Chicago

Mish Mosh

I think I’ve hit the prover­bial “brick wall” with my daily blog entries. I’m just not at all feel­ing cre­ative these days and I’m sure it has to do with the fact that I’m just 15 days away from fin­ish­ing up the promise I made to myself to post daily until the Mon­day after Easter.

Yeah, I’ve got me some writer’s block going on.

Oh, not that I don’t have things to say (when don’t I?), I think I’m at that state where I know I’m in the last stretch before the home front. And if I. Can. Just. Push myself. A lit­tle further …

Today was laun­dry day. And at the café next to the laun­dro­mat, there hap­pened to be this sign –>

How can you not laugh after see­ing that? Espe­cially now that I’m imag­in­ing a future bowl of soup take off on me in the midst of con­sum­ing it so it can save the world.

After­ward, it was back to the local cof­fee house so that Hubby can con­tinue to do some more work with­out the dis­trac­tions of the TV at home. Nope … instead we were dis­tracted by look­ing up scores for the NCAA March Mad­ness Tourney.

Of which, this is the first year I’ve ever did a set of brack­ets. While I’ve known I’m a sports fan(atic) for a while, I’ve never been too much of a col­lege bas­ket­ball lover. (Hubby blames it on the demise of Michigan’s Fab Five.) And I could never under­stand how peo­ple could become so dis­tracted on those Thurs­days and Fri­days of the NCAA tour­na­ment. Until now. D*mnit.

Oh, and I just have to send a quick shout-​​out to my alma mater, Oak­land Uni­ver­sity that did make the tour­na­ment this year. Unfor­tu­nately they lost in the first round. But that’s more I can say about Hubby’s alma mater. :-P

One more piece of bab­ble before I sign off for the night. And I have to men­tion it only because it is a rather his­toric day in Wash­ing­ton DC. I think any Amer­i­can would’ve had to be liv­ing under a rock these past cou­ple years not to know what I’m talk­ing about.

Hubby “rockin’ it” at the local *Bucks

Yes, I can’t believe that today will be the House vote on whether or not to pass the Health Care Reform bill. And see­ing that the key Demo­c­ra­tic  hold-​​out amended his deci­sion based on a last-​​minute Exec­u­tive Order from Obama, it’s sound­ing more and more like this Health Care Reform bill will be signed into leg­is­la­tion by the end of tonight or in the early morn­ing hours.

As a pro­fes­sional clin­i­cian in the Health Care arena … let alone one that specif­i­cally works for a health insur­ance com­pany, I’m hon­estly a lit­tle ner­vous about what this will mean for the land­scape of my immi­nent future. While I will be incred­i­bly relieved that this ver­sion of Health Care Reform means that every­one has access to qual­ity health care (because regard­less of whether a per­son is poor or rich, we should all have the basic human right of receiv­ing appro­pri­ate care), I’m a lit­tle wor­ried of the real­ity on how this will all be funded.

Again, not say­ing that I dis­agree with the con­cept that every liv­ing being should be able to have access to the basic human right of qual­ity health care … I’m just sim­ply stat­ing that if Health Care costs con­tinue to rise at the rate that they do, how will even the fed­eral gov­ern­ment pay for it?

My Mom made the com­ment this after­noon as a spoke with her that it’s because of rise in Health Insur­ance pre­mi­ums that have forced those pre­vi­ously opposed to the bill change their mind. She specif­i­cally pointed to my employer ( … you know, the one who pays my bills?) as an example.

WTF?! This is Sub­ur­ban Chi-Town’s ver­sion of the Lean­ing Tower

How­ever, what she failed to see (and what most peo­ple also fail to real­ize) is that the raise in pre­mi­ums is due to the rise in over­all health care costs. And rise in over­all health care costs is a com­bi­na­tion of mul­ti­ple fac­tors. One which can specif­i­cally be directed towards those phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies and high tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies that pro­duce those multi-​​million dol­lar machines that can diag­nose can­cer just by stand­ing next to it.

