Megan Stielstra's Blog

So we're driving to dinner and some guy cuts us off and then starts yelling as though it’s our fault—which of course we can’t hear ‘cause our windows are rolled up but we can see the gestures and the open mouth and the red-faced fury, like watching TV on mute—and I’m like, Must we get so nasty all the time? It's such a vicious cycle: this guy yells at us, and we yell at our waitress at dinner, and she yells at the bartender, and he pours light on the drinks for the rest of the evening, etc. etc. when maybe we all just need to get over the traffic thing, seriously, we live in CHICAGO, part of Chicago is traffic, it goes with the territory (like when you rent a third story apartment and the people on the second floor get mad if you, like, WALK across your floor which has happened to me a few times and every time I’m shocked. This is the CITY. We live on top of each other, that’s just how it WORKS, and, sure I’ll be respectful and not having Jumping-Up-and-Down Parties at three a.m. but if you think I’m going to spread afghans across my floor every time I want to walk to the f’ing bathroom then you’re just crazy, I haven’t done that since I was fifteen and snuck out to kiss my boyfriend in the rowboat [we lived on a lake] [hi, Dad! (my dad is actually in town right now. From Kodiak Island, Alaska. Which means A. I don’t have to worry about him reading this long-kept secret on the internet, I can just turn to him right now and say, Dad, when I was fifteen I snuck out to kiss my boyfriend in the rowboat and since my room was above yours I spread blankets over the floors—wooden floors, absolute murder for teenage girls trying to sneak out undetected, FYI; although in my defense I never snuck out to go to parties with sex and beer bongs and football teams and stuff, only really chaste, borderline dorky things like row out to the middle of the lake and kiss under the stars which sounds real pretty and all but in actuality there’s a LOT of mosquitoes in Southwest Michigan and my whole body welted up and my clothes were constantly stained pink from calamine lotion—to create some padding between my feet and the floor and B. we’re eating a lot of Moose. Moose burgers moose steak moose stew] so I’m not about to start taking my shoes off now especially when, D’UH, you RENTED AN APARTMENT BELOW SOMEBODY ELSE so there’s going to be noise, it’s just INEVITABLE and it’s kind of the same thing with traffic, I think. It’s just going to suck. That’s all there is to it. Leave the house fifteen minutes early and don’t get so bent out of shape, get a stress ball for the glove compartment and squeeze, but don’t yell at me with your windows rolled up, ESPECIALLY when it’s your fault (I’m sure, were he telling the story, it would be our fault. Depends on the vantage point [Dear my students who google me: SEE!? VANTAGE POINT. How does one character see a situation vrs. how another sees it? Note the horse race scene in Anna Karenina and then compare it to the way your ex-girlfriend tells the story of your relationship vrs. how you tell it: same idea. DISCUSS]) and ESPECIALLY because you’re not REALLY yelling at us ‘cause of the whole driving thing but really because you have displaced rage and should be directing your anger at its actual source instead of me and my husband and our little Honda Civic just trying to turn into that parking lot right there, CAN’T A GIRL JUST TURN INTO A PARKING LOT??!! DO YOU SEE ME GESTURING VIOLENTLY AT YOU TO LET OUT MY ANGER? NO WAY, MAN, I HAVE A BLOG!!!!

This is how my mind works, people.

But the thing I’m actually trying to get to, the part I’m really itching to tell, is that while while I was gearing up to yell back, to give him the finger or mouth SCREW YOU the way twelve years as a Chicago driver have taught me, my husband rolls down the window and says, as cheery as can be, “HEY, MAN! I’M JUST TRYING TO BE FRIENDS! A FRIEND IS JUST A STRANGER YOU HAVEN’T MET YET!” and then he waves in a very happy singsong bye-BYE sort of a way. The guy is shocked silent and as we turn into the parking lot I think about how kindness is such a powerful weapon and I smile really big at the waitress and she jokes with the bartender and my martini, people, is EXCELLENT.

