has parental duties that cannot be ignored. We'll be working at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, which is so far north its on the shores of Lake Superior, which is practically Canada.

In the coming weeks, in addition to my usual work search and writing activities, I'll be preparing for this trip. I have plenty to write about between now and then - I haven't even begun to touch on Senegal, and maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to publish a heroically optimistic post announcing my re-entry into the working world.

Thanks for reading,

JP

Slowly re-entering the world

I got back last Wednesday, and have been moving at a snail's pace ever since. SO much happened while I was gone - big things like the disaster in Haiti, smaller things like the Conan debacle, and I've been so wiped out it was all I could do to catch up on emails between naps.

I had an amazing time in Senegal, and am slowly creeping back into my "normal" life of applying for jobs, certifying for unemployment benefits, volunteering at various local organizations, and writing for myself and for Gapers Block.

I'm simply amazed at my body's capacity to adapt - for more than two weeks I was in another world, waking up at strange hours, eating different foods, pushing my body to the limit with dance and travel, and not once did I get sick. I think a love letter to my GI system is in order, along with my immune system and my muscles.

I have a lot of catching up to do on this blog, and I'll get there, I promise!

Off To The Airport... Again

How is it that December completely took hold of me, leaving me frozen in my tracks, unable to move forward? I never even finished writing about Portugal, and I'm heading out of town again on another adventure later today. Four years ago, I took my first West African Dance class with Idy Ciss. He told me about a two-week dance-themed tour that he leads every year in December in his native Senegal, and I was intrigued. I took a brochure, mulled it over, checked flight prices, and decided I would wait until the following year. After all, I'd only just started taking classes with him, I didn't know whether I'd like it enough to fly all the way to Africa and spend two weeks with him and a group of my fellow dance students.

The next year I wasn't able to go due to my work schedule, nor the following year, or the year after that. After not taking classes for a couple years due to work obligations, I began taking classes with Idy again in September of this year. He recognized me immediately, and welcomed me back into the class. Out of curiosity, I asked if he still did his annual tour of Senegal. "Wait right here," he said, "I have the brochures in the car."

This year I'm unemployed; the only thing stopping me is the common sense logic of not spending money on an expensive airline ticket when I'm only earning what the Illinois Department of Employment Security pays me every two weeks. On the other hand, with adventures of this kind, its always a question of having the time and the money, and I rarely have both. I had just committed to doing the Habitat for Humanity project in Portugal, but I didn't want to let this one slip away for yet another year. At some point, I reasoned, I won't want to fly to Senegal to dance. Someday I might not be in the physical shape necessary for such an undertaking, or, more likely, someday I'll have a job that will keep me from traveling internationally for two weeks at a time.

I started looking at flights, which are expensive - its not cheap to fly to Senegal, flights typically run about $1,800. One day I was scanning flights and came across one at the unbelievably low (for flying to Senegal) price of $1100. I asked Idy about it; "oh, you won't find anything cheaper than that," he said, "book that today." When I got home I discussed it with M. "Is it crazy?" I asked, somewhat rhetorically. M convinced me to buy the ticket, reasoning that I've wanted to go for years and this might be my one big chance. I bought the ticket. The next day the price went up to $1,800.

All of this was months ago, and in the interim I've had all kinds of adventures, both close to home and far away. I've gone to the travel clinic for immunizations (yellow fever, typhoid, and would you believe polio?) and prescriptions for malaria and something called travelers diarrhea to take with me on my trip. I've watched the calendar with a mixture of trepidation and excitement, and once again, the date has snuck up on me. I spent most of this weekend preparing for this journey, and will be heading to the airport later today. As those of you in the Midwest and on the East Coast know, there's been weather trouble at a number of airports, and as all of you doubtless know, there's been an increase in security. With luck, I'll be in Senegal by tomorrow. If I get delayed maybe there will be time for one more post before the end of the year.

When I return I'll have a backlog of posts to write, but I guess that's not such a bad problem to have. Thanks to all of you for following my adventures, have a wonderful new year's, and I'll talk to you all in 2010.

West African Dance

I didn't realize that I'd actually wanted the job until I got the rejection letter. Or more accurately - the rejection email. I opened my inbox and saw a message titled "Employment at RI" from the H.R. director. I scanned it quickly, enough to see that it wasn't a job offer (I pretty much knew that already, they would have called with an offer), and closed it again.

M really wanted me to get this job. We have repairs to make on the house, and our car is unreliable - we borrow his mother's car for any trip over twenty miles. And then there's the news. I've been avoiding it, someone told me early on that its bad for your mental health to hear job loss statistics when you're unemployed, that it will just get you down, and I haven't watched much news - or much TV at all, since I lost my job. The otherwise useless job loss counselor who was brought in the day after layoffs had sealed it with: "People who lose their jobs tend to get depressed because they watch too much Judge Judy." The words conjured up an image of me sitting on the couch - no, laying on the couch, in my pajamas, an open tube of Pringles on the floor and the TV remote in my listless, extended hand, slack-jawed and glossy-eyed. That was the moment I decided not to watch daytime television for the duration of my unemployment, and I haven't - apart from a couple episodes of The Ellen Show, and the one time I watched Barney Miller on channel 23 for it's inherent kitsch value. And who doesn't love Ellen? With her dancing and her disarming, genuinely upbeat attitude, she is the antidote to a thousand horrible daytime programming decisions. She even gives money away to her unemployed audience members from time to time. I love Ellen, but I don't even watch her show because she's on at 3pm and the TV stays off until at least 6.

I sat in front of the computer for a moment before pulling myself up off the chair, the weight of the flesh hanging from my bones feeling suddenly much heavier than when I'd sat down moments earlier. I had somewhere to go; I changed into a pair of sweatpants and a tank top, took the glasses off my face and pressed clear plastic discs onto my eyeballs in their place, got onto my bike, and rode to the Old Town School of Folk Music for my dance class.

The first time I saw Idy Ciss' West African Dance Class was through the windows outside the school on Lincoln Avenue. I was on my way to another class, and as I walked up the street the riotous sounds of live djembe drumbeats escaped from the open windows of the dance studio. I stopped in front of the picture windows and watched as a roomful of students danced from one side of the floor to the other using big, expressive movements. The drumbeat was infectious, and the energy of the dancers captivated me. I enrolled for the next session as soon as I could get to the registration desk.

