Megan Stielstra's Blog

So last week my dad calls from Alaska and says, "I'm going to come visit you!" and I said, "Great!" because not only do I love my dad ('cause you know, he's my dad) but we're also great buddies. I like hanging out with him and we haven't had a lot of time over the years (re: Alaska). "Great," he says, "I'll be there next weekened," and I say, "What time is the flight?" so I can pick him up, right? And he says, "Actually, I've been feeling like a nice drive."

A nice drive for me is an hour and a half to Benton Harbor for a Saturday. Forty-five minutes in traffic to the Montrose dog beach. A half hour in serious traffic to Cafe 28 in Irving Park. For my dad, it's ten days across Canada, down into the U.S., hang out with your daughter for a couple days and then deer hunt in Michigan for a month with a new puppy (he just bought a puppy. Who's in Michigan, waiting to be picked up. He'll train her on the road. I said, "Damn, Dad, that's hardcore," 'cause we barely made it through training Mojo with a house and a bed and a crate and doggie treats and a dog park but my dad's like, "We'll go bird hunting," as if that's the answer to everything) and then down to Kentucky for a couple weeks and then a Northwest diagonal back towards Alaska. "Marilyn (my super-awesome stepmother) says I have to be home by Thanksgiving," he says, and I look at my briefcase, and laptop, and watch and high heels and mascara and manilla folders and books and bills and think, "I can't wait to grow up."

Posted by Megan at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

So, Ashton and Demi got married, which, I think—

Gotta pause here for a minute and say I really loved that movie One Crazy Summer. John Cusak is in it, and when I was in my Lloyd Dobler phase I saw everything he was ever in, and One Crazy Summer I thought was really fun ‘cause his drawings came to life and the dog had a cone around its head and Demi wore cornrows. All you’ve really got to do to get in my good graces is wear cornrows in a cult Eighties movie. Point being, I like Demi—Striptease notwithstanding—and was happy with her Charlie’s Angels comeback, especially ‘cause she wore some crazy lace outfit that turned into wings. So she could fly. How hot is that? I don’t have a lot to say about Ashton—never seen anything he's done, although when trying to remember where I parked, I do say, “Dude where’s my car?” and I do laugh at myself as though I’ve said the funniest thing in the Universe—except that people have said Christopher looks like him. Like, he’s been approached on the street. So I have to tease him. And then he teases me about looking like Joss Stone. Who sounds sort of like Janis Joplin, so that’s cool so far as I’m concerned.

—is great. Go, love! etc.

But I do find it interesting that in the news—which is becoming more and more interesting as the days go by in a totally disturbing sort of way (such as how Ashton+Demi and Kate Moss going to rehab is featured as prominently as Katrina evacuees returning home, or Delay indicted, or Roberts confirmed, or the death toll rising in Iraq, or fires in California, etc.)—it’s not “Ashton and Demi Get Married,” it’s “Ashton Who is Way Younger and Demi Who is Way Older Get Married and this May Decemeber (?) relationship is yet ”another story of how love conquers age.

Love conquers age. Maybe it’s the verb, but that gives me a pretty intense image. Like, love had to complete some Herculean tasks to defeat age. Love had to haul a thousand buckets of water over a very big mountain, or defeat some Death Squad (just watched Kill Bill), or sneak poison into Age’s tea after breaking into Age’s house and disguising itself as a chamber maid. You know? And I’ll tell you, I’m older than my boyfriend—not enough of an age difference to write “significantly” in front of “older,” but enough so that sometimes when I tell people he’s twenty-four, they give me a look like “What are you doing dating a twenty-four-year old when you’re thirty?” and I return the look with one of my own, which means either “I really don’t care about his age” or “He’s accomplished more at that age than you will by the time you die, Asshat,” depending on the situation—and, really, it’s the easiest thing in the world. There’s nothing to be “conquered.” There’s no reason to bring in Dr. Joyce to explain the mystique of the older woman (“The younger man is attracted to an older woman most likely because of her poise, her social graces, her contacts. She has a polish he hasn’t yet acquired,” she said. And it’s like, Come ON, Joyce! The idea that Christopher likes my POISE! I exploded a pork loin in the microwave last night! I’m on the floor cleaning up puppy pee! He’s more poised in his pajamas than I am, like ever!). There’s no reason for everybody to be getting all excited, seriously!

