Megan Stielstra's Blog

1.
We had a conversation. It went like this:

CHRISTOPHER: We should buy a place.
ME: Totally.
CHRISTOPHER: Do you think we can afford it?
(Christopher and Megan look at each other and laugh hysterically)

2.
Our friends Michael and Dave introduced us to their realtor, whom I could refer to as THE GREATEST OF ALL AWESOMENESS, but instead I’ll just call him Lee because A. it’s easier and B. it’s his name. Lee came over to our place and I told him I was scared of realtors. Of buying property, owing property, credit checks, getting taken advantage of, debt of any kind, furnaces that explode two years after warranty, being an adult, property taxes, buyers markets and sellers markets and markets in general and complicated vocabulary like “equity” and “escrow” and signing lots of documents that I don’t understand but am bound to, like cell phone contracts or gym contracts, and if I’m nervous about contracts that involve, like, a hundred dollars, then why the hell would I play with not only my entire life savings but also tons of money that I don’t even have (sidebar: remember when a hundred dollars was a lot of money? Remember when FIVE hundred dollars was a lot of money? There’s this great line in an Elizabeth Crane story that goes, “He thinks five hundred dollars is a lot of money. You think five hundred dollars is a handbag with a pug embroidered on it”). “We just bought a new car,” I told Lee. “Actually, it’s an old car, but it’s new to us. And we went to all these dealerships and I said to them, I said, ‘Don’t take me for a ride, people, I know I don’t know the difference between my alternator and my carborator’—I actually DO know the difference,” I told Lee. “But I was going for dramatic effect, you know? So anyhow, I said to this dealer, I said, ‘Look. We’ve been shopping all day and while usually I LIKE shopping all day, today is really hot and I forgot to wear sunblock and here’s the thing: I’m not spending a penny over X amount so please don’t tell me later that I’ve got to pay a zillion dollars after the fact in Chicago State tax and warranty and what all, just give me a car that has decent gas mileage and doesn’t look stupid,’ like those Toyota Scions, you know what I mean, Lee?” and—and this is really important—he DID. Know what I mean, I mean. That’s the first reason why he’s awesome. The second is he knows Chicago real estate, and he specializes in historic buildings and vintage architecture and places with personality and character and also he’s really patient and explained everything to us fifteen times in laymen’s terms and never got irritated when I asked him to please repeat (I wrote down everything the man said over the entire process and now, when I read back over those notes, I don’t know what the hell they mean which is very similar to reading back over stuff I wrote when I was drunk. It just DOESN’T MAKE SENSE [pleeeease don’t tell me that Burroughs did it. I really don’t care what Burroughs did or did not do. And regardless of what Faulkner or Hemingway WROTE when they were drunk, they cleaned that crap up in rewriting. Yaaaaay rewriting] [A really good story about me writing drunk is one time I was at this bachelorette party, and there was much of the drinking, and I had on these jeans with one back pocket full of dollar bills—for the strippers. There were three. Zoro was my favorite for sure—and in the other back pocket I had all these notes so I could write about it later (there are two reactions happening right now to this admission. The first is from other writers, who are thinking, “My goodness, she is dedicated!” The second is from my father. Which, I’m sure, is self-explanatory. Hi, dad!) but here’s the thing: when I woke up the next morning, there was one pocket full of dollars and the other pocket was empty. Which means that Zoro is running around Chicago somewhere with my story in his G-string. Take this as a cautionary tale, people: don’t write drunk!]). Also, Lee (my realtor, remember?) jumped up and down on hardwood floors to make sure there wasn’t excess moisture which is apparently very bad. And also, one time, when he was driving us around from condo to condo, some guy cut him off and Lee pulled up next to him at a red light, rolled down his window and said, “YOU MUST DRIVE BETTER,” in the same tone of voice anyone else would’ve used to cuss somebody out. Also, he plays in two bands and is super cool to have a beer with. Also, he made me laugh a lot and ALSO! he’s the one who brought us to Uptown, and showed us our new building, and walked us around the neighborhood, and said, “Let’s get this place for you, shall we?”

3.
We bought the place (AND it wasn’t scary AND I’m still alive AND we’re not as broke as we thought we’d be, like, we’re not eating ramen noodles, except sometimes Christopher does ‘cause he likes them).

4.
We packed, which, for us, consisted of selling nearly everything we own. Everything. The shelves, couch, desks, chairs—all of it went up on Craig’s List and was gone within the month. We kept only the dog, the books, the laptops and anything labeled MARC JACOBS. We said, “On to the next chapter! New home! New stuff!” Stuff! God, the AMOUNT of it! I couldn’t believe what we’d amassed in just two short years! The closets were full, every drawer jam-packed, the piles to be taken to Savation Army and/or the alley were almost three times what we actually took with us! Some of it, I noticed, was just junk (Hello? Did I really need three food processors, none of which worked? Five unopened IKEA duvet covers? Three copies of Love in the Time of the Cholera [which is a GREAT book, FYI, but one’ll do you fine]) but much of it was stuff that seemed incredibly important just a few years ago but now, well, I guess I’ve finally grown out of it. I don’t need the teddy bear anymore. The box of letters from the ex-boyfriend. There’s no need to cart that shit around anymore!