Something about the movements of the dance - big, uninhibited, fearless movements that take my whole body to create, makes me feel so fantastic. I was never what you'd call agile, I never did ballet as a kid and I don't have the flexibility or grace of a natural dancer. I can keep time with the beat, and I do my best with what I've got. The most intense dancing I'd done as a youth was square dancing at summer camp, which while fun in its own way, is calculated and careful in comparison, and has none of the unbridled energy of West African Dance.

Idy can make any step look lithe and effortless. I sweat so much during my first class that I had to take my glasses off and dance blind. I took several sessions of Idy's class, even moving to level II, until I got a job that took away the extra energy I needed for this kind of activity.

I got to the dance studio early. There was only one other student when I arrived, and we sat in silent communion on the glossy wooden floor, stretching our bodies and waiting.

Idy started us slow, but soon I was drenched in sweat. The force of drumbeats willed me to move past my depression and into another space entirely, forcing a catharsis. Idy clapped out the beats with his hands so loudly it sounded like wooden sticks making contact. People sitting at the Bad Dog Tavern across the street looked up from their drinks, passers-by on the street stopped and looked in the windows as I had once done, and small children pressed their noses to the glass door leading to the hallway. Everyone on the block knows when there's a West African Dance class in session.

After the class was dismissed I rinsed my hot face in the water fountain in the hall, stepped outside into the early evening breeze, got on my bike and rode home.

Family Camp 2009

Family camp was challenging this summer. I went with my sister and her husband, my twin four-year-old niece and nephew, and my six-month-old nephew, the latest addition to the family. I’d spent whole summers here as a kid in the 80’s, and first attended family camp - a one week session at the end of August after the regular camps have shut down, in August of 1998 with my sister. Neither one of us had been on this land in years. Its just like regular summer camp; there are lots of outdoor activities, crafts, and a talent show at the end of the week, but you sleep in a cabin with your family instead of a bunch of kids your age, and there’s far fewer staff. My sister met her husband at family camp the first year we attended - he was on staff, and they’ve been back every year since except the summer she gave birth to the twins. I make it back about every other year.

We slept in a rustic open air cabin that had a doorway but no door, and a section along an entire wall starting at chest height that was open to the elements. Bunk beds lined the three remaining walls, ten in all. The twins each had their own bunk, and my sister and her husband slept with the six-month-old on two air mattresses pressed together in the middle of the floor. At night after everyone else was asleep I climbed into my bunk as stealthily as I could, my sleeping bag squeaking against the cheap thin mattress underneath it that was covered in plastic ticking. I was amazed that I didn’t wake anyone up in the process. At regular intervals during the night first one twin and then the other would wake up needing to pee. One of their parents would help them down from their bed, pull down their pajama bottoms, and sit their bare bottoms onto a plastic potty on the floor, inches from my head. From my perch I listened as a rain of piss exited their blameless bodies, and they settled back into their bunks. Sometimes one or the other of them would wake up inconsolably cranky, and with no closed-door space available, would keep the rest of us up for as long as it took to settle them back down.

It’s not like I didn’t know how this arrangement would work. I’d done the same thing last summer, in the same cabin in fact, but in the way that its easy to forget the pain of stubbing your toe, getting a paper cut, or giving birth (so I’ve been told), I had forgotten about the nightly sleep interruptions and subsequent haze that passed over me the next morning. There are people who can function on little sleep, I’ve never been one of them. If I don’t get a full eight hours I have to make up for it the next night; its one of the main reasons I’ve never become a straight A student, a type A personality or a superhero. Parenthood necessitates functioning on little sleep, and my sister and her husband have become as accustomed to it as they’ll ever be. I, however, have not.

One night the drumming circles at Vermont Witch Camp, just across the lake, mixed with hoots and shouts and floated across Woodward Reservoir in the dark. Somehow I was the only one in the cabin that lay awake listening, although I heard reports the next day that others at family camp had been disturbed from their sleep too. They sounded like they were having fun, and I secretly wanted to slither out of my sleeping bag, tiptoe out of the cabin and follow the sounds of drumming until I found them. Hannah, the program director for family camp, said the witches go through three urns of coffee every morning, compared to just one at Family Camp. No wonder they were up so late.

There was a square dance last night, and the camp is sleeping in this morning. I’m at the waterfront watching mist rise from the top of the water and move across the surface towards route 100. Amika, one of the lifeguards, is sitting in a rowboat waiting for the early morning swimmers to arrive. The last time I saw her she was an infant. I babysat for her once or twice in high school, now she guards my life at the waterfront. She’s not the only one with that distinction this summer - Cody, the nurse, was a baby the last time I saw him. Now he dispenses ibuprofen to me in packets containing two pills each, and takes my temperature with a digital thermometer covered in a sanitary plastic sleeve before telling me its 98.6 and sending me on my way. I’ve felt slightly off the entire week, and its become a subject of conversation among the neighbors. Three people have approached me with “I hear you’re not feeling well.” Its not the kind of information that would generally make headlines, but among these hundred people, out here in the woods with no electronic distraction, it becomes news.

My sister and her family left the dance early to put the kids to bed last night, and I searched for a spot to hang out and read. I came up short - the main lodge was still being used for dancing, and the first floor of the “cozy lodge” was being used as a sleepover spot for kids, so I climbed the stairs of the cozy lodge thinking that I remembered a room or two upstairs where I could take refuge. There was a light on in what used to be the staff room, and I knocked lightly on the door before opening it, revealing a scene of teenaged idle; all that was missing was black light posters, Led Zeppelin and weed. Four teens were reclining on old, musty couches, looking up at me laconically.
“Is this the hangout room?” I sputtered, and immediately regretted my choice of words.
“No,” came the lazy, pointed reply from one of the girls.
“I’m looking for a place to hang out,” I said, digging myself a deeper hole and proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am a certified geek - what thirty-eight-year-old comes to family camp and walks around alone in the dark with a backpack and a flashlight, asking kids if they can hang out? “And I can’t find one.”
“Sorry,” one of them says, I can’t remember which one, and I close the door. I stand in the dark hallway for a moment and am transported to a thousand terrible moments of rejection from my youth. Finally I walk ten paces to the room that used to be the camp library. I flip the light switch on and look around. The books are still here, some that I recognize - Our Bodies, Ourselves, to name one, and a closet full of motley dress up clothes that have been donated by campers and staff over the years.
“Well,” I say out loud, “this is as good as it gets,” and plop my nerdy, severely post-pubescent ass onto a hard wooden bench and dig for the book I’ve been toting around in my backpack all week - A.J. Jacobs’ “The Know-It-All,” a chronicle of one man’s attempt to read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica from A to Z. Reading about his quest makes me feel slightly less nerdy, and it comforts me as I sit alone, slumped over a bench in the dress-up room across the hall from a room full of self-satisfied teens.