There’s just him and me.

Posted by Megan at 12:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

This morning you could see your breath.

Posted by Megan at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

The last time I played Scrabble with Christopher was November 2004. We'd been living in Prague for eight months and I was homesick. And PMSing. And Bush had just won the election so I was sort of upset. And drunk (but I was mildly drunk the entire time we were there, I think. It's a cultural thing). He was kicking my ass (which was nothing new in the slightest: Christopher is Scrabble Man. If we play Scrabble it's understood that I'll lose in a big way, but that's how you get better, right? Losing? Again and again and again?) and then he played some five letter word for seventy-two points and something cracked and I burst into tears. I cried and cried and, poor guy, he had no idea what the hell was going on. The ouburst had little (if anything) to do with Scrabble, but I put on a very fine show of dramatics and vowed to never again play that horrible game.

Jump forward nearly a year to right now. We just played for the first time since that night, and I won. By a lot: 298 to 216. Now, if I'd won by just a little bit, I might've bought it (usually he wins by like 400 to one-something). But since I won in such a big way, I'm guessing that he threw the game. To build my ego, you know? Also because he really likes to play Scrabble and probably wants me to play with him more often, so letting me win is in his best interests all around. He maintains that no, he didn't let me win. In fact, when I said I was going to go write about this on my blog, he said, "I'm so going to counter-blog that!"

Go ahead. Counter blog me. Prove my Scrabble-savvy to the masses. And especially, to me.

Posted by Megan at 6:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Christopher has been working on this big huge mothership of a website, and he launched it today, hooray! He was just showing it to me and it's this complex thing with lots of links and FAQs and fancy things that I don't know the technical terms for, and really, it's much smarter than I am, this website, and I'm kind of in awe that my boyfriend built it with his very own brain. There was this cool thing where whenever there's a difficult word within the text (and there's a lot, FYI. It's a financial site) you can click on it and the definition shows up in a little magic box, like VH1 pop-up videos except square and without the annoying sound. I said, "that's supercool can you make my blog do that?" and he said, "I sure can!" So I thought it would be fun if my definitions showed up in magic boxes. Not Webster's definitions. MY definitions. Like, say you clicked on the word "Webster's" two sentences back. The pop-up box would say: a two-story wine bar where 2d Story is performed and fine cheese is served. And if you clicked on "cheese" in the last sentence it would say: Megan enjoys Brie of the triple creme variety, or a nice herb havarti. And if you clicked on "Megan" it would bring up a little picture of me, like maybe the one where I'm in Prague, and I just got my absentee ballot in the mail, and the package includes a plastic magnifier so people with poor eyesight can read their ballots, and I held the magnifier over my mouth and smiled. So in the picture, I look like the Cheshire cat. My mouth is bigger than my whole head.

Posted by Megan at 9:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Reading in public is tricky. On the one hand, a change of scenery is nice (especially if it involves good coffee). On the other hand, you do run the risk of people trying to talk to you while you are reading. “What are you reading?” these people ask, and you show them the cover, and then they sit down ‘cause the two of you are going to have a discussion. Granted, I’m sure there are people who read in public in order to have these conversations i.e. Meet people i.e. Hit on people. I am not one of those people. Maybe I was, back when I was single, but quite frankly I’m trying to block those years out, so I’ll remain comfortably in the Not One of Them category, and tell you about the dog park this afternoon.

Usually, Mojo and I walk/run in Humboldt Park. This is my favorite place: it’s big and beautiful and private and a block away from my house. But, the dog has to stay on leash (I’ve seen lots of people letting their dogs off leash there, which they’re not supposed to, which I could care less about if the dog is well trained, which, more or less, Mojo is, but however well he’s trained he’s still a baby and he’s recently discovered squirrels, and the fact that they can run up trees, and, well, it’s just not time yet), so sometimes I’ll take him to the dog park so he can run his ass off with other dogs. Which is sometimes more fun than running his ass off with me. Because I do not roll around in dirt and shit.

So anyhow, Mojo is running around, having a blast, and I am sitting quietly, reading my book. Then:

“Whatcha reading?”

He is tall, with lots of tattoos, and a T-shirt cut off at the armpits to show off the aforementioned tattoos, and a big white Labrador who keeps trying to stick its nose in my crotch.