I’m kid­ding, of course. There is no such instru­ment. But the truth is, it’s these com­pa­nies that charge US the con­sumers mil­lions of bil­lions of dol­lars in order to turn a healthy profit on their end. And when I talk about “con­sumers,” I mean any per­son that seeks health care ser­vices, the facil­i­ties that pre­scribe these drugs or pur­chase these instru­ments, and the health insur­ance companies.

Where else would these phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal com­pa­nies get the money to adver­tise their med­ica­tions (A$$-effects any­one?) And how else would they con­tinue to make the prof­its by keep­ing the patents to these med­ica­tions for years and years (and years), and charge hun­dreds of dol­lars for their “Brand Name” drug when it could be made more read­ily avail­able for generic dis­tri­b­u­tion (and there­fore cheaper to the consumers)?

So yes, this is more the rea­son I’m con­cerned about the cur­rent Health Reform bill. Because, quite frankly, it really doesn’t dis­cuss any reform when it comes to health care spending.

Another Ran­dom Chicago Pic

And maybe it’s because I’ve seen both sides of the equa­tion … both as a Reg­is­tered Nurse work­ing in the hos­pi­tal and as a RN Case Man­ager work­ing for the health insur­ance com­pany …  try­ing to assist with find­ing resources for those un(der)insured patients in order for them to be safely dis­charged home, that I absolutely know Health Care Reform is needed.

I just hope that some­how with the pass­ing of this bill, that these other issues will also be addressed. Espe­cially now that those “bills” (as in the bills that typ­i­cally get sent to the indi­vid­ual who received ser­vices and/​or the health insur­ance com­pany, if they have any) would be the respon­si­bil­ity of our government.

Whew. Okay … this was a much longer post that I antic­i­pated. But hey … per­haps this means I’ve plowed through that brick wall?!

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In Ger­man today, here’s my Daily Lenten exercise.

Eine gute Tat des Tages: Uhm … I’m hon­estly not quite sure I did a Good Deed today. At least not yet. I guess I’ll have to do some­thing before the day is offi­cially over. Hmmm … per­haps walk our Kozzy-​​girl when we get home? So Hubby can con­tinue to work? Yeah. Think I’ll do that.

Gefühle der Dankbarkeit für den Tag: Well, today I’m grate­ful for Hubby who did a stel­lar job in help­ing out with the laun­dry today. Espe­cially since I’m not feel­ing a 100% today. I’m all achey and clammy. Uh-​​oh. :-(

Okay y’all. Time to sign off for now. Until tomorrow …

No Schedules Allowed

It’s finally Fri­day night and I’m so happy that the week­end is finally here. So what if the weather is sup­posed to be crappy weather all week­end? So what if it’s prob­a­bly going to be spent doing laun­dry? Or, worse, work?

All I know is that I’m not going to be held to a spe­cific sched­ule; not going to be pulled into a last-​​minute meet­ing. Not going to have to deal with a con­stant bar­rage of emails and IM’s. And even though there is work to be done, the fact that I’m going to be able to work at my own pace just totally makes the whole weekend!

So this post is going to be short tonite; no fluffy sto­ries or reflec­tions about a child-​​free life. Tonite is all about keep­ing up with my Daily Lenten promise.

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Today’s Good Deed: While walk­ing the mutt-​​ster this morn­ing, I man­aged to find a dol­lar bill on the side­walk. After look­ing all around me to see if there was any­body in the vicin­ity that might have lost the money, I picked up the dol­lar and put it in my pocket. And no … the good deed wasn’t that I returned the dol­lar to the per­son who lost it. I actu­ally made it a point to give it to my co-​​worker who, every work day, passes the same hun­gry home­less man on the way to her com­muter train sta­tion. I fig­ured that he could use the dol­lar more than I could.

Today’s Grat­i­tude: Can I just say one word? Fri­day. :-)

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One more thing … couldn’t resist putting a photo of this up here. Thought this was one of the coolest con­cepts I’ve seen in quite awhile; per­fect for the annual dye­ing of the Chicago River for St. Patty’s Day. Click on the pic­ture to find out more about the Ad Agency behind the concept.

Out of My Shell

Nice Sunny Chicago Day … Last Summer!

It’s gor­geous out­side. And I know this, despite being locked up under arti­fi­cial lights since 8:30 this morn­ing, because I’ve been unchained from my desk for a lunch time break. I couldn’t let the beau­ti­ful day go by with­out soak­ing up some of that sun.