I first came to this camp when I was nine years old. My parents had just split, and my sister, mother and I moved back to Brooklyn from a small unincorporated town on the outskirts of Geneva, Switzerland, where our closest neighbors were dairy farmers. A few days after landing, my sister and I were loaded up on a charter bus at Port Authority, and four white-knuckled hours later ended up in this green valley. I spent a month with a bunch of other nine-year-olds in a cabin called Crickets, which stood until sometime last year. Its been replaced with a new structure, also called Crickets, that’s cleaner and no doubt safer, but has none of the dark wood graffiti-ed charm of the original. Last summer, just before leaving, I walked through the old Crickets looking for my name scrawled into it, but couldn’t find it. It had been too many years, and I wrote it too small. I did find my friend Annie’s name in several spots. “Annie C. was here,” she wrote in two inch high letters with permanent marker. I remember being angry with her for doing it, thinking it was undignified and obnoxious to write her name so many times, in such big letters, and to do it the year after she actually lived in the cabin. Annie was about eight months older than me, and we knew each other in Switzerland, where we were enrolled in the same class at the international school that all the ex-pat kids attended. Soon after I moved back to the states her family moved to Germany. We spent our first summer at camp together in Crickets, the next year I stayed in Crickets while she graduated to a cabin about twenty feet away called Heffalumps. It was that second summer that she came back to deface Crickets. All these years later it was the only recognizable graffiti I could find. We ended up going to the same college for about a year until we both transferred out, and the last I heard she was living in a halfway house in Colorado.

The perfect stillness of the misty waterfront scene is broken when Amika asks “are you getting in the water?” to the only other person down here, “because I’d like to go to breakfast.”

Many of the qualities that define me come from this place: a skeptical view of all things political, a tendency to break into spontaneous song, and a penchant for nudity. The camps have changed since I was a kid. The outhouses are newer, they have doors on them, and are separated into stalls. They used to have two or three seats in a row with an open air window and no doors, sometimes a four seater set up with two rows back to back. The hygiene practices surrounding them has evolved too. Now there’s an elaborate process involving sawdust, bleach, and disinfectant to spray on the spigot after washing your hands. It had never occurred to me that after you wash your hands you touch the same faucet that you touched when they were covered in outhouse microbes. The spigots used to be outfitted with a bar of Ivory soap hanging limply in plastic netting attached to a nail. They’d melt in the rain, leaving a gooey gray stain in the dirt. Now there are plastic liquid soap dispensers mounted to the sides of every spigot. Hand washing before meals has gone through a similar evolution. I don’t remember what the process was when I was a kid, maybe some of us washed our hands but I’m pretty sure I never did; now it involves washing hands and then squirting them with Purell, dispensed from gallon sized pump bottles set up on benches outside the dining hall.

I’m acutely aware that I am here without my husband. M’s idea of a wilderness getaway is to stay in a closed cabin no farther than ten minutes by car from a grocery store that has electricity, indoor plumbing, and if not an Internet connection then at least a TV that picks up local broadcast channels. I got him out here years ago, before we were married, and despite the challenges he had a good time. There was a genuine thrill in seeing him try so many things for the first time. One of the many family camp traditions is something called "climb up the mountain", which happens just before meals when everyone stands in a big circle. Someone will call out an item, like: “climb up the mountain if you milked a cow today,” and all the adults and kids who did barn chores will walk in to the middle of the circle, receive a smattering of applause, and then walk back to their places. Then someone else will say “climb up the mountain if you did the ropes course today,” or whatever item they want to call attention to. The first year that M attended family camp, before one of the last meals of the week, the camp director called out “climb up the mountain if you tried one new thing this week that you’ve never done before,” and just about everyone walked into the circle. Then he said “climb up the mountain if you did two new things this week,” and a bunch of people walked into the circle. He kept upping the number of new things until finally only M remained in the circle, and I counted off on my fingers and said out loud to the group all the new things he’d tried, which went something like this: first time sleeping in an open air cabin; first time using an outhouse; first time canoeing; first time away from the Internet for a whole week since its invention; first time away from television for a whole week; first time not spending money for a whole week; first time going a week without driving; first time milking a cow (his reaction to touching a cow’s teat was a genuinely surprised “It’s warm!”); among many others that I no longer remember. The director told us that M had made his dream of getting a true city boy to participate in the wilderness of family camp come true, and M and I both felt like we’d accomplished something.

As fun as that first time at family camp with M was, it couldn’t really be recreated. Perhaps because he knew what he was in for, his approach when he returned a few summers later was that of a man who knew his limits, and it just wasn’t as fun without the element of adventurous novelty. Now when I come to family camp its with my sister and her family, and I go home blissed out on the wilderness, my legs and armpits hairy, a bandanna on my head, and I slowly re-enter the civilized world on an as-needed basis.

There’s a few of us here without our husbands or significant others, but not many. Some of the regulars who I’ve come to know over the years approach the subject gingerly.
“And uh, M…. is he still, uh… in the picture?” they’ll say, wanting to ask, but not wanting to pry. There have been a number of divorces among the families that regularly attend over the years, so it’s a fair question.
“Yeah,” I’ll say, “he’s at home, working to support me in the lifestyle to which I have become accustomed,” my standard hilarious unemployment joke. There is at least one other woman here without her husband - Betty, who I met my first summer at family camp, and always enjoy spending time with. She comes to family camp with various iterations of her family from year to year - some years with her husband and three kids, sometimes with an extended clan of sisters and brothers and nieces and nephews, other times its just her and one or two of her kids - this week she’s here with her nine year old and her sixteen year old. Sometimes her sister Carol, who I also met the first year I came to family camp, joins the group. They’re roughly ten to fifteen years older than me, and I look to their sisterhood as a model for my own; like me and my sister, Betty and Carol are six years apart, and like me and my sister, Betty and Carol live very different lifestyles, but they manage to find common ground and have a good time together. I can always count on being completely goofy with Betty and Carol, and this summer is no different. My first summer at family camp I led the three of us through the pitch dark to the sauna, without even a flashlight, relying solely on my powers of recollection from walking through these camps as a youth. They were duly impressed, and we spent the evening alternately sweating in the heat of the sauna and diving into Woodward Reservoir to cool ourselves off.