Especially when I’ve got eight boxes of journals covering the last fifteen years of my life, including everything about the teddy bear and the ex-boyfriend(s). Right? Right.

And people! The JOURNALS! You can’t just PACK them! You have to pour a glass of wine and READ EVERY GODDAMN ONE.

The night before our dining room table sold (to this awesome couple, he’s a DJ, she’s a massage therapist, they have a loft on the South Side), I stacked the journals on one end and read them, one by one. Kat sat at the other end of the table, sewing, because I’d mistakingly bought a KING sized down comforter, when I really needed a QUEEN (I get very distracted and excited when something has the word SALE stapled to the box) and Kat—who, like Bond, has many fancy contraptions, including this strange, buzzing box she calls a SEWING MACHINE—said, “Oh, that’d be easy to fix,” and cut the thing apart. Immediately, the room was covered in feathers, but we didn’t care. Poison by Bel Biv Devoe played on the iPod and we were drinking vodka tonics (there wasn’t any ice, so we used frozen blueberries instead] and, as she fed one end of blanket into the sewing machine, the other end slid across the table onto my lap. “What are you reading?” she asked, and I wondered how to answer. I’m reading myself at twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight: writing stories, teaching classes, waiting tables, dating, trying to figure out what I’m doing. There are many names. Friends and boyfriends and students, whatever writers I was reading at the time. It’s interesting how some of those people were the center of my Universe back then and most of them I haven’t spoken to in years. What has remained constant, however, is the place: Chicago. The near West Side. Wicker Park, Bucktown, Logan Square, Ukranian Village and Humboldt Park (when we were looking at condos, the listings for Humboldt Park kept coming up as “West Wicker,” which you’d only find funny if you had lived in both). I’ve been in that area for more than ten years. It’s the longest I’ve ever lived in any one neighborhood.

Here are the places mentioned most frequently in my journal:

1. Bongo Room (I worked here, on and off, for almost a decade).
2. Urbus Orbus (I still mourn the loss of this coffee shop. I compare all other coffee shops to it).
3. Myopic Books (Best used bookstore in the city. Give them your money).
4. Quimby’s (Best alternative bookstore in the city. Also give them your money).
5. Danny’s (This hidden little bar was number three on my list of Best Bars in the world. Now, since Dragon Den’s in New Orleans went under during Katrina, Danny’s is number two only to Blue Light in Prague).
6. Subterranean (I haven’t been here in a long, long time, but back in the day we did all sorts of readings in the upstairs Cabaret room. It’s really beautiful and lofty and ideal for performance).
7. Flying Saucer (great restaurant in Humboldt, on the other side of the park from our apartment).
8. Soul Kitchen (for Champagne and oysters)
9. Ezuli (comfy couches, and bruschetta with blue cheese, mango and peanut butter).
10. California Clipper (great old Mobster Feel).
11. Letizia’s/Entoca Roma (Yum).
12. Rainbo/Estelle’s/Black Beetle (for when I was in my early twenties).

What’s interesting is, as I look over that list, many of those places aren’t even AROUND anymore, and those that are are different. For me, at least. Maybe it’s because I’ve changed, or maybe they’ve changed, but probably both. Like the other day, I was in Wicker Park to meet a friend for breakfast and, as I was rounding the corner of Honore and Milwaukee, I passed this guy wearing a T-shirt that said, “I miss the Old Chicago.” I looked at the Urban Outfitters and the G-Star and the uber-expensive boutiques and thought, I know exactly what you mean. I’m part of that guy’s T-shirt: the old neighborhood, the neighborhood who cheered when somebody kept throwing bricks through the window of the Starbucks at Milwaukee, Damn and North. The neighborhood who started moving West when Real World Chicago moved into the empty Erbus Orbus space. The neighborhood who doesn’t come to the neighborhood anymore ‘cause it’s not the neighborhood—and, yeah, I know, before I was that guy’s T-shirt there was a whole other slew of people who were that guy’s T-shirt—every ten years there’s that T-shirt!—and I was the whatever glopping up their streets with my Leo’s Lunchroom and my Earwax café, and they moved on just like I’m moving on, just like I go into Starbucks now, too (they changed their blend so it doesn’t taste burnt anymore, it tastes yummy, plus many of my students work at Starbucks and I’m really happy they have health insurance, plus they just donated to Rebuilding Together, the charity Christopher works with), my point being that it’s me, not just the neighborhood, it’s this great cycle, and what’s it all going to look like in another ten years? I’ll go back and stand on the corner of Honore and Milwaukee when I’m forty and see how we’ve changed.

