Vote Early, Vote Often

So, we went down and early voted today. I have such mixed feelings about this, about how much it really matters. And also some very strong frustrations about the lack of transparency and voter education that goes into this. Sure, we've all heard about two of the seven people running for president. But beyond that? At least here in Illinois, not only was information not shared, it was downright hard to find.

I did actually look too, I thought I'd found names of judges who weren't qualified to stay in their positions. However none of those names were on my ballot. I went to a forum discussing the constitutional convention we're supposed to vote on, and left feeling just as confused as when I went in. I had assumed that everything would be paper ballots, with touch screen voting only for people who needed it. Where we went today, every voting box was electronic.

If I'm finding it this complicated, what does that say about the state of voting here in Chicago? Is this common to cities, voting in general, or just here where corruption is rampant and expected?

As someone who grew up with neighbors and teachers who were in the state legislature, I knew everyone running before I was old enough to vote. Occasionally candidates would stop by our house to chat in the evening about their positions. Candidate comparisons seemed common and easy to find. I even heard that in Portland, people received position statements in the mail, all in one easy to browse pamphlet. It's very disengaging to feel that not only does my vote not matter on a federal level, but my vote even doesn't matter on a local level to those that are running for it.

And yet even feeling that way, I still had a sense of obligation to go and check all the little boxes. By the time I got to the end of was it twelve electronic pages? I'd pretty much checked out myself.

waking up

My favorite version of me is the one that gets up at 6am, exercises, showers, eats a big breakfast, practices my Spanish, and gets a good productive start on the day. It's been very difficult to come up with that version lately.

I've been dreaming a lot, which I like. But I'm in a phase that occasionally happens, where I actually feel held hostage by my dreams. They're so detailed and complex, I really want to find out how the story ends. I end up making myself go back to sleep instead of getting up and being productive, just so I can see what happens in the dream. Once I have been in this phase for a couple of days or a week, it starts to really frighten me. What I'm basically letting my brain say to me is that my dreams are more interesting than my real life, and I'd rather stay there. I remember times in high school where my dreams were so vivid that sometimes I'd be actually participating in real life but under the assumption that it was also part of my dream. I began to have a hard time figuring out what the line between the two was. I think I'm always a little bit scared that I might go back to that, if the dreams get so out of hand.

And I don't agree with my brain. My life is interesting and wonderful. My dreams are a fascinating magical story, but even when I'm in them I realize it's just a story. I have been lucky to have resolution dreams, where I'm visited by someone who has died or is no longer in my life and we're able to say goodbye to each other. And I'm thankful for those, but I still would choose my actual life over my dreams.

It's just hard to make that choice when you're cozy under the blankets in a wonderful bed, and the option is to put your bare feet on a cold floor and wake up. But do you hear me brain? I'm ready to wake up again!

weekend widow

I got called a weekend widow yesterday, and this weekend it's even more true. ehs has been out of town for every Saturday except one starting September 20th (I did go for one of those weekends. He'll be gone again next weekend, and then we'll both be gone for two weekends. yikes!). He's enjoying what he's doing, but we've definitely put some things on hold because we know that the time just isn't there right now.

This time he's gone the whole weekend, he left right after work on Friday to fly to Boston for my brother's bachelor party, and he'll be back at the end of the day on Sunday. Yesterday I saw a friend during the day, then I went out with friends to one of my favorite bars in the city. It's a Scottish bar with great beer, amazing fish and chips, and a real pub feel. Also you can order half-pints, which is a wonderful concept. For an after-dinner drink, the waitress suggested port lemonade. I had never heard of this concept, and was not expecting it to contain ice cubes, but it was great and I would definitely get it again. Basically a version of sangria.

Today I'm having just a quiet me day. I'm intending to take myself to a movie this morning (box of popcorn and Javier Bardem, here I come!). Then my goal is to lose myself in some deep organization. We do a pretty good job of stuffing things in closets and closing the doors, but I've decided I want the closet back. We'll see who wins at the end of the day.