Early this week Betty and I came up with the seed of what will become a very silly talent show piece, and when Carol joined family camp mid-week (during the first half she was cycling from Portland, Maine to Plymouth, Vermont), we got her into the act - a mock infomercial for a set of CDs of family camp songs. I write the text, and Betty and Carol go over it with me and offer suggestions. Betty is a writer and Carol is a voice coach, so between them I get all the advice I need. We rehearse rigorously, meeting before and after meals, and going over notes. I have no idea if anyone else will think our act is funny, but we have so much fun rehearsing that I don’t care. People overhear us as they walk past our open-air rehearsals with amused expressions on their faces. Friday night arrives, and Betty and I both get stage fright even though we’re so far down on the bill that half the campers have already gone to bed by the time we're up. Carol, being a performer, is in top form. When we’re called to the stage we take our places and I launch into my spiel.

“Are you like me?” I begin, as Betty and Carol stand on either side of me, miming deep thought, “do you cherish the week you spend at family camp and wish there were some way that you could capture the essence of family camp magic to take with you into your everyday life?” Betty and Carol nod vigorously. “Well wish no longer, call now for this limited edition, never before released recording of all your favorite family camp hits, such as…” and we launch into our medley of campfire favorites.

A few minutes later the piece is finished, and the audience applauds our efforts. After the talent show is over, Jonah, the precocious fourteen-year-old who MC’ed the event along with my brother-in-law, approaches me. Jonah is a strong presence at family camp, he and his diminutive eight-year-old sister spend several hours every day helping in the kitchen, and Jonah announces what we’re having at every single meal, stepping into the middle of our pre-meal circle wearing a white apron, sometimes a chef’s hat, and without a smidge of self-consciousness tells us what to expect at our tables. He’d spent the summer as a political intern in his home state of New Jersey, and follows the Daily Show and the Colbert Report with an insight as sharp as I’ve seen on any adult.

“I just had to tell you that when I think something is really funny I cough,” he begins, “and I coughed through your whole skit. Did you write that?”
“Thank you so much Jonah, yes, I did write that,” I say, and we begin what becomes a half hour conversation on writing, politics, and anything else that pops into our heads. Its raining steadily outside, and I have a poncho and an umbrella. Jonah has neither, and he disappears into the cozy lodge to look for rain gear. I consider how much effort it would take to walk him to his cabin under the shelter of my umbrella, and then come back to the lodge by myself. I go into the cozy lodge after him. I don’t see him on the first floor so I climb the stairs, the light is on in the staff room and someone shuts the door abruptly before I reach it. I go back down the stairs and find him on the first floor.
“I can walk you to your cabin,” I say, “I have an umbrella.”
“Did you see the teens up there?” He asks.
“Yeah, uh, I think Britney is up there, and uh, some others…”
“Thanks,” he says holding his hands up to his chest, palms out, a look of earnest gratitude in his face, “but I’m going to go hang out with the teens now.” There’s no trace of rejection in his voice, just the honest acknowledgment that he and I belong to different sociological strata at family camp.
“Okay, have a good night.” I say, and walk back to the adult world of the main lodge.

The rain gets harder, and by the time I walk into our cabin its so loud that I don’t have to be stealthily quiet as I change into my damp pajamas and climb into my squeaky bunk. Everyone slept well that night. I woke up once to find a small person squatting on the potty next to my bunk, but the sound of dispensing urine melted in with the rainfall, and I slept right through both the preamble of waking up and asking for help, and the postscript of being led back to bed and tucked in again.

Wednesday, Second Interview

The thigh-high stocking on my left leg had lost its elasticity and began rolling south as I walked down the stairs of the Ravenswood Metra stop. I don't go in for pantyhose, I don't even like writing the word, but I followed the advice of my upstairs neighbor who worked at RI for several years and submitted myself to their compressing imprisonment for the interview. The ubiquitous "nude" hue that instantly imparts professionalism to the legs of working women everywhere erased all signs of life from mine: gone were the hard earned tan lines on my feet from wearing sandals all summer; gone was the small mysterious bruise on my calf; and gone was the scab on the middle of my left foot where the strap from a pair of clogs had rubbed against my skin on a humid day and cut right into my flesh.

I drew the line at full coverage, buying a pair of thigh-high hose from the display at Walgreens instead. The elastic at the top dug into my skin and left a red mark around the diameter of my thighs as a souvenir of the day's activities.

With each step the stocking fell a bit more until it hung loosely around my calf like a nude parenthesis. I walked through the underpass and stopped at the western staircase to hike it back into place, catching the attention of a fellow commuter who had been walking in lock step behind me. I headed south for half a block and it started falling again, and I wondered why I was bothering with it. I pulled the stocking off my leg, then grabbed hold of the elastic band on its twin and removed that too. Instantly the leather of my left shoe began cutting into my naked foot - why is dressing professionally such a pain in the ass? I continued on, walking past the open back door of a first floor apartment, its inhabitant bathed in the light of an open refrigerator, and past a man leaning perfectly still and silent against a tree like a camouflaged moth.

It seemed that I should keep the discarded stockings for future use, they'd gotten me through the first and second interviews and had become a kind of talisman - something that had transported me back to the working world for a couple of hours and protected me from it's harsh ways. I rolled them up inside a copy of the September 21st issue of the New Yorker that I'd found on the seat next to mine that belonged to a Bryan Smolinsky of Wolcott Avenue. Could Bryan really be finished with his New Yorker so soon? It was only Wednesday; it takes me all week to read that thing. I decided to drop it into a blue mailbox on a street corner in the hopes that it would be re-delivered to the subscriber, I'm not sure if the post office will deliver it but I figured it couldn't hurt to try. I'd written a note in it explaining where and when it had been found, in case it makes a successful journey home.