I hold up my book so he can see the cover: the fifth volume of Anais Nin’s journal (one of my guilty pleasures, like Since You’ve Been Gone by Kelly Clarkston and US magazine [which I won't admit to. I'll say instead: 3d Planet by Modest Mouse and The Atlantic Monthly]).

“Nin, huh?” he says.

Loooong pause, during which he stands there and I wonder if I can go back to my book, or if I have to wait until he leaves. Then:

“Have you read Harry Potter?”

I haven’t.

“Man, it’s amazing. Like, it’s a completely Jungian archetype—” I start repeating Jungian archetype over and over in my head, so I won’t forget it before I can get to a pen. Jungian archetype. Jungian archetype. Jungian archetype—“besides the fact that she’s brought so many people together, like, really built community with her work and that’s just genius, you know? It made me think, what’s going on in the world that makes so many people need Harry Potter right now? Like, why do we suddenly have this need to believe in magic?”

I nod. Jungian archetype. Jungian archetype. Jungian archetype.

“And her website is really amazing, too. Like, I really got to know her on it. Like, she’s totally normal and all, and has kids, and was even on welfare. How amazing is that? She has KIDS, but she’s so passionate about her writing that she goes on welfare to support them! I really admire that, you know? That’s passion!”

Again, I nod. I’m not interested in battles anymore, literary or otherwise. Sure, when I was younger, I was really into them. I could kill a night (pre-21) at the twenty-four hour diner or (post-21) at the four o’clock bars duking out literary theories, or any kid of theories. I got off on the Devil’s advocacy of it, fighting just to fight. But, man, I’m too old for that stuff now. Or, maybe it’s because talking about books is my job, so on my off time I’d like to, I don’t know, read them? Like Kundera wrote: people should stop trying to figure Kafka out and just read him!

“She really inspired me to start writing, you know? I’m a writer now.”

Good. I like people being inspired to write. Just go do it on the other side of the dog park, please, and get your dog outta my pants while you’re at it.

“Are you a writer?” he asks then.

“No,” I say cheerfully. “Just like to read.”

After that, he walks away. He is not getting what he wants out of me, be it a conversation or a phone number. Mojo runs over and drops a (very gross) tennis ball at my feet. We play fetch for a while (he doesn’t always remember the Bring it Back part of that game, which is a problem) and then he starts chasing a puggle and I go back to my book.

Five, four, three, two, one.

“What are you reading?”

This guy is dressed like a bike-messenger: shorts and Nikes and courier bag. He’s got five dogs in the park, all various ages and sizes. One of them is a big ol’ Rott who runs round the park humping littler dogs. I keep one eye on it, making sure it doesn’t go after my puppy, and hold up my book so he can see the cover.

“Nin, huh?” he says, sitting down next to me. “I love her stuff. I know you, you work at the Bongo Room. You know me from—” he names a place I’ve never heard of before— “and then from Starbucks, ‘cause I worked at Starbucks for like two years til it drove me crazy. I thought it would take longer but it didn’t, two years is all I can stand. Now I’m a dog walker. Which is your dog?”

I point at Mojo, who is eating an empty plastic water bottle.

“Huh. Cute. So I was a therapist for a while—I graduated with a double major in psychology and philosophy—and my specialty was sex and relationships. And I think people are just afraid to talk to one another, you know? Specifically if they’re going to say something vulg—what is sometimes perceived as vulgar. I think, if you’re going to take your clothes off in front of someone, you should comfortable saying anything to them, and if you’re not, then you shouldn’t be taking your clothes off in front of them in the first place! Now, if a stranger says something like that—”

Let me pause by saying I didn’t ask this guy what exactly he was talking about because I was afraid he would, you know, tell me.

“—then that’s one thing, but this is another thing entirely, and I’m just saying I think it’s really great that Anais Nin says it. You know? She says it. I’m trying to get my wife to read her stuff—”

Oh no.

“—but she’s not into it. I mean, she’s very well read and everything, very well read, but she’s not interested in reading this stuff.” He pauses. ‘Stuff like this.”

I say, “We have to go now.”