I’m get­ting a head start on today’s post only because I will be attend­ing my sec­ond Meetup for the week; another one about Blog­gers in the Chicago area. This appar­ently is one of the big­ger groups (300+ mem­bers), so I’m a lit­tle hes­i­tant to see how per­sonal or unper­sonal this event will be.

In any case, I sup­pose it’s a good thing to get out there in this city. After a over a year of being here, I need to find a bal­ance between work and play. And see­ing that this was one of my prob­lems back in Detroit, I fig­ure it best be some­thing I cor­rect now.

It’s amaz­ing how the older we get, the harder it is to step out­side of our shells. Some­days I’m still amazed how I man­aged to pick up and leave the only city I’ve ever known and start over. And hav­ing a job wait­ing for me was def­i­nitely a bless­ing in dis­guise; because, if any­thing, at least that pro­vided me with the abil­ity to inter­act with peo­ple and relate to them on some com­mon ground (the job, our back­grounds as Case Man­agers, etc).

This hasn’t been the same for Hubby. While he con­tin­ued to have free-​​lance jobs and inter­act with peo­ple either online or on the phone, there wasn’t much face-​​to-​​face inter­ac­tion in his day. (It prob­a­bly was more face-​​to-​​laptop screen or ear-​​to-​​iPhone inter­ac­tion more than any­thing.) While I encour­aged him to work out­side of our apart­ment where there were more chances of human con­tact, some­days he was too busy to leave his home-​​office. And some­days, he pre­ferred only furbaby inter­ac­tion instead.

Either way, it’s a good thing that he dis­cov­ered Meetup​.com. It’s a site that allows peo­ple to search for com­mu­ni­ties and events by inter­est; nar­row­ing it down to a spe­cific loca­tion. And because Chicago is a rather big city, there hap­pens to be more groups/​communities avail­able that suit his inter­ests. So for the past (almost) three months now, he’s been attend­ing var­i­ous events and begin­ning to build his network.

Now is the time for me to start doing this. And see­ing that my inter­ests lately have been more towards writ­ing more and blog­ging, it makes sense to go to this Meetup tonite. I have no idea where this blog will take me, but I truly hope that I can at least learn some tips of the trade in try­ing to get my blog out there and read more often.

Wish me luck!!

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Whew … 17 more days and count­ing until my Lenten jour­ney is over! Go me!!

Good Deed Du Jour: Today we had another inser­vice at work for the entire staff. Unfor­tu­nately, the major­ity of my in-​​house staff wanted to go together; which I couldn’t allow because our phones needed to be cov­ered for poten­tial incom­ing live calls from our Cus­tomer Ser­vice area. But since two staff mem­bers left behind had really expressed inter­est over going to this topic in the past, I told them I’d cover for their phones and get our telecom­muters to cover the phones as well. Both of them were very grateful!

Grat­i­tude Du Jour: Thank good­ness for warm sunny days! Noth­ing like a lit­tle bit of sun­shine to give us a taste of Spring … which offi­cially begins on the 21st! Yay!!

Amateur Night

My Dad tries to “Poll Dance” in Vegas on the shut­tle … It’s his Ama­teur Night! LOL!

How is it that I man­aged to attend my first Meetup group event on the eve of my blo­gov­er­sary? And how per­fect that I joined a group called Chicago Blogs?

Yes, Hubby finally man­aged to drag me (although not kick­ing and scream­ing) to one of his Meetup events. Which, see­ing that it just hap­pens to be about blog­ging, seems per­fect as a Meetup Virgin.

WOW, did I learn quite a bit about the “geekier” side of blog­ging! From SEOs (a term I just learned tonight) to mar­ket­ing my blog in var­i­ous man­ners … I feel as if I’m quite behind on my learn­ing curve for blog­ging. But that’s okay. Because that’s what this group is about; which is to learn from each other and share var­i­ous experiences.

See­ing that I had never been to a Meetup event before, I was ini­tially quite ner­vous. Although I’m the “out­go­ing” one between Hubby & I, there are still times that I can be quite shy. But from the moment Hubby & I arrived, we both felt quite comfortable.