I'd just returned from my second interview at RI. I was a bit dazed during the first interview; after my week in the wilds of Vermont I felt like a cave woman unaccustomed to the social and cultural norms associated with the twenty-first century workplace, and was a little surprised to hear back from them. The second interview went well, until it became clear that I'd been studying the wrong job description. They have a complex online application system, and I'd gotten confused between two postings that I'd applied for. Either they'll think its funny, and a sign that I can roll with the punches and quickly change my talking points, or they'll think I'm an idiot.

Time will tell.

Friday in the Garden

Its a gorgeous Friday morning, and I’ve taken the laptop into the yard. We’ve had a series of picture perfect summer days now, and are due for a few more. I’m in my pajamas, sitting at the patio furniture that we got from The Great Escape a few summers ago, the orange umbrella in the center of the table fully opened. I have my favorite mug with me, it has the heft of an old time diner mug, and an outline drawing of a stack of pancakes sitting on a plate with a fork stuck in the top, a square pat of butter melting down the sides. Above the image is the word "Pancakes", below it is the text "make people happy". A black ant just climbed its way up the face of the mug, as if drawn to the image on it. Above me the thunderous sounds of fighter jets training for this weekend's Air and Water show has begun, a sound that will continue until Sunday.

I have an interview today for an unpaid editorial intern position. I responded to the posting in June, and was contacted yesterday. I'm making small footholds in a couple other local publications too, tomorrow I'll be attending a training for neighborhood reporters at the Chi-Town Daily News, and I might be writing for another local online publication soon too. I haven't gotten much traction with the usual employment route, and since I'm being paid unemployment I figured this would be a good time to try my hand at getting in print, even if it's not paid.

Since being laid off my tolerance for downtown Chicago has diminished, it happened surprisingly fast. I first noticed it on an interview in early June; the mad crush of bodies on the train was suffocating, and navigating my way through crowds on the street sent me into a Koyaanisquatsi-like trance. In just a few weeks the everyday patterns of commuting, cemented into routine over years of office work, had begun to unravel. There have been other changes too; I’ve let my hair do whatever it wants to, and its been liberating. Taming it has been a lifelong struggle, I was the only one in my family to have frizzy hair, and nobody knew what to do with it. When I was six years old my best friend Annie had hair that was straight as a pin, and she was always clean and well dressed. She wore neat dresses with ruched panels on the chest and sweetheart sleeves, cardigan sweaters, and bows in her hair. I was a muddy tomboy. I lived in overalls, wore the same outfit for days at a time, and barely bathed. I thought my hair was wild was because I wasn’t neat and clean like Annie. I tried to alter it by brushing it endlessly in front of a mirror, but all that did was make it frizzier, proof positive that I had crossed the point of no return. The concept of cosmetics and hair products was completely foreign to my family, I don’t think I’ve seen my mother in lipstick more than twice in my life, and I don't think she's ever owned a bottle of hair conditioner. Her bathrooms have always been spartan, containing no more than a bar of Ivory soap and a bottle of Neutrogena shampoo. She's never spent more than three minutes taking a shower.

I didn’t start experimenting with hair products until I was in my twenties, and these days there’s always at least one gel or spray product in my medicine cabinet that promises tamer, glossier hair. I started coloring it when I was sixteen, and have been going to the same hairdresser for over ten years. I had an appointment lined up when I got laid off, canceled it, and haven’t done a thing with my hair since. These past few months its gotten longer, and the color has changed - partly from swimming in chlorine, partly from being in the sun, and partly from new growth, and a handful of grey hairs have become visible on my temples. Its been like watching time lapse photography.

Apart from the occasional smudge of Burt’s Bees Lip Shimmer, available at Walgreens for $4.99, I’ve stopped wearing makeup, and I tend to dress comfortably. I feel like I’m reverting back to my natural tomboy self, like a manicured lawn that's suddenly been left to it's own devices.

Along for my tolerance for downtown, my patience for time spent in offices has diminished considerably. The few times that I’ve stopped by my old office to deal with unemployment paperwork or meet a former colleague for lunch I’ve felt oppressed by the tedious nature of office life, surprised at how much time passes when all I meant to do was fax one page or make one phone call, and have little tolerance for the persistent shop talk around me. Doing the same thing every day seems unthinkable now, and I’m dreading the day I'll have to start doing just that.

At 11 a.m. I go indoors and look for something presentable to wear. I pick out a pair of black slacks and a semi-casual top. I don't want to look too stuffy, this is for an internship at an alternative weekly paper with offices in a semi-industrial neighborhood. I dig up a pair of sensible earrings, put my hair up in a clip, and apply eyeliner and mascara for the first time in months. I load the dishwasher and set it to run, then walk to the corner and catch the Kimball bus to the Blue Line.

The interview is short - twenty minutes, and I'm not sure if that's good or bad. Normally I would send a thank you note, but now I'm second guessing myself - will I come off sounding out of touch? Do people send thank you notes for internship interviews? When I return home the dishwasher is still warm, and I change back into my pajamas. I set some water to boil and go into the garden for tomatoes and basil to serve with store bought ravioli. Our upstairs neighbors are avid gardeners, and we're taking care of the vegetable beds while they're out of town. The result is simple and fantastic, and makes me think about gardening. Hopefully some of the seeds I've been planting will start taking root.

20 Years

We drove through Southbury, CT., stopping into a storefront simply called The Bakery, but the name was misleading. Two glass cases held a measly selection of bagels: one rye, three salt, and one that was marked "day old". We put in an order for two lattes, and bought a scone and a blondie. Leaving the establishment we realized we’d made a mistake - we’d patronized something called the European Shoppe, located one door over from The Bakery. This was not a good omen. With much trepidation, Cori and I were on our way to our 20 year high school reunion at a small Quaker boarding school in Poughkeepsie, NY. Before the bakery, we’d stopped for gas in Meriden at a station where a dreadlocked man with a death wish sat smoking a cigarette next to a gas pump while I went into the station's convenience store and bought two sleeves of Nutter Butters. This also was not a good omen, and it took all of Cori’s resolve not to say something to him about it.