Posted by Megan at 6:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

I was early meeting Kat for brunch, so I got out the journal and did some writing, and, as usual for Sunday brunch in Chicago, there were little kids running all over the place while their parents sat and talked (and ignored them totally and, while that doesn’t bother me so much as a patron I did spend the better part of a decade working Sunday brunch so, people; please, please, PLEASE do not let your children run all over the restaurant while you drink lattes and talk to your adult friends, I mean, come ON! You wouldn’t let your child walk unsupervised across a field of landmines, right? And that server is carrying four plates of very hot things—three stacked precariously on her left arm and the fourth in her right hand—and what happens when little Johnny bangs into her knees is she loses her grip on those plates and fast forward to your impending lawsuit against her bosses (and her subsequent unemployment) not to MENTION the lifelong guilt due to Johnny’s 2nd degree burns from Hollandaise sauce and ALSO possible brain damage due to concussion—brunch plates are VERY heavy, people—and the kicker is: none of this is her fault! or Johnny’s fault—he’s FIVE for godssakes, he can’t be held responsible for his actions!—but you! YOU are the one to blame! For taking him to brunch and ignoring him and your friend Sandy’s pigtailed triplets who are looped on sugar from chocolate chip pancakes and running all round the restaurant like drunken sorority girls!) and after a while the mother looks up and sees her kids playing tag around the poor waitress trying to deliver steaming hot coffee and what she does is look at her husband and say (very loudly—I am across the room and I can hear her), “JOHN!” to her husband, a big hairy guy who just wants to be sleeping in on Sunday morning, he works all f’ing week, Lord Almighty can’t he get a BREAK? “Don’t let them run around like that! Some people are trying to—” and I expect her to say DO THEIR JOB and then get the kids out of this girl’s way, shit, I want to get the kids out of this poor girl’s way! (but then, inevitably, I think about that day when I do have children and if any stranger either A. touches them or B. tells me how to handle them there’s going to be hell to pay, I’ll tell you what [that said, I won’t be taking my kids out to Sunday brunch without some serious crayons or a portable DVD player, thank you very much, and also I TIP VERY WELL], so I stay in my seat and drink my coffee) but this mom doesn’t notice the waitress at all, only the other patrons who are looking daggers at her. Like ME, and she looks straight at me sitting there writing in my journal and says, “Some people are trying to have THOUGHTS!!”

Posted by Megan at 7:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Here’s what I think about American Idol:

1. Sigh.

2. Dear Paula: Cold Hearted Snake was a really interesting video, especially the part with the violins where you go, “Co-co-co-cold hearted sssssssss-NAKE.”

3. That guy on the right is not nice at ALL.

4. I like the song Since You’ve Been Gone and I’m not afraid to admit it.

5. Insert long rambling paragraph about everything that’s wrong in our country with specific focus on how American Idol’s voting record eclipses that of National elections.

6. Would more people vote for President of the United States if they could do so from the comfort of their own couch?

7. Isn’t there something else ON already?

But then—THEN—I was reading Shiow’s blog the other day and she linked to Melinda Doolittle’s audition tape and—Oh my God, that girl can SING! but also the whole confidence thing, which, if that’s not inspiring you might want to check your pulse—and now I’m ridiculously hooked (not hooked enough to actually WATCH American Idol—which is a little too sado-masochist for my taste, to tell you the truth—but enough to root for Melinda Doolittle whenever Idol comes up in conversation [which, these days, is like all the f’ing time]). SO: Yaaaay, Melinda! Get your hot ass into the foreground!

Posted by Megan at 7:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Usually I really hate these quiz-things, but sometimes, like now, I really need a break from all the other stuff I’m supposed to be doing/finishing/thinking about. So, here goes, nabbed from Viki:

20 years ago (1987)

Age?
Twelve.

Were you in school? If so, where and for what?
7th grade at Beach Middle School in Chelsea, Michigan. My father was the principal. It was traumatizing (hi, Dad!)

Where did you work?
n/a

Where did you live?
Cedar Lake.

What were your regular haunts?
On the far end of Cedar Lake there’s a little secret lake—a little pond connects the two. You can’t see it unless you’re over there in the rowboat. I would go over there and float around and read books. Also, on Thursdays, on the way into school, my dad and I would stop at the Chelsea Bakery for donuts. Also I was gearing up for a long career as a band geek, so probably the band room. I played the saxophone (good Lord, a twelve-year-old with a saxophone).

Did you wear glasses?
Nope.

Who was your best friend?
Oh, man. Uhm … probably Becky?

How many tattoos did you have?
None. Yet.

How many piercings did you have?
None.

What did you drive?
n/a

Had you been to a real party yet?
Sleepovers at Becky’s or Christine’s where we’d coreograph dance routines to Cyndi Lauper or Boy George.

Heart broken yet?
Not really … I had an unrealized crush on the first chair saxophone player, but then I beat him and got first chair and it didn’t so much matter anymore.

Status on the market?
n/a

Ten years ago (1997)

Age?
Twenty-two.

Were you in school?
My first year of grad school at Columbia College.

Where did you work?
Tutto Bene on Van Buren and Racine—I also started at the Bongo Room at the end of that year.

Where did you live?
In a loft in Humboldt Park with Heather and Pete—Pete had a painting studio in the back and his band, Behold the Living Corpse, practiced there sometimes. It was kinda seedy and nobody ever did the dishes and I never slept for shit but in retrospect it was perfect. Absolutely perfect.

What were your regular haunts?
Subterranean—Heather worked there. And one a.m. sushi at Kamahachi with Sue after a shift.