So thank you, Marty, for being such a gra­cious host. And seri­ously, it was incred­i­ble to meet such a great group of peo­ple with var­i­ous expe­ri­ences in the blo­go­v­erse. Look­ing for­ward to pick­ing your brain for more ideas … espe­cially now that I finally have a reg­is­tered domain!!

And now comes the time-​​consuming part (mostly on Hubby’s end) of design­ing and devel­op­ing my blog …

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Well … see­ing that it’s the eve of St. Patrick’s day, might as well go for an Irish ver­sion of my Lenten Activities:

Dea-​​Gníomhas an Lae: Today’s good deed was all about encour­age­ment. Not only was it about encour­age­ment to some of the new folk I met tonight; espe­cially those that have just entered into the world of blog­ging … but it was also about pro­vid­ing feed­back and con­fi­dence to all of my employ­ees as we met one-​​on-​​one today.

Bhuío­chas ar an Lae: I am grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity to meet new peo­ple. Being new in a city is not nec­es­sar­ily a bad thing … it’s just the older I get, the harder it is to meet other peo­ple out­side of work and out­side of my pro­fes­sion. So being able to meet new peo­ple and find com­mon inter­ests? Yeah … that’s just the whip cream on top of the banana split!

Okay all, that’s it. I’m barely keep­ing my eyes open at this time … Good night!

Spare Parts

I actu­ally started writ­ing this post on my iPhone on the drive from Chicago to Detroit. Ah … The won­ders of mod­ern technology!

Click on to the pic­ture to find out about this “store front”

Typ­i­cally on the 5-​​hour drive, Hubby usu­ally gets the “honor” of being behind the wheel. And there’s some­thing about his dri­ving that usu­ally lulls me to sleep. But today, despite stay­ing up late last night and putting in a six-​​hour work day, I’m sur­pris­ingly wide awake. Maybe it’s the Real Fruit Berry Slushie from the Sonic in K-​​zoo? Nah …

In the past, when­ever we’d go on long road trips, Hubby & I would make it an event. We’d stack up the CD’s and pack some snacks and have so much fun. And in between Van Mor­ri­son and CCR songs** Hubby and I would have these incred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tions about our life together, our future, and our hopes & dreams.

Not that we still don’t have awe­some con­ver­sa­tions now on our round-​​trips between Chi-​​Town and Motown; it’s just that they don’t always hap­pen dur­ing every trip … Espe­cially with Hubby’s uncanny abil­ity to make me so nice and relaxed when he does the driving.

And because those con­ver­sa­tions were really in the ear­lier years of our rela­tion­ship, there was more to find out about one another. There was more about us, as indi­vid­u­als, to share. There were more dreams of the ideal future to discuss.

There was none of those shared wor­ries or dis­ap­point­ments. There was no shared heart­breaks for futures that weren’t real­ized. There was only hope.

It’s because of those things that these awe­some con­ver­sa­tions hap­pen less … But when they do, they are so much more excit­ing and fun.

Today, Hubby & I had one of those fun con­ver­sa­tions. Since learn­ing more web apps, he’s been dying to either a) start up and design his own blog, or b) take my blog and move it to my own domain so that he can have all the fun in play­ing around with it while design­ing it. Now I’m totally for Option B here*** but I’d also love to see Hubby write his own blog as well.

Any­way, a cou­ple days we were try­ing to come up with poten­tial names for his blog. Unfor­tu­nately, we never came up with any that would “stick.”

Today on the drive to Detroit, I came up with a name that I thought would make for a great new blog title … For me. Except when I told Hubby about it, he thought that I was talk­ing about a blog title for him.

The title? “Spare Parts” which would have been great for an infer­tile liv­ing child-​​free like me, who still has all her lady parts. Except … well, except they just don’t work. So yeah. Spare. Parts.

Hubby, on the other hand, thought that I was talk­ing about a blog name for him, where he’s just the “spare part” to me. In which  he pro­ceeded to say to me, “What does that mean? That I’m so old and bro­ken? And that I’m replace­able? For newer parts?”

He was seri­ous, and yet I couldn’t help but laugh.