"I almost said to him, 'are you smoking right next to a gas pump?’" She explained that she'd lost her self-censoring filter, although it wasn't that outrageous of a thing to say to a man smoking in a gas station. "It’s like something takes over and words come right out of my mouth before I even realize it.” The first time this happened to Cori was when she was pregnant with her eldest child, and she was at a county fair in Connecticut when a man cut in front of her in a food line. “I was waiting in line to buy steak and cheese, or maybe it was sausage and pepper. Who knows, all I know is that it was damn important to me, and I wasn’t going to be wronged.”
“What did you say to him?” I asked.
“I just said ‘excuse me, I was next'. And I could feel the Lou Ferrigno green rising in me.”
Last week Cori’s filter failed when a car full of teenage boys pulled into her apartment complex, and one of them threw an empty soda bottle out of a car window.
Cori rolled the window of her car down and said “you know you’re going to pick that up, right?”
“Then what happened?” I asked.
“They picked it up.”
“Teenage boys are like dogs Cori, they just need discipline,” I said.

We approached the state line, where we were greeted by a highway sign reading “Welcome to New York, the Empire State”. We took the Taconic state parkway to 84 to route 9, passing through towns with names like Newburgh, Fishkill, Peekskill, and Wappingers Falls. As we were closing in on Poughkeepsie Cori suddenly opened the driver’s side door at a red light.
“Cori, don’t do it,” I joked, “it’s not that bad, we don’t have to go if you don’t want to.”
“I was just brushing the crumbs from the scone off my lap,” she said.

I was running on three hours of sleep; Bruce and Robert had picked me up at the Hartford airport at 9 p.m. the previous night. The last time I’d seen them they had dropped me off at that same airport after a visit, and watched as I underwent the humiliation of being subjected to The No Touch Pat-Down, a device that blows 37 separate jets of air onto your body simultaneously, and sent my hair flying. Robert and Bruce watched from outside the security perimeter, all of us laughing as I made my way to the boarding gate.

“What does that do anyway?” I asked.
“It detects trace amounts of materials you might be able to make bombs with", Robert said.
"It detects trace amounts of Summer’s Eve", Bruce added. Bruce has a wit as sharp as a blade, and not everyone appreciates it. He recently hurt his foot, and when a nurse in his doctor’s office asked him to remove his shirt before being examined he looked straight at her and said “my tits aren’t broken, my foot is.” On another occasion at Pearl Vision, the woman behind the counter brought out his new spectacles and told him to try them on. He put them on his face and turned to Robert, who is half Chinese and half Jamaican, and said: “oh my god you’re black!”

We pulled out of the airport parking lot, and began the drive to their home in Middletown. I told them of my travel plans; from here I was visiting New York, and then on to Boston. There were a number of ways to make this connection: Amtrak could get me there for $62, Greyhound could do the same for $35, and something called the Fung Wah bus makes the four hour journey from New York's Chinatown to Boston's Chinatown for $15.

“You can’t get cheaper than the Chinese,” Robert said, “if you want to know about the cheapest anything, ask the Chinks.”

We pulled into the driveway of their saltbox house that was built in 1725 by the Atkins family, and that they have restored over the years, discovering treasures along the way such as a hidden fireplace and a beehive stove. The property includes a small pond and a few acres of land, which Robert has cultivated into a vegetable garden. One summer before they had the pond dredged, Bruce made the mistake of wading in it, and before he knew it was up to his chest in mud.

“I thought that was going to be the last day of my life,” he said, “I wiggled my feet around in the mud until I broke free of my boots, and then fell face first into the mud. When I managed to get out, all my clothes got sucked off except my shirt, and I walked back to the house naked and covered in mud. My pants and boots are still in there somewhere.”

Being consummate hosts, the moment we set foot in the door Bruce set about making me a burger consisting of two grilled patties, three quarters of a pound of bacon, provolone cheese, three pickle spears on the side, and a basket of potato chips. I don’t usually speak of myself in the third person, but after taking a bite I said:

“It’s nice to know that whether or not a Lady is employed, she can always fly to Connecticut for a burger.” Robert has been calling me Lady J since we first met in New Haven the summer I turned 20. When I emailed him that I’d been laid off, he called me within minutes and yelled “what the fuck!” into the phone before I’d even said hello, followed by “that is no way to treat a Lady!”

As quiet as their part of the state is, I was awakened at 3:45 a.m. by a passing car, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I hadn’t given much thought to my employment situation since being cut three days earlier, and the additional strangeness of sleeping in unfamiliar surroundings kept me from falling back to sleep. I turned my computer on, checked email, checked facebook, and applied for a job online. To top everything off, as of midnight it was officially my birthday. When I finally clambered downstairs at 7 a.m., I caught Bruce on his way out of the bathroom.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t hear you,” he said, and after collecting himself: “that was close.”
“Well, it is my birthday, I should at least see someone in their birthday suit,” I replied.
“It’s your birthday?! Well happy birthday!” he said.
“Thanks’” I said, and went into the bathroom.

In the medicine cabinet mirror I surveyed my weary face and took stock of the situation: I was thirty eight years old, I was unemployed, and I was on my way to my 20 year high school reunion. This was not how I’d envisioned this weekend unfolding. I took a shower and got dressed, stuffing myself into a shaping undergarment that covered me from just above the knee to my bra line before putting on a dress. I've put on a respectable 20 pounds since high school, but I'm not above trying to slim my appearance for a reunion.

"I'm wearing a fat sucker," I said to Cori by way of a greeting when she came by to pick me up from Robert and Bruce's.
"I am too," she said.

Back in the car, Cori and I drove past things that looked familiar - a water park called Splashdown, Estelle and Alfanso Fitness/Dance, and a pub called Greenbaum and Gilhooley’s. We took a right on Kingwood and drove up the back entrance to Oakwood, where the reunion was in full swing.

There were 12 of us representing the class of ‘89, which is better than it sounds considering our graduating class was only 67 students. We hugged each other wildly in a rush of giddiness and nostalgia.

“I love how we’re all hugging each other,” Karla, who has three little girls now, said. “We never would have hugged when we were actually in high school.”
“I’d hug you just for having survived the last 20 years,” I said. We settled under a tent that had been erected for the occasion where a buffet was being served on the same cafeteria dishes I’d eaten off of twenty years ago. A current student, emboldened by a bull horn, passed by our table and began issuing directives.

“Would the classes of ‘79 and ‘89 please gather at the auditorium, classes of ‘79 and ‘89, please gather at the auditorium for your class photos.” We did as we were told and abandoned our plates. A woman wearing white sandals with nude stockings arranged us on the steps of the auditorium, and a photographer took a few pictures. Once we were finished, we began milling around. I stepped into the gym to use the ladies room and paused in front of the school team symbol, a hand-painted blue paw print in a white circle and the words: "Lion’s Den, Go Lions” above it.