5.
We closed. To all you good people who told me the horror stories of your own closings, I thank you. It made that insane, hellacious day just a smidgeon easier to think, Closings are SUPPOSED to suck. You are SUPPOSED to think you’re going to lose your home and your whole life savings in the bargain. Your husband is SUPPOSED to sprint across the South Loop in search of a bank, in search of the wire transfer that hasn’t yet come through. You are SUPPOSED to sign five hundred documents that you don’t understand and the secretary processing your faxed paperwork in the lending company in Florida is SUPPOSED to go to lunch halfway through the process and you and the developer and all the lawyers are SUPPOSED to sit there together around the conference table making small talk for over an hour until she comes back and afterwards, when it’s all over, when it’s yours, when you’ve crossed this strange, wonderful threshold into something vaguely adult and responsible and all these things you never thought you’d be, you are SUPPOSED to go drink a very nice bottle of wine at two o’clock in the afternoon and, finally, after months of freaking out—reeeeelax.

Note: another good thing about having a kick ass realtor is they will recommend a kick ass lawyer. Christopher and I were very, very lucky that Lee and Barb were there to watch our backs.

Also: remember to eat breakfast before your closing. ‘Cause it will go long and you will be drinking a LOT of coffee and eventually you’ll get that BUZZZZZZZZZ in your mind which will, of course, be perpetuated by the monotony of signing your name over and over while your poor wonderful lawyer tries to explain every document to you even though she KNOWS you’re tuning out ‘cause, seriously, how can you possibly tune IN?

6.
We went to our new, empty place, ate Chinese take-out on the floor and jumped up and down a lot.

7.
We moved. Here’s what I like about moving: when, while packing, and deciding what junk stays and what junk goes, we will often, out of pure nostalgia, hang on to stuff we really don’t need by constructing very interesting reasons on why we could, at some point, need it desperately/actually use it. To whit: “We can’t throw away the pepper grinder shaped like a Christmas Tree! I know it’s sort of nasty-looking, but there’s good pepper in there! What I could do is open it and save the pepper for later use in our really swanky pepper grinder which is so big, so new, so full of peppercorns that we probably won’t have to refill it until fresh-ground pepper is no longer in culinary fashion! So in the meantime, I’ll just put the Christmas Tree-shaped pepper grinder into THIS BOX, so it will be available when I need it!” But what happens when you move is you have to CARRY THIS BOX, and all the other random boxes of random crap, and you figure out very quickly what is really important. Similar to those In Case of Emergency plans the Department of Homeland Security wants every household to rehearse. Where are your exits? Where would your family meet up if you couldn’t use your cell phone? Stock-pile extra water and non-perishables! And the most important question: WHAT WOULD YOU PACK? My answer: the dog, the laptop, the top drawer of my file cabinet, cash from the secret place and my first edition Anais Nin (Christopher’s got the tent, knife, matches, flashlight, bow and arrow and credit cards. He’s THAT kind of guy).

Anyhow, our old place in Humboldt Park was a third-floor walk-up. And our new place in Uptown is a third-floor walk-up. That was the scale with which we measured what stayed and what went: am I going to carry this DOWN and then carry it UP? You can learn a lot about a person in such moments. For example, I am the sort of the person who will NOT, no matter how much pain in the lower back, leave a box of books behind. Christopher is the sort of person who would not leave his gas mask behind. His GAS MASK. He has a GAS MASK. I was all, “Where did this gas mask come from?” and he was all, “I need that,” and I was all, “Do you think we’re going to be gassed? Who’d going to gas us, Oh my God, biological warfare!” because I am very paranoid and he is the calm to my storm. So, you know, if the calm to your storm has had a gas mask in the closet for two years—“No,” he said. “It has sentimental value,” and went on to tell me this long story involving Burning Man and, well, enough said (to my students reading this, the ones who google me: note the use of objects! How an object can not only be a factor in character development but also be a jumping off point for backstory and also a useful tool for establishing character relationships!).

So, blah blah we took the gas mask, but left a lot of other stuff because it wasn’t important enough for us to CARRY. Still, it was a very long day at the end of which two things happened: 1. I said, “Next time, we’re hiring movers,” which I say after every time I move even though I know I won’t but this time, THIS TIME after I said it, Christopher said, “There won’t be a next time for a really long time because, see, we own this place,” and 2. The week before we moved, Kat broke her ankle (she’s fine, it’s almost all healed, she has a black cast that everybody signs in silver pen and in really big letters across her calf it says DON’T DO THIS AGAIN LOVE GRANDMA) which is relevant only because she had some very nice pain killers. And her momma taught her to share.

8.
We’re here. And there’s all sorts of new things. New restaurants and bars and bookstores and coffee shops and people. The Montrose Dog Beach is four blocks away. I have a balcony and a back porch and a room shaped like a turret and a refrigerator, that has this button, and when you press the button, ICE comes out. There’s this line in a Lorrie Moore story about how the main character, Zoe, buys this new house, with a yard, and a tree, and she thinks it’s really wild to own a tree. I’m sitting here typing and looking at the floor thinking, “Dude. I own this floor” (or, at least, a small percentage of this floor. You get my drift). I bought Murphy’s oil, and twice already I’ve moved the furniture into the corners and MOPPED. I bought little felt pads for the bottoms of the all the chairs, ’cause IT’LL BE A COLD DAY IN HELL BEFORE ANYTHING SCUFFS THIS FLOOR!

I'd like it to stay nice. See, I plan on staying here for a while.