Did you wear glasses?
Nope.

Who was your best friend?
Heather and Sue and Jeff (we’d just started our writer’s group and were hanging out all the time, being terribly literary and whathaveyou).

How many tattoos did you have?
None yet.

What did you drive?
A ’91 Isuzu Stylus that Pete sold me for the cost of his accumulated parking tickets.

Had you been to a real party yet?
Hell, yes. Heather WAS the party—it followed her wherever she went—and since I lived with her I got to come, too. I learned a great deal from her, about being independent and having fun and living in the moment.

Heart broken yet?
Yes. Bobby and Jason.

Status on the market?
On.

Five years ago (2002)

Age?
Twenty-seven.

Were you in school? If so, where and for what?
I teach, so I’m in school every day.

Where did you work?
Columbia and U of C. And also the Bongo Room for Sunday brunch, because I love the people who work there and the money’s damn good.

Where did you live?
In a one-bedroom in Humboldt Park, but my lease ran out three months before I moved to Prague for a year and the management company wouldn’t extend it, so I slept on Tracy’s couch for a couple months until Christopher and I got together and then I moved into his studio. Which was AWESOME. Not because the PLACE was awesome—the place was pretty schkeevy, actually—but because of those first few months of being in love, being sort of drunk all the time and late to everything and floating everywhere. And then we moved to Prague, where I spent my last few months of 27.

update: I’ve been thinking about it, and all of that actually happened when I was 28. Can you believe it? I’m getting old enough to forget entire YEARS. When my mom turned 50, she got a birthday card from an old friend saying, Happy 51st! and she was all, I’m 50! Not 51! Turns out she really WAS 50 and, somehow, she’d skipped a year. So now, not only am I getting senile but I’m also turning into my mother.

ANYHOW: when I was 27 I lived in that same one-bedroom in Humboldt. I did go to Prague, but only for a six-week stint during the summer (it was then that I decided I’d move there a year later).

What were your regular haunts?
Bongo Room, Danny’s, Flying Saucer, Bistro Campagne and Myopic Books; Blue Light, Cartouche and Meduza’s in Prague.

Did you wear glasses?
Reading glasses. After so many hours with my nose in books, the computer, or student work, I’d officially ruined my eyes.

Who were your best friends?
Jeff and Lott and Dia.

How many tattoos did you have?
I got my first that year—a Ouiji board across my lower back.

Update: I also got the one on my inner right arm that year.

How many piercings did you have?
None.

What did you drive?
Toyota Camry. The a/c didn’t work and the driver’s side window didn’t roll down—not a vehicle for summers in Chicago.

Had you been to a real party yet?
Yes—bachelorette parties at the Bongo Room.

Heart broken yet?
Yes, but it was distant and stung less.

Status on the market?
On the market, up until the last few months when I was off in a big way.

Update: On all year. I didn’t get together with Christopher until I was 28, so I stayed single and went out a lot and did many Fun at the Time yet Stupid in Retrospect things with many Fun at the Time yet Stupid in Retrospect boys.

As of today (2007)

Age?
I’ll be 32 in August.

Are you in school? If so, where and for what?
Still there every day.

Where do you work?
Columbia and U of C. I also do 2nd Story, which means either my house, Amanda’s house, Webster’s or Dollop.

Where do you live?
We just moved to Uptown.

What are your regular haunts?
Dollop, Magnolia, Café Too and Uncommon Ground, although mostly my house, because it’s new and I love it and also we have a mortgage so I can’t go galavanting around like I used to. And also Amanda’s house. Amanda? You should just give me keys.

Do you wear glasses?
For reading. When I remember. I really should remember—I’m not wearing them right now.

Who is your best friend?
Christopher.

Do you talk to your old friends?
Some. Mostly Jeff, Lott and Dia.

Do you have a crush?
Are you kidding? Have you SEEN my husband?

How many tattoos do you have?
Still two—but I have two new ones ready to go if I can just find the time to make the friggin’ appointment. I keep putting it off for silly things like dentist and doctor.

How many piercings do you have?
None. Never.

What do you drive?
Honda Civic 2003. I’d like a Hybrid but they’re still too expensive—plus, I park on the street in Chicago. It’s just not realistic to have a nice, new car. You need something small, with good gas mileage, and who cares if someone slams into your bumper?

Have you been to a real party yet?
These days, I like dinner parties. I like cleaning my house and getting it all nice and fancy and having interesting people over who make me A. laugh and B. think.

Status on the market?
Off.

Besides ones of the pet variety, any dependents?
I’m going to ignore the beginning of this question and leave you all with this:

I’m tagging Byron, Kim, Shiow and Mary (Don’t fight me on this, Mary Mac. I’ll come find you—I know where you live).

Posted by Megan at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)