We gathered again outside the auditorium and began an impromptu walking tour of campus, pausing every so often to reminisce. We stepped into the dorms, which had the same smell of fabric softener and ramen noodles they'd always had, and Mike Thomas told me about the elaborate exhaust system that Andrew Yates and Jeff Crowe had set up in their room to elude detection of their marijuana smoking by the authorities. He also said that apparently we’d raised $1,000 that was to be used as a gift from our class to the school; we were going to buy a fax machine (can you believe fax machines once cost that much?) but instead the funds were misappropriated and used to fund a post-graduation loft party in Manhattan.

On the drive back, Cori looked perplexed.
“The class of ‘84 looked so much older than us, but they’re only five years older,” she said. "That's going to be us soon."
“That’s because they all let their hair go grey,” I assured her, “the class of ‘89 is way too hip for that shit.”

We walked through the front door of Bruce and Robert’s house to find a bundle of balloons tied to a chair, and a large pink box on the kitchen table. I wasn’t expecting this but was glad for the attention; I needed a little recognition after the week I’d had at work.

“Happy Birthday Lady,” Robert said.
“Have you ever had a Barbie?” Bruce asked,
“No, I haven’t” I said.
“Open the box,” Robert said. I did as I was told, and inside was a large pink mound with a plastic doll set in the center. I had never seen such a thing. Since I’d left that morning with Cori, Bruce and Robert had set about planning a surprise party for me, and Robert had called up the cake department at Stew Leonard’s, a local specialty grocery store, to see if they had any Barbie cakes available.
“I’m sorry’” the woman in the bakery department said to Robert, “We really need 48 hours notice for those cakes.”
“Okay,” Robert said, “what about those cakes that you can send a digital image of a person and it gets transferred onto the top of a sheet cake?”
“Well, I don’t know, I’m the only one here today and we’re pretty busy. I’d have to talk to my manager. I’ll take your information and call you back and let you know what we can do.” When Robert gave her his contact information, she paused at the sound of his last name.
“Chang, that sounds Chinese.”
“It is,” he said, “I am Chinese.”
“Really? I’m Chinese too!” she said, “I have to get you that cake now!" When he got off the phone Robert approached Bruce and said:
“I have some good news and some bad news; the good news is we got the Barbie cake, the bad news is I have to be Chinese to get it so you can’t come with me to pick it up.”
"Do you mean to tell me that you played the yellow card?" I asked Robert once he was done explaining the Barbie cake saga.
"Absolutely!" He said, "fortunately I had just shaved my head that morning, or I might not have looked Chinese enough. The best part was when she asked 'and how old is your little girl?'”
"What did you say to her?"
"I kind of dodged that question. It’s a layer cake,” Robert said as I admired the confection, “half yellow cake, half chocolate.“
“Just like you honey,” Bruce said.

I took a knife to the cake, and cut slices off it. The Barbie doll emerged from it in a protective sleeve that kept it from getting covered in cake and frosting, and was just the beginning of my loot. Bruce had stopped in at Wal-Mart, and a paisley print gift bag full of presents awaited discovery: a sun hat, a leopard print umbrella, a box of dried papaya, chocolates, and a jump rope with bubbles on the handles, among other treasures.

Cori’s husband Leighton joined us, and the four of us stayed up late talking. Cori and I were both tired, and retreated into the living room to check facebook. After a few minutes Bruce appeared in the doorway and said:

“What is this, the Vagina Monologues?”

I went to bed at 12:30, and slept the whole night through.

The next day after a brunch hosted by Cori’s parents, and watching a TV show called Yo Gabba Gabba with Cori's kids, Leighton drove me to New Haven’s Union station for the next leg of my journey. I paid fourteen dollars for a one way ticket to Grand Central, and a dollar for a banana from Sbarro. I walked to the track information board where automated tiles flipped over to show updated train destinations, whirring like a flock of pigeons flapping their wings in unison. I made my way to gate fourteen and boarded the train, ready to begin the next leg of my east coast adventure.

Cut

I.

Yesterday began like any other; I woke up late, fed Oblio, Mignonne and Mama Kitty, showered, picked out something to wear, ate a bowl of cereal, drank some coffee, and checked the online bus tracker for the #82 Kimball-Homan. On the blue line, a man sitting behind me argued on his cell phone in what sounded like a lover’s spat. He kept repeating:

“Because I’m more of a man than that. Because I’m more of a man than that. Because I’m more of a man than that. Because I’m more of a man than that.”

When I got above ground there was a text message on my phone from A: FYI, just found out there will be a security guard here today, it’s protocol. I texted back: thanks for the heads up. Today, after two agonizing weeks of waiting, we were finally going to find out whether we’d remain employed. Representatives from management and HR had flown in from headquarters, and we all had to meet with them individually, along with our direct supervisor. I was fixing myself a cup of coffee when the management rep found me in the kitchen.

“Oh hi,” she said, “whenever you’re ready come on in.”
“OK,” I said, and in that moment time slowed. I’d already poured hot water over the coffee grounds in my one-cup coffee press, I slowly opened the cupboard for my bag of turbinado sugar marked with my initials, and the fridge where I keep a similarly marked soy milk container. I fitted the plunger onto the press pot and pushed the handle down, poured the dark, fragrant brew into a mug, added soy milk,sugar, and stirred. I went back to my office to get a pad of paper and pen (I didn’t end up taking any notes), got my coffee from the kitchen, and walked into the room where the HR and management reps were waiting. It was 9:08 am. My supervisor was on the phone from headquarters, and in the space of three minutes I was let go from my job at a humanitarian aid organization where I've worked for three years. I’d been preparing for this moment, but tears came. As my supervisor read from a script (everyone was read to from a script, regardless) an open box of tissues was passed across the conference room table and set in front of me.

“I’m sorry,” my supervisor said at the end.
“I’m sorry too,” I said.

I went back to my office and called my husband, and in the next hour a steady stream of colleagues came in and out of my door; some who’d been let go, others who weren’t, all of them in tears. In the end, three of eleven had been let go in our office, and organization-wide the number was somewhere close to 70.