Tomorrow I'm going to a friend's house for what was described as "expirimental cooking." Apparently this will be the third attempt at making homemade pizza rolls. Plus some guitar hero, which I fully expect to be terrible at. It's nice to have your expectations low going in, that way it won't be a surprise.

birthdays

so, I have many friends who are going to be turning 30 in the next year or so. And that seems like a pretty big deal. I really can't predict how I'm going to react to that event for myself. I never had a list of things that needed to be accomplished by that time, so I don't feel like I'm running out of time to make something of myself.

However, I also have a friend who's turning 50 next year. That's a bigger deal. She's planning to host a party of 50 women, what she's calling a "Slumber Party/Suicide Watch." (Which I believe is more panic than real danger). And she's already panicking about turning 49, which she wasn't expecting. I think she'd thought everything would be chill until the night before turning 50, when suddenly the realization of the age would hit her. Turns out to not be the case.

So there are a lot of questions this creates for me. Can someone who's not yet 30 really sympathize and support someone who's turning 50? I can be caring and concerned, but really have no way to create the life experiences and the actual fear of that time. I have anticipation of that fear, but I'm not sure it can really sink in until then.

And then the questions become, what will I want to do for my 50th birthday? What would I be scared of then, and if I can figure out what it would be, can I change it? And is this all just naive pondering that continues to show my inability to grasp the full significance of that birthday?

forgot to put a title on

Last night we went to Navy Pier to see Amadeus at Chicago Shakespeare. It's pretty strange to sit in the audience there, five years after having worked there as a freelance electrician. It feels like some other lifetime that I was climbing ladders, lifting lights, and living that lifestyle. And yet five years is not really all that long of a time.

The show was very good, more humorous than I remembered it being (is it scary that I tried to spell "humorous" as in funny as "humerus" as in "the arm bone"?) . The acting was very good, and it brought up a lot more to think about than I had expected. Much more discussion of good and evil, and the role of God in human lives.

In other news, ehs has gotten trapped in two different labyrinth/journey books at once. He was reading "House of Leaves," but decided to start "Kafka on the Shore" before we saw it at Steppenwolf. Well, we saw it on Tuesday, so now he's partway through both of them. It's an interesting juxtaposition to make with those two, but what I mostly notice is that even still I can't discuss "House of Leaves" before bedtime without getting a cold shiver down my spine.

Finishing the Small Cat Story

So I realized that in my hiatus from posting I never finished the cat acne story. We left off with the part where I was going to try to give Benedryl to the Small Cat. Now this guy is squirmy and hard to pill anyway, we've had major problems in the past. For some reason I decided to attempt it by myself anyway. I got the pill in his mouth, but he immediately spit it out and began foaming at the mouth. Apparently he didn't like the taste of it and was trying to create as much saliva as possible to clear it out. I didn't at first realize what was going on, so I let him walk away. Then I realized he was dripping on the floor. Blech. I grabbed him and threw him in the bathroom (wiping down the floors of course), and then sat in there with him. I figured since I had him in there anyway, I might as well try the pill a second time. Bad idea. This time he got even more of a taste of it, and some of the pink coating came off in his mouth. Now he's foaming serious amounts of pink froth out of his mouth, and I have a deeper-than-it-looks gash in my finger from an escape attempt. We sat in the bathroom glaring at each other while I put pressure on my wound and he dripped pink drops. Eventually we both dried up a little and I let him go.

When ehs came home that night, we tried again, only to create a spectacular repetition of the previous performance. Twice actually. The three of us sat in the bathroom for a while, Small Cat banished to the tub while he frothed.

The next day I tried grinding up a Benedryl and putting it on a treat. He got within smelling range of the treat and began to foam. We've created a Pavlovian foaming effect.

So, we're currently ignoring the allergies. We're going to see how much of a problem it really is, possibly try switching the food. We can also pay to have a topical antihistamine created. We noticed some chin acne on the Monster Cat as well, so now they both get to have their faces washed (although as you may guess, I don't lock myself in the bathroom with the Monster Cat and attempt to wash his face. I let ehs take that job).

And the final note (for the moment) is that one night I decided to take a Benedryl for my potential allergies. I don't know what's wrong with those pills, but Small Cat was right. Those are some of the worst tasting pills I have ever had to ingest.