“Of course not,” I told him. “I was talk­ing about myself!” and then I explained to him the rea­son I came up with the name.

But that still didn’t stop Hubby from call­ing him­self as “Spare Part” for the rest of our drive home. Or refer­ring to par­tic­u­lar Hubby behav­iors as a “Spare Part” behav­ior. Like, for instance, the fact that he has a ten­dency to ask mul­ti­ple ques­tions at one time as “Spare Part ques­tions.” Or head­ing in the wrong direc­tion towards the free­way as “Spare Part directions.”

Later on that night, as we were closer to home I told him that he was irre­place­able. That there was only one Hubby for me. And if any­thing, I was the one who was replace­able … with my bro­ken parts.

And of course he told me that *I* had no spare parts; that I was per­fect the way I am. Most impor­tantly, he told me this: The two of us sep­a­rately can be seen as “spare parts.” But together … well, that just makes us whole.

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Now … for my daily Lenten activities:

Today’s Good Deed: At work, I had sched­uled a ven­dor meet­ing for my entire team (not my first choice of days dur­ing the week). This, unfor­tu­nately meant that my telecom­muters had to come in to the office for the day. Hubby gave me the bril­liant idea of bring­ing in some treats for the team. So we stopped off at Dunkin’ Donuts on the way to the office and picked up a dozen donuts; for no other rea­son other than to cel­e­brate that it was Fri­day and that we were all together in the office. The best part? As I stepped out of the ele­va­tor, three of my team mem­bers were wait­ing to climb on to go down for a morn­ing snack. And guess what they were going to buy? That’s right peeps … donuts! Hubby obvi­ously had a sixth sense about stop­ping for this par­tic­u­lar snack.

Today’s Grat­i­tude: Every time we go back to Metro-​​Detroit, we make it a rit­ual to meet up with our friend, J. And of course, we try to meet up at our favorite local tav­ern for some good burg­ers. Tonight was no excep­tion to our meet-​​up, but … being a (ques­tion­ably) good Catholic, I refrained from eat­ing meat on a Fri­day dur­ing Lent. (I know! What restraint!!) I may have men­tioned in pre­vi­ous posts that we con­sider J one of our clos­est friends; so today I’m grate­ful for this friend­ship and the incred­i­ble con­ver­sa­tions we have when­ever we get together.

So that’s it for today … it’s actu­ally quite late as I’m fin­ish­ing up this post. Truth be told, it’s already Sat­ur­day early morn­ing … but since I tech­ni­cally didn’t sleep yet … this is still Friday’s post. And that’s how I’m going to date it.

So there. <sticks tongue out>

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** Because there’s some­thing about those clas­sic rock songs that just make you wanna sing them at the top of our lungs while dri­ving long distances …

*** Hey, why not?! It’d be rel­a­tively free for me!

Proud Pet Owner

There’s this high school in Chicago with an  incred­i­bly large lawn right down at the end of our street. It kinda like the “old skool” schools that remind me of Rydell High from “Grease.”

Offi­cial Club­house for the DEC

In any case, the huge lawn of this school also serves as a dog park. It comes in pretty handy when we’ve gotta take our Kozzy-​​girl out for her “busi­ness.” But not so great when there’s a whole gag­gle of other dogs out there as well.

As I’ve men­tioned in pre­vi­ous posts, our Kozzy is not exactly the most socially adept dog. Both with strangers and with other dogs. With us, she’s the sweet­est affa­ble dog around … but with oth­ers, she’s such a ner­vous nelly; which in turn makes her aggres­sive. So yeah, she’s not exactly wel­comed at the dog park.

In fact, Hubby & I have a name for the group of pets and their own­ers. We call them the DEC. Or the Doggy Exclu­sive Club. Of which Kozzy & her own­ers are not members.

But thanks to unyield­ing patience on both our parts and the help of tips from watch­ing “The Dog Whis­perer,” Kozzy has made a break­through tonight. That’s right, peeps; I think Kozzy actu­ally made a doggy friend. And it hap­pens to be this fluff-​​ball of a puppy that belongs to the fam­ily in the apart­ment build­ing a few houses down. It’s a good thing this fur­ball is the antithe­sis of Kozzy; he’s friendly and ver­rry non-​​aggressive. So much that Kozzy actu­ally let him sniff her and let Kozzy sniff him … all with­out any growl­ing or barking!

I KNOW! I was sooo amazed!

Of course, after that … I just had to test out the DEC. And, unfor­tu­nately … the amount of pets and pet own­ers at the park must have over­whelmed our Kozzy. Which, of course, resulted in Kozzy being overly anx­ious and overly aggres­sive. But … at least I man­aged to calm her down before head­ing back home.

Despite that lit­tle hic­cup at the end, I am so proud of my Kozzy-​​girl. It’s taken awhile, but I think she’s finally adjust­ing to city life!

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And now for the Daily Lenten Spe­cial:

Good Deed Du jour: The first Wednes­day of the month is typ­i­cally “Free Inser­vice Day” at work. It’s where our Clin­i­cal Train­ers arrange for some sort of ven­dor to come out and present on a healthcare-​​related topic. With that comes free Con­tin­u­ing Edu­ca­tion Units (CEU) to keep up with our Nurs­ing License and Cer­ti­fi­ca­tion for Case Man­ager. Oh, and lunch is usu­ally pro­vided as well. How­ever, the amount of food that’s pro­vided is usu­ally waaay too much for me to eat in one set­ting … so I tend to either share it with some­one or bring it home.

Today I decided to give the other half of my chicken pita sand­wich and cook­ies to some­one else who needed it. And that would be the home­less guy that hap­pened to be sit­ting out­side of the Bor­ders Book­store on Michi­gan Avenue. I’m sure this guy prob­a­bly gets a lot of hand­outs through­out the day, but at least I know that I’ve given food to some­one who could use it.

And here’s my Kozzy-​​girl!!

Grat­i­tude Du jour: Even though I already expressed grat­i­tude for hav­ing Kozzy in our lives; today I am thank­ful for all the things that hav­ing to care for Kozzy has taught me. While patience is the num­ber one thing that Kozzy has taught me, there’s another impor­tant les­son I’ve learned for her. Because of Kozzy, I’ve learned how my emo­tions and moods affect oth­ers. With humans, it’s not as bla­tantly obvi­ous to see how an anx­ious or bad mood can affect other peo­ple around you.

With pets … dogs, in par­tic­u­lar … they can pick up on emo­tions right away. If I’m happy and excited, then chances are Kozzy is the same. And when I’m angry or anx­ious … well, you bet that Kozzy starts exhibit­ing her anx­i­ety. And because of this exer­cise, I’ve learned to be more con­scious of how my dis­po­si­tion affects oth­ers. So thank you Kozzy, for that lesson.

Dedicated

I am so ded­i­cated to com­plet­ing the month of post­ing daily (although I started to lose the whole “Ties” theme mid­way through), that I’m cur­rently writ­ing this with my eyes half-​​closed.

I’m so look­ing for­ward to this week­end, just so I can catch some Zzzz’s. Not only have I stayed up late pretty much every night since the Olympics, but it feels as if I’ve been run­ning non-​​stop at work this past week. Need­less to say, I am exhausted.

So before I lit­er­ally fall asleep with my head on the lap­top key­board, let’s get down to business:

Today’s “Good Deed” for the day involved speak­ing with one of those inter­est­ing home­less guys on the streets of Chicago. Because Hubby had a con­fer­ence until 4:30 down­town, we made plans to meet at the local Bor­ders Book­store after I got off work. And since I had enough of work today, I left my office a half hour ear­lier (with the bless­ing of Big Boss, of course) And as I stood out­side the store patiently wait­ing for Hubby, this com­pletely harm­less Home­less Guy (HG) came up to me and started talk­ing with me.

Now, nor­mally I would give any stranger that came up to me (let alone one that appeared to have bathed in liquor) a rather dis­parag­ing look and dis­miss him or her. But since it was Fri­day, and HG appeared friendly enough, I decided to humor him.  After about 10 min­utes of ban­ter­ing back and forth about me being “full of it” (he didn’t believe I was mar­ried) and about try­ing his best to do what he thinks is right … Hubby finally showed up; prob­a­bly much to this guy’s cha­grin. And after a brief three-​​way con­ver­sa­tion, HG reluc­tantly let Hubby & I go on our merry way.

Of course, Hubby had to tease me about how he couldn’t leave me alone for a minute; that I always seem to attract the oppo­site sex … of which I imme­di­ately cor­rected him by say­ing that I always seemed to attract the “best” of the bunch. Hah!

At the very least, I hope I pro­vided HG a lit­tle bright spot in his day. I’m sure that most peo­ple either ignore him as they walk on by. Or they do what I nor­mally do on any given day. Some­times I think that peo­ple just want to be heard, so I’d like to think I indulged him with that opportunity.

As for what I’m thank­ful for today? Since I’m so frickin’ exhausted, I’m just quite happy that one thing I get to “indulge” in every week­end is the abil­ity to sleep in or wake up on my own time. If there’s any bright spot about liv­ing child-​​free after infer­til­ity, this is def­i­nitely one of them!

Okay, that’s it. I’m done for the night. Hope you all have a won­der­ful Fri­day night … and may you all have the oppor­tu­nity to sleep in. Even if it’s just for a bit!!

NUTS!!">Oh NUTS!!

Some­days work feels like Mr. Stay Puft

Pro­ton Pack Day #2. Except today I was remotely putting out fires from home; which def­i­nitely had its chal­lenges. But ask me if I minded doing it from home, and I’d tell you that I would find a way of putting up with the chal­lenges in order to take advan­tage of this ben­e­fit. It’s just too bad that I’m lim­ited to work­ing from home only one day a month. Boo …

Any­way, because I worked from home today I did not have much oppor­tu­nity to do any new Ran­dom Acts of Kind­ness. Instead, while tak­ing my puppy-​​girl for an extended walk (after my work day was done), I once again spread some good­ies for the Chicago wildlife. Well … the birds and squir­rel vari­ety, any­way — none of those “back alley” city wildlife.

Squir­rels are funny crea­tures; more so, it seems, in the city. Hubby & I have had the con­ver­sa­tion before about how squir­rels in Chicago seem just a bit dif­fer­ent than squir­rels back in sub­ur­ban Detroit. First of all, the colorings/​markings on Chicago squir­rels are remark­ably greyish-​​brown; more of a hodge-​​podge of var­i­ous squir­rel col­or­ings. And then there are those sub­ur­ban Detroit squir­rels, which tend to be either reaaal­lly brown or black.

Meet City Squir­rel (Chicago)

And because I grew up in sub­ur­ban Detroit in the decade fol­low­ing the 1967 Detroit Riot and dur­ing Cole­man Young’s five terms of Mayor (both cir­cum­stances that con­tributed to the mas­sive seg­re­ga­tion between city and sub­urbs, cau­casian and non-​​caucasian), it’s a silly obser­va­tion that Detroit squir­rels should be so … well, black and white. Add to the fact that up until the last decade or so, it was rare to see a black squir­rel past Eight Mile Road* … that’s irony at its best!

But regard­less of ra– … I mean species , the big thing that we noticed about city squir­rels and “coun­try” squir­rels*** is the per­son­al­i­ties. Sub­ur­ban squir­rels (at least in all other areas of the Detroit area other than Ann Arbor) are rather timid. They are eas­ily fright­ened by any­thing and every­thing. Whereas, their cousin, City Squir­rel just loooves to come up to any­one or any­thing … espe­cially my dog.

You know, the same dog that has anx­i­ety issues? And totally gets nervous/​aggressive when other pets are around? Yes, City Squir­rel loves to antag­o­nize her. (My poor Kozzy-​​girl … ) They love to stand in direct path of her and make click­ing sounds in order to get her atten­tion. And then they looove run­ning away the minute Kozzy starts pulling on her leash and bark­ing at them.

And this is Sub­ur­ban Squirrel

Some days it’s absolutely hys­ter­i­cal. And then there are days, like today (as I tried to feed them), that it’s down­right frustrating!

(Remind me again why I was try­ing to feed them? Oh yeah, for my daily Lenten *good* deed … NUTS!!)