After I’d made some phone calls and sent some emails, all but one of us went across the street to Elephant and Castle for drinks. The La's There She Goes was playing on the sound system. Q went to the bar and returned to our table with two shots of whiskey. I’m not a whiskey drinker, but I lifted the diminutive glass to my lips, and took a sip.

“You can’t drink it like that,” K, who was sitting across the table from me, said, “You have to toss it back”. I picked it up again and tossed it back, the liquid ran over my tongue and down my throat, leaving a warm trail. Over the next few hours we sat, we talked, we drank, and we laughed. At one point K’s finger was bleeding and I told her that she shouldn’t take staff cuts so literally. By the time I left it was almost eight o’clock. I went back to the office to get things out of the fridge and check my email before heading home. On my way out, Flora the night guard asked what we’d been doing across the street for so long – we’d passed her on the sidewalk on our way over. I told her there’d been layoffs.

“Oh,” she said, “who all got let go?”
“G,” I started.
“I saw her, I knew she didn’t look right.”
“S,” I continued, “and me.”

Flora is nothing if not talkative, and she launched into a story about a bank she’d worked in once where the entire third shift security team was let go, herself included, and how her supervisor, “a real mean girl named Angie,” had made life difficult during that time. She told me about other companies in the building who’d had layoffs, employees who’d stepped off the elevator in the lobby carrying boxes of personal effects and weeping. I was tired, but I listened. On the days that I bike to work, Flora hands me the key to the bike closet on the loading dock, and we’ve developed a rapport over the years. Finally I told her I was going home. She hugged me, told me she knew everything was going to be all right, and walked outside with me, where she hugged me again. A man carrying a bottle in a brown paper bag approached us, asking:

“Can I have a hug? Can I get in on a group hug?” Flora released me from her embrace and said:
“No, no you cannot,” and chuckled softly. “All right,” she said to me, “I’ll see you tomorrow, right? Don’t leave without saying goodbye to me.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow Flora.”

II.

I descended the stairs to the red line and sat on the train with my eyes closed, listening to the rustle of people around me, and the recorded voice announcing what stop we were approaching. At Belmont, I got off the red line and stood on the platform to transfer to the brown. The evening air was warm, and it felt good on my face. I rode the brown line to Kedzie where a fellow commuter, a man in wire-rimmed glasses, held the exit door open for me.

“Thank you,” I said quietly, and he nodded. We walked on opposite sides of the street, both heading south for several blocks until he turned and headed west at Montrose; I continued on. The light from the sky made the colors on my street pop, the bright yellow green of recently fallen buds lighting up the sidewalk like emergency lights on the floor of a darkened airplane. As I walked up my front steps Oblio stared through the window at me from his perch on the loveseat, and watched me as I turned my key in the front lock. Once inside, my husband embraced me, and the tears came again.

“You and G and S should open your own international humanitarian aid organization down the street and steal donors, like they did on ‘The Office’” he said, and I laughed.

I ate a banana and fell asleep on the couch watching a documentary about the Crips and the Bloods.

III.

The next morning I slept in, and got to the office at around 11:30. The day security guard, James, greeted me as I came in. He said he’d miss me with my bike this summer. James used to help me put my bike up in the storage closet back when I rode a Schwinn Cruiser that was too heavy for me to lift. In the first months that I biked to work, every morning he’d hoist the front end of it onto a hook while I held up the back wheel, and every day he’d say: “Oh J, I sure hope your husband buys you a new bike for Christmas.” When I upgraded to a Marin Belvedere that winter I was able to put the bike up myself, and every day James would say: “Your husband should buy you a scooter for Christmas.”

When I got upstairs I met with a job loss counselor who looked remarkably like Al Delvecchio, circa his stint as spokesman for En-Cor Salisbury Steaks. He wore a tan corduroy jacket over a blue button down shirt, and sat directly in front of an oversized wall photo of a Guatemalan woman holding a baby, his head obscuring the baby in such a way that it appeared as though he was wearing the blue knit cap pictured on the infant’s head.

“So, what can I do for you in the short time that we have together?” he asked. I told him I wanted to know about the logistics of applying for unemployment. “It’s very complicated,” he explained, leaning back in his chair and intertwining the fingers of his hands, “if you earn any money while you’re unemployed, you have to deduct that from what they give you. I did it once for about two weeks and then stopped because it was too much of a hassle.” Then he started talking about other companies who'd hired him for his job loss counseling services. “I was out in Rockford the other day, talking to single mothers who’d just lost their jobs. They sat right where you are now, in tears, asking me what they should do. ‘What am I supposed to do?’ they asked me, ‘work as a waitress in a diner?’” He paused for effect. “Do you think you’ll become depressed?” he asked, as casually as if he were asking if I take milk with my coffee, “are you the kind of person who becomes depressed in situations like this?”

Tomorrow M and I will come downtown with the car for my personal effects:
• A 1924 Underwood typewriter, with a matching print advertisement from Popular Mechanics that reads: Own a Typewriter! A bargain You Can’t Ignore! Try it Free, and See! $3;
• Four mold injected dinosaurs from the Museum of Science and Industry;
• Two empty glass jars of Sanford’s washable fountain pen ink;
• An empty Codo Super-fiber typewriter ribbon case;
• A box of antique gummed labels;
• An old wood block used for advertising typist jobs in newspapers that shows the profile of two women sitting in front of typewriters, their hands raised in mid key strike;
• A reproduction vintage poster for Spa-Citron;
• Miniature Barbapapa dolls;
• A wall hanging from Benin;
• A toy camel from India;
• A Moroccan scarf;
• Carved wooden cows from Switzerland;
• Photos of Cape Cod;
• A wedding photo of me and M;
• A tin Chicago Tribune front page cover showing Obama on November 5th, 2008 with the headline: “Obama, Our next president”;
• A Swiss flag wall lamp;
• A miniature Swiss flag;
• An antique brass doorknob with the words: “PUBLIC SCHOOL CITY OF NEW YORK” imprinted on it;
• An iPod docking station;
• Antique NYC subway operator badges;
• Pictures of my nieces and nephews;
• A Peters projection world map;
• A printout of my ticket to Grant Park on election night;
• A Shepard Fairey “Yes We Did” poster; and
• A Nikki McClure “Vote” poster, to name a few.

I’ve taken a couple empty banker’s boxes out of the storage room across from my office; hopefully everything will fit.