He nods, and I call my dog. The Rott follows him to the door and I can see in its eyes that it’s going to mount my baby’s back. It’s not that Mojo can’t take care of himself; I’ve seen him swipe at dogs three times his size if they try to put their No-Balls-Having selves anywhere near his backside, but, in this moment I’ve got some stuff to get off my chest, so I look at the Rott and I growl.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Mojo thinks that’s the coolest thing on the planet.

Posted by Megan at 4:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Yesterday a student suggested a book to me. “You’ll love this,” she said. “It’s the greatest read ever.” I wrote the title/author on my hand. I woke up this morning and was about to get in the shower, but then I saw the ink. I typed title/author into my journal (kept on the laptop), and then took my shower. Now, I just realized that I was a jackass and didn’t save anything I’d written this morning. I keep staring at the faint smudges on my hand, trying to figure out what the greatest read ever is, but it's futile. The soap has done it's job.

Any ideas?

Posted by Megan at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Dog people tell me horror stories: "We left for an hour and Fritzy ate the WALL!"

My dog Mojo is ten and a half months old. Up until recently, he's been a little angel, chewing only (as our dog trainer calls them) "appropriate" toys, i.e. his bones and bully sticks and squeaky hedgehog. But, somehow, the devil has entered my dog, and in the past two weeks he's eaten the following:

1. our couch (it's okay, it's old)
2. a light bulb (he's fine, the vet says he's fine, I, however, am not so fine, I died like a thousand deaths and cursed my pet-owner self and wonderd if I should have children)
3. the August issues of Real Simple and Wired (left untouched were Newsweek and Atlantic Montly so, if anything, I can praise his taste in periodicals)
4. Lost in the City by Edward P. Jones (I've got to disagree with him on that one: it's really a wonderful book)
5. a straw hat (which he took off my head himself. He doesn't like us wearing hats)

(he hasn't touched my shoes. We had a little talk about shoes when he was just a baby. "Mojo," I told him, "These are the shoes. You treat the shoes like members of our family." I was very adament. I know, as I spoke, he heard only "Mojo, mmm mmememeee, mmm, mhhaa mmmm," but I do believe we have an understanding)

(You don't suppose I just jinxed myself, do you?)

Posted by Megan at 7:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

In class, we had a conversation about the difference between having a dream, and telling a dream. I looked back through my journal, and most of my dreams read like this:

Dreamt I gave my Czech fortune telling cards to Martine and he put them in the deep-fryer. I ate them like potato chips.

That's all well and good in my journal, which is just for me, but if I'm going to really tell that dream, say, to all of you, there’s a lot of fill-in-the-blanks that'd need to happen. Like maybe this:

When I was living in Prague, we went every Friday to the Allegro gallery, a consignment shop that rotated some three hundred Czech artists. Painting, sketches, sculpture, ceramics, clothes, jewelry, every week different things. I fell for a deck of hand-painted gypsy fortune telling cards, sort of like tarot cards except, along with a picture, they had a single word—Death. Love. Memory—written in four different languages. Death in English, German, Czech and Russian. I bought them, brought them home to Chicago, and have no idea what to do with them. I don’t use them—I’m not so much a fortune-telling kind of girl. That shit makes me nervous. I went one time to a palm reader, and she said I’d be very important to the world at large but very unhappy and lonely in my own personal life. I remember wanting to tell her to suck it, which was not very karmic of me. Anyway, I look at the cards often, because they’re stunning, and I figure I bought them for a reason other than aesthetics, right? Who knows. Anyhow, I had this dream where I gave the cards to the cook at the restaurant where I wait tables. Martine. He’s this smiley Puerto Rican guy in all white-chef jackets, his black hair up under a baseball cap in accordance with health code regulations. He’s very kind, all about learning English and thinks I’m cute when I try to use Spanish (Quando tengas tiempo, necessito mas salsa, por favor), but when we’re busy, he Jekyl and Hydes into a big ‘ol jackass and screams and yells at me for screaming and yelling at him. I am screaming and yelling because table twenty is short a breakfast burrito, everybody else has had their food for fifteen minutes, come on! and he is screaming and yelling because I am annoying the hell out of him. So anyhow, in the dream, I give him the cards and he drops them into the deep fryer, which is funny because we don’t have a deep fryer at the Bongo Room. We grill everything. This annoys a lot of people because they like their French fries. I am glad we don’t have French fries, because I like them a lot, also, and I am trying to lose ten pounds. Also, when I was in high school I worked nights at Arby’s and one time I touched my wrist against the wire-mesh deep-fry baskets (you fill them with frozen fries and set them in boiling oil for three minutes) and it hurt like hell, white-hot wire against my flesh. It branded a cross-hatch F into my skin. F for fry. So anyway, when the cards have finished their three minutes in the deep fryer, Martine pats them with a paper towel, dumps them on a plate and gives them to me. They are thin, brittle, and curling up at the ends like potato chips. I eat them one by one, without looking at them first, so I don’t know if I’m eating death or love or memory.