As for what I’m thank­ful for today … I guess because we’re quite tight in the wal­let lately, I’m grate­ful that I have food to put on our table and food to feed our pets. While City & Sub­ur­ban Squir­rel can prob­a­bly scrounge off the land (they’re raised to do that) or fill their tum­mies with scraps given to them by suck­ers like me, at least I don’t have to go fur­ther than the clos­est gro­cery store to get mine. And how about all the other peo­ple I see in the streets of Chicago? The ones ask­ing for spare change just to get food? The same ones that are grate­ful for any left­overs that other humans give to them? That just makes me even more thank­ful that we have what we have.

Okay … that’s it for the night. Think I’m going to crash now, so that I can be pre­pared to fight more fires tomor­row. <sigh>

~~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~~

And finally, meet City Squir­rel II (Detroit)

* Yes, that IS the road that is ref­er­enced in the famed Brian Grazer/​Eminem** movie. This road in Detroit is lit­er­ally (and fig­u­ra­tively) the divid­ing line between city and suburbs.

** Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: I have a friend who actu­ally went to HS/​Middle school with Mar­shall … well, at least until he dropped out!

*** Remem­ber City Mouse and Coun­try Mouse? Meet their kiss­ing cousin, Sub­ur­ban Mouse! LOL!

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Today, I am Polish-​​Filipino

If there’s one thing I love about Chicago, it’s the fact that they share a lot of the same tra­di­tions as Detroit does. Today just hap­pens to be one of those days.

I had a co-​​worker back in Michi­gan that moved from the East Coast. The first Feb­ru­ary in Detroit, she recalled how she’d be read­ing the news­pa­per and would stum­ble upon this word that she had NO idea how to pronounce.

“Pack-​​zee? Pass-​​key?” That’s how she thought the word would sound like. “And what the *heck* is ‘Pazz-​​ski Day’ anyway?”

My fel­low Detroi­ters and I laughed when we heard that state­ment. “Poonch-​​kee,” we cor­rected her. But really, we couldn’t fault her because … well, unless your Pol­ish, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t know how to pro­nounce “Paczki.”

For those of you that aren’t famil­iar with what a Paczki is, it’s a deep-​​fried piece of dough that is typ­i­cally filled with either crème or jelly. Sounds like a reg­u­lar dough­nut, doesn’t it? Except it isn’t … it’s made out of espe­cially rich dough con­tain­ing eggs, fats, sug­ars and some­times milk.  So basi­cally it’s a lot more calo­ries than your typ­i­cal filled doughnut.

Paczki Day started as a Pol­ish tra­di­tion in which a typ­i­cal Polish-​​Catholic would make batches and batches of paczki to try to purge any ingre­di­ents that might spoil dur­ing the Lenten sea­son. And, of course, what bet­ter day to get “rid” of all those extra paczki than to make Fat Tues­day the offi­cial day for these treats?

This tra­di­tion car­ried over to the US, and in par­tic­u­lar the Mid­west­ern states, where there are large com­mu­ni­ties of Polish-​​Americans. Detroit, in par­tic­u­lar, has Ham­tramck; a city of Pol­ish descen­dents within the city of Detroit. And Chicago, appar­ently also has a mul­ti­tude of Pol­ish neigh­bor­hoods; which is col­lec­tively known as Chicago Polonia.

And why do I know so much of the his­tory of Paczki Day? Well … let’s just say the Catholic Grade School I went to com­prised mostly of Polish-​​Americans. So much that this Filipino-​​American knew more about pierogi and sauer­kraut than the typ­i­cal non–Polish-​​American. 

Seri­ously … our Grade School’s Annual Fes­ti­val com­prised of your typ­i­cal Mid­way rides, a beer tent and a Polka con­test. (And no … I do  not know how to Polka. But I have been taken around the dance floor a cou­ple times!)  In fact these same co-​​workers (who helped me tease our East Coast trans­plant) have all but named me an “Hon­orary Pole” for know­ing a lit­tle too much of Pol­ish traditions!

So yes … I just thought I’d bring a lit­tle his­tory to y’all non-​​Polish peeps and any non-​​Midwesterners. Have a won­der­ful FAT TUESDAY and a Happy Paczki Day!!

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