Posted by Megan at 7:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

When I first moved to Chicago, I took the el everywhere. Then a few years later, I got a car, so I was a driver. Now, I’m taking the el again (gas is expensive, save the world etc). It was a shock to see that, as the el moves underground, there are video advertisements projected on the wall between stops. On the blue line, a red and white Target commercial runs between Washington and Madison, Madison and Jackson. When did those start? When did that become the norm?

Posted by Megan at 7:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Every morning, we get up at seven, drive to the el and listen to NPR. Which means that last week, every day, we listened to live coverage of the Senate Judiciary committee interviewing Roberts, Bush’s nominee to head the Supreme Court.

Every evening, I leave work around six, take the el back to Damen and drive home frome there. Which means that last week, I listened to live coverage of the Senate Judiciary committee interviewing Roberts, Bush’s nominee to head the Supreme Court.

Seven a.m. and six p.m. every day.

This isn't about me dogging the news (especially NPR!), or live coverage of anything (except maybe celebrity trials). It's just that all last week, whenever I got in or out of my car, I felt like screaming all the damn time. Which isn't a nice way to start/end your day. I like to start/end my day with good music, reading in bed, hugs, flowers, coffee, a long walk in the sunshine, maybe some blueberry pancakes and a mimosa/sushi and a martini. But then there's that nagging voice in the back of my head whenever I turn off/log off/turn the page of the radio/TV/internet/newpaper: "Don't you want to be INFORMED? Aren't you a concerned CITIZEN? Don't you want to know what's going ON in this world?"

It's a balance I'm having difficulty achieving.

Posted by Megan at 7:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A year ago this week, I sat in front of my television in Prague and watched CNN International's live coverage of the terrorist take-over of an elementary school in Beslan. Over three hundred people died in the fall out, mostly little kids. I remember, after three days of my sitting hypnotized in front of that TV, Christopher and our friend Tracy said ENOUGH and took me on a paddle-boat ride on the Vlatava River. I thought, God, I am lucky lucky lucky. I am safe, I have wonderful friends, a home, family to go to for help.

Now, a year later, I'm in the same place. I'm sitting in front of the TV in front of the TV in front of the TV in front of the TV and I have to turn off the TV for a minute. Have to go for a paddle boat ride on the Vlatava. Have to sit very still, and remember how lucky I am.

Anthony Doerr, one of Christopher's favorite writers, wrote this post on his blog, expressing many of the things I'm feeling--that many of us are feeling, I think--especially that helplessness. Of wanting to go down there and help. Dig my hands into it.

But my hands aren't what's needed most. It's my money. I'm far from rich, but the littlest bits are going a long way right now. If you haven't already, I urge you to do what you can. Here's the link to the Red Cross.

I keep hearing stories--on NPR, news sources online, blogs--about the real people affected by Katrina . The real people. Not the numbers, the statistics, the nameless faces on CNN. It's those stories that make this all so alive to me, the same way The New York Times coverage of September 11th included NOT just facts and figures, but the stories of all the victims. Where they were from, what they did, how they tried.

Everybody, meet Jabbor Gibson. I don't know the guy, and he won't ever hear me, but I'd like to stand up and give him a round of applause. Him and everybody else who tried, however they could, to get the hell in there and use their hands.

Posted by Megan at 6:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Today I said to the puppy, "Mojo, life is hard, isn't it?" and he yawned, rolled over and went to sleep.

I think I'll take a nap, also.

Maybe tomorrow I'll say, "Mojo, life is hard," and he'll jump up and start a revolution. Call people to action, inspire them with his wisdom and fortitude, change the world.

We'll see what happens then.

Posted by Megan at